I have looked at this particular linguist fairly close in the last month. This began when I put a post on my blog which lifted a particularly stupid quotation out of any context from Tooby and Cosmides book Adapted mind. I took a cheap shot at one of the contributors, and decided that if I was going to post such a thing on my blog I had to perform at least a little diligence.
I read How the mind works very closely looking for a similarly stupid quotation I could lift out and score off of. I could not find one. Pinker measures his statements in that book very careful, in spite of numerous instances of loose argument. For example at one point he states that King Solomon had a harem of 700 wives and concubines. If you want to get picky, there is no historical record of any such thing, or even of any specific person such as King Solomon who is discussed at length in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. So, although there is a blatant falsehood, he does not make any inferences from it; instead he uses it as an illustration of what he wants the reader to conclude about the arguments which he does make. In that particular book his argumentation is not demonstrably fallacious as far as I could tell (and I was looking pretty close for exactly that.)
I get the impression he is fond of making statements that appeal to college students in his classrooms, even if he is not appealing to their better nature and good judgment. When he gives more informal talks that is bound to show. He is an interesting hybrid between a scientist (long list peer-reviewed sound method works) and a charlatan. He is a star, so he can make his own rules as long as he isn’t writing a submission for the Journal of Linguistics.
Voted up, and agreed with, except that the phrase charlatan seems utterly inappropriate as a description of what you just described. How about ‘celebrity’. Almost any scientist who is actually famous does the same things. Without famous scientists, would we even have science?
“To follow up on one of my earlier thoughts, I think Levitt really has changed his career trajectory in a big way with Freakonomics 2. Before Freakonomics 1, Levitt was a very successful professor: well paid, with the opportunity to work with excellent students, lots of invitations to speak in interesting places, the assurance that people would notice his articles when they came out, etc. After Freakonomics 1, he had all this, plus riches and fame. And I have the impression that he worked hard to keep up with his academic duties, doing research, editing journals, etc. After this new book, though, I think there’s no going back. A lot of people just aren’t going to take his stuff seriously anymore—and the people who do like it, might very well like it for the wrong reasons. Also, Levitt’s gotta be careful now about who he pisses off. He might feel on top of the world now, as an equal-opportunity offender who’s riled conservatives on abortion and race, punctured liberal myths on climate change, and lived to tell the tale. At this point, though, further bold stands might well be subtractive, chipping away at the proportion of the audience that can trust him.”
Fair enough; I take back charlatan. Would you go for grandstanding? Or perhaps sophistry?
People said the same thing about Carl Sagan but in Sagan’s case I believe that criticism was unfair. He was enthusiastic about stuff which merited his enthusiasm. Compare the style of Pinker; this is remarkable stuff (freaking evolution man—five billion years ago our ancestors had one cell) and no grandstanding is necessary. It’s like Horowitz performing a concert with Liberace staging.
Grandstanding is more fair. I think that people in the public eye generally get treated unfairly, Sagan, Pinker, Kurzweil, movie stars, politicians, CEOs, the works.
I have looked at this particular linguist fairly close in the last month. This began when I put a post on my blog which lifted a particularly stupid quotation out of any context from Tooby and Cosmides book Adapted mind. I took a cheap shot at one of the contributors, and decided that if I was going to post such a thing on my blog I had to perform at least a little diligence.
I read How the mind works very closely looking for a similarly stupid quotation I could lift out and score off of. I could not find one. Pinker measures his statements in that book very careful, in spite of numerous instances of loose argument. For example at one point he states that King Solomon had a harem of 700 wives and concubines. If you want to get picky, there is no historical record of any such thing, or even of any specific person such as King Solomon who is discussed at length in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. So, although there is a blatant falsehood, he does not make any inferences from it; instead he uses it as an illustration of what he wants the reader to conclude about the arguments which he does make. In that particular book his argumentation is not demonstrably fallacious as far as I could tell (and I was looking pretty close for exactly that.)
I get the impression he is fond of making statements that appeal to college students in his classrooms, even if he is not appealing to their better nature and good judgment. When he gives more informal talks that is bound to show. He is an interesting hybrid between a scientist (long list peer-reviewed sound method works) and a charlatan. He is a star, so he can make his own rules as long as he isn’t writing a submission for the Journal of Linguistics.
Voted up, and agreed with, except that the phrase charlatan seems utterly inappropriate as a description of what you just described. How about ‘celebrity’. Almost any scientist who is actually famous does the same things. Without famous scientists, would we even have science?
Interesting comment by Andrew Gelman on “becoming a scientific celebrity”:
“To follow up on one of my earlier thoughts, I think Levitt really has changed his career trajectory in a big way with Freakonomics 2. Before Freakonomics 1, Levitt was a very successful professor: well paid, with the opportunity to work with excellent students, lots of invitations to speak in interesting places, the assurance that people would notice his articles when they came out, etc. After Freakonomics 1, he had all this, plus riches and fame. And I have the impression that he worked hard to keep up with his academic duties, doing research, editing journals, etc. After this new book, though, I think there’s no going back. A lot of people just aren’t going to take his stuff seriously anymore—and the people who do like it, might very well like it for the wrong reasons. Also, Levitt’s gotta be careful now about who he pisses off. He might feel on top of the world now, as an equal-opportunity offender who’s riled conservatives on abortion and race, punctured liberal myths on climate change, and lived to tell the tale. At this point, though, further bold stands might well be subtractive, chipping away at the proportion of the audience that can trust him.”
Fair enough; I take back charlatan. Would you go for grandstanding? Or perhaps sophistry?
People said the same thing about Carl Sagan but in Sagan’s case I believe that criticism was unfair. He was enthusiastic about stuff which merited his enthusiasm. Compare the style of Pinker; this is remarkable stuff (freaking evolution man—five billion years ago our ancestors had one cell) and no grandstanding is necessary. It’s like Horowitz performing a concert with Liberace staging.
Grandstanding is more fair. I think that people in the public eye generally get treated unfairly, Sagan, Pinker, Kurzweil, movie stars, politicians, CEOs, the works.