Is taxpayer-funded academia worth it?

[Trausti]

A lot of academic work coming out of colleges and universities certainly has value (usually in the hard sciences). Yet, there's also a current of pseudo-scientific nonsense which enjoys taxpayer funding and the implication of credulity by being associated with a university and published in a journal.

Should tax money fund this?

Oh well. Who needs a cure for cancer anyhow?

https://twitter.com/real_peerreview

 

[Nice Squirrel]

How do we know these studies weren't funded through foundations?

 

[untermensche]

This is a problem with the educational institutions and the insanity of publish or perish.

It has nothing to do with how these institutions are funded.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Land Grant my arse!

 

[Trausti]

This is a problem with the educational institutions and the insanity of publish or perish.

It has nothing to do with how these institutions are funded.

You're probably right about some of them; and it's difficult to tell where the funding comes from in any case. But many of the articles are authored by professors at public universities, so taxpayers are economically supporting these professors' "research":

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2014.991705?journalCode=cgpc20

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is a problem with the educational institutions and the insanity of publish or perish.

It has nothing to do with how these institutions are funded.

Partially.

There's also the problem that government fares badly at evaluating the quality of what they're funding because it's so rule-bound.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think its worthwhile to have taxpayer dollars fund studies like this. Not because of any worth to the studies themselves, but because limits on what research the government deems acceptable should be very loose. Nobody's going to hit the line of acceptability all the time and it's far better to err on the side of wasting cash on bullshit like this than to have government paper pushers deny legitimate research topics.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Well, let's take a look at the research from for profits such as De Vry, Full Sail, and the University of Phoenix.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Wow seven papers. Bet there are dozens more like this out of the hundreds, thousands of other papers published.

And it seems this is argument via abstract.


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[barbos]

This is a problem with the educational institutions and the insanity of publish or perish.

It has nothing to do with how these institutions are funded.

Yes, there is a fair amount of outright fraud in funding research. It's just amount is different in different fields.

 

[whichphilosophy]

It isn't clear how these were funded and how many studies were done in each field and what the perceived value for these are. They may even be simply student projects in some cases but there's no way of telling.

 

[barbos]

I think its worthwhile to have taxpayer dollars fund studies like this. Not because of any worth to the studies themselves, but because limits on what research the government deems acceptable should be very loose. Nobody's going to hit the line of acceptability all the time and it's far better to err on the side of wasting cash on bullshit like this than to have government paper pushers deny legitimate research topics.

Lets make one thing clear, quoted studies are a result of "publish or perish" policies. I highly doubt any of these authors believe that shit they put out is legitimate research, but they are forced by universities to publish something and bring in public funding or they will be fired.
Some people don't like it but they do it anyway. Some like it and spew bullshit all the time and more often than not it pays off.

 

[barbos]

It isn't clear how these were funded and how many studies were done in each field and what the perceived value for these are. They may even be simply student projects in some cases but there's no way of telling.

Does not matter how exactly it was funded, if you look deep enough you will see that public eventually pays for everything.

 

[arkirk]

It isn't clear how these were funded and how many studies were done in each field and what the perceived value for these are. They may even be simply student projects in some cases but there's no way of telling.

Does not matter how exactly it was funded, if you look deep enough you will see that public eventually pays for everything.

One of the purposes of a University is to serve as a marketplace for ideas. I agree that the public ends up paying for everything...even the for profits. The range of topics a University should cover is open to debate. It has to be wider than a barn door or it begins to become constricted and the University loses its social significance. Not everything that happens in a university bears fruit, but the ideas that do eventually make it to the fore are worth tolerance of a lot of bullshit. One man's bullshit is another man's definition of social justice. Let the argument happen in an academic setting and not the street.

 

[barbos]

Does not matter how exactly it was funded, if you look deep enough you will see that public eventually pays for everything.

One of the purposes of a University is to serve as a marketplace for ideas. I agree that the public ends up paying for everything...even the for profits. The range of topics a University should cover is open to debate. It has to be wider than a barn door or it begins to become constricted and the University loses its social significance. Not everything that happens in a university bears fruit, but the ideas that do eventually make it to the fore are worth tolerance of a lot of bullshit. One man's bullshit is another man's definition of social justice. Let the argument happen in an academic setting and not the street.

You are missing the point. Authors who put out these "research" papers don't believe for a second that these are ideas worth a shit.
I know a guy from a top US university who is a chair of school of something in hard science who put out not paper (it was too bad even for bullshit paper) but grant application and patent. It was complete and total bullshit, he knows it, I know that, and he knows I know it. But he got $500k grant, he is happy, university is happy, his students are happy. But there are not going to be any tangible fruits, it was all a scam.

 

[untermensche]

It isn't clear how these were funded and how many studies were done in each field and what the perceived value for these are. They may even be simply student projects in some cases but there's no way of telling.

Does not matter how exactly it was funded, if you look deep enough you will see that public eventually pays for everything.

The public means all the people.

What else can pay besides people?

 

[Derec]

This is a problem with the educational institutions and the insanity of publish or perish.

It has nothing to do with how these institutions are funded.

It has to do with lack of any sort of sanity in social science and humanities departments where they are overrun by identity politics and postmodernism. There is a lot of stuff that deserves to be funded, but stuff in the OP should not be funded by anybody. Of course, it is the result of misguided racial/gender politics of the last 40 years that you can't defund this stuff, no matter how insane, lest you be labeled "racist" or "misogynist" or "homophobe" (as they gratuitously toss in LGBTQABCDEFG...)

 

[laughing dog]

Failure to understand the significance of research in humanities or social science does not necessarily indicate that the research is faulty or wasteful - it simply may indicate ignorance or bias.

 

[Derec]

Failure to understand the significance of research in humanities or social science does not necessarily indicate that the research is faulty or wasteful - it simply may indicate ignorance or bias.

Let's take the very first paper from the OP. What does some poet misunderstanding the concept of a limit or a polynomial in math have to do with anything remotely significant or worthy of funding? It has to do with affirmative action admissions becoming affirmative action hires at affirmative action "racial/gender grievance" departments.

This kind of nonsense is not new. Feminist calculus is not that different than the infamous "Newton's Principia as a rape manual" nonsense by Sandra Harding or "E=mc² is a sexed equation because it privileges the speed of light" by Luce Irigaray. And the paper on "Snooki-as-text" reads like Sokal's hoax paper.

 

[laughing dog]

Failure to understand the significance of research in humanities or social science does not necessarily indicate that the research is faulty or wasteful - it simply may indicate ignorance or bias.

Let's take the very first paper from the OP. What does some poet misunderstanding the concept of a limit in math have to do with anything remotely significant or worthy of funding?

You assume facts not in evidence. There is no evidence she did not understand the concept of a mathematical limit. It is entirely probable she is using that concept as a metaphor. Nor is there any evidence that research was directly funded.

It has to do with affirmative action admissions becoming affirmative action hires at affirmative action "racial grievance" departments.

The abstract to that paper was more logical than your introduction of one of your hobby horses.

This kind of nonsense is not new. Feminist calculus is not that different than the infamous "Newton's Principia as a rape manual" nonsense by Sandra Harding.

Is it possible for you to stay on track instead of using every instance to babble about one of your many boring hobby horses?