Re:Nobody knows how to cite 4chan mathematicians who solved ...
by neuromantik8086 on Wednesday October 24, 2018 @01:01PM
(#18294228)
> It's worrying that academia is slowly turning into a rigid "appeal to authority" church
Seeing as how academia literally started out as an accessory to the various Christian denominations for educating priests, I don't see how you really could characterize it as "a space for truth and inquiry". It's only been relatively recently that "appeal to authority" has given way to more secular/scientific ways. Even within the last couple of years, I would wager that academia is no more authoritarian than it has ever been- tenured professors have almost always had a disproportionate amount of influence over their trainees' futures, etc. The head of my father's department when he was getting his PhD in the 70s actually attempted to pull my father's stipend because of an avant garde project that would today be accepted as normal.
I've seen a trend towards the opposite, actually, with graduate students becoming more skeptical of the institution and more proactively addressing its shortcomings through grad student unions and advocacy of open science policies (which neither university administrations nor longstanding tenured professors are fans of in general).
Seeing as how academia literally started out as an accessory to the various Christian denominations for educating priests, I don't see how you really could characterize it as "a space for truth and inquiry". It's only been relatively recently that "appeal to authority" has given way to more secular/scientific ways. Even within the last couple of years, I would wager that academia is no more authoritarian than it has ever been- tenured professors have almost always had a disproportionate amount of influence over their trainees' futures, etc. The head of my father's department when he was getting his PhD in the 70s actually attempted to pull my father's stipend because of an avant garde project that would today be accepted as normal.
I've seen a trend towards the opposite, actually, with graduate students becoming more skeptical of the institution and more proactively addressing its shortcomings through grad student unions and advocacy of open science policies (which neither university administrations nor longstanding tenured professors are fans of in general).