# Will a 14-year-old start a wave of self-critical soul-searching in academia? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 7, 2015, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223 "2015-08-07T08:03:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tclouie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/838e76/32.png) [@tclouie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tclouie)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/21 "2015-08-07T20:14:08Z")
> [@APB](#): > > That neatly reinforces my point. If locating examples was as easily as it now is, why didn’t Miller himself do so? The Daily Beast article does not say he did not find examples. It does say he found examples as long ago as the 1970’s, in graduate school. But, when he tried to debunk Jensen, Jensen was so thoroughly accepted that Miller’s motives were attacked. So, maybe it took a 14-year-old girl to do the job. People don’t like to publicly attack 14-year-old girls. As for why no one besides Miller and Fried was willing to do the research necessary for the debunking work, well…that is the great (sad) mystery of this whole drama, and that is why my OP raised questions about academia itself. But, as Baffle said, maybe this just shows that the system works. Even 13 years later. ---
**Author:** ![Defensive\_Indifference](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/defensive_indifference/32/6502_2.png) [@Defensive\_Indifference](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Defensive_Indifference)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/22 "2015-08-07T20:22:13Z")
I haven’t yet read Rebecca Fried’s original article, just the article linked in the OP that reported on Fried’s. But, based just on the excerpts: Holy cow! she can write. I think I’m a decent writer when I put forth the effort, but no way could I have written like that as a 14-year-old, and most days I can’t write like that as a 42-year-old. Wow. Good for her. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2015, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/23 "2015-08-07T20:42:27Z")
> [@tclouie](#): > > I would still like an answer to my original OP: do you think this episode will lead to soul-searching and changes in academia? If the various people that got papers full of gibberish accepted for publication didn’t prompt any soul searching, I doubt this will. ---
**Author:** ![tclouie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/838e76/32.png) [@tclouie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tclouie)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/24 "2015-08-08T01:54:11Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > If the various people that got papers full of gibberish accepted for publication didn’t prompt any soul searching, I doubt this will. I am also interested in other cases of articles in peer-reviewed journals that got thoroughly debunked. The vaccination=autism article is probably the most famous example; do you know of any others? Perhaps that would make a good thread by itself. And you are right, if there have been many bogus articles in peer-reviewed publications that didn’t cause soul-searching, then this one won’t either. Unfortunately. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/25 "2015-08-08T16:57:05Z")
> [@tclouie](#): > > In my opinion, this episode is less about the humiliation of a single person and more about the humiliation of an entire discipline: academic historical scholarship. It raises questions about the peer review process, about the greater attention paid to to controversial papers, about complacent acceptance of “the last word” on a subject, about using academic conclusions as the basis for political rants, and certainly about intellectual arrogance. Me? I’m loving this. I hope this episode leads to turmoil within the halls of the University of Illinois and Oxford. But, do you think it will? Will some academic reforms come out of this, or will it be business as usual by next year? I dunno. Researchers have always fallen into the two camps of those who set out to find information and draw conclusions and those who set out with conclusions in order to find data to support them. (That is not limited to the social sciences, either. “Hard” science displays a lot of the same activities.) I am not sure that peer review is even designed for the purpose of preventing Jensen’s errors or that it should be. Peer review is a gateway to reduce the number of utterly stupid presentations so that the wider audience has less chaff through which to sort. it looks for obvious errors of investigation or logic, but does not attempt to establish the “truth” of any claim. In the case of Jensen’s 2002 paper, (was it even peer reviewed?), the reviewers would have had been presented with a claim that he had done a certain type of research using methodology that was (at that time) state of the art, and he drew conclusions from it. The function of any reviewer(s) would have been to examine whether his methodology appeared reasonable and whether his conclusions could be defended as legitimately proceeding from his research. It is not the job of the reviewer(s) to re-research his data–that is the function of anyone who chose to challenge his results. I do not see that changing. In this case it took over a decade for his paper to be challenged, (using even more state of the art tools), but his research was challenged, (rather successfully). People chosen to perform peer review of papers are, themselves, generally busy scholars in the field in which they are asked to perform reviews. They do not have the time to re-examine every data element of every claim. Had his paper said that he looked over one newspaper in 1892 and, finding no NINA ads, drew the conclusion that a bunch of melancholy Irish immigrants had drunkenly assumed that English songs had been source of claims about the American experience, I suspect that a peer review would have prevented his publication. Beyond that, Ms. Fried did a great job of debunking his thesis, but I see no change in the way that academia handles publications. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/26 "2015-08-08T18:00:29Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > If the various people that got papers full of gibberish accepted for publication didn’t prompt any soul searching, I doubt this will. But there have been many papers and books that “proved” falsehoods. Some of them even won prestigious awards and earned critical hosannas. > **[Arming America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America)** > > Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture is a discredited 2000 book by historian Michael A. Bellesiles about American gun culture, an expansion of a 1996 article he published in the Journal of American History. Bellesiles, then a professor at Emory University, used fabricated research to argue that during the early period of US history, guns were uncommon during peacetime and that a culture of gun ownership did not arise until the mid-nineteenth century. > Although the book was awarde... Why would THIS mini-scandal change things of the others didn’t? Now, as I said earlier, I never doubted that anti-Irish discrimination was common in the 19th century, and never doubted that NINA signs were real back then. But do I feel vindicated or triumphant now? No. I want the historical record to be correct, but my point has always been that Irish-Americans haven’t experienced real discrimination in the USA in a loooooong time, and Irish-Americans who keep the NINA story alive often do so with ulterior motives: to tell current American minorities, in essence, WE suffered too, so shut up and quit yer bellyaching!" ---
**Author:** ![syncrolecyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/27 "2015-08-08T22:03:27Z")
I see this as the normal process of revision. “Revisionist” is a dirty word to some, but new sources and methods always emerge. I suppose it is unusual that a 14 year-old performed an intervention in this history. Jensen arrived at a conclusion based on his research (perhaps he is far too wedded to that conclusion). 15 years later, someone else revised this significantly. If one looks at histories of World War II written ten years apart (1955…1965…1975…) I suspect you would see much the same process. I don’t think anyone will ever write the last word on any historical event. As a side note, I ran similar searches - out of curiosity - a while ago and found many examples of “No\_\_\_\_Need Apply” - aimed at Irish, Jews, Italians, Poles, African Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, Catholics and so on. Private employment discrimination was pervasive against a variety of groups. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/28 "2015-08-08T23:45:25Z")
> [@tclouie](#): > > I also feel some glee that my ethnic group’s history was not all just imagined. Just as the “no-NINA” believers felt glee at claims of discrimination being imaginary (as _they_ imagined). It is one thing to accuse the Irish of constantly throwing a “pity party” for themselves, but it is quite another to claim that the pity party has no basis in reality. I’m also glad it wasn’t all just imagined. It’s good to remind certain self-satisfied “American Catholics,” when they grouse about some other group, that they were once the scum of society. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/29 "2015-08-09T01:03:47Z")
> [@tclouie](#): > > I hope the girl gets a full-ride scholarship to the institution of her choice. Many American colleges, including flagship state universities, would give her a full tuition waiver, and some would probably also pay much of her room and board expense – even if her family has no financial need. However: Did you notice the high school she attends? It is the same elite private school patronized by the Obama and Clinton families. Students who do well there go on to prestigious private colleges with astronomically priced tuition that is usually discounted, but rarely, if ever, waived. Re the supposed scandal of mediocre scholarship getting through peer review, this will always be a problem. And AFAIK the problem isn’t worse in history journals than others. On the medical situation, see: [http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(15)60696-1.pdf](http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960696-1.pdf) Peer review isn’t worthless. It’s part of a process that is necessarily imperfect, but does, in fits and starts, lead to progress in science, and probably even in academic history writing. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223/30 "2015-08-09T14:23:07Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Uh, cite? Uh, were those cites sufficient? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-a-14-year-old-start-a-wave-of-self-critical-soul-searching-in-academia/727223.md?page=1)