# McGill University has a junk science course **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 14, 2017, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171 "2017-01-14T23:21:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![velomont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@velomont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velomont)\ **Post date:** [January 14, 2017, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/1 "2017-01-14T23:21:19Z")
So McGill University in Montreal has a professor teaching a course called “UFOs: History and Reality”. In _The Montreal Gazette_, Montreal’s main anglo daily newspaper, they interview him for an article, at the link below: > **[Q&A with Don Donderi on aliens, Roswell and his UFO course at McGill](https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/qa-with-don-donderi-on-aliens-roswell-and-his-ufo-course-at-mcgill)** > > A retired McGill University professor is convinced beyond a "reasonable doubt" that UFOs and extraterrestrials exist. According to the article, the course ‘…part of McGill’s Community for Lifelong Learning, outlines why “UFOs are real and extraterrestrial.”’ In the interview, the interviewer asks: “How certain are you of life beyond our planet?”, to which Don Donderi answers: “I’m 100 per cent certain of that. The way I put it in my course and to the public is this: I have three main propositions. One, some of what people report as UFOs are extraterrestrial vehicles. \*\*That proposition, I believe, is established beyond reasonable doubt. And if you know your law, you’ll know that’s the standard for a conviction of a felony. \*\*Proposition 2 is that some of the extraterrestrial vehicles have ET crews, and proposition 3 is that some of these ET crews ‘catch and release’ humans to study them, so-called alien abductions. \*\*Proposition 2, I think, is established beyond a reasonable doubt, \*\*and proposition 3 is bound on probabilities.” [bolding mine] Without spending the next several weeks ignoring my job and researching this specific issue, I am fairly sure that no such proof scientifically exists. Furthermore, he has a PhD in psychology (not that there’s anything wrong with that, though in the realm of psychology), so in anything related to this line of inquiry he’s not even a scientist. McGill is not some BS school. It’s existed since 1813 as McGill College and in 1821 established as McGill University by a royal charter issued by King George IV. FFS, what’s next - a course on vaccines and autism? ---
**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 15, 2017, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/2 "2017-01-15T04:10:06Z")
McGill’s a big university. They’re bound to have a few nuts slip through the net. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/3 "2017-01-15T04:24:41Z")
> [@velomont](#): > > FFS, what’s next - a course on vaccines and autism? They’re [way ahead](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/u-of-t-one-step-closer-to-offering-a-masters-of-pseudoscience/article25419832/) [of you](https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/02/09/anti-vaccine-professor-no-longer-teaching-health-course.html). ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/4 "2017-01-15T04:35:15Z")
I would suspect that if UFOs are real, video evidence of them would have increased in proportion to videos of cats and Russian car wrecks. But, with the explosion in people around the world with a loaded videocam at their fingertips at all times, there doesn’t seem to have been any increase at all in videos of the kinds of events that would support the hypothesis that UFOs are real. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/5 "2017-01-15T05:07:05Z")
Is it a course for a degree for serious students? No. “Lifelong learning” can be about professional development but is often a catch-all of garbage. Making a course about Beyoncé or Game of Thrones gets the teacher what they most want --attention. “The Art of Listening” (McGill’s original degree bird course) is meant to be easy, not “open minded”. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/6 "2017-01-15T08:03:59Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > McGill’s a big university. They’re bound to have a few nuts slip through the net. McGill has a pretty stellar international reputation but this sort of thing occasionally happens even at the best schools, sometimes helped along by otherwise sound principles of tenure and academic freedom, and often surfacing in non-mainstream areas like (in this case) apparently an adult education course, or in the U of T case, what sounds like an offbeat course on a satellite campus. I know there have been cases like this at major US universities, too, though I can’t remember the specifics – the only ones that come to mind right now is that MIT had a professor of atmospheric physics who was a climate change denier, and the University of Colorado for some reason over the years became a sort of epicenter that spawned a small cadre of deniers or self-identified “skeptics”. But I also recall blatant racists and other nutbars surfacing as faculty at highly respected schools. Fortunately, all such incidents are extremely rare. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/7 "2017-01-15T12:28:05Z")
I wonder what [Dr. Joe](http://blogs.mcgill.ca/oss/tag/joe-schwarcz/) thinks about this? ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/8 "2017-01-15T16:45:36Z")
Lu-Ann, on “King of the Hill”, decided to enrol in the community college when she learned that she could get a degree for just sitting and watching movies. A net gain. Education consists not just of learning relevant facts to be memorized and remembered, but associating with information and processing it in a pedagogical environment where your work is subjected to qualitative criteria. Learning to be an analyzer and organizer of information is useful, regardless of the relevance of the information being processed. It is a plus, if a course that directs itself toward that goal has sufficiently attractive and appealing subject matter to entice students to enrol in it. Monterey Peninsula College was in the same town as the US Army language school, with PhD instructors living in town who taught dozens of foreign languages. The college welcomed any who desired to put their language in the catalog and moonlight three nights a week to teach it. There were about 30 languages in the catalog, all degree-credit courses, including things like Hausa and Serbo-Croatian. (I took Mandarin.) Years later, I also took two semesters of Nunatsiavummiutut (Labrador Inuit) at Memorial University of Newfoundland, taught by a retired missionary, for credit. All valuable increments to my overall education/ ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/9 "2017-01-15T16:53:54Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Lu-Ann, on “King of the Hill”, decided to enrol in the community college when she learned that she could get a degree for just sitting and watching movies. That’s called cinema studies. You’d be surprised at how many people are employed in the film/tv industries, and how integral those industries are to culture and society. You know, people even study novels at universities! :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/10 "2017-01-15T19:30:08Z")
Here’s McGill’s Lifelong Learning catalog. > **[0052\_brochure\_winter2017\_111716\_reduced\_size.pdf](https://www.mcgill.ca/continuingstudies/files/continuingstudies/0052_brochure_winter2017_111716_reduced_size.pdf)** > > 1484.00 KB Some of it is hard academics, but a lot of it isn’t, and I don’t think that’s the program’s intention. A lot of it is just “discussion groups for retired people and housewives”. So, for instance, you have this: > [@](#): > > 255 My Favourite: Dvorak. Your Favourite? > Moderator: Pauline Bentham | p.bentham@videotron.ca > Time: Wednesday, 9:30-11:30 a.m. > Duration: 10 weeks Study Group Style: B > In the first hour of this Study Group, I will present my favourite music by Anton > Dvorak. In the second hour, participants will present their favourite composers > from Early Music to the XXlst century with no holds barred! Participants must > bring their own CDs, DVDs, or YouTube presentations with a brief description of > the music and why it was chosen. You can take the whole hour or share it with > another group member as wished. ---
**Author:** ![velomont](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/8491ac/32.png) [@velomont](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/velomont)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/11 "2017-01-15T20:13:59Z")
To all above, I know that these are “continuous learning” type things but in my gut, there should be some criteria so that Oxford or Cambridge aren’t associated with courses on Healing Crystals etc. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 15, 2017, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mcgill-university-has-a-junk-science-course/777171/12 "2017-01-15T23:33:14Z")
> [@Muffin](#): > > That’s called cinema studies. You’d be surprised at how many people are employed in the film/tv industries, and how integral those industries are to culture and society. > > You know, people even study novels at universities! :smack: That wasn’t my point. Lu-Ann, although fictional, decided to pursue higher education because she recognized a course in the catalog that she thought might make college meaningful to her.