Thing
...now with added haecceity!
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2005
- Messages
- 510
If one were a woo and wanted to work at a welcoming university where might one wander? Ordinarily one might expect to equate woo-friendliness with low academic standards across the board, but that's not always the case. So, ladies and gentlemen, your nominations please for the top wooniversities. Points are awarded (in your imagination) for the prestige/calibre of the institution, the contrasting appallingness of the woo and the amount and variety thereof. Here's the ones I can think of off the top of my head to start the ball rolling:
Arizona: Gary Schwartz, has his own Human Energy Systems Laboratory for his life after death stuff, well covered by Randi.
Princeton: Robert Jahn and his PEARlab. Jahn used to be Dean of Engineering there, clearly a good woo entrist tactic is to become distinguished and successful in a regular field and then go woo. Perhaps more of them should try it.
Cambridge: Brian Josephson, the ultimate example of the above tactic. One can hardly blame Cambridge for keeping him on, given his Nobel prize, and maybe they've got to if they still have tenure there.
Bristol: Stuart Burgess, head of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Design & Nature. Claims the human knee joint is irreducibly complex and disproves evolution. And lectures undergraduates on 'design and nature'.
Warwick: Stephen Fuller, see Dover ID trial. Sociologist, maybe that's just what they do.
Southampton: Double score. 1) George Lewith's CAM research group. Does meticulous, well-designed, well-executed studies of homeopathy, these duly show no effect, he protests vehemently when this is taken to suggest that homeopathy might be worthless. 2) Research Group in the Critical Study of Astrology, doesn't seem to have an academic heading it since founder, Social Statistician Chris Bagley, retired. But Pat Harris is still pursuing a PhD on astrology and Health Psychology (IVF in the original press-release) in between her day job at www . astrologyfashion . com .
La Sorbonne: I believe they awarded a PhD in astrology some time back, but I'm a little hazy on the details.
There must be lots more, so nominations please.
Arizona: Gary Schwartz, has his own Human Energy Systems Laboratory for his life after death stuff, well covered by Randi.
Princeton: Robert Jahn and his PEARlab. Jahn used to be Dean of Engineering there, clearly a good woo entrist tactic is to become distinguished and successful in a regular field and then go woo. Perhaps more of them should try it.
Cambridge: Brian Josephson, the ultimate example of the above tactic. One can hardly blame Cambridge for keeping him on, given his Nobel prize, and maybe they've got to if they still have tenure there.
Bristol: Stuart Burgess, head of Mechanical Engineering and Professor of Design & Nature. Claims the human knee joint is irreducibly complex and disproves evolution. And lectures undergraduates on 'design and nature'.
Warwick: Stephen Fuller, see Dover ID trial. Sociologist, maybe that's just what they do.
Southampton: Double score. 1) George Lewith's CAM research group. Does meticulous, well-designed, well-executed studies of homeopathy, these duly show no effect, he protests vehemently when this is taken to suggest that homeopathy might be worthless. 2) Research Group in the Critical Study of Astrology, doesn't seem to have an academic heading it since founder, Social Statistician Chris Bagley, retired. But Pat Harris is still pursuing a PhD on astrology and Health Psychology (IVF in the original press-release) in between her day job at www . astrologyfashion . com .
La Sorbonne: I believe they awarded a PhD in astrology some time back, but I'm a little hazy on the details.
There must be lots more, so nominations please.
