I’m getting to the point where mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all, but that watching shitty administrators ruin good universities gives me the kind of schadenfreude most of us usually reserve for watching Donald Trump’s poll numbers. Today’s installment went a little long:
Our story begins at the University of Toronto, where stem cells and insulin were discovered. Beth Landau-Halpern, the wife of the dean of the Scarborough campus, who is also a homeopath, taught a course called “Alternative Health: Practice and Theory” in the Anthropology Department. Here’s a taste:
We will delve into quantum physics’ understanding of disease and alternative medicine to provide a scientific hypothesis of how these modalities may work…
The course also required that students watch a two-hour interview with leader of the anti-vaxxers, Andrew Wakefield.
As soon as the press caught wind that this charlatan was ladling out a heaping helping of bullshit under the colors of the University of Toronto, they tried to punk her. You can read the whole thing, but here’s the start of Landau-Halpern’s self-pitying account of the “bullying” of the media:
In May of this year I received a call from a young mother [reporter in disguise] expressing concerns about the safety of vaccines for her baby and asking if she and her husband could come in and talk to me about homeopathic alternatives (which, in the simplest terms include homeoprophylaxis for those choosing not to vaccinate, or immune support for those who choose to vaccinate). This is a common request from (especially educated) parents, aware of media stories of vaccine damage as well as the myopic perspective of mainstream medicine for whom there are no alternatives, no accommodations, and no individualizing of vaccination schedules.
I love the haughty modifier “(especially educated)”, since their education consists of reading media stories on “vaccine damage”. By that standard, someone’s grandparents who watch Fox News every waking hour should be granted honorary degrees from the University of Toronto.
For those of you who are not especially educated this definition will enlighten you:
Homeoprophylaxis uses homeopathic remedies called nosodes (prepared from disease germs) to educate the immune system towards the disease process. They are not intended to force antibody production, nor are they polluted with every other ingredient vaccines have. Nosodes are pure disease energy aimed to stimulate appropriate immunological response to natural disease so that the immune system knows how to get sick and how to get better.
In other words, homeoprophylaxis is the same basic quackery as the rest of homeopathy: dilute something to almost nothing and administer it to the patient, for mysterious woo-woo reasons unrelated to any form of scientific inquiry. (Even so, Health Canada has approved 100 different nosodes for homeopaths to peddle the their especially educated clients.)
So Ms Landau-Halpern is a quack, which is in itself not a big deal. What’s remarkable here is the U of T’s mealy-mouthed response. You can tell they realized that they done fucked up, to use layman’s terms, because they won’t teach this course any longer. But they fall back on a study conducted by one of the deans [pdf], who secured his future in the administration by reporting that the class was probably OK since it was for advanced students who already knew that anti-vaxxers were full of shit. In other words, in the students’ minds, the homeopathic and anti-vax bullshit was diluted by the rest of their education and rendered ineffective. It’s the opposite of what a homeopath would believe, so perhaps it’s true.
bystander
I can only tolerate Donald Trump in minute doses. Does this mean I’m a self-inoculator?
MattF
You should probably replace ‘dilute to almost nothing’ by ‘dilute to nothing’. It’s easy enough to show that homeopathic ‘dilution’ results in zero concentration. Of course, you’re ignoring contamination, so there’s that.
schrodinger's cat
Question: Why are these new agey charlatans always trying to latch on to quantum mechanics. It does not say what they think it says.
kindness
Sounds like someone has been reading Lawyers, Guns & Money. The complaints about Administrators sounds just like them.
MattF
@schrodinger’s cat: Because the relatively few people who understand quantum mechanics (at least enough to actually do it) don’t want to get into arguments with cranks.
constitutional mistermix
@bystander: Your immune system is being exercised but no antibodies are being created, so I’m not sure.
@MattF: You’re right about that, however, I was trying not to be sucked in by mainstream medicine’s myopic theory of molecules.
Belafon
@schrodinger’s cat: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
schrodinger's cat
@MattF: There are some physicists who indulge in the crankery too, Fritjof Capra comes to mind. For them, I think snake oil salesmanship is easier than doing physics research.
schrodinger's cat
@constitutional mistermix: Good to see you back! How have you been?
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
But it does sound very sciency.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodinger’s cat: They latch onto it *precisely because* so few understand it, and they know if they say disease is caused by evil humours, people will laugh at them.
boatboy_srq
Is UofT voiding the credits and refunding the tuition for this class? That would be a good solid “we done effed up” statement…
Ruviana
@kindness: Somebody’s been exposed to academia. Mistermix sounds like all faculty ever including me. And as an anthropologist I apologize for having this course housed in an anthro department. Argh!
constitutional mistermix
@schrodinger’s cat: Good, just took on too much work a few months ago and I’m still working too much…
Roger Moore
@MattF:
It also assumes they mix things well. It’s very easy to mess up dilution series by failing to mix adequately. If you then sample from a place far from where you added the thing you’re diluting, you’ll get much greater dilution than expected; if you sample from close to where you added it, you can get much less dilution than expected. That’s been offered as an explanation for the experiments that claim to show that water has a memory; if you mess up your serial dilution, there may be enough material left to give the results they’re seeing even though it should have been completely diluted away.
CONGRATULATIONS!
My brother teaches at a university, so watching administrators ruin his career and life does give me any schadenfreude at all, quite the opposite.
However, watching administrators embarrass the shit out of themselves and their families, like this story does, give me a big old grin. Because they are what are destroying the academy.
Walker
Actually, I would have no problem with an course like this in an anthropology department if it was about the anthropology of people/societies that believe this stuff. Sadly that is not what this was.
boatboy_srq
@schrodinger’s cat: @MattF: … so they don’t like Big Bidness and especially Big Pharma, but they’ll take esoteric natural-science-cum-philosophy and twist it to suit because Science (and Science itself is never wrong). Correct?
Scratch
Just a friendly reminder to you all not to toss any homeopathic remedies down the drain where they’ll be diluted to even greater potency.
Nylund
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is the basic idea of how homeopaths believe the magic happens:
Find something, a poison or irritant, that causes the problems/symptoms you want to “cure.” Put it in some water. This bad thing has “energy” or “vibrates” or something like that. The water “remembers” this vibration. If you then take a drop of that magic water that “remembers” the energy and add it to a different tank of water, this drop will spread it’s magical vibration knowledge to all the other water. In order for this to happen though, you have to bang the container many times so that it vibrates. You then take a drop of that water, add it to a large tank of plain water. Strike that tank so that it vibrates, allowing the memory of the first drop to spread it’s vibrations to the full tank. Repeat and repeat until you’ve diluted the original water by about a million times, until you have just plain water. The more you dilute it, the more “powerful” the medicine.
Its like saying that if I add a pinch of ground pepper to a reservoir, then any sick person can stop their sneezing by drinking water from that reservoir.
MattF
@boatboy_srq: More like ‘use words with ‘q’ and ‘z’ in them because they’re unusual’.
Iowa Old Lady
In my experience, good administration is much rarer than good research or even good teaching.
But bad as administrators can be, politicians who meddle in higher education are far worse. The North Carolina system and the U of Wisc are in the process of being gutted.
J R in WV
@Roger Moore:
But I’m thinking that if you didn’t dilute at all you still wouldn’t get anything theraputic going on because the original mix was leaves and cat hair, not drugs or even effective herbal remedies.
They use substances that they claim would reproduce the symptoms of the disease they are attempting to cure. Which is just stupid on the face of it. Now a good herbalist on the other hand is going to use herbs that seem to actually fight the symptoms and causes of a disorder, as opposed to herbs which will cause similar symptoms to the disease being treated, which to me would make the disorder worse in my book.
So if you have a fever, take herbs that make your body temps go up? WHUT? NoNoNoNoNo.
Take asprin, which makes your body temps go down, so you feel better and your body can muster resources to combat your disease.
Why do medical frauds do so well when real scientific medicine really works so well? My shoulder agony is over, by treatment by surgeons and researchers in replacement body parts. Or I could have taken water that once met herbs that make your joints hurt. Huh?
Walker
The problems with the course aside, I understand U. of Toronto’s hesitant stance. Academic freedom is a pretty major sacred cow and administrators do not want to take any steps that might threaten it. For years, the university has been under threat by right wingers trying to eliminate courses and entire programs. Heck, if the requirement is that we can get rid of any academic coursework that has been heavily refuted, I would love to force U Chicago to dissolve their Economics department.
Yes, this was a pretty egregious case, but it was in Anthropology department, not a science department. The department is responsible for policing its quality without administrative interference. Upper-level administration can eliminate the entire department (and the tenure of everyone in it) if they feel it is violating its mission, but they cannot micromanage what the department does.
Gene108
@Walker:
Homeopathy was invented by a 19th century German.
If you want study where this came from I guess you need to start with Germany’s contribution.
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: The destruction of state colleges, is what I thought the blog was going to be about.
Woodrowfan
Because regular doctors do it to make money. no, seriously, that’s what I’ve been told.
Mike J
@MattF: The Infinite Monkey Cage had an ep on “quantum medicine.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b051ryq8
Davis X. Machina
Is it true that Mrs. Clinton gave some sort of major speech today? On the economy and stuff?
Anybody see it?
Or was it skippable, because everyone knows she’s just a tool of the banksters and doesn’t mean a word of it?
Walker
@Gene108:
Ok, are you arguing then that this goes in a history department rather than an anthropology department?
Roger Moore
@Iowa Old Lady:
Sure. Bad administrators are parasites, but like most parasites they want their host to stay alive so they have a continuous source of nourishment. Bad politicians are actively trying to destroy the system.
Woodrowfan
we had an adjunct that I found was teaching Velikovskyism in his history classes as the reason why the large mammals in the American went extinct. (Mars did it!) Fortunately he is no longer teaching.///
Iowa Old Lady
@Roger Moore: Actually, I think one problem with deans and college presidents is that they tend to stay a few years and then move along to a bigger, more prestigious job, so they aren’t completely invested in the host’s survival except as it reflects on them.
boatboy_srq
@MattF: It’s too early on a Monday morning for the quantity of aspirin that thinking about that statement would require.
trollhattan
It startles me how many otherwise functioning engineers believe this crap. I just wanted to note that for the record.
Roger Moore
@J R in WV:
Two reasons:
1) There are always people who distrust authority and will turn to anyone who claims to have an alternative. These are the people who take willow bark tea for their headache but would run screaming if somebody suggested they try aspirin.
2) There are plenty of areas where modern medicine is less successful. We still have at best mixed success with cancer and can’t do a whole lot but offer palliatives for a lot of other chronic diseases like arthritis, autoimmune diseases, and chronic CNS diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Those are exactly the places where the hucksters and crazies tend to congregate.
dedc79
Speaking of quacks, look who’s baaack… (did she ever actually leave?):
Felonius Monk
@trollhattan:
Are engineers more susceptible to this crap than other people? Why do you single them out?
Amir Khalid
@Davis X. Machina:
Here’s the CNN story on it.
Mike J
@Amir Khalid: I’m sure this pissed off the media:
Matt McIrvin
@schrodinger’s cat: Quantum mechanics is weird, and some of the pioneers of the subject were intellectual omnivores who dabbled in (usually Westernized versions of) Eastern religious philosophy, and reached for it when trying to find metaphors and ways of talking about the weirdness.
Then when the Sixties/Seventies counterculture hit, this stuff was tailor-made to explode into pop culture, and people like Capra and Zukav were all too happy to oblige. And the popular takeway was just that quantum physics is magic.
Not only that, a few very legit physicists like Eugene Wigner had interpreted the influence of measurement on a quantum system to mean that human consciousness somehow had a special, direct influence on the systems it perceived (erroneously, I believe, but it was at least a semi-respectable position). And that opened up a can of worms, because you could wave your hands and argue vaguely that this explained every paranormal thing that anybody believed in. Parapsychology was hot; there were all these stories about secret psychic warfare programs and such. Here you had something that sounded like a physical basis for telekinesis and telepathy.
Once it got into the self-help-book market, there was no getting rid of it.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Felonius Monk:
Salem Hypothesis. It’s kind of startling how many cranks who claim to be scientists or have had science training turn out to be engineers. I don’t think anyone’s done a formal study on it, though.
To be clear, I think the cranks have a predisposition to going into engineering fields, rather than engineering turning people into cranks. A lot of these people are very smart, but also very prone to confirmation bias.
Trentrunner
Slightly off-topic, but Donald Trump and El Chapo are having a Twitter fight, and IT IS AWESOME. Daily Mail (sorry):
Trentrunner
<a href="“>Here’s the Daily Mail link
Amir Khalid
@Mike J:
Well, it’s not Sanders she’s disagreeing with. Not right now, anyway. There will come a time for her and Sanders to debate the fine points of her policy proposals versus his, who would be better able to implement, etc. For now each candidate has to set out their own ideas for everyone to see.
Miki
@trollhattan:
My dear-departed Dad was one of them. It contributed to his ultimate death from sepsis (shingles + post-shingles neuralgia + “treatment” with homeopathy/TCM/acupuncture = pressure sore, etc.). His doctor was a “real” doctor (board certified in internal medicine) who prescribed all kinds of woo but never prescribed even a simple lidocain patch.
I hate those people (alt med people, not engineers). Hate, hate, hate them.
Botsplainer
As I consider the original post, I wonder how many $400,000.00 per year administrators and their $200,000.00 a year deputy administrators were involved in approving and putting together this fine program?
RSA
Here’s how the program advertises itself:
The report said it’s a new program; the faculty doesn’t have a curriculum committee set up for it; there was insufficient oversight of new courses and instructors. To me this sounds like the result of some pretty slapdash, disconnected processes.
Amir Khalid
@Miki:
Doctors like that deserve to lose their medical licences.
J R in WV
@Woodrowfan:
Yes, they do, and quite a lot, before they do the operation, too. But I’m pretty sure my cousin pays for her homeopathic medicine from the naturopath in Seattle. So that argument doesn’t work for me at all.
On the other hand, she orders chinese herbal medications for one of her dogs, and it actually works. Go figure. Maybe the dog has better than average placebo effect? Maybe good and appropriate herbs!
Capri
There’s a difference between learning about something and adopting it as a life style. If I were a pediatrician with patients whose parents are “highly educated” I might want to see a 2-hour movie in order to know what the anti-vaxers believe.
FWIW, there’s a lot the immune system can do without making antibodies. But no evidence homeopathy does anything. If it did, you could eat some apple seeds and become resistant to cyanide.
Space Oddity
To be fair to homeopathy, much like Freudian psychotherapy, it started out as woo that could at least boast of being less harmful than the standard practices of the time. (“Laudanum! The miracle drug that helps EVERYTHING!”) Of course, that hasn’t been the case for over a century, and the homeopaths haven’t changed their bag of tricks. Even if they have gone all quantum on us…
the Conster
@schrodinger’s cat:
I read The Dancing Wu-li Masters and The Tao of Physics back to back, and got a lot out of it, FWIW. Especially Gary Zukav’s discussion of Bell’s Theorem.
And just because Andrew Wakefield is a fraud, it doesn’t mean that all western doctors aren’t full of shit. I’ll change my diet before I’ll take a pill.
WereBear
I say some of medicine has to take some blame. Try being a middle-aged woman with baffling symptoms. Heck, try being any woman with something the doctor cannot understand or help. You will be given Prozac and told to go away.
Look at diabetes care. Despite massive scientific evidence for a low carb diet doing wonders for most forms of Type II, with many ditching meds entirely. Yet the “standard of care” is drugs and low fat. Which is why diabetes is considered a chronic progressive disease. They aren’t treating it right.
There’s no better time in history to get put back together again. I’ll never take that away from modern medicine. But when they give up on a person, the sufferer is going to try some wild things out of desperation.
Still, the vaccine thing was utter bullshit, and it’s been shown to be so, and the guy lost his license, but it’s taken on independent life now.
mapaghimagsik
I blame Star Trek, which seemed to happily conflate engineers with scientists.
Let the rage begin :)
Bostondreams
Speaking of ruining universities, tenure was just eliminated in Wisconsin.
When does the brain drain from that system begin?
Jebediah, RBG
@Scratch:
Since I can’t upvote or star your comment, that means that homeopathically it has the million stars that it deserves.
Miki
@Amir Khalid:
Yup. He’s had some license issues (agreed to a suspension a couple of years ago) but he’s back at it again now. He’s an arrogant ass who considers himself a miracle worker. Fucker.
Both of my parents were deep into the woo. I think it made them feel special. I was polite, but I didn’t participate in it. More than once it was suggested that I was too “negative” and had some “energy” problems. Kind of tough to argue against that without seeming to prove their point.
I miss my parents (they both died in 2008), but I don’t miss the woo. And for sure I don’t miss the woo doctor.
Botsplainer
@Bostondreams:
So will this negatively affect FranziaBlog?
Botsplainer
@Trentrunner:
It’s classy, VERY classy. That Mexican thug is a loser, a lousy negotiator.
Monala
@WereBear: I want to echo this. I get my flu shot every year, my kid is fully vaccinated, and I am very thankful to be living in a time with modern medicine. And yet, I am someone who often turns to homemade or alternative remedies. This is partly due to the tendency of a lot of doctors to immediately try to give me drugs (when something else may work better), and partly due to having spent some time in my life uninsured, and having no other choice.
A few examples:
1. I once had tendonitis in my hand (repetitive stress injury). An orthopedist prescribed a heavy dose ibuprofen which did nothing for the pain, and gave me a cortisone shot in the hand, which caused my fingers to curl up and lock.
Eventually, I found a hand therapist, an occupational therapist by training, who straightened out the locked fingers and the pain with electrostimulus of my hand, massage, and hand strengthening exercises.
2. I get really bad bronchitis every year and for years doctors always wanted to give me antibiotics after a few weeks. Antibiotics always gave me yeast infections, and never cured the bronchitis.
I got a new doctor a few years ago, who finally gave me a diagnosis that made sense: reactive airway disease, a form of short-term asthma triggered by colds and viruses. She did put me on a medication, but an appropriate one: an inhaler.
3. During one of my uninsured periods, I got an infection under one of my fingernail beds. I started reading online about how to treat it, and most of the mainstream medical sites said that the only cure is an antibiotic. Well, that was not an option for my uninsured, and reluctant to take antibiotics anyway, self.
Then I read this on a site about homemade remedies: soak the finger in white vinegar for 20 minutes a day, 2 times a day, for 3 days. Guess what? It worked!
Uncle Cosmo
Engineers are by & large almost as intellectually arrogant as MDs in asserting that their cognitive abilities trump ;^) education and expertise in any given field of study. These overcredentialed imbeciles are convinced that a few minutes of their thought provides more insight than the years of training & experience of experts in the field. This is especially true when the consensus views of the experts go against their beliefs or convenience.
How do I know this? I spent years working on a floor of ~150 engineers, most of whom were 6 megaparsecs to the right of Genghis Khan & exactly as I characterized them: overcredentialed imbeciles.
At least engineering degree requires you to be able to think, albeit in limited realms. Med school is primarily an exercise in rote memorization.
Paul in KY
@J R in WV: If cat hair cured ills, I’d live forever!
Paul in KY
@Gene108: Germany!!!! (shaking fist in general East direction)
FlipYrWhig
@Uncle Cosmo: My dad, a hardcore rationalist physics PhD, has never liked the expression “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist.” He says, “A ‘rocket scientist’ is just an engineer. Pfft. Most of THEM still believe in GOD.”
SFAW
@mapaghimagsik:
Well, they are not dissimilar, in some respects. Dweebiness, asocial behavior, wearing high-waters. But only a few of them talk like Urkel.
WereBear
@Monala: So glad you got positive experiences. I, too, have otherwise inexplicable improvement with things that could be dismissed as woo.
But some of today’s woo can be the treatments of tomorrow. They drove Dr. Semmelweis into madness and death.
He wanted doctors to wash their hands.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: It confuses smart people. Presto change-o, God of the gaps is back, baby.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
Which is SO much worse than physics PhDs, who continue to believe in massless elephants and frictionless boulders.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: easier to get paid you mean. Thanks, Newt Gingrich.
Paul in KY
@WereBear: What kind of idiot would say that a diabetic would not have to control carbs?! My dad is diabetic, on low carb diet, with taking glimepiride/metformin & is 91. If we did not control the carbs, he would be dead.
Paul in KY
@Bostondreams: Hope they come down to UK and UL.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Monala:
But of those three stories, only the third one is actual “alternative” medicine. Physical therapy is underprescribed because insurance companies are too cheap to pay for it, but most doctors realize it works better than drugs for physical/mechanical problems. The second one was a misdiagnosis.
But the vinegar thing does seem to work on fingernail/toenail fungus for some people. My spouse was trying it for a while, but I think his case is too far advanced.
Roger Moore
@RSA:
Obviously, the solution is to hire more administrators to oversee the process…
Punchy
That’s the funniest sack of complete and utter bullshit I’ve read in years. Pure Disease Energy is a great band name, BTW. Also good for the rotating tag line.
Gravenstone
O/T: Bloom County may be back!
schrodinger's cat
@Matt McIrvin: Quantum mechanics is not weird, that’s how matter behaves on an atomic scale and lower. It seems weird because human language is not equipped to describe it, since we cannot perceive quantum reality using our senses. The language of quantum mechanics is math, not English or any other human language.
Quantum mechanics works, the computers and intertoobz through which we communicate would not have been possible without understanding quantum mechanical behavior of matter.
WereBear
@Paul in KY: The American Diabetes Association. Last year I visited an endo who had an informative chart over his desk advocating for carbs at the three meals and two snacks.
Gravenstone
@schrodinger’s cat: Because it sounds “sciency” and “truthy” and bamboozles the gullible marks to part with their hard earned monies.
SFAW
@schrodinger’s cat:
Or doesn’t.
schrodinger's cat
@SFAW: Does too, may not be for kittehs, but definitely for electrons
MattF
@SFAW: No, no. Spherical elephants and frictionless planes.
schrodinger's cat
@Another Holocene Human: What did Newtie do?
Paul in KY
@Punchy: That would be a hella band name. Pure Disease Energy: Could call themselves PDE, would have to be a Christian Nu-Metal group then.
SFAW
@schrodinger’s cat:
Glad you picked up on that. Not surprised, however.
Paul in KY
@WereBear: He can have some brown rice or dark bread. No potatoes or corn at all.
mapaghimagsik
@SFAW:
True. Though I still remember someone telling me that Star Trek inspired them to become an engineer. For that, I have never completely forgiven Star Trek.
SFAW
@MattF:
You musta gone to one of them schools what taught hippie “science.”
schrodinger's cat
@MattF: Sphere? that’s too complicated. I suggest treating the elephant as a point mass, unless it is rotating.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: That’s just as thought experiments and is thus a sign of superior rationality. (But, yeah, when physics turns into philosophy and vice versa, I’m out. I’d like to think I’m a fairly intelligent person on a fair amount of subjects, but existential-philosophical stuff for me might as well be pouring molasses into both ears at the same time.)
SFAW
@mapaghimagsik:
Not sure why the hate for engineers, unless the engineer under discussion was a dick.
But, on a more practical/realistic level: engineers build things and get them to work. (Well, the good engineers do.) Scientists, not so much.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: My dad is pretty close to being a living example of that saying, usually at the expense of economists or political philosophers, “Yes, it works in practice, but does it in theory?”
mapaghimagsik
@SFAW:
Not just a dick, a raving dick. A good engineer is worth their weight in gold, however, it seems that many disciplines kind of threw out all those good qualities, and hire jackasses.
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
Don’t quite follow, to which are you referring? The massless elephants? Or the engineers that believe in God? Or something else that I’m completely missing?
trollhattan
@Felonius Monk:
Have worked with and alongside engineers most of my professional life. For whatever reason there is an out-of-proportion subset heavily smitten by dietary and medical woo. I can’t even begin to list the wacky things I’ve been told in earnest or heard in passing. It’s particularly ironic, considering they have considerable science coursework, including biology, before they dive headfirst into their engineering curriculum. (I’m a more lenient with, say, an accountant.)
Luckily it’s only a subset but beyond eye-rolls the other engineers don’t seem motivated to push back against the crazy. My stock retort to unsolicited “medical” advice is promising to not drive over a bridge designed by an M.D. and not making medical decisions based on advice from a P.E.
Anti-climate-change engineers are a whole other topic.
sharl
@Grumpy Code Monkey: I’m glad you found and linked that Salem Hypothesis explanation – I can NEVER remember the name for that!
While over at Rationalwiki, I found pages for Engineers and Woo and Crank Magnetism which deal with this same general category: folks who are well educated in a specific field – and maybe even quite competent and skilled in that field – who presume that their expertise can legitimately be extended to any other topic.
Some of the stuff in that first link offers some fine trolling ammunition for use against that special engineer in your life who is so full of him/herself (probably himself, to be quite honest). For example:
Sure, that statement is subsequently qualified and further explained, but it would be just so gosh darn tempting to use it on the office blowhard on a day when he’s being particularly irksome.
FlipYrWhig
@SFAW: I remember as a kid trying to give my dead some grief about the whole concept of hypotheticals (like the absence of friction), and he was furious. “Look, this is important. There are things you have to assume to isolate the larger issue!” Mostly I was just trying to quote his sneery joke about of credulous engineers, not to endorse it. I don’t think I know any engineers.
SFAW
@mapaghimagsik:
My condolences. But I understand the back-story better now.
I have been fortunate enough to work with some excellent engineers during my career. Although it would never happen, I would have been extremely gratified to be mentioned (positively) in the same breath as some of them.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@WereBear:
Was it the “carb counting” chart? From what I understand, diabetics have to count the carbs in fruits and veggies, not just the things we normally think of as “carbs” (bread, rice, potatoes, etc). For a diabetic, a carrot needs to be counted as a carbohydrate.
trollhattan
Is a thread on medical quackery the reason the site is pasted with “Ben Carson for President” ads? Because I kind of like the pairing, in a perverse way….
SFAW
@FlipYrWhig:
OK, got it.
We’re (mostly) OK, but we have our flaws. There was a time when a (male) engineer was usually married to a nurse, because engineers generally needed someone to take care of them (because they often did a shitty job on their own).
Note: The preceding sentence is not intended to be a comment in the vein of engineers-are-men-and-nurses-are-women stereotyping, because that hasn’t been the case for a long time. (My mother was an engineer, and I’m no spring chicken.)
trollhattan
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Glycemic index, perhaps? Not up on the lingo, but have a passing familiarity with tracking GI in diet.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Nope. This was what the patient was supposed to MEET.
Miki
@FlipYrWhig:
Heh. My Dad was a rocket scientist – he worked on the Jupiter missile at Redstone Arsenal from @1956 – 1960. We went to church with Wernher Von Braun. And my Dad became an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church in the early 1980s.
So, yeah – your dad was right.
Marmot
@trollhattan: Wait wait! Regular engineers or software? I’ve noticed a raft of quirks more common among the former — libertarian wishes, terrible writing, pervasive squareness, a strange group mentality, naturally acquired block-print handwriting, and more. Research I’ve read says they’re more likely to hold extreme political views.
Just curious. So late in the thread, though.
SFAW
@Marmot:
That’s the soft
headsware engineers, I think.Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@WereBear:
IANAD, but as I understand it, diabetics do need some carbs in their diet since too-low blood sugar can cause a coma or seizure. That’s why the emergency treatment for a suspected diabetic crisis is to give them sugar water or fruit juice to bring their blood sugar back up. But most of the dietary advice I’ve seen has been recommending protein and non-starchy vegetables with small amounts of carbs like rice.
trollhattan
@Marmot:
Regular (e.g., civil) engineers. I’ve only known a small sprinkling of software engineers. I’d call my brother one, but he’s a chemist by training. It’s just that he was never able to find a job as a chemist so has done computery stuff his entire working life. Funny how things work out, sometimes….
ETA, and since you mention it–lots of libertarian leanings also, too. That I almost understand, since there’s a belief that when the zombie/DFH apocalypse comes, they can retreat to their ten acres and live offgrid forever.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
We old-fart non-software engineers used to distinguish between programmers and software engineers. Most of the ones we knew were programmers who got an “engineer” tacked onto their name because that was the way of the world. But those newly-minted software “engineers” could write spaghetti code with the best of them.
Microsoft probably had a lot of ’em in the early days.
Roger Moore
@SFAW:
Actually, plenty of scientists have to build things and get them to work as part of carrying out their experiments. The difference is that scientists tend to do that stuff as artisans rather than manufacturers. I think the bigger difference is that scientists are focused on trying to figure out how the universe works, while engineers are focused on forcing the universe to do what we want it to. Those can lead to very different attitudes.
Marmot
@trollhattan: Thanks. And I see the thread delved further into the topic than I expected.
I work among a bunch of engineers, and some percentage of them are quite odd. I see y’all have noticed too. Average engineer verbal GRE scores are shifted significantly down compared to other technical disciplines (so are those of comp sci students), almost as if it’s a two-peak plot.
Simon Baron-Cohen says they’re most likely to parent an autistic kid, though who knows why that might be the case. I think there’s a sample-size problem with his data too, but I’m not certain.
Of course, there are plenty of perfectly normal engineers.
trollhattan
@Marmot:
Yeah, I don’t want to come across as slagging on engineers as a whole–they genuinely run the gamut. I’ve had many for bosses (and project managers, almost but not quite a boss) over a couple decades and they’ve ranged from absolutely amazing, brilliant human beings to DSM-grade sociopaths, both men and women.
And also, too, without engineers, how would we have something as amazing as this?
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Agreed. Although engineers often have to do “artisanal” (FSM, I hate that word) equipment-design-and-building as part of the design process.
Interesting (in a good sense) way of putting it. I would suggest a slight modification: both work at solving problems, but scientists are not necessarily certain what the problem-to-be-solved is, when they start. (Pertains more to theoretical, rather than applied, science, I guess.)
Roger Moore
@Marmot:
Genetics.
Paul in KY
@Miki: My Dad’s sister company captured Dr. Von Braun at end of war. Was in Southern Austria at time.
SFAW
@trollhattan:
Or this, for something a little more down-to-Earth.
Marmot
@Roger Moore: Sure, but the genetics of autism are very murky. It’s certainly a multi-genic trait, with a heap of important environmental factors, possibly developmental factors, and who-knows-what. I’m still skeptical of the connection, anyway.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Marmot:
It’s very clearly heritable, though, which is what most laypeople think of when they wonder if something is “genetic”:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_autism
I suspect part of the problem is that other developmental syndromes are currently getting lumped together as “autism,” so trying to trace a single gene from a research pool that may have different reasons for similar symptoms is tough.
I do wonder if part of the problem with some of the anti-vaxxers is that they’re themselves on the autism spectrum but undiagnosed.
RSA
@Roger Moore:
It’s funny because it’s inevitable…
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: Scientists are sometimes cranks about fields of science that are not their own. (Sometimes, even fields of science that are their own, when their pet ideas have been rejected, and then they diversify to other fields. I think there was something in the water drunk by the British steady-state cosmologists like Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold.)
But engineers, in particular, are a bit more likely to embrace the sort of crankery that tells them that anything is possible with sufficient will: machines that generate energy or momentum out of nowhere, revisions to relativity that let you go faster than light, climate denialism that says you can actually burn as much fossil fuel as you want without hurting the environment. To these people any science that says “no, you can’t” is suspect. It’s often associated with libertarian politics.
Marmot
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I agree with that. There are probably several similar disorders all getting classified together.
I’m too predisposed to believe the engineer connection, with what I see in my job, so I’d prefer an airtight case. You’ve also got de novo mutation, copy number variation, and possible epigenetic factors (mayyyybe), so it’ll be awhile.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Marmot:
I’ll just say that in my own family, my niece and nephew’s diagnosis on the autism spectrum was pretty much the least surprising news ever, because I had met my sister-in-law’s family. So that’s my anecdata for the day.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Just remember: the plural of “anecdata” is not “anecdote.”
Lee Rudolph
@J R in WV:
And maybe (shading into “likely”) actual veterinary pharmaceuticals. There’s been quite a spate of cases over recent years of stuff packaged and sold as “Chinese traditional medicine” drugs that turns out to be adulterated with … Western Big-Pharma drugs; e.g., impotence medicine adulterated with Cialis or Viagra.
Of course the dosage is unlikely to work out right, even if the drug has the desired activity. If the medicine actually helped her dog, I guess it’s just one lucky {son of a bitch|bitch} [choose appropriately].
OneMadClown
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I’m not sure if the doc WereBear talked about sucks or just has an ancient poster on the wall, but I was just diagnosed with Type 2 last fall, and neither my doc, the nutritionist I was sent to, nor the ADA website told me “eat a bunch of carbs and no fat”. They did stress to me not to go nuts and try to cut all carbs out of my diet, but to lower the amounts I’m taking in and make smarter choices about the sources of the carbs I consume.
karen marie
In other words, it is bullshit, not supported by actual science. While I have a great deal of admiration for our neighbors to the north, I am gobsmacked their health service pays for this quackery.
Nick
As a U of T grad (thanks, U of T!) from the anthropology department (not surprised), what’s really frustrating about this conclusion is that of all the people in a university who might study this, anthropologists are the LEAST likely to be able to figure out that it is bullshit. Medical students and pharmacologists and chemists and biologists and pretty much everyone would have had classes that give them the ability to penetrate the murk — but anthropologists are trained to respect peculiar, irrational belief systems. It’s not considered ‘nice’ to attack them with facts and logic from your own.
Matt
Somehow I’m reminded of Monty Python’s Cheese Shop sketch: “Well, it’s certainly uncontaminated by CHEESE…”