Thursday, February 07, 2008

My own experience with Leftist bias in the academy

My personal comments on this blog generally consist of little more than an introductory sentence or two. I basically let the articles I have collected speak for themselves. So I think it is about time that I said a bit more about my own experiences in academe:

I had a small grumble recently about the fact that I have not been awarded a D.Sc. (Doctor of Science) even though my academic publication record would normally warrant it. I also pointed out however that a D.Sc. is an honoray degree that is awarded as a result of approval from one's peers and that my conservative views do NOT get approval from most other academics in the social sciences. Psychologists are nomally Left-leaning and I am the rare maverick who rejects such views. So the situation there is simply no surprise.

The surprise is that I DO have another doctorate -- the Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) -- which is a degree awarded as the result of a formal process of study and writing. But I very nearly did not get that degree either. The major component of that degree is a dissertation -- which is a book-length research report of some kind. And a doctoral dissertation is normally "marked" by academics who are expert in the field concerned -- and that means that they are normally "external" -- i.e. they do not work at the university from which the dissertation emanated.

And my Ph.D. dissertation contained findings which called some popular Leftist theories into question. So that was a high-risk strategy, given the known biases of psychologists generally. And the riskiness did show. Of the three referees who agreed to mark my dissertation, one praised it highly as an exceptionally comprehensive body of work on the matters it discussed, one simply threw it in the bin and the other one rejected it on grounds that would have disqualified almost all psychological research.

The first referee -- the one who praised the work -- was John Western of the University of Queensland, who had himself done similar work. I had in fact consulted him personally about his work before beginning my own. I imagine that his views tended Left but he was far more interested in careful research than anything else. The second referee -- who would appear simply to have thrown the dissertation in the bin, and who certainly failed to reply to all letters from my university about it -- was Seymour Martin Lipset -- a highly praised American sociologist who seems to have been a fairly moderate Leftist but whose theories my findings directly contradicted. He apparently could not even consider the possibility that he might be wrong and did his best to sabotage me. My work was much more methodologically thorough than his own so ignoring it was the only way he could deal with it, I guess. In good Leftist style he was basically an armchair theorist rather than a rigorous researcher.

The third referee was Fred Emery from the Australian National Univesity in Canberra and he obviously did not like my work either. But it was very thorough and careful work by the normal standards in the field so he had difficulty in finding reasons to reject it. The reason he eventually gave was that I had used parametric statistics. But something like 99% of psychologists do use such statistics so his criticisms were rightly regarded as eccentric and were ignored. Other markers was turned to who gave my dissertation the nod.

So it was a close-run thing and the whole process ended up taking four years -- mainly due to Lipset's obstructionism. The university where I submitted my dissertation (Macquarie university) would give him many months to reply to each letter that they sent him but they never received a single reply. The only letter they ever got from him was his initial agreement to mark the dissertation -- before he actually saw it.

So Leftist bias very nearly denied me my doctorate. How childish most Leftists are, though. They know how poorly-founded their views are but they are also unable to retreat from those views -- so disagreement threatens them to a point where they just cannot respond in any kind of mature way.

The dissertation did subsequently generate rather a large number of published academic journal articles (proof that Prof. Western was right) but the article which best encapsulates what the dissertation as a whole had to say is a book chapter here.

I once had a chat with the administrator at Macquarie University who handled the whole matter and he remarked that it was the most difficult dissertation assessment he had ever managed. He particularly remarked on the completely opposite assessments given by Western and Emery.

Getting my doctorate was of course not the end of my experiences of bias. Getting journal articles published is difficult at any time but I had extra hurdles to surmount. See here for a paper which I once presented on that very topic. In the paper I spoke of "personal factors" being held against me and of my being a "norm violator" but everybody present knew what the norms were: political ones. That I did surmount the hurdles I had before me you can see here






The Presidential education budget

More School Vouchers, Fewer Programs

President Bush would freeze the Education Department's discretionary spending at $59.2 billion, cutting or consolidating dozens of programs while expanding school vouchers and restoring funding for a No Child Left Behind reading initiative that Democratic lawmakers slashed.

The budget would add $300 million for Pell Grants for Kids, a new voucher program aimed at giving low-income students in struggling schools aid to help them switch to private schools. It also would provide $1 billion for Reading First, up from the $393 million that Congress appropriated for the current fiscal year. The reading program has been beset by allegations of conflicts of interest.

Some Democrats and education groups contended that the budget would shortchange schools of money needed to carry out the six-year-old No Child Left Behind law and such other priorities as career and technical education. Democrats also attacked the voucher proposal.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said the budget would cut "ineffective" and duplicative programs to allow a nearly 3 percent increase in funding for poor schools. The budget would nearly double, to $200 million, funding to help states and localities develop teacher merit-pay plans. It also would add $2.6 billion to Pell Grants for low-income college students, raising the maximum award to $4,800.

Source




Kids to be punished for farting

The Merriam Webster Dictionary definition for flatulence is brief: "flatus expelled through the anus." And while it's a natural bodily function, it seems some Camden-Rockport Middle School eighth-grade boys are taking it to new heights and making a game of seeing who can expel the loudest and grossest flatus. According to this week's Fire Cracker school newsletter though, the joke's on the boys as the penalty for "intentional farting" is now a detention.

"Strange, but true, thanks to a bunch of 8th grade boys, intentional farting has been banned from CRMS," the newsletter said. "It started out as a funny joke and eventually turned into a game. This is the first rule at CRMS that prevents the use of natural bodily functions. The penalty for intentional farting is a detention, so keep it to yourself!"

According to a group of seventh-grade students milling around downtown following Friday's storm-related early release, the eighth-graders' escapades are well known in the school. "They would do it in science class and other places," said Jordan Tyler. "It's a natural occurrence and we all do it 16 times a day." When questioned where he learned that information, Tyler and the other students all said it was true, though they couldn't remember where they heard it.

One of the other students, Kyle Ruger, said the act by the boys was funny, but he had mixed feelings about whether it was appropriate. Jordan Knowlton minced no words when she expressed how she felt, saying, "It's gross." Remy LeVine said he was in the class when CRMS science teacher Brad LaRoche talked to all the eighth-grade boys about the issue, as well as the consequences.

Attempts to reach CRMS Principal Maria Libby Friday afternoon were unsuccessful and school Superintendent Patricia Hopkins said she had not heard anything about the issue or the alleged suspected result, though she did get a good chuckle out of the news.

Source

No comments: