The List - a collective effort

[Novaheart]

I frequently encounter people online who appear to think that a PhD adds weight to an argument. Clearly this might be the case in physics or structural engineering, but for most social, political, and economic issues it often doesn't mean that much. In other words, I want to make a list of idiots/liars/shitheads with doctorates.

To make it a collective effort, we will add to the list. If a name is challenged then you list the reason for inclusion. Then others can weigh in pro or con.


I'll start the list:

Mark Regnerus
Len Jeffries
Angela Davis
Howard Zinn
Robert Oscar Lopez

[Adam]

The only name out of that list that is even remotely familiar to me Howard Zinn, and I only notice that one because it's unusual. I wouldn't know Howard Zinn if I tripped over him in the street.



If we're going to have a list of people who have gotten allegedly well-educated and yet are still dumb as posts and flaunt that stupidity in public, or just flat-out lie about it, then Paul Krugman has to top that list, followed quickly by pretty much the entire Obama administration.

I think that idiot Phelps has a Ph.D., too; if so, he definitely belongs in there as someone with alleged book smarts and yet maintains a parade of stupid.


More when I think of it.

[Billy Jingo]

Anyone I disagree with.

[Norm dePlume]

John Lott

[phillygirl]

Anyone with a PhD that insists I call them "Dr.".

[Billy Jingo]

Anyone with a PhD that insists I call them "Dr.".

[Adam]

Anyone with a PhD that insists I call them "Dr.".

Heh! True. I'll do my best to show my respect for someone's achievements, but I don't think I've ever run into a medical doctor who has been as insistent as Ph.D.s often are about the use of the title "doctor."

[Adam]

OK, I've bothered to google the names in the OP.

• Mark Regnerus: brands himself a sociologist, which is all I need to know. Sociology is a pseudo-science. It's about as credible as phrenology. Whoever he is, he's full of shit.
• "Leonard Jeffries Jr. (born 1937) is an American professor of black studies...." That's enough. As soon as there is a department of white studies or European-American studies, someone let me know. In the meantime, this is just BS.
• "Davis was a professor in the History of Consciousness and the Feminist Studies Departments...." You gotta be shittin' me!
• Howard Zinn: after reading the Wiki on him, I remember more of him now, though it never was too terribly much of an impression. The guy was a pointy-headed idealist, and I'll agree that he wasn't terribly bright. Meh.
• Robert Oscar Lopez: not so sure about this one. While he does have a Ph.D., it's in English and he is a legitimate literature professor, not some guy riding his way to tenure on teaching West African Pygmy Feminist Writings or whatever. He just happens to have an opinion that doesn't fit the meme: he opposes gay marriage and gay child-rearing. Since he personally experienced this, since he bases his opinion upon this personal experience, and not because he thinks he's smarter than everyone else because of his education, I don't think he qualifies. He's guilty of having an un-approved opinion, not of being stupid.

[Adam]

John Lott

Unfortunately, he's not going to qualify since he keeps getting proven correct more and more each day.

[Billy Jingo]

[*]"Leonard Jeffries Jr. (born 1937) is an American professor of black studies...." That's enough. As soon as there is a department of white studies or European-American studies, someone let me know. In the meantime, this is just BS.

I think we just used to call that "college" so putting white in front of it would be redundant.

That aside, there are several, easily found departments of European studies but if that isn't specific enough, and you want the hyphenated kind so as to try and narrow things down to a point you are trying to make, there are Italian-American Studies, Irish-American Studies, Franco-American Studies, German-American Studies, and I bet, if I looked, I could find something about the Dutch we should care about enough to teach it in college.

[Novaheart]

Let us dispense with the easy one first: Len Jeffries


Jeffries had also advanced a theory that whites are "ice people" who are violent and cruel, while blacks are "sun people" who are compassionate and peaceful.[7] He is a proponent of melanin theory and claims that melanin levels affect the psyche of people, and that melanin allows black people to "…negotiate the vibrations of the universe and to deal with the ultraviolet rays of the sun."[8]
His lectures and talks have been characterized by ideological opponents as "racist rants".[9][10][11][12]
In an interview in Rutherford Magazine May 1995 Jeffries, asked what kind of world he would want to leave to his children, he answered: "A world in which there aren’t any white people".[13]
Jeffries has said that the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle disaster was "the best thing to happen to America in a long time," as it would stop white people from "spreading their filth through the universe."[7]
Philip Gourevitch at Commentary calls him "a black supremacist who uses his classroom to teach his notion that the skin pigment melanin endows blacks with physical and intellectual superiority."[1]
During the court cases, Jeffries made a speech where he represented white people with various animals, English as elephants, Dutch as squirrels, and Jews as skunks who "stunk up everything". [3]
On May 13, 2012, Jeffries acted as the MC at a fundraiser honoring Tawana Brawley. He said, "Let this young queen Tawana know we love her to death." The donations were to offset a portion of the approximately $400,000 fine (originally $100,000) the courts ordered her to pay in a defamation suit.[14]

[Novaheart]

[*]Robert Oscar Lopez: not so sure about this one. While he does have a Ph.D., it's in English and he is a legitimate literature professor, not some guy riding his way to tenure on teaching West African Pygmy Feminist Writings or whatever. He just happens to have an opinion that doesn't fit the meme: he opposes gay marriage and gay child-rearing. Since he personally experienced this, since he bases his opinion upon this personal experience, and not because he thinks he's smarter than everyone else because of his education, I don't think he qualifies. He's guilty of having an un-approved opinion, not of being stupid.[/LIST]

He does much more than that. Like Regnerus, he takes legitimate studies, removes the corrections, and declares that they prove the opposite of what their authors claimed. Much like our dear friend the moron of San Diego.

[Novaheart]

We need a Global Warming dumb aas in this thread.

Anyone got a guy with a degree in dumb assery who claims to be a Global Warming Guru?

[Billy Jingo]

We need a Global Warming dumb aas in this thread.

Anyone got a guy with a degree in dumb assery who claims to be a Global Warming Guru?

[Billy Jingo]