From an interview with John Staddon we can learn that constructive criticism is more useful than cheerleading when one’s game needs work:
In an interview at his Durham home, Mr. Staddon recalls an episode that reflected this problem. An anonymous reviewer of his 2017 book, “Scientific Method”—a broad defense of the process of verification—scolded him for airing the problems of contemporary science. “My critic felt that science is under attack now, so anyone who writes about it for a general audience should do his best to defend it,” Mr. Staddon recalls. “Science, of course, should need no defense in a society whose existence depends on it. But when science is not in a healthy state, it needs not cheerleading but understanding and improvement. Science is strengthened not by praise but by criticism.”
While Mr. Staddon has addressed issues in the hard sciences, he’s more concerned with “festering” problems in the social sciences, “where weak science competes with activist political tendencies around the fraught issues of race, class and gender.” In a forthcoming book, “Fact vs. Passion: Science in the Age of Unreason,” he writes that “many social scientists have difficulty separating facts from faith, reality from the way they would like things to be. Many research topics have become taboo which, in turn, means that policy makers are making decisions based more on ideologically-driven political pressure than scientific fact.” …
“I would publish an article critical of, say, the postmodern idea that there is no such thing as objective reality. There was only one faculty member willing to write a response to such critiques. Usually no one was willing to respond,” he says. “That seems to be a key characteristic of my more avant colleagues. They are not willing to defend their ideas. Fields in the social sciences, especially, have made avoidance easier by subdividing. The American Psychological Association and American Sociological Association each have more than 50 divisions. What you have are little enclaves, filled with people who uncritically approve of each other’s work and jack up their citation counts—a collection of circular massage squads.”
J. Peder Zane, “Science Needs Criticism, Not Cheerleading” at Wall Street Journal
Note: Most of the story is paywalled but you might know someone who subscribes.
One outcome of the problems Staddon describes is that “trust the science” is becoming something of a joke in a broad variety of areas and that is not good news.
See also: A Twitter mob made a mistake when it went after an AI industry giant. Pedro Domingos: In my confrontation with the AI cancel crowd, I was particularly helped by the fact that several of the ringleaders are (or call themselves) professional AI ethicists. Some of them are even well-known within their field. When they serially engaged in childish and unethical behavior in full view of their colleagues, they did my job for me.
Those subdivisions aren’t really about “avoiding the problem”, they’re just the natural result of the feudal system of tenure. The personal power of each senior prof tends to breed a “Centre For Our SubSubSubTopic”, with its own set of rooms and equipment and grants. The best Centres have complete buildings.
One of Parkinson’s Laws: When an organization gets its own brand-new building, you can be sure it has lost its purpose and turned into a pure power machine.
as to, “I would publish an article critical of, say, the postmodern idea that there is no such thing as objective reality.”
Actually, rather than saying that postmodernists deny the existence of objective reality, it would be more precise to say that postmodernists deny the existence of objective truth,
Moreover, in Critical Theory we find that “Postmodern critical research,,, rejects the idea that a researcher’s work is an “objective depiction of a stable other.”,,,
Which begs the question of, if your (ironically named) critical research,,, “rejects the idea that a researcher’s work is an “objective depiction of a stable other.”,,, then why is blue blazes should other researchers ever bother paying attention to your research in the first place since it is not objectively true for all people?
As should be needless to say, the rejection of objective truth by postmodernism, (and critical theory), is simply suicidal as far as science itself is concerned.
As someone on Facebook commented, what we desperately need in our universities and schools is not ‘critical theory’ but is more ‘critical thinking’!
Moreover, postmodernism, (and its equally unscientific cousin ‘critical theory’), find their roots in Darwinian ideology.
In the following article, Nancy Pearcey, in her usual excellent manner of teaching, traces out the progression from Darwinism to ‘postmodern pragmatism’,,
Thus the primary source of the denial of objective truth in postmodernism and critical theory is none other than Darwin’s theory itself. And thus the primary source of the educational, scientific, and even cultural rot that we see in society today is none other than Darwin’s theory itself.
This should not be surprising. Objective truth is an abstract property of an immaterial mind and simply can never be based on the naturalism and/or reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought.
As John_a_designer recently explained,
As should be needless to say, if your Atheistic Naturalism and/or Atheistic Materialism cannot possibly ground the existence of objective truth, then that forever precludes your worldview of Atheistic Naturalism/Materialism from ever being objectively true.
Only Theism can ground the existence of objective truth. (and can thus provide a firm foundation for our practice of science).
As Peter Kreeft explains,
Thus in conclusion, and to repeat, the primary source of the denial of objective truth in postmodernism and critical theory is none other than Darwin’s theory itself. And thus the primary source of the educational, scientific, and even cultural rot that we see in society today is none other than Darwin’s theory itself.
As the following article bluntly states, “It is precisely because modern science has abandoned its foundations in the Biblical worldview,, that science is collapsing.”
Of supplemental note to objective truth,,, other religions claim to point you to the truth, but only Christianity claims to be source of objective truth!
Verse and video
All evos know is how to be cheerleaders. They are too stupid and boring to offer anything constructive