Heather Mac Donald on standards versus “diversity”:
Yale has created a special undergraduate laboratory course that aims to enhance minority students’ “feelings of identifying as a scientist.” It does so by being “non-prescriptive” in what students research; they develop their own research questions. But “feelings” are only going to get you so far without mastery of the building blocks of scientific knowledge. Mastering those building blocks involves the memorisation of facts, among other skills. Assessing student knowledge of those facts can produce disparate results. The solution is to change the test or, ideally, eliminate it. A medical school supervisor recently advised a professor to write an exam that was less “fact-based” than the one he had proposed, even though knowledge of pathophysiology and the working of drugs, say, entails knowing facts.
the only way is down.
Science is observation, explanation and testing. Thinking you a scientist is not a substitute for being a scientist, except in certain left wing areas of academia.
Is this what Trudeau and Bill Nye, the Science Guy were talking about?
I didn’t pay attention that closely to them a few weeks ago….. or is this the attempt to dumb down science? I know, stick ’em up…just give us your tuition fees and shut up. Nobody will get hurt.
So how long until medical schools start granting diplomas to those who identify as doctors? So long as it prominently states the “identifies as” on the diploma (which must be posted at the place of business) I’m OK with that.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
It does seem that this is where we are going.
The decline of western liberal civilization is well underway. The farce of climate “science” is only the most visible manifestation.
A degree in “climate science” is a degree in “oxymoronic studies” …
Liberal White Supremacy.
Funny how we conservatives generally believe that given an opportunity, ANY individual that works hard and applies themselves can be successful, yet leftards think so lowly of minorities’ abilities that they now systematically treat them all like helpless little children. How degrading and destructive.
Ya, and we conservatives are the racists and bigots. Right.
Something else: anything these hacks will actually be able to do an AI can do more quickly and cheaply.
The only reason I can think to do this would be to increase the number of “doctors” who will write prescriptions for synthetic opiates without asking questions. The goal isn’t to recruit doctors. It’s to recruit street-corner drug dealers.
Every dystopian book on the future of civilization is coming true.
Remember “The Marching Morons” by Philip K. Dick?
What year was that set in? Science fiction becoming true centuries before forecast.
C.M. Kornbluth
–Bad News
This kind of malarkey has infected major scientific and technical organizations. I’ve been a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for more than 40 years. Ever since Trump was elected, it’s been whining that we need “evidence-based” science, not to mention publishing numerous editorials about “diversity is our strength” in its flagship publication Science.
Hello? AAAS? Are you interested in me renewing my membership…..?
These characters are something to behold.
One suspects that soon their are going to discover their own navel and start wondering, what is this and how it got there.
What insanity. Conning students into spending all that money on an education that’s designed to only make them “feel like a scientist”. So they can feel like as scientist when they ask, “Would you like fries with that?”
Huh!? Imagine that? in 2018, Yale “feels” a need to assist undergraduate minority student’s “feelings of identifying as a scientist” …
Yet, when I was an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley in the mid 1970’s … the vast majority of undergraduate students in math and sciences WERE minorities!! Ohhhh … now … I see … THOSE were the WRONG minorities. They were mostly Asian. And we all know how the Universities have been trimming the numbers of Asian undergraduates … evidently because they don’t have enough … “feelings”
Affirmative action rocketry… Coming soon to a launchpad near you!
I took another look at the link.
I hope some day real soon, some ‘wunderkind’ edjukashunal institute gets an undergrad who picks their nose and flicks it at the nearest compadre, farts and giggles incessantly, cheats, steals stuff, vandalizes the place, and all manner of really disgustingly offensive actions, only to be taken under the wings of the ‘inclusion’ cabal or better yet, the aclu, well funded, intractable, and eager to set a legal precedent.
what, you never had a kid like that in grade school?
You just described a number of the students I had while I was a post-secondary educator. Having to face classes full of such darlings day after day, it’s a wonder I never became an alcoholic. That was one reason I quit my teaching job more than 15 years ago.