14-08-2020, 05:19 PM
@-JKP-, @ReneZ, and @Alin_J, you guys have much more experience in the world of academe than I do, so I'll take your word for it. I naively believed that an author putting a reference in a bibliography means that the author has read it and understands it, because that's the way I always did it when I was a student. I would feel ashamed citing a primary source I never (or barely) even read. It's one thing to cite a verbatim quote, or a single unconnected fact, with a source that you only used to cite that one thing. It's another thing entirely to list a book as a primary source of information for your work, when in reality you only used it to cherry-pick a few tidbits pertinent to your argument, and have no understanding of the greater thrust of the book.
If the stories of corruption and bribery rampant in academe are anywhere near true, I'd argue that the output of informal and unregulated research scenes like this one have a certain unrefined honesty to them that's much rarer in formal venues.
The hard fact is, wholly unbiased and objective scholarship is a rarity. Every person and organization involved in research has irrational hopes for how the research will go, and what it will show. My sense is that people involved with academe have been socialized to be extremely discreet about these biases and hopes, often to the point of keeping them entirely to oneself. Amateur and informal researchers with little formal tertiary schooling are more likely to commit the social error of wearing these biases and hopes on their sleeve. This sort of candor comes across as uncouth to academics, because bias is not conducive to getting the facts straight. And they're right. But this doesn't mean that academics truly are free of bias and ulterior motives. They just try to keep these things to a minimum, and save face for themselves professionally by not talking about their own slip-ups.
Just to lay my cards on the table, I find this book sums up my (cynical) view of the relationship between the knowledge-based professions, and the moneyed interests of the industries that fund — and therefore design — the training for these professions: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I think this book should be required reading for anyone even considering graduate or professional school, especially someone with stars in their eyes looking forward to all the free inquiry and autonomy promised them, like I once was.
Then again, I'm biased by my experience.
If the stories of corruption and bribery rampant in academe are anywhere near true, I'd argue that the output of informal and unregulated research scenes like this one have a certain unrefined honesty to them that's much rarer in formal venues.
The hard fact is, wholly unbiased and objective scholarship is a rarity. Every person and organization involved in research has irrational hopes for how the research will go, and what it will show. My sense is that people involved with academe have been socialized to be extremely discreet about these biases and hopes, often to the point of keeping them entirely to oneself. Amateur and informal researchers with little formal tertiary schooling are more likely to commit the social error of wearing these biases and hopes on their sleeve. This sort of candor comes across as uncouth to academics, because bias is not conducive to getting the facts straight. And they're right. But this doesn't mean that academics truly are free of bias and ulterior motives. They just try to keep these things to a minimum, and save face for themselves professionally by not talking about their own slip-ups.
Just to lay my cards on the table, I find this book sums up my (cynical) view of the relationship between the knowledge-based professions, and the moneyed interests of the industries that fund — and therefore design — the training for these professions: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. I think this book should be required reading for anyone even considering graduate or professional school, especially someone with stars in their eyes looking forward to all the free inquiry and autonomy promised them, like I once was.
Then again, I'm biased by my experience.
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