
Professor Who Helped Expose Crisis in Flint Says Public Science Is Broken - danso
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Water-Next-Time-Professor/235136
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kafkaesq
My favorite part:

 _Q: How exactly does one teach heroism to college students?_

 _A. We teach aspirational ethics. What I teach my students is, You’re born
heroic. I go into these animal studies, and heroism is actually in our nature.
What you have to do is make sure that the system doesn’t change you, that our
educational system doesn’t teach you to be willfully blind and to forget your
aspirations, because that’s the default position. ... The main thing is, Do
not let our educational institutions make you into something that you will be
ashamed of._

 _Q. And you sort of warn them that you’re preparing them for a life of
possible sadness and alienation?_

 _A. Well, yeah. There’s a price to be paid._

~~~
mgregory22
What's sad about being alienated from fools?

~~~
bpchaps
Probably something along the lines of, "If you call them fools, you probably
deserve the alienation."

Edit: Read that wrong, but I'll change my answer:

I feel that a large amount of the issues in science and "exclusive knowledge
groups" stem from alienation at its root. Exclusivity, obfuscation, lack of
publishing, "no true Scotsman", "othering", etc. By calling them fools, you're
only contributing to the sorts of alienation that causes these issues to
exist.

~~~
progressive_dad
There are so many issues here I hardly know where to begin. I've made similar
arguments myself in the past and you have to be very careful to
compartmentalize what you hope to say and accomplish when debating someone
directly affected by these issues.

What do you want to accomplish? Do you believe that all the world’s entire
scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and
journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of
private corporations?

Do you believe that the complexity of modern science and the scale of the
problems inherently requires increasing specialization and an inherent
detachment for modern scientists from the impact of the work in a cultural
context? Does that lead us toward a specialization in being a spokesperson for
science? Should large institutions feel obligated to create such positions?

Because if you're simply pining for the days of natural philosophers who were
statesmen, lawyers, political figures, and leading minds embodied in one
person you're at a dead end.

Whatever you do, don't bring up ethics. A required college course wraps up any
and all debate on that front!

------
progressive_dad
Science is interesting and if you don't agree you can fuck off.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fh_liyhIH8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fh_liyhIH8)

~~~
dang
Please don't do this here.

~~~
progressive_dad
I was quoting Richard Dawkins quoting an editor of New Scientist magazine. I
even linked the debate. Its not a new issue, its a very divisive issue, and I
think that sums up the opposition quite succinctly.

For further context this discussion was between Richard Dawkins and Neil
Degrasse Tyson at the "Beyond Belief" panel discussion:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_2xGIwQfik](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_2xGIwQfik)

~~~
dang
I know, but quoting the most inflammatory thing an inflammatory figure has
said is unconducive to substantive discussion. The last thing we want on HN is
binary ragewars between people who identify one way and people who identify
the other.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11031472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11031472)
and marked it off-topic.

