Why are scientists so dull? Because interesting people are selected against.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-are-scientists-so-dull.html

by theoden • 15 years ago

4 2 15 years ago

charltonteaching.blogspot.com

tokenadult• 15 years ago

This story has been submitted to Hacker News before with other URLs. It is important to note that the author himself was so dull (stupid) at doing peer review that he was sacked from his former position as editor of a highly speculative "scientific" journal.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/is-there-a-rol...

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100318/full/news.2010.132.ht...

http://journalology.blogspot.com/2010/05/medical-hypotheses-...

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/05/medical-hy...

Most of Charlton's critics are actually a lot more interesting and more willing to carefully investigate interesting ideas than he is. They just work harder at checking facts.

cstross• 15 years ago

Also worth noting is Charlton's political agenda: self-proclaimed reactionary Christian, with a self-published book about the evils of political correctness. (Note his drive-by on anthropogenic climate change in the first couple of paragraphs, as he's warming to his topic ...)

In view of this background, I tend to discount his public pronouncements as increasingly eccentric axe-grinding.

Why are scientists so dull? Because interesting people are selected against.

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