THE BIOLOGICAL PHYSICIST - Feature: Disciplined Minds: An Interview with Jeff Schmidt: http://www.aps.org/units/dbp/newsletter ... /oct01.pdf
Challenging dominant physics paradigms: http://www.uow.edu.au/~bmartin/pubs/04jse.html
Disciplined Minds
Challenging dominant physics paradigms... Last year, Dr. Jeff Schmidt, a staff writer at Physics Today, published a book that looks critically at education and employment in physics and other fields.... Shortly after publication of the book, Schmidt was fired from his 19-year job at Physics Today.
... There's about a 50 percent dropout or kickout rate for students entering PhD programs in all fields. I found that this weeding-out is not politically neutral. To put it bluntly, the programs favor ass-kissers -- students with a politically subordinate attitude -- those who will be the best servants of the status quo. - I realized that employers, too, favored people who kept their concerns about the big picture nicely under control, always in a position of secondary importance relative to the assigned work at hand. So I saw education and employment as a self-consistent, but deeply flawed, system. I wrote Disciplined Minds to expose the problem more completely and thereby force change.
... SB: In your chapter "Now or Never," you advocate resistance to what you describe as a "soul-battering system" -- a personal resistance with a strong political dimension. Do you have any suggestions for institutional reform?
- JS: I suggest workplace democracy at the lowest level, with each workplace innovating its own mechanisms of democracy. Workers who believe that democratic decision-making is inefficient would be free to elect someone to boss them. However, they'd have the power to unelect the boss at any time. The staff meeting would always be the highest authority in the workplace.
Abstract
There are many well-qualified scientists who question long-established physics theories even when paradigms are not in crisis. Challenging scientific orthodoxy is difficult because most scientists are educated and work within current paradigms and have little career incentive to examine unconventional ideas. Dissidence is a strategic site for learning about the dynamics of science. Dozens of well-qualified scientists who challenge dominant physics paradigms were contacted to determine how they try to overcome resistance to their ideas. Some such challengers obtain funding in the usual ways; others tap unconventional sources or use their own funds. For publishing, many challengers use alternative journals and attend conferences dedicated to alternative viewpoints; publishing on the web is of special importance. Only a few physics dissidents come under attack, probably because they have not achieved enough prominence to be seen as a threat. Physics could benefit from greater openness to challenges; one way to promote this is to expose students to unconventional views.
