Getting Paid for Academic Idiocy
At the University of Oregon, recently a professor conducted a study related to “climate change”. In and of itself, that’s nothing newsworthy.
But this one is a bit different. As part of the project, the “research professor” in charge published a paper titled, “Glaciers, gender, and science.” It urged other scientists “to take a ‘feminist political ecology and feminist postcolonial approach’ when researching glaciers and climate change.”
Here’s the paper’s abstract; I’ve added emphasis to highlight some of the spectacular idiocy. (The full version of the paper can be viewed here; a PDF-format copy may be downloaded here.)
Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change. However, the relationships among gender, science, and glaciers – particularly related to epistemological questions about the production of glaciological knowledge – remain understudied. This paper thus proposes a feminist glaciology framework with four key components: 1) knowledge producers; (2) gendered science and knowledge; (3) systems of scientific domination; and (4) alternative representations of glaciers. Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.
Yep, you got it: SWJ Propaganda 101, masquerading as “science”. Or, alternatively: an example of someone who’s figured out how to ride the “grant gravy train” by producing intellectual garbage that panders to the prejudices of those providing the funding.
If you’re waiting for the “punch line”, here it is. A $412,930 National Science Foundation grant apparently at least partially funded this trash. So if you pay Federal taxes . . . looks like your Federal taxes funded part of this lunacy.
And if you live in Oregon, your state taxes funded the rest of it.
Fox News has an article with more details. It’s worth a read – unless you’re having blood pressure issues.
Relativism has been defined as the belief that intellectually there is no distinction between sh!t and Shinola. Based on the above, it certainly appears that both the University of Oregon and the NSF have adopted that idiotic theory.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", WTF?
“The feminist lens is crucial given the historical marginalization of women, the importance of gender in glacier-related knowledges, and the ways in which systems of colonialism, imperialism, and patriarchy co-constituted gendered science. Additionally, the feminist perspective seeks to uncover and embrace marginalized knowledges and alternative narratives, which are increasingly needed for effective global environmental change research, including glaciology (Castree et al., 2014; Hulme, 2011). A combination of feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology provide the intellectual foundation for feminist glaciology.”
I think I strained a retina reading this thing. I have never in all my life read anything like it.
It left me feeling disgusted. It was like watching Uncle Fester masturbate to an episode of Flipper.
I once read a study of the regenerative properties of Bat guano. It was funded by the National Park Service. $155,000 to explain the properties of a super saturated solution of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium.
I tried to make sense of this thing but found myself , mouth agape, in a Rod Serling kinda wince.
For a real laugh, you ought to read up on “SCIgen”. I suspect some academian’s are using something similar to write their papers.
For fun, I’ve provided a link where you can put your name in and the program will generate a nonsensical paper: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/
When I first read about this “paper”, that was my first thought…
Computer generated garbage.
But no…. Someone actually wrote that.
What a waste of time and money.
Yep. And somewhere around 120 of the “papers” generated by SCIgen apparently got published.
http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-withdraw-more-than-120-gibberish-papers-1.14763
Hysterical, huh?
You mean, like this?
http://scigen.csail.mit.edu/scicache/613/scimakelatex.4090.Dennis+Howard+Chevalier.Linda+Kay.David+Cooper.Professor.html
The PDF version for download.
http://scigen.csail.mit.edu/scicache/613/scimakelatex.4090.Dennis+Howard+Chevalier.Linda+Kay.David+Cooper.Professor.pdf
Hmm. One of those names looks kinda familiar. (smile)
It’s easy enough to concoct a rebuttal to this shit, you know.
“It was like watching Uncle Fester masturbate to an episode of Flipper.”
Dammit, good thing I wasn’t drinking anything! I’m so stealing that line for the future. The bad part is I’ll remember that later today and start laughing again for no apparent reason. People around me will think I’m nuts.
I’m just going to tag this on here. In my humble, untutored opinion, I believe the crapazoid perfesser misused the term epistemilogical. He should have, instead, used EPISTEMIC RELATIVISM, as defined thusly: Epistemic relativism is the position that knowledge is valid only relatively to a specific context, society, culture or individual. The discussion about epistemic relativism is one of the most fundamental discussions in epistemology concerning our understanding of notions such as ‘justification’ and ‘good reason’.
In other words, he’s a putz with empty pockets who saw a way to game the grant system. Whattaguy! It distinctly recalls that professor in ‘Real Genius’ who got a science grant and had his unpaid, credit-hungry students do all the work for him.
Yeah, jump off a building and see how “epistemilogically relativistic” views of graivty keep you from bouncing hard.
I think he was banging the intern and had his mind on things other than glaciers and there effects on women.
I think maybe the intern cut him off and this was how he was trying to get back in her good graces so he could get some more.
(For our members of the faired gender, please excuse this small rant. I have a hard time reconciling this particular paper and any relationship, gender-centric or otherwise, to what I was raised and educated to think of as scholarship.)
I bet they do things just as idiotically at UC Berserkely. I lost at least 10 IQ points reading that!
Wanna guess where the paper’s primary author (Carey) had a post-doctoral fellowship? (smile)
https://honors.uoregon.edu/faculty/mark-carey
Gee whiz, wotta surprise – NOT!!!
As the world’s oldest college student (63-years-old), I run into some strange people in academia. I remember one time there was a group on campus protesting NSA and their intelligence tactics. I was tempted to tell them what I did in the military. (ASA/INSCOM)
That said, my professors go out of their way to help me. The kids usually mistake me as a professor until I tell them otherwise.
It’s not easy going back to college (again) at my age, but I am maintaining an A average.
You do have me beat. But like you, my experience with my professors has been nothing but wonderful for the most part. I just finished my bachelor of science degree (final exams for my last session were this week) and nonetheless am looking forward to not having to tapdance around ‘socially constructed gender issues’ and so on (which came up surprisingly often considering my math/agricultural science major!).
Taking a little more than a year off before I try for grad school for a number of reasons, including needing my strained tolerance to have a chance to regenerate (but also because of the miracle of life).
Sounds like that means congrats may be in order for two different reasons.
Either way, congratulations. Or congratulations – twice – as apropos.
Thank you very much! We’re very happy – and the timing works out awesome. Wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the usual extreme stupidity on campus while getting bigger and bigger (not to mention the risk of having to protect myself on a ‘no guns’ campus).
Either way, a new farm laborer and American on the way, and I’ll be in a good position to homeschool.
So… Professor Bongwater and his assistant Patty Patchouli have discovered the world is in danger because all the mama glaciers have to stay home with the baby glaciers while the daddy glaciers are hanging out and going with the floe like a bunch of sexist pigsicles?
Nicely done, Perry G.
That begs the question, how does one determine if the iceberg is male or female? Lift up its backside and peak? Ask Uncle Fester after, of course, he is finished playing tag with the pink torpedo?
Pink torpedo? I am SO quoting that!
Ya owe me a keyboard! Pink torpedo! ‘cuse me while I wipe my dose. High pressure coffee really clears the sinuses.
“It was like watching Uncle Fester masturbate to an episode of Flipper.”
Pass the brain bleach, please.
“Additionally, the feminist perspective seeks to uncover and embrace marginalized knowledges….”
I has knowledges too, but they does not include the feminist perspective on glaciers.
No, and you are not functionally illiterate, either, Air Cav.
I don’t know but I’m guessing that the global warming feminist perspective is to put out for all comers and the glacial feminist perspective is never to put out at all. (Gee, I hope my take doesn’t offend anyone.)
No offense taken.
And my kids wonder why I drank all of their college money…
WINNER!
I’ll second that!
What in the Wide World of Sports did all of that mean? Besides nothing, with a capital N?
I consider myself reasonably educated and well read, and even I have figured out that if I can’t make sense of it, it’s less than political BS. At least with BS, you can fertilize your garden.
or, to ( hope) quote Steven Segal “What the hell kind of babbling bullshit was that?”
And all along, I thought the Science was settled….
Glaciers melt faster if they have hot flashes. Duh.
Remember-nothing was allowed to differ or deviate from “Soviet science” in the old USSR. That’s essentially what we are seeing here, feminist ideology is built on a foundation of lies and it cannot withstand any strict scrutiny-so none is allowed (see the way that shrieking crowds turn out whenever anyone even slightly conservative appears on campus), but it dominates all aspects of campus life. By the same token, no area of study is allowed to have any insight that is outside the scope of the prevailing ideology. The whole academic edifice should be razed and only very carefully rebuilt.
Not only did I go through the abstract, but I also scanned the article, and focused on the conclusion. Not only was the “research problem” a terrible one to do research on if you’re doing a scientific research, the article didn’t provide methodology or recommendations for further study. They didn’t identify limitations to their research either.
When it comes to the credibility department, that should ring warning bells.
They identify this as “epistemological”, which is academic for “study focusing on knowledge” as opposed to the type of study that we normally think about when we read about a study done… one that adds to our understanding in a useful or practical manner.
The University of Oregon uses both MLA and
APA style referencing. The type of referencing that they use in that “study” was closest to APA than to MLA. They did a horrible job and failed to follow proper APA guidelines. As with their abstract, article, and knowledge study, they did a terrible job.
These guys would’ve gotten their azzes handed to them had they handed that to my doctoral cohorts and me for review.
See my note above, thebesig. The prof has a poor command of vocabulary.
Ace reviewed this whole mess and touched on this issue-if you don’t have the intellectual chops to talk about something demanding like glaciology, you can always talk about “the issue of glaciology”. That way,, you can glom up all of that grant money without having to make all of the effort of wading through the actual scientific research.
I’m sure there are two statements here that will prove entertaining to my Uber riders today…
The paper is about as exciting as a bucket of warm spit…
Nusser and Baghel (2014) also reject the ‘ice
is just ice’ assertion. Glaciers, they argue, ‘have
increasingly become contested and controversial
objects of knowledge, susceptible to
cultural framings as both dangerous and endangered
landscapes’ (Nusser and Baghel, 2014:
138).
Must be nice to get paid 6 figures to state that ice isn’t just ice after all and is in fact a cultural effect due to influences on sea levels and the providing of drinkable water to a variety of cultures…
Asshole with some letters after their name assigning human characteristics to inanimate objects are still assholes regardless of the fancy letters.
Ice is, in fact, just ice. As Pollack stated it reads no papers and is unburdened by ideology, it just melts as it crosses a temperature threshold from solid to liquid. Nothing more, nothing less.
The rest is just bullshit, but on a grand academic scale for numbnut SJWs to bicker about like the sad little twats they are for all of eternity.
Fucking idiocy indeed.
Thank you Hondo, I needed a laugh this morning and I imagine these jagoffs sitting around in their own academic circle jerk masturbating over these fantasy assignments of humanity to giant blocks of ice to be quite amusing to the average layperson.
well, there’s a shitload of Innuits who would agree that there are varying kinds of ice – but they have a different cultural perspective
Liberalism — the belief that you can pick up a turd by the clean end!
The clean end?
And that, ladies and germs, is an outstanding topic for a comprehensive research study, to wit: “Determining the Clean End of a Turd – An Epistemological Study.” It’s somewhat like the great egg/chicken study and depends to great extent on determining which end came first. The philosophical questions alone would provide a never-ending field for fertile study.
I think it’s amazing how easy it is for someone who is functionally illiterate like this Carey fellow to get money for creating gibberish. Just throw in a bunch of polysyllabic vocables whether their functional relativism to subject matter is valid, and you’ve embarked on your course of action.
How’s that for bloviating silliness?
I’m going to go find birds to talk to and pick up some strawberries later on.
Makes much more sense than the subject discourse.
Having taken courses in the Humanities and Social Sciences, I truly understand the feminist philosophical perspective on many issues. It took a while, but I understand and even support it.
But this is utter nonsense. This project and anticipated conclusions, if validated, will help no one.
Silly.
Glaciers penetrate valleys, so I would think that feminists would be against them just on general principals.
Dammit, Wireman, could you post a spew alert??????
I was just involved with a cup of hot tea!!! Have pity!
Another classic case of mental masturbation in academia… and on YOUR dime!
This is true…but he didn’t approve his own application. There’s somebody with a rubber stamp that needs investigating.
Well maybe everyone should ponder this for a moment Omamas Justice department is using RICO to go after companies and individuals that don’t believe in climate change.. as we speak one professor here at the UA got in to hot water over debunking bad science
I never met a glacier, or a woman, that I couldn’t outrun! On the other hand, I have never had a glacier chase me.
I think the paper is plagerism – stolen from Carroll.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
Are we certain this isn’t satire? Maybe some enterprising conservative has found a way to use lefty sensibilities for fiduciary enhancement.
Considering that the professor (Carey) did a post-doctoral fellowship at Berkeley, OWB – in the words of the Russian emigre comic Yakov Smirnov: “Eye . . . don’ tink zo.” (smile)
https://honors.uoregon.edu/faculty/mark-carey
The consequences of climate change disproportionally negatively effect females in most developing countries. Poverty disproportionally effects women in developing countries. And women have less political power to mitigate the consequences of social instability being caused by climate change.
So this is a legitimate study.
I have no idea why so many “Americans” insist on embarrassing out country with their constant anti-intellectual narrative.
Regardless of what you think of this kind of research it is a hell of a lot great a constitution to the social good and the knowledge of humankind than the bullshit you post on the blog, Hondo.
*hell of a lot greater a contribution.
Um, did you even bother to read the abstract I quoted above? The study is absolute horsecrap.
However, thank you for your confirmation that I’m on the right track. Anyone who actually thinks this study was anything besides a waste of time and money is either a drooling idiot or a shameless leftist political flack. I’m proud to oppose idiocy – even when that originates from someone who was
brainwashedindoctrinated“highly educated” at UC-Berkeley. And I’m equally proud to oppose leftist propaganda.I was not defending the study. There are tens of thousands of grad students in the country each required to produce some sort of dissertation or thesis paper to graduate. And many are required to produce and publish additional research papers in order to have a chance at securing a job in academia after they graduate.
So with literally 10s of thousands of research papers submitted for peer review there are going to be alot of ones that can be ridiculed.
My response to your post was a response to the MOTIVATION you have of posting it. You choose to target academia with all the things happening in the world, many more directly related to veterans, or national defense. Including a lot of absurdity and squandered public funds.
That motivation to target and ridicule academia and criticize the money spent on it is what I am meaning when I say “anti-intellectualism”.
Oops, this comment about “not defending this study” was supposed to be posted in the more recent blog post you made about academia. I accidently posted here after opening the link you posted on the other blog post comment section.
Commissar, nobody here needs to give evidence that you’re a bloviating empty-headed hippie-educated sniveling liberal HACK, you prove it yourself with each and every one of your rants o intellectually inferior one!