# Juvenile delinquent taught at a university **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 7, 2014, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154 "2014-01-07T18:58:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/81 "2014-01-10T15:57:53Z")
> [@Don\_Simus](#): > > This means that the article was reviewed. It means it was reviewed in the sense that it was read prior to publication, but it doesn’t mean that it was peer reviewed. If you read the article cited to, you’ll see the editors admit that their journal was not “refereed,” i.e. subjected to peer review: > [@](#): > > As a non-refereed journal of political opinion and cultural analysis produced by an editorial collective (and entirely self-published until its adoption four years ago by Duke University Press), Social Text has always seen its lineage in the “little magazine” tradition of the independent Left as much as in the academic domain, and so we often balance diverse editorial criteria when discussing the worth of submissions, whether they be works of fiction, interviews with sex workers, or essays about anticolonialism. In other words, this is an editorial milieu with criteria and aims quite remote from those of a professional scientific journal. Whether Sokal’s article would have been declared substandard by a physicist peer reviewer is debatable (it is not, after all, a scholarly contribution to the discipline of physics) but not finally relevant to us–at least not according to the criteria we employed. Asking a writer who is submitting an article outside of one’s field of expertise to trim his footnotes and remove some speculation, and then publishing it anyway when he refuses, is in no way rigorous peer review. > [@Don Simus](#): > > The fact that the editors did it themselves instead of sending article to an external reviewer is not essential. The editors published an article in which they were not the writer’s peer; they had no background in physics. The fact that they didn’t send the article to a physicist peer reviewer for review before publication isn’t just essential, it’s crucial. You still haven’t answered my question about what Abagnale’s hoax at Mandela’s funeral means about the discipline of sign language. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/82 "2014-01-10T20:49:34Z")
Nor why he didn’t just give the baby back after he got the ransom. Not cool, bro. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/83 "2014-01-10T21:58:57Z")
> [@Don\_Simus](#): > > To teach a 101 course at a university you need a Ph.D, that is 7 years of education. I started teaching college courses after 3 years of higher ed. Bachelors only, just starting my Masters. And some were 300 level later that year. (They really needed people to teaching Computer Science courses back then.) Have you really never heard of TAs? As a regular prof I was routinely thrown into teaching a course I had never had as a student. Jeez, they didn’t even have courses in Databases, Software Engineering or any modern programming language back then. I also created new courses, usually in a specialty of mine but occasionally in an area I wanted to learn more about. There are a lot of people out there than can teach themselves stuff. It’s hardly a miracle. That’s not even as hard as getting a PhD where the question is: Can you create new stuff? No one is going to teach you the stuff that’s going in your thesis. So learning new stuff on your own is easier than that. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2014, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/84 "2014-01-10T23:12:11Z")
It’s okay, Don. You’re in a safe place now. Show us on the doll where the university professor touched you. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Simus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@Don\_Simus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Simus)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/85 "2014-01-11T05:04:58Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > That’s how _all_ the sciences work. No, this is how it does not work. The scheme I described would obviously not work for automotive repair. Similarly it can’t work in science. When producers are also consumers of the same product economy does not function. It is doing strange things. ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/86 "2014-01-11T09:03:36Z")
I’ve been faking being a professor for years (teaching, published peer-reviewed research, public lectures, conferences, and most recently all the admin and hootenanny involved in creating a new pathway/major concentration in our department), and I keep getting promoted :mad: I honestly thought the job interview I sat was the vacancy for a new tea lady. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![BlakeTyner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@BlakeTyner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlakeTyner)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/87 "2014-01-11T14:53:56Z")
> [@Don\_Simus](#): > > No, this is how it does not work. The scheme I described would obviously not work for automotive repair. Similarly it can’t work in science. When producers are also consumers of the same product economy does not function. It is doing strange things. _Sigh_ You keep working from (and then ignoring the results of) logical fallacies. By the time I got involved in the thread, you were using the false premise of “you need a PhD to teach university classes” which led to your faulty conclusion in deductive reasoning. Now, you’re trying to set up a false dichotomy or a strawman where one actually doesn’t exist. Automotive repair: I come up with a way to increase gas mileage by making an adjustment to valve timing. What’s going to happen from here? I tell an auto mechanic buddy of mine what I did. He makes the same adjustment to his valve timing and gets better gas mileage. He tells a friend, who does the same, and gets the same results. In other words, we’re essentially following the scientific method, with peer review. I performed an experiment based on a hypothesis (adjusting my valve timing in such a way will increase MPG performance) which led to a positive result. The question now is: can my experiment be replicated by someone else? If it can, then let’s publish the findings in the GM automotive tech manual for that particular car, because it works. If my experiment cannot be replicated, then either I had flawed measurements, I’m a liar, or whatever. Whichever way, my (failed) technique doesn’t make it into the GM tech manual. That’s the scientific method/peer review in a vocational context. In my field, let’s say I write a paper with the thesis that Shakespeare was a homosexual. I base this on my finding that “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” was written from a dude to a dude. I send my paper into Shakespeare Quarterly for peer review, where a panel of 5 Shakespeare experts read my paper, examine my evidence, and (of course) say “um, no. He’s writing from a male to a male, but the more likely interpretation is that it’s a letter to HIMSELF as a younger man.” My thesis is invalid, and my paper isn’t published. You can find a few examples of the process being fraudulent, sure. But the overwhelming majority of the time, that’s how academic study works in all fields. What are your educational/academic credentials, if I may ask? ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/88 "2014-01-11T18:12:24Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > This doesn’t surprise me any more than the time that a physicist submitted [a fake paper full of utter nonsense](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair) to a respected sociology journal, and got it accepted. > EDIT: And what’s this doing in CS, anyway? Despite having the word “Social” in the title, that is not actually a sociology journal, it is “cultural studies”, a quite different field from sociology, much newer, and much more intellectually iffy. I also think the claim that it is a “respected journal”, even by the standards of cultural studies, really needs a cite to back it up. Anyway, the fact that Sokal, presenting himself as a physicist with an amateur, but sympathetic interest in cultural studies (whereas he was really a physicist with an amateur but _unsympathetic_ interest) managed to prank them, probably says more about the excessive and undue respect our culture affords to physicists who pontificate outside their field than it does about low intellectual standards in cultural studies. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/89 "2014-01-11T18:26:02Z")
> [@Don\_Simus](#): > > No, this is how it does not work. The scheme I described would obviously not work for automotive repair. Similarly it can’t work in science. When producers are also consumers of the same product economy does not function. It is doing strange things. It is certainly how peer review works in the sciences, which is what you were ostensibly talking about. Only physicists get to review articles on physics by physicists (because they are the only people qualified to do so), and so forth. That is what “peer” means. As for the producers being the only consumers, that may be close to being true of a few particularly esoteric academic fields (though almost all find some consumers at least in adjacent, related fields), but it is certainly not remotely true of sociology. For example, sociological research finds many consumers, who often make practical use of its results, amongst the likes of governmental and industrial policymakers, political strategists, marketers, and the like. ---
**Author:** ![Ace309](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ace309/32/1050_2.png) [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/90 "2014-01-11T18:26:57Z")
> [@BlakeTyner](#): > > What are your educational/academic credentials, if I may ask? I am also curious about this. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Simus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@Don\_Simus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Simus)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/91 "2014-01-11T18:36:27Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Have you really never heard of TAs? In the school were I studied TAs were grading homework or had classes were they helped students with homework and such thing. Not a single TA read lectures (this is what I call teaching a course). And this is what Abagnale did. And he faked a PhD to get the job. Even if you assume that just a B.S. was a minimum requirement for his job, it is still the same level of education the graduates of Embry-Riddle get. And the question why he never flew a jet but did teach sociology still stands. Since both professions allegedly require the same level of education. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/92 "2014-01-11T18:41:59Z")
> [@Don\_Simus](#): > > And the question why he never flew a jet but did teach sociology still stands. No, actually I think that question has already been answered pretty well by numerous people in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/93 "2014-01-11T18:57:17Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > And even then, it still says very little about the quality of his work. Intro students are not known to be discerning. Heck, many intro level students would probably _prefer_ an instructor who only expected them to know what was in the textbook and did not challenge their thinking or give them much work to do. Students who actually cared about Sociology might find this disappointing, but I’ve never heard a student complain about getting an easy A. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Simus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@Don\_Simus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Simus)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/94 "2014-01-11T19:08:26Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Sure he could. As long as he was just giving classroom instructions. The stuff he’d be teaching his students would be wrong but they wouldn’t know that until they tried to actually fly a plane. And what about sociology students? Did they ever noticed something was wrong? Besides, to get a Private Pilot rating ground school is not even required. You need to pass the FAA written test, but you can study the textbook yourself as most people do. And to teach actual flying one needs a CFI (Chief Flight Instructor) rating, which is a lower rating than the ATP rating which the graduates of Embry-Riddle get along with their B.S… So to teach a Private Pilot course a lower than B.S. level of education is required. And you admit that Abagnale could not do that. While he successfully performed a PhD level duties in sociology: read lectures. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/95 "2014-01-11T19:26:38Z")
Don, we’re two pages into the thread so let’s cut to the chase. If you think sociology is a pseudoscience just come out and say it. You’re really not making your case by trying to tie it in with Frank Abagnale. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/96 "2014-01-11T19:27:46Z")
> [@Don\_Simus](#): > > In the school were I studied TAs were grading homework or had classes were they helped students with homework and such thing. Not a single TA read lectures (this is what I call teaching a course). And this is what Abagnale did. And he faked a PhD to get the job. How do you know he read lectures? And, for the umpteenth time, what is your argument here? Your OP didn’t prsent one. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Simus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@Don\_Simus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Simus)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/97 "2014-01-11T19:38:42Z")
> [@Ms\_Boods](#): > > I’ve been faking being a professor for years (teaching, published peer-reviewed research, public lectures, conferences, and most recently all the admin and hootenanny involved in creating a new pathway/major concentration in our department), and I keep getting promoted :mad: > > I honestly thought the job interview I sat was the vacancy for a new tea lady. ☹ Lectures and conferences like this one: [Doctor Fox Lecture](http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/1237447/PhDs-couldnt-tell-an-actor-from-a-renowned-scientist.html) ? Peer reviewed research like that described in this article [Opium for Scholars](http://ecclesiastes911.net/opium_for_scholars.html) ? ---
**Author:** ![Ace309](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ace309/32/1050_2.png) [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/98 "2014-01-11T20:06:53Z")
> [@Don\_Simus](#): > > In the school were I studied TAs were grading homework or had classes were they helped students with homework and such thing. Not a single TA read lectures (this is what I call teaching a course). And this is what Abagnale did. **I delivered lectures while I was a graduate student.** I TAed, but I was also listed as the instructor for other courses, and this was at an accredited institution. In addition, I currently teach courses of my own, at accredited institutions, on the strength of my master’s degree. Your assumptions are false. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/99 "2014-01-11T20:24:04Z")
> [@Don\_Simus](#): > > In the school were I studied TAs were grading homework or had classes were they helped students with homework and such thing. Not a single TA read lectures (this is what I call teaching a course). And this is what Abagnale did. And he faked a PhD to get the job. > > Even if you assume that just a B.S. was a minimum requirement for his job, it is still the same level of education the graduates of Embry-Riddle get. And the question why he never flew a jet but did teach sociology still stands. Since both professions allegedly require the same level of education. I don’t know why I am doing this. Flying a jet is not equivalent to teaching an intro level class. Flying a jet is the _most_ complex thing that a pilot does. Teaching an intro level course is pretty much the _least_ complex thing a professor does. If you want to compare flying a jet to doing conducting publishable research, go for it. Those two are somewhat equivalent. And if you want to compare teaching intro course to filing a flight plan, go for it. Those two are somewhat equivalent. But as it stands, your comparison is laughably invalid, hence everyone making fun of you. What do you learn in these intro courses? _The things you need to know to go from knowing nothing about the subject to being able to learn more about it._ Things like basic terminology and concepts, a brief history of the subject, major figures and studies, etc. Intro classes basically give you some background and vocab, so that when you take more advanced classes, you know what they are talking about. Intro classes presume no prior knowledge. So it’s not surprising that someone with no prior knowledge can, with a good textbook, transmit that basic knowledge. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_Simus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@Don\_Simus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Simus)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2014, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154/100 "2014-01-11T20:55:28Z")
> [@Jragon](#): > > It’s true that to some degree peer review is garbage in/garbage out. That is, if your field is made up of cranks who think crank things, then the only thing peer review will accomplish is making the exact grade and flavor of crankery you get somewhat consistent. But the automotive mechanics, used in my example, are obviously not cranks. So this is not the problem. I’ll give you a hint. What is the economic relationship between two automotive shops? > [@Jragon](#): > > people will be pleased as punch with how fast their quantum computers run in 2050. I see. You are a profet. Like Brigham Young. > [@Jragon](#): > > unlike obvious crank such as Demonology But those Schrodinger cat computers sound pretty demonic. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/juvenile-delinquent-taught-at-a-university/678154.md?page=6)