OK, I have read the Scientific American article in the interim. I find the observations of interest, but as with my comment about the conflation of Information and Knowledge, the degradation of the educational mission is equally troublesome to me......for example, in the run-up to the 2016 Presidential election Bernie Sanders was advocating for free higher education. The discussion of that issue revolved around equating education with earnings, without any mention of the quality of life for those with advanced educations. Like so many aspects of society, we are undermining the educational mission in the name of profit as yet another bottom line enterprise. Given that, why would society put value in the generation of scientific evidence, given that the process is misunderstood, if it is understood at all? Teaching to the test for the sake of expediency doesn't give the student an appreciation of the process so he/she can fully understand the significance of the content, or lack thereof. We are not teaching our students to think and problem solve, we are teaching them to pass exams. When social 'values' are only measured in $ and cents, this is the result.  

On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 8:42 AM, JOHN TORDAY <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear Joe and ToKers, your email and the SA article are great talking points for us to consider. However I think that there's an overriding problem due to the tendency to equate Information and Knowledge. This has resulted from both the "Question Authority" movement and the 'Arab Spring' of technology leveling institutions of society, including science.....discusss? 

On Mon, Jun 25, 2018 at 8:16 AM, Joseph Michalski <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Colleagues:


Please see the attached article from my newly arrived July 2018 issue of Scientific American. The three main hurdles to clear scientific thinking they've identified are: 1) shortcuts to deal with cognitive overload; 2) the well-know issue of confirmation bias; and 3) social goals (or what we refer to as influence as part of Gregg's J-I-I argument). I share the article for a few reasons.


First, it's great to see a broad swath of the academic community (at least the psychologists and the research cited) largely reaching similar conclusions about cognitive biases - and how the work aligns with much of Gregg's framing and what I've been reading of others on our list-serv. Gregg and I have attempted to joke, with some irony, that we hope we're not just creating our own "echo chambers" and exercising our own "confirmation biases" by agreeing too much. Every group needs the outliers to help keep us honest!


Second, I've mentioned before (using my own siblings in part as exemplars) the problem of discussing issues and struggling to be fair-minded, 'objective,' and receptive to alternative viewpoints, new info, etc. And yet the academy itself has been increasingly under attack in recent years as "liberal re-education camps" and "close-minded" by not embracing alternative viewpoints or shutting down speakers, especially on the right-wing end of the political spectrum, who challenge "liberal orthodoxy" or may be skeptical of any claims-making from university professors -- scientific or otherwise. Nancy commented in part on this issue a couple of weeks ago in a quite insightful way. I'm thinking that the issue is actually much broader in the sense that these issues affect all of us, both inside and outside of academia. It's not simply a matter of any of us being "experts" in our fields or far more knowledgeable about the "facts" and "scientific evidence" in regard to our specialties. All knowledge has a relational component too, i.e., depends upon the social location of the actors relative to each other in combination with the cultural sources of justification systems invoked. This explains in large measure, in my view, the rise of the "alternative facts" and "fake news" critiques that have gained such popularity.


Finally, note too the fact that our researches across the many fields within the academy -- but especially in the social sciences and humanities -- gradually have chipped away or at least provided insights about the standard forms of knowledge and justification systems that have helped certain groups to maintain their power and privilege for many generations (and across cultures). If I show you the lead article from the well-respected journal Criminology last month (which confirms something I've hypothesized about for years) showing the adverse effects of early childhood exposure to lead for healthy brain development and some adverse behavioral outcomes, then how does one "receive" and "interpret" that information? What are the implications for even something as basic as "equality of opportunity" for youngsters who grow up with high lead exposure in their environments, to say nothing of the many other factors that affect their "life chances" simply because they grow up in a certain neighborhood or attended woefully under-resourced schools or a thousand other factors beyond their control? Back to the article and the various mechanisms that we use to simplify the whole darn thing. I'm thinking a la Colonel Jessup's famous quote in A Few Good Men: "You can't handle the truth!" Can any of us? 😎  Best regards, -Joe


Dr. Joseph H. Michalski

Associate Academic Dean

King’s University College at Western University

266 Epworth Avenue

London, Ontario, Canada  N6A 2M3

Tel: (519) 433-3491, ext. 4439

Fax: (519) 433-0353

Email: [log in to unmask]

______________________

eiπ + 1 = 0


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