I hate to repeat myself, but what is the meaning of certainty and consensus within the context of a PhD program which systematically weeds out grad students who question the dominant ideology?
From http://www.julesnyquist.com/articles/article/1430100/16489.htm
MR: When you first thought of writing this book, you were in graduate
school, right?JS: Yes, that’s right. I got interested int he topic when I was going
to professional training myself, getting a PhD in physics at the
University of California, Irvine. It seemed like the best of my fellow
graduate students were either dropping out or being kicked out. And by
‘best,’ those were the most concerned about other people and seemed
less self-centered, less narrowly-focused, most friendly people…they
seemed to be handicapped in the competition. They seemed to be at a
disadvantage not only because their attention was divided, but because
their concerns about big picture issues like justice and the social
role of the profession and so on, caused them to stop and think and
question, whereas their unquestioning gung-ho classmates just plowed
right through with nothing to hold them back. As I mentioned, there’s
about a 50% drop-out rate for students entering University programs in
all fields; and what I found was that this weeding out is not
politically neutral. To put it bluntly, the programs favor
ass-kissers. I don’t know if that’s an acceptable term on KFAI, but
that’s the fact of the matter…
(From an interview with Jeff Schmidt, author of Disciplined Minds, and former 19-year editor for Physics Today. Schmidt was fired for writing this book, but more than 700 researchers (plus Noam Chomsky) signed petitions and wrote letters in his defense, forcing a large settlement and reinstatement of his job by the American Institute of Physics.)
To the extent that certainty within one idea is a function of awareness of all possible ideas, one has to imagine that the construct of certainty can be altered by decisions to selectively teach various ideas and controversies at the level of the PhD program.
The public is under this apparent impression that consensus in science involves a process of each individual scientist deciding, without interference from others, and of their own free will, that a particular theory is correct. Jeff’s book suggests rather plainly that this is not how the graduate programs actually work – that we need to also consider the possibility that the consensus we see in various scientific theories is an artifact of the way in which we train the scientists.
