John Clark writes:
>Academia is a wonderful place but it can be vulnerable
>to a dreadful disease, cargo cult science, the reason is that a full
>professor need produce no results to keep his job, his ideas don't have to
>work. ...
>I think it would be interesting to see how many creationists there are among
>oil company geologists, if these people are religious they can only afford to
>be so on Sunday because on every working day they must use Darwin's theory
>and the geological timeline it produced to date the micro fossils the drill
>bit brings up.
I heard about a geology department considering hiring a new (untenured) professor. He was a creationist, but the committee decided that his religous beliefs didn't effect his work, which was excellent. So they hired him.
Part of the reason odd religous beliefs can persist so long is the ability of people to partition those beliefs, so they don't actually much influence practical choices.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-2627