As a job hazard I've met a lot of PhDs in my life. Whenever I chat with them about what made them decide to pursue a PhD it's near universally that they didn't know what else to do after school and decided "I'll get a PhD I guess". These people aren't the best and brightest. They're not people with great passions for what they do. They're not self motivated or well accomplished people. They're just people with reasonably high IQs that decided to stay in school all their twenties because they didn't want to face the uncertainty of adulthood.
Having worked with them professionally I generally describe them as people who know a whole lot about very little. When they're in their tiny area of specialty they can be useful. When they take two steps outside their wheelhouse they know as little as anyone else and generally prefer to ignore anything that doesn't fit their specialty.
It's worse than that. The first part is right, they didn't know what to do in life, didn't like the idea of getting up every morning and going to work, and are generally smug and self satisfied about themselves. Since PhDs in the social sciences are most easily obtained, that's where most of them end up.
PhD in "political science" or social work, psychology, or public health. Generally interesting areas, but how does one become a professional with skills in any of those area through study? You don't. You choose a narrow research area, and like most other things in life, they didn't know what they wanted to do, so its usually some highly specific, irrelevant, meticulous "analysis" of some bullshit that never needed to be looked at so closely.
Inevitably, what emerges from that is sophisticated sounding nonsense like "in this study we employ the use of multivariate analysis through the lens of postmodernist female identities as experienced and embodied by modern Ethiopian womxn, in order to deconstruct and unpack the inherent patriarchal and white supremacist constructs present in the egalitarian conceptual worldview as posited by John Rawls through a scope of Foucaultian black, queer identity in 1970s Paris."
SO yes, two steps outside of their wheelhouse, they don't know anything, but in their wheelhouse, there's frequently not much knowing of anything going on. Of course, they're probably a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars in the hole by the time they finish all that "education," so it is in their best interest to support the adoption of crazy nonsensical ideas as it creates an industry for them to actually get paid with their knowledge, think, Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator.
I get what you're saying so I should clarify. The PhDs I'm talking about are the ones who studied hard sciences and now work for medical research companies. It's easy to pick on people who studied Marxist gender fluidity of other pure bullshit but I think a certain degree of skepticism needs to be applied even to people who studied perfectly respectable topics.
As a job hazard I've met a lot of PhDs in my life. Whenever I chat with them about what made them decide to pursue a PhD it's near universally that they didn't know what else to do after school and decided "I'll get a PhD I guess". These people aren't the best and brightest. They're not people with great passions for what they do. They're not self motivated or well accomplished people. They're just people with reasonably high IQs that decided to stay in school all their twenties because they didn't want to face the uncertainty of adulthood.
Having worked with them professionally I generally describe them as people who know a whole lot about very little. When they're in their tiny area of specialty they can be useful. When they take two steps outside their wheelhouse they know as little as anyone else and generally prefer to ignore anything that doesn't fit their specialty.
It's worse than that. The first part is right, they didn't know what to do in life, didn't like the idea of getting up every morning and going to work, and are generally smug and self satisfied about themselves. Since PhDs in the social sciences are most easily obtained, that's where most of them end up.
PhD in "political science" or social work, psychology, or public health. Generally interesting areas, but how does one become a professional with skills in any of those area through study? You don't. You choose a narrow research area, and like most other things in life, they didn't know what they wanted to do, so its usually some highly specific, irrelevant, meticulous "analysis" of some bullshit that never needed to be looked at so closely.
Inevitably, what emerges from that is sophisticated sounding nonsense like "in this study we employ the use of multivariate analysis through the lens of postmodernist female identities as experienced and embodied by modern Ethiopian womxn, in order to deconstruct and unpack the inherent patriarchal and white supremacist constructs present in the egalitarian conceptual worldview as posited by John Rawls through a scope of Foucaultian black, queer identity in 1970s Paris."
SO yes, two steps outside of their wheelhouse, they don't know anything, but in their wheelhouse, there's frequently not much knowing of anything going on. Of course, they're probably a hundred or two hundred thousand dollars in the hole by the time they finish all that "education," so it is in their best interest to support the adoption of crazy nonsensical ideas as it creates an industry for them to actually get paid with their knowledge, think, Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator.
I get what you're saying so I should clarify. The PhDs I'm talking about are the ones who studied hard sciences and now work for medical research companies. It's easy to pick on people who studied Marxist gender fluidity of other pure bullshit but I think a certain degree of skepticism needs to be applied even to people who studied perfectly respectable topics.