Here’s a wonderful rant by Pharyngula:
You don’t find that much arrogance in science. If you want arrogance, you need to go to those uninformed, lying christianists who pronounce doom and destruction and declare who is evil and who is going to hell and whose country must be destroyed and its inhabitants converted to the One True Faith. When I hear people declare that Dawkins is the arrogant one, while they are surrounded by Robertsons and Coulters and Dobsons, I give up on them. They’ve just admitted that they lack any sensible perspective on the world.
Entries (RSS)
You don’t find that much arrogance in science.
Wow. Either Pharyngula doesn’t know many people doing science, or needs to look up the word “arrogance.”
arrogant
adjective
having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities
No, I think that a relatively small proportion of scientists that I have met or read suffer from this. On the other hand, almost all political pundits and religious leaders seem exhibit this characteristic.
The key, of course, is exaggerated, which implies a comparison between objective, measurable importance and abilities and those claimed.
The key, of course, is exaggerated, which implies a comparison between objective, measurable importance and abilities and those claimed.
Right.
Pull the other leg, Geoff, it’s got bells on.
I’ve worked with scientists whose importance to their own fields is immense, and unquestioned: I’d bet a dollar that you and most people in the general public don’t know them from Adam. That leads almost inevitably to a degree of arrogance.
This is not to say I disagree with you about either pundits — who continually annoy me by a willingness to express an opinion on things they clearly can barely spell, like damn near anything I’ve ever heard any pundit say about stem cell research — or the sublime confidence of widely known preachers.