Posted on 11/21/2009 6:46:20 AM PST by grey_whiskers
<snip>
2.4 Diagnosis #4: The Attraction of Magnificent Academic Trusels. A "trusel" is an idea or a finding that is widely perceived to be true, but which is largely useless (or even of negative value). (The idea that a truth may lack value may be disturbing, but it is true, although it is not a trusel and probably will not be thought to be magnificent.)
A "Magnificent Academic Trusel" (MAT) is a trusel that has been widely acknowledged for its intellectual content (explicitly or implicitly), but without a corresponding amount of attention being given to its utility or even to its potential negative value for society. The negative value may come from commission or omission. It may deal with the content of a discipline, with the way a discipline is perceived, with knowledge that cuts across disciplines, and even with "integrative studies".
Academia is an environment where two main things go on as the defining part of the image that characterizes academia. These are: (a) faculty actions, involving the advancement of thousands of ideas to a student clientele (whether formally in the classroom or informally in the research environment) and (b) administrative actions involving the imposition of dozens of decisions that affect faculty-student performance and morale.
For reasons that are widely understood and accepted, the advancement of particular ideas is almost never subjected to prior scrutiny for evaluative purposes. Thus the concept of "quality control" in academia is weak, at best, and there is little likelihood that this situation will ever change through administrative action alone. Any attempt to "police" faculty utterances in the classroom will meet with deserving scorn.
(Excerpt) Read more at softpanorama.org ...
The petition now has been signed by over 32,000 scientists.
Very profound, SJ.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.