Academic Free-For-All Day
The Alliance for Science has a page up for Academic Free-For-All Day.
Ever since that sad debacle known as the “Enlightenment”, a cult of knowledge-and-learning has insisted that any investigation be based on what has been learned in the past. How limiting! If we can only free our minds from the yoke of wisdom, the possibilities become endless. Also, there is way too much hero worship these days. Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, blah, blah, blah. They are just a bunch of old dead white guys. Why stand on the shoulders of giants when we can peer from between their ankles?
On Academic Free-for-All day, everyone can have it their way. Don’t worry if 99.9% of the experts on some subject agree on one conclusion about the facts — if your ‘gut’ says differently, then go for it! No matter how wacky the idea is, you can usually find a handful of cranks with Ph.D.s to back you up!
Check it out.
Interesting.
Based on your description, it seems like every day is academic free for all day!
Actually, I’m not sure I’m even opposed to it. Shouldn’t we be open-minded?
NS
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Please leave the URL spamming out of the body of comments. Second warning… there will be no third warning.
Anti-science advocates deny that science can distinguish between alternative hypotheses, or insist that counter-factual hypotheses are endlessly up for discussion. Phlogiston is gone and isn’t coming back, and the same goes for various creationisms. Students don’t have an infinite amount of time to learn about science; we need to teach responsibly and let them know about the science that has withstood the scrutiny of the scientific community. Insisting that students need to be informed of various and sundry things that have failed upon inspection by the scientific community isn’t “open-minded”, it is instead something in the range from irresponsible to idiotic.