Really stupid people who end up with PhDs?

Based on what you have said, it sounds like you are the stupid one. You don't seem to understand the difference between stupid and unintelligent. You also lack perspective and empathy.

If you're able to write a well-structured and thought-out thesis, chances are you are able to obtain a PhD. It's not a big flashy title people wave around to show how smart or important someone is, it's a status signifying your ability to conduct reliable research and to document it academically.

Furthermore; one who has a PhD in a particular field usually have spent thousands upon thousands of hours on that field and thus become specialized in that area. Naturally this can cause a person to have difficulties in other fields.

PIed wrote:

She also had no idea ......and gave up sunscreen after deciding it was more cancerous than sunshine. I've known several other PhD holders and PhD candidates like comparable to her.

Unless she is sunbathing for several hours a day in a place like California, what is so stupid about this?

You have not convinced me that there are really stupid people who end up with PhDs, but you have convinced me that there are really stupid people who worked in academia for awhile at one university and earned a master's of science at another.

In my experience, many graduate students in the sciences lack common sense and worldly intelligence. This is mainly the result of leading a book wormish hermit's existence rather than lack of cerebral intelligence. Interacting with highly intelligent people is often strained and awkward because they tend to be intensely interested (and knowledgeable) in certain areas and wholly lack a functional working knowledge of other areas.

Post Hole Digger wrote:

You have not convinced me that there are really stupid people who end up with PhDs, but you have convinced me that there are really stupid people who worked in academia for awhile at one university and earned a master's of science at another.

+1

Sounds like one of flagpole's anecdotes he tries to use to bolster his arguments. Just because you know two people like this does not mean if is universally true.

outside the box wrote:

PIed wrote:

She also had no idea ......and gave up sunscreen after deciding it was more cancerous than sunshine. I've known several other PhD holders and PhD candidates like comparable to her.

Unless she is sunbathing for several hours a day in a place like California, what is so stupid about this?

Everything about it is stupid. That would be a good place to start.

Sometimes your laser-like focus on narrow topics makes you seem clueless on other topics.

Non-rare? Really? How about common? Well, at least you used a dash properly.

Many people/celebrities are awarded honorary doctorates every year by all universities. Many of them aren't that smart.

I have a PhD and I'm an idiot.

wow fascinating stories,, what doesnot surprise me is how non-rare it is for people in General to be total morans

a) Sounds like you have a bit of an inferiority complex, which I see a lot in people with MS degrees.

b) This person probably just meant that his reaction tubes had been cross-contaminated somehow. This isn't that uncommon, especially with people who aren't super careful with their pipet technique.

c) You only have to be good at the thing you're getting a PhD in, plus writing and presenting. Being shitty with maps, while it does exhibit a lack of basic life skills, does not preclude being really good at molecular biology or whatever.

I am a non-traditional student (read old) who returned to get a master's last year to start an "encore" career. As happy as I am to be making this transition as an oldish-timer, I have quite turned off by academia and modern campus culture.

First, the professors are not particularly impressive. I used to feel truly deferential toward PhDs, but now I find the ones I'm spending time with to be unbalanced, arrogant and unaware that they exist in a bizarro cloistered world separate from where the rest of us exist. I have concluded that tenure, while I understand its purpose, is not a great thing. People who are too comfortable, too confident and not beholden to someone else for performance, transform into the weirdos I see on campus every day now. To those who are either tenured or aspire to be, yuck is what I have to say to you.

Secondly, academia seems a world in which "researchers" feast on the dregs of what others have said, or accomplished, parsing it into endless lists, drawing distinctions without difference, writing endless pages of fluff that has minimal relevance in the real world. I'm in semester two of a 3 year program and can honestly say that most of what I've learned so far is simply fluff, detritus layered upon detritus. I'm put off by the $100+ dollar hardbound textbooks, 11th edition of course, the tens of thousands of annually published articles, many recycling the same ideas as the others, it's been a genuine experience in seeing the wizard behind the curtain. And there are how many thousands of universities in the US, sucking vast amounts of money out of the larger economy? This is not productivity.

Lastly, everything on campuses these days revolves around a dogmatic and political adherence to "diversity" and identity politics. I'm finding that for the most part, rigid "openness" to predefined diversity is demanded, but genuine diversity of thought is not tolerated in discourse. In summary, if I didn't need to complete this program to get started on career 2.0, I would keep my dollars and run as far as I could from academia. It's been disappointing to learn that academia really is the land of broken toys. This is an overgeneralization, but I have started to believe that universities these days are not good organizational citizens.

Rayne wrote:

If you're able to write a well-structured and thought-out thesis, chances are you are able to obtain a PhD. It's not a big flashy title people wave around to show how smart or important someone is, it's a status signifying your ability to conduct reliable research and to document it academically.

Furthermore; one who has a PhD in a particular field usually have spent thousands upon thousands of hours on that field and thus become specialized in that area. Naturally this can cause a person to have difficulties in other fields.

PhD: learning more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing.

Shalya kipp?

1. You know some real dopes.

2. The better the school, the smarter the students on average.

2. Many PhD candidates are not problem solvers. They did well as undergraduates because they memorize well and study hard. Most professors simply look for kids with good grades who seem interested in their work.

3. Being in a well-organized lab with a good manager and an established project following a capable post-doc makes many candidates with average problem solving abilities seem competent. Many students who are not otherwise clever look for these opportunities and is a sign of intelligence.

4. Schools are rewarded for graduates.

amygdala wrote:

Being shitty with maps, while it does exhibit a lack of basic life skills, does not preclude being really good at molecular biology or whatever.

Map-reading (or I think the OP specifically said compass skills) was a basic life skill 100 years ago maybe, but not today. Google tells you when to turn left and right.

Very entertaining video on modern education.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcWu0tsiZM

That is frighteningly reminiscent of our campus culture in the US these days.