Why Academics Hide in Ivory Towers
In a recent post I asked 'What is the point of psychology?' - a question to which you had some great responses. These responses reminded me that what can seem like a simple question of psychology can elicit a fairly complicated answer. Which sent me back to wondering how people with no training and little exposure to psychological science view the work of academics and researchers.
Then I came across two posts by a couple of academic linguists which can show exactly how viciously people can react to academic research. The Polyglot Conspiracy describes the blogoshere's reaction to work carried out by linguist Mary Bucholtz into the meaning of nerdiness. Have a read...
The Language Log has a follow-up reaction with more thoughts on the ignorance of networked crowds.
I point to all this because in many ways it's exactly these kinds of ignorant attacks that many science blogs are hoping to counter, or at least mediate. I'm not saying science blogs are going to change many of these people's habits of thought, but there does at least need to be an alternative.
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Perhaps someone could defend the "superwhite" paper for me? I have a PhD and am generally pro-academia, but wow that paper seemed incredibly dumb. I don't think the problem started with the NYTimes---maybe in this case the ignorant bloggers are right.
Disclaimer: I did read the full article, but I am not a specialist in sociological semiotics.
Caveat: I have not read the superwhite paper, and will not comment on the methods or specifics.
It appears the article on the face of it was not dumb, but questioning the very construction of what we have labeled "nerd." The notion that this social construct is grounded in stereotypical "whiteness" seems eminently plausible.
Having read the links that Jeremy provides, I find it jaw dropping that the notion floated by some (and generally supported by many others outside of the "useless" social sciences) is that skin color does not matter.
Yet, we useless social scientists demonstrate again and again that color in our society does matter (e.g., examine the literature on implicit and explicit attitudes, or some of the research applying for jobs using identical resumes, wherein only the names on the resume are stereotypically "white", "black", "asian", and "latino." Guess who gets more interviews?
As for the ivory towers, there are two points I would like to make:
1) Applied and Community psychology are two disciplines that seek to break out of the often insular environment of academe (in these two large categories, I would include evaluators and clinicians, with several caveats). So, we aren't all completely isolated from reality :-)
2) One of the problems is the reporting. Indeed, our department is facing some issues with the work of one tenure member whose work has been/is used by white supremacist hate groups.
Too often, the work is published in the peer-reviewed journals, and it's off to the next publication. Little to no outreach to make sure the research is accurately framed in language outside the field, explaining the importance of the research in lay terms. Too often it is paraphrased by a reporter with limited experience in the academic field.
And should an individual wish to question/delve more into the actual research? How accessible are the research articles to the general public? Are they online? Yes, but it costs, unless you are affiliated with a university. So, of course folks outside academe are going to rely on the magazine/newspaper article: What options do the have?
The development of science blogs is a welcome development, but it's a narrow channel insofar that the bloggers pick and choose a very limited number of articles to cover. Something more institutional needs to happen for this issue to really be effectively dealt with.
(Epilogue: Of course, there is the whole issue of culture that cannot be ignored, and generally speaking, the United States has a tendency to lean towards anti-intellectualism, IMO, as demonstrated by the preference of single-cause explanations to complex problems...)
Anon, personally I'm relying on the blogs of the two linguists (with PhDs) I link to above. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me. And even if it's not the best, does it really deserve the sort of abuse it comes in for?
Dr G., I'm nodding so much I'm in danger of injuring my neck...
I think psychology is it's own worst enemy. For some reason it's moved away from being a "men in white coats" proper science and morphed into a branch of sociology. There's nothing wrong with sociology but if that's want to study, then study it, not psychology.
I don't buy the argument that being a "diverse" discipline makes it "vibrant and dynamic" - it makes it confused, devalued, unfocussed and directionless. Kids are growing up with the idea that psychologist are just members of the panel on reality TV shows.
"Men in white coats"? Personally, I think that schema has been the problem all along.
So, what would you consider psychology? Given my disciplines (social, environmental, community), how would you suggest I scientifically examine the human/environmental interaction? I presume you would say that I am not a psychologist, right?
If one remains in the lab (presumably wearing their white lab coat, on ;-), one sacrifices ecological validity ("Interesting results, but those wouldn't happen in the real world").
The father of social psychology, Kurt Lewin, had classic studies absent any "white coat." My favorite: He examined how food got to the table. That was it. And from that, he developed a whole theory of social behavior from which we have derived several commonly-used terms in our language (e.g., "gatekeeper").
I don't see much wrong with the field of psychology (or any of the social sciences, frankly). There have been some changes over the years that have impacted the perception of psychology though...
One of them, you nailed on the head, Matt: Daytime TV (e.g., the "Dr. Feel" show).
The second is the growing knowledge of the non-social sciences, and somehow the social sciences should somehow be as "clean" and "conclusive" as physics and chemistry.
This one really bugs me, and as I tell my students:
Look, in the matter of a year, psychology could be producing the same definitive results regarding human interactions as the "hard" sciences produce in their respective subjects. It would be very easy; easy, that is, if we were willing to ignore all aspects of basic human rights, morality, ethics, and decency.
I could propose some research projects that would produce concrete results; however, I could not do so without also sounding like a monster from the Nazi regime.
Anyway, Matt, you suggest that there is a problem with psychology because people perceive there to be a problem with psychology. I think there is a flaw in that reasoning. How is psychology any more or less "directionless" than biology? How is it any more or less "unfocused" as compared to physics? How is it any more or less "confused" as compared to chemistry?
Believe me, I'm more than happy to criticize the field (a note though: it's probably not the best idea to do it during your oral exams... {insert regretful sigh here} ), but to conclude that the field is off-track because of the Dr. Feel show is a bit of a stretch, IMO.
"So, what would you consider psychology?"
I answered this question as an undergrad... When I was growing up (the 1970s) my impressions of psychologists were men with beards saying "Tell me about your childhood"; men in white coats trying to confuse rats; or men in suits trying to put subliminal messages into Cinzano ads. All are equally valid, and equally worthy of study and practice. For some reason, despite the 1970s being the "nurture" decade, the idea that psychology involved studying "society" was not familiar to me. It began and ended with the individual.
Anyway, enough self disclosure. I think the apperance of psychologist on TV (as instant experts rather than true academics) is symptomatic of the confused nature of the discipline and a direct consequence of "giving it to the people". The people unfortunateley lack the knowledge to understand psychological research, and the result has been dumbing down, a populist approach, and the perception that psychology is academically, a soft option. Put bluntly, it's in danger of becoming the new media studies (I appreciate that subject may be much maligned but the effect, in popular imagination is pervasive).
To give an example I recently visited the Psychology section of a national book store chain. What did I find ? A freud reader perhaps ? A begginers guide to behaviourism ? A bit of Zimbardo ? Nope. Row after row of self help/personal growth titles aimed at everything from how to self cure depression to how to reinvogorate your career to how to bring up your children. Some of them are probably very good, some of them have probably helped many people, but they are to psychology what NHS direct is to medicine - they are "psychology lite", and ultimatley they devalue the subject.
To make my second point I would reverse your argument about ethics. If you look at the experiments that have driven the development of ethics, they are generally the ones which have reached potentially uncomfortable conclusions about the range of behiours we are all potentially capable of (I'm thinking of Milgram, Zimbardo to name 2 here). Is this a coincidence ? Or are we trying to protect society and ourselves from answers we would rather not hear to questions we don't like to ask ? Following on from that, is there a connection between ethical concerns and the likelihood that if you ask a layman to name a psychologists, most, if they could name one at all would probably name one who has not contributed to the discipline for half a century ?
To use a slighly naff analogy, the white coat played a symbolic, central part in Milgrams experimental designs. As he appreciated it confers expertise, authority and gravitas on the wearer and for psychology to remain influential, those are qualities it should surely aspire to ?
Matt,
I hear you loud and clear. For the most part, the psychology section of most mainstream books stores is quite depressing for the exact reasons that you state. When John Grey is given row after row, and nary a sign of John Gottman, it is quite an indicator of how psychology is perceived.
I just took issue with the premise that because of how psychology is perceived, the field in reality is "directionless," "unfocused," and "confused".
As for ethics, we could debate that for quite in-depth. My pet peeve is that research on various topics, such as obedience (e.g., Milgram-ish), or group interactions (e.g., Zimbardo-ish) are nigh impossible given the unwillingness of institutional review boards to permit any (even remotely) potential discomfort (as opposed to "harm", which didn't happen in the two studies above revealed, but did in the Stutter study recently cited by Jeremy).
What we fail to realize is that there is potential harm we inflict by not studying those psychological dynamics. How do we reduce destructive obedience? We have some general ideas, but they have not been scientifically tested (by folks in white lab coats ;-) How do we reduce the seemingly inevitable increase in antagonism between groups such as guards and prisoners.
Folks may think I'm going overboard here, but part of the responsibility for what happened at Abu Graib rests on the shoulders of psychologists who have not delved deeper into the dynamics involved. The case of the person who called McDonald's and Appleby's across the U.S. pretending to be a police officer, and convincing managers to strip search (and worse) their employees, giving instructions over the phone.
All that said, I think the reasons of ethics limiting the above-cited research is two-fold:
1) There are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the well-being of those who participate in the research. Perhaps Milgram and Zimbardo got lucky that no one suffered any harm. I tend to believe that the situational forces are much more powerful than personal dynamics, and therefore behavior returns to "normal" when one returns to their normal environment, but other may disagree. Hence, the trepidation.
2) CYA. The fear of a lawsuit-happy society. Is it really worth the risk? Just give folks a blooming survey, and hope they don't get a paper cut.
Anyway, my few cents.
I'm the Anon that wrote the first comment. It seems no one else actually read the paper. Really, you may want to read it----it really does seem dumb. I don't know if it deserves the full amount of abuse it's getting but I think it deserves at least a bit of abuse.
BTW I agree with the posters that psychology is better than the mainstream/pop depiction of it.
Just a disclaimer - I am a sociology grad student, not a linguist.
To be fair to those taking issue with Bucholtz are taking issue with the
depiction of her work in the NYT.
I went to her website and browsed two of her articles in question and had several issues
(1) the research was done in the mid-90s
(2) her construction of nerdiness as (a) outcast and (b) white by placing the terms in solely a black/white dichotomy.
As far as my first critique of nerd=outcast. I think there has been a change in the definition of the word nerd to mean someone with an intense interest in some subject. So nowadays there are guitar nerds, metal nerds, comic book nerds, etc. She fails to note a basic sociological fact - culture is not static, and writes like the field work she did in one school in 1995 is generally applicable and not specific to that particular time and place. I guess my critique is that she didn't stress this in her conclusions. This allowed the NYT writer to exaggerate her research and claim that her study shows that "nerdiness" is only associated with
whiteness.
I have a problem with the idea that her research points to the conclusion that nerd=displays of whiteness in general. There is no doubt that at her field site the outcast/nerd kids did put on displays of hyper-whiteness (and investigations as to how race plays out via signs and symbols in everyday life is important), however this was a specific school site, we can't draw conclusions that all nerds display hyper-whiteness. She fails to considered the association between Asian and nerd (especially in CA where her fieldwork was done) and is to quick to link nerdiness in general to whiteness. Granted, at her site there didn't seem to be a group of Asian nerds for her to study, but without such considerations she really doesn't have a theory, just a case study of a couple of school cliques.
I guess my critique is that her N is too small and that culture has changed since she was at her high school feild site. On a personal note, I'm not sure that studying language usage is the way to go about identifying nerds, the song "white and nerdy" is a much better analysis of what she wants to talk about and even that links nerds to the cultures they consume rather than diction (though again, I have problems with linking nerd soley to a whiteness which is the antithesis of African American cool).