Penn State Board’s Support for Paterno and Spanier Is ‘Eroding’

Perhaps it is because the two comment writers found fault only with the grammar and not the conclusions. I know I did. Some of us still care about the written word.

The board had better take this last chance to do the right thing… and clean house utterly.  Spanier has to go.  Paterno has to go.  People on Twitter are already calling it “Predator State University” and “Pederast State University.”  That’s pretty bad.

The important question that needs to be answered is “did Spanier and Paterno know that there was a report that Sandusky was observed by a graduate student molesting a minor?”  If they were informed, even after the fact, and did not report this to the authorities for thorough investigation, then they should be dismissed, even if there are not prosecutable criminal offenses.  Molesting a minor is not a trivial infraction that can be swept under the rug in order to protect a football program, even at the mighty Penn State.  It is difficult to believe that something this serious managed to escape the incredibly leaky academic grape vine at Penn State, and only now emerges at a much later date.  It stretches one’s credulity that the top level people could even begin to claim “plausible deniability.”  No wonder the Penn State board is upset- this is a terrible blemish on their reputation, and if they try the same stonewalling “rope-a-dope” that the president tried, they will be hung out to dry as well.

It’s hard not to react with disgust to this situation.  Once you read the attorney general’s report, the depth of the depravity and scope of Sandusky’s behavior hits like a freight train.  This is a very sick man and everyone who actively or passively protected him needs to go.

Turning over a CEO, CFO and head football coach at an institution known for its football program will be a major institutional shake-up.  No doubt there’s very little else being talked about on campus.  The bigger they are….

Another question to ask is, did Paterno and Spanier know about the campus police report filed in 1998 detailing an incident at that time for which Sandusky apologized to the mother of the victim. And assuming they did (as it is extremely difficult to believe they did not, as Sandusky was then still a PSU employee), would not a further incident in 2002 have raised a red flag for them and led them to do much more than they did at that time? It should have been clear by 2002 that there was a pattern of behavior here that necessitated doing more than sweeping it under the rug.

Looks like some at Penn State are heading to State Pen.

It would appear that Spanier has to go for committing the one unpardonable presidential sin:  He allowed his Board to be blindsided.  There’s no excuse for that.

Paterno’s case is less clear, and I don’t think there is enough information available yet to draw firm conclusions.  I’m no Paterno fan; but if he told his supervisor everything he knew as soon as he heard it, as some reports suggest, then he had a right to expect that his supervisor would pass the information to the proper authorities and see that proper steps were taken.  Paterno is, after all, a football coach, not university general counsel.  That said, Paterno also has a moral obligation to follow up later and ask for reassurance that the matter was being dealt with appropriately.  We do not at present have enough information to draw accurate conclusions.  I hope that the Board will ask very specific questions and then take firm action based on the facts,not on reputation or popularity.

Have to be a little careful here.  The assistant should have told Paterno and the cops.  He was a witness.  Paterno should have told the assistant to tell the cops (we don’t know whether he did) and Paterno should have told the AD, which he did.  But if Paterno had gone to the cops based just on hearsay, and if the allegations had turned out to be false, then Paterno could have been charged with defamation.  I hate to be put in a position of defending Paterno, and I don’t mean to defend him.  But I do think we should suspend judgment on the degree of his culpability until more facts come out.

What a number of people have missed, as you’ve pointed out, is the very distinct difference between a legal and moral obligation.

Here’s the bottom line: at Penn State, Joe Paterno is probably the most powerful man on campus. He may not admit that publicly, but it’s most certainly the case. (This is not unique to Penn State, naturally)

Do people not believe that, had Paterno taken a more active role in the issue, that it could have been stopped sooner? You think, if Joe Paterno had called the Pennsylvania State Police and said, “I’ve just had a member of my staff tell me something incredibly sick and disturbing” that it would have mattered that he didn’t follow letter-of-the-law protocol? This is a living legend who heard about the kind of acts that our society is uniformly appalled by. Paterno’s apparent lack of response is staggeringly disappointing

A portion of the inertia in this story is based on whether Paterno acted or did not act appropriately. Lesson learned from this highly visible case:  universities should unequivocally state in handbooks and policies and codes of conduct: if a criminal activity is reported to you, call the police. Period. The law can deal with the legality and the university has eliminated any doubt or culpability.

I’ve been in a somewhat analogous position.  I once had a student come to me and allege that to her certain knowledge another student was dealing drugs on campus.  I urged her to call the police, and I also called to police to ask for guidance.  The police made it very clear that they did not want to hear from me.  They had to hear directly from the witness.  They also made it clear that they did not want any names from me.  For one thing, I would have been defaming the named student if the allegations were untrue.  Of course, I have never been a campus legend.  But however great Paterno’s moral obligation, he had also to be careful how he carried out that obligation.  Once again, we just don’t have enough information to draw firm conclusions about Paterno.  I do think the Board can get the necessary information, and I hope they get it and act on it properly and firmly.

Yes — this has been the talk of Centre Co. for months.  The board’s claim of being blindsided is puzzling, unless they mean “humiliated,” but the stage was set for that to happen long ago.  

Paterno’s age makes him more vulnerable than he would be otherwise.

The dominant tone of the dozens of reports I’ve read is outrage, and that’s understandable.  But these stories are not conveying the very deep sense of betrayal felt on campus and in town.

The idea that the sports department dictates university policy is scary. The incoming president for the University of Alabam tied his salary to $1.00 more than Bear Bryant.

Paterno has a history of supporting his coaches rather than students. For years he supported Rene Portland, who reworked scholarships if she thought a woman basketball player was a lesbian. Despite numerous complaints, and defections to other schools, he supported her.

He may be the winningest coach in the league, but he’s not the child and student friendliest.

I went to Penn State. Being a “Penn Stater” has been an enormous part of my identity for a log time. I am so perplexed by what has occurred, and everyday new information makes it harder and harder to maintain my faith in what had always been regarded as such a “morally” run football program. I just really hope that the students who are on the main campus right now are able to hold their heads up high and focus on their studies. I can only imagine what this must be doing to them.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from many of these sex abuse stories is that large, powerful institutions, including not only the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts but also colleges and universities, are extraordinarily bad at policing themselves. That is why law enforcement should always be involved, automatically and as a matter of course. Administrators and coaches — who are professionally and financially invested in the reputation of a school — do not, and should not, have any latitude in deciding which issues are worth investigating.

Renellin – couldn’t agree with you more.  Young may have been in congress for almost 40 years, but before that he worked in construction, fishing, trapping & gold mining – and even captained a tugboat.  (ps I got this from wikipedia, knowing it would drive the elitist academics crazy)  I’ d guess that most Americans would say he’s done more with his life than the esteemed Dr from Rice who’s resume is to have written a bunch of books.

Representative Young certainly made a fool of himself in this exchange.  Telling an invited speaker  to be quiet as he did – totally disrespectful.  Rep. Young should listen to those who know mare than he does.   Dr. Brinkley should have got up and walked out.

If the citizens of the United States needed any more evidence that our national government is broken, we need look no further than this week’s news that the so-called congressional supercommittee has failed to agree on deficit reduction and taxes. And, they fiddled while Washington burned.

This august (That’s sarcasm, folks.) group of legislators, supported by millions of tax dollars for their salaries, their staffs’ salaries and all of the perquisites that go along with being members of Congress, could not reach an agreement to rein in spending and increase revenue. The Christian Science Monitor has a great summary of the situation here and
the Washington Post has a graphic telling us more about this entire dirty dozen
who are an insult to our democracy and besmirch the name of representative
government by kicking the can down the road once more. They are a gutless group
more interested in protecting themselves than serving the people. Texans have a
representative on this 12-member congressional body that is a failure. He is Rep. Jeb
Hensarling, a Republican representing District 5 in East Texas.

And we the people pay their salary.

Which brings us to another piece of congressional arrogance that brings far more credit to Texas than the discredit that Hensarling brings to our fair state.

In a video that has by now surely gone viral, Dr. Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University
history professor, stands up to Alaska Republican Rep. Donald Young and, ultimately, to Natural Resources Committee Chairman Richard “Doc” Hastings. By the way, a review of a variety of sites attempting to track down credentials that justified the nickname of
“Doc” Hastings resulted in no evidence for such an honorific title. Once again, we see the duplicity of a politician.

During the hearing, as several sources report, Brinkley stood up to Young and Hastings despite both of their attempts to discount him. Hastings’ assertion that Brinkley destroyed the comity of Congress is the height of hypocrisy.

A website based in Houston chided Brinkley for interrupting, labeling Brinkley’s behavior a major breach of protocol. However, somehow and some way, the citizenry needs to send a
lesson to the plutocracy in Congress: “You are not better than we are. We pay your salaries. You work for us. You owe us the respect that one would give an employer.”

As I conducted research for this commentary, I couldn’t help but notice the resources poured into the construction of congressional websites for both individual members of Congress and, for example, theNatural Resources Committee. No wonder incumbency is so powerful.

The election next year is critical. Congress is rotting, filled with deadwood corrupted to the core. Honesty and integrity have become empty words. We the people are on the precipice of being no more than an empty slogan.

I pray that by next year every congressional district and Senate seat will offer voters a choice between an incumbent and challenger. I hope the challengers win and if we throw a few babies out with the bathwater in order to clean house, so be it.

The chairman handled it poorly, however as it is a House of Representative committee they are both of the same party:

1. The congressman should have been told to tone down his remarks without shifting responsibility to the professor, and

 2. The chairman should not have threatened the professor with removal. – What’s next, cite the professor for contempt of Congress and jail him?

Remember Oliver North’s attorney’s remark to a zealous committee member? – “Senator, I am not a potted plant.”

You use your disdain for the subject of drilling in ANWAR as a shield to protect Brinkley’s vanity. Brinkley may be revered as a distinguished scholar amongst those of you with Ph.Ds, but he comes across on video to the rest of us as an arrogant elitist when he implied that a community college education made the Congressman to be an educational unequal.    

So, just curious… when a student offers a differing opinion in the classroom, do such distinguished colleagues sneer at them, then impune their lack of educational pedigree.  Is that what higher eduction has become? Its interesting how those who are supposed to be so open to the thought of discussion and debate can appear so closed-minded and colored.

Respect must go both ways.  Most of the comments here are disregarding the fact that Young referred to Brinkley’s testimony as “garbage”.  That’s what instigated the exchange.  That was downright rude and uncalled for, and Young deserved what he got.  The chair was in error to only criticize Brinkley.  He should have asked Young to tone it down as well.

Drilling in ANWR would be one of the most intelligent things this nation could do. Only a smidgen of the refuge is up for drilling, and it could (along with the pipeline from Canada and natural gas extraction) go far to reducing our dependence on foreign energy sources. And yes, I know Canada is “foreign” but not in the way of Middle Eastern kleptocracies and their ilk.

Something tells me, though, that ABS, whoever he or she is, expects that it is others who will suffer the consequences (along the lines of other grandees and hypocrites like Al Gore and Tom Friedman). Brinkley’s sinecure at Rice similarly shields him from the consequences of his own recommendations.

Congressman Young’s sorry behavior at this hearing is symptomatic of the garbage that we Americans are coming to accept as legitimately representing our interests in government, and damn all alternatives. In dismissing him as the ill-tempered fool that he undoubtedly is, we should reflect, on this Day of Thanks, that he did not land in Congress via a spaceship from Mars, but WE ELECTED HIM, much like all those good Germans in 1933 elected the little housepainter  Young is representative of the general run of parochial, intolerant, bigoted, no-nothing (and proud to be so, dammit!) politicians who are being floated by the GOP this year, because, simply, Party heads are terrified of supporting anyone of intelligence, moderation, reasoning power, and compromise, lest their parochial, bigoted, intolerant and NO-NOTHING electorate, hooked in to the Goebbels-like hatred-stoking of Beck and Limbaugh, will dump them as a party and split off to ensure Obama’s re-election in 2012. Americans have always been like this; intolerant of other peoples’ opinion, short-fused, violent, racist, sexist and committed to milking this country of whatever wealth it possessed, and then throwing the refuse in a great big landfill, to let someone else clean up the mess. You don’t believe me, read Alexis de Tocqueville’s still-right on “Democracy in America”: democracy, that is, for white Christian male adults exclusively.

To darccity):

Points taken. Then, the good citizens of Alaska, Sarah Palin’s people, owe the nation for this mark of Cain on their collective forehead. Otherwise, my opinions stand: the politician who represents a particular constituency, speaks for that constituency, or, in our little system here, he/she is increasingly liable to lose his/her job. Increasingly, politically disaffected Americans seem to be advancing extremist, intolerant-of-compromise political mandates on their respective Senators or Congresspeople, since they feel that the System has failed them and if they do not speak up at once, their will shall be completely forgotten, and Biblical darkness will descend on the faithful… Inevitably this recourse to extremist, unreasoning voices, uncompromising, one-way only messages by the Vox populi directed at their political representatives ends in general system paralysis and breakdown on the national level. Is this really what we want, people screaming at one another, with the amount of bandwidth given to each other’s media spokesmen being the deciding point as to what in the end prevails as national policy?

Saudi and the other resource-rich (or even resource poor) Middle Eastern rentier state despotisms do not need to curry the intelligence or the responsible views of their respective populations, although in the wake of regimes going down in Tunisia, Egypt (at least the despot figureehead there), Libya and Yemen, the little kings and lieutenants and feudal baron gangsters who rule throughout this region are increasingly whistling as they walk past the graveyard. Their time is coming too, the Asads and the Abdallahs and even the Akhmadinedjads and Kameneis realize all too well. But in America, we have chosen to at least rhetorically operate by a different political and social standard, that of the Lockean social contract between rulers and ruled. Those who aspire to rule in our country cannot (theoretically) dare to presume to rule in behalf, only, of some small vested interest which fills their pockets with favors owed them exclusively, and monies in payment of. At least, this is the presumption of democracy, no matter how little these theories have traveled from the documents of our Founding Fathers to the muck of practical politics. Those who rule must rule in behalf of, and to benefit, le peuple entier, not on the foolish and self-deceiving wish and a prayer of Tea Party moroni, who want to give over the farm to those already glutted with privilege, power and money, on the slim chance that In Gratitude, this same elite will throw some jobs down the hill for the rest of us poor slobs. The other side of the political contract, and this implemented by that great hoary genius of compromise in the nineteenth century, Henry Clay (who nearly singlehandedly prevented the Civil War from being fought in the1820s rather than in the 1860s) comes to the nearly forgotten-especially by Know Nothing Republicans and the Tea Party tin hat brigade-art of compromise, of treating your opponent in the highest levels of government with respect and decency, looking for possibilities of agreement rather than aavenues for controversy and aggression.

This Lockean Social Contract has, I feel, been forgotten by the GOP un-worthies, who are coming to shelter themselves in the outposts of racism, sexism, caving to empty, bloviated rhetoric, and like emotions. In so doing, these people are betraying their patriotism, and endangering the welfare of our people, OUR AMERICAN PEOPLE, ONE AND UNITED. The GOP, and their tin-hat allies, and the lobbyists and hatred-stoking media that keeps all afloat on a continuous effluvia of nonsense and recrimination, are revealing themselves as the real traitors in our midst.

The only disdain is reflected towards a person who implies that they are better than others  because of their education. One may have more education or more degrees, but that doesn’t make them “better”.  And I think that is what Dr. Brinkley was doing – attacking Young because of his inferior education and lack of educational pedigree.  

And yes, they were both out of line. Neither should have treated or been treated with such disdain.  Both should be equally embarrassed by their words.   

I remain thankful that in the US, unlike too many places, a man like Young does not have the authority to permantly silence those who he doesn”t like.

“What a narrow-minded view that people have to have a Ph.D. to be
considered well-educated.  My guess is that most soccer moms, or small
business persons, and other ordinary Americans (without a Ph.D.) could
do better than most of the “well-educated” elitists already there.”

I think you people are arguing about definitions. Yes, a BA soccer mom may be more intelligent, more capable, more charming than a PhD. But is she better educated? No, she is not, that is just the definition of the word “well-educated.” The PhD has studied longer and more intensely and has had to actually produce knowledge in an academic field. He or she is better-educated, whether the PhD is smarter or not in other life domains is completely irrelevant. And on another point, you say education doesn’t make people better than anyone else with less education. I agree with that but why the gratuitous dig at people who are in academics? And spare me the cliche attack of well educated as elitists. It generally takes ignorance, not education, to produce people who think they are better than others. Sounds like your “argument” is just the opposite, let me understand this, you are implying that  people with less education are actually smarter??  That is not a very smart arguument, but let me guess, your reasoning would be that the “soccer mom” ain’t confused by all that durn infermation and just uses her ole common cents to make her way in dis wurld. First of all, you make an odd rhetorical decision by insulting the demographic you are defending (“soccer moms” really?), and you then contrast “ordinary Americans” with academic PhDs so I can only assume that you mean PhDs are “extraordinary”? Did you not get into grad school or something?

If Brinkley was a fool, it was because he didn’t hit harder and more often that the Congressman.

Everyone is missing the real issue here, a Congressman should not serve for 38 years. He tried to tell him he was a public servant and didn’t own anyone. Give them 3 terms at most and no pension. Elect someone who is a real American and hasn’t grown up with the best of everything, someone who has rebounded from hardship. These guys make laws for them and the wealthy. It’s obvious and something must change. It sounded more like a disparaging monologue for the Congress than a discussion. Congress has lost it’s integrity.

Why is the commission not exploring the really big question: How many English universities should be shutdown given the UK deficit crisis and the unemployment/underemployment of many current university graduates?  Isn’t it time to realize that the UK can no longer bear the cost of local self-esteem, local pride and pork barreling.  The time of “free ice cream and cookies for everyone” should come to an end.

Another big question is: Why isn’t government funding restricted to Cambridge and Oxford, while all the rest are left to fend for themselves?  This should free-up large “numbers of people who have higher-level skills” making them available for corporate employment.  The timing is perfect given the lack of academic positions in the rest of the world.

The article states, “the U.K. ranks just 15th among the 30 OECD countries when it comes to the numbers of people who have higher-level skills.”

This seems an odd criterion given that population and history can distort the numbers.
A much more meaningful evaluation is the % of UK post-secondary graduates aged 24-29 and 30-34 earning an annual taxable UK employment income above “the £35,000 earnings threshold” that is supposed to be applied to UK migrants. 

The BBC says, “Prime Minister David Cameron says he wants to reduce annual net
migration to ‘tens of thousands’ from the current level of around 250,000.”

However, unlike migrants there should be no exceptions “The government has responded to the concerns… by exempting PhD-level jobs from the new pay threshold for settlement.”  What could be a more damning indictment of the shoddy future offered Ph.D.s.  It is damning that so many supposedly “skilled workers,” not just Ph.D.s make below the threshold. 

Even if the threshold is not applied to migrants it seems an excellent starting metric to evaluate what are actually “higher-level skills” and the results of universities and government funding.  Of course, the threshold needs to increase each year to reflect inflation.

“Sauce for the Goose, is sauce for the Gander.”

Please see the February 29, 2012 BBC article, “Immigrants ‘have to earn £35,000′ to settle – from 2016″
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17204297

The horrifc experiences of RMIT (Royal Melbourne Inst of Technology) and Uni of NSW are just two of a long line of branch campus disasters involving Australian universities.  The injury is usually self inflicted. The lessons are never learnt, in particular their cost in money, time and labour by the parent institution.  The motivation for setting them up is TO MAKE MONEY but that is largely a mirage and self dilusional.  Admins making careers for themselves is really what drives most of these schemes.
Branch campuses are often set up based on completely wrong information about the host country.  Often this is wilful: those who actually have first-hand experience in the host country are deliberately ignored.  After all, PC demands you must only hear things you want to hear. For example, most faculties of agriculture have a wealth of experience in SE-Asia, usually on the ground.  They are likely to provide PC-free information –  if they were ever asked..

elie_s_dad, thank you for your points. The scenario that you describe seems to have been more a Wall Street phenomenon.  Having UK grads go to Wall Street, US Management Consulting firms or other foreign employers doesn’t really help the UK taxpayer. One of the early spurs for the move of physicists was one of the cycles of Ph.D. gluts and downsizing of US research, especially with end of the Cold War, the downsizing of US government labs, the downsizing of US corporate research (IBM, AT&T and others) and the killing of the Superconducting Super Collider in 1993.

The former South African, Emanuel Derman went from Feynman Diagrams to Financial Engineer in a process that he partly describes in his book “Models Behaving Badly.”   But in those cases you’d expect them to be getting somewhat more than £35,000 a year, don’t you think, which would qualify in one of my metrics above.  

An open question about the Royal Society report is what is meant by “non-Science” jobs.  If like Derman you apply mathematical, statistical and physics tools and methodologies, you are doing something different than if you are a currency trader or a bond salesperson.  

In your own case of applied math, I would count you as having a Science job if you use part of your applied math tools, methodologies or techniques even if you are working managing quality control at a factory using Statistical Process Control techniques or using Operations Research techniques to improve productivity/production etc. There is no problem with using Science in Industry (though I would think you would be best off doing starting that at the Masters level or earlier) or doing research in Industry.  I don’t know how the Royal Society counted or defined non-Science jobs.

The £35,000 threshold is a crude, one dimensional metric, but it does reveal something, in addition to being government blessed number that will be applied to others.

It is very telling that “The government has responded to the concerns… by exempting PhD-level jobs from the new pay threshold for settlement.”  It is especially interesting that they appear to set NO threshold, which implies there is no limit to how low you can pay a Ph.D. in the UK.  It seems designed to ensure lots of low-cost foreign competition from non-UK citizens who could have graduated from Cambridge or Oxford with a Ph.D.

“Their actions and activities can affect the perceptions of prospective and current students; and those students may eventual hold leadership positions in business, government, and civic society.” — Exactly and because the actions and activities DO affect perceptions, it is necessary to be cognizant of the responsibility this implies. Everyone in these campus communities serves, unofficially, as representatives of the United States. Universities that integrate more deeply into the international arena seem to replace American Culture centers dismantled after the Cold War. However, universities can have a broader reach given their mission to educate, conduct research, etc. K-12 education should be geared towards the reality that we are an integrated world community; language training and cultural competence should be part of the international reach.  The international reach of universities is similar to that of multinational corporations and together, they advance the strategy of “diplomacy and development” articulated by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton which is, of course, part of President Obama’s National Security Strategy. So, in a nutshell, yes — all embarking on foreign soil for should do so fully cognizant of the incredible opportunity and responsibility inherent in the action. 

On a micro level, I thought about this a lot as I was teaching a graduate business course last fall in Shanghai.  I felt both pride and responsibility in reflecting on my own background and American values as I worked with Chinese managers in examining case studies and human relations in a business setting.  We also talked about family, hometowns and politics.  I am returning this fall to teach a new group of students and look forward to a reunion with my former students.  We learned much from each other academically, but also on a personal and cultural level.

@chronicle-55af8d91586e2a00656e2254a6b23608:disqus  I’m not sure I understand why you feel that online education is politics free. What what distinction are you making between online ed and higher ed? Many of today’s online offerings are in higher education – whether through proprietary universities or traditional universities growing their online presence. My reaction to Lane and Kinser is that they are missing a huge part of this conversation. Online education is probably one of the biggest doors to internationalization, and not just in education. As students around the globe are able to attain US-accredited degrees from their home countries, they have the opportunity to more immediately contribute to their local economies in a way that was not ever possible.

”
 Lehrer’s defense is that he is fully aware that, as he puts it, “our current science is very much a first draft,” but that you can’t weigh down every example with a page full of caveats and expect a normal person to read it on an airplane” …..  I think this is a weak argument:  the late Stephen Jay Gould used caveats wherever they were necessary to indicate that a hypothesis or set of arguments were provisional or open to question;  he was read with great intensity on airplanes and pretty much everywhere else.  He would have had plenty to say about those blue walls:  that’s a claim that  truly demands to be weighed down with caveats.

I smell jealousy!

“knows more about science than a lot of scientists.”   Depends on how we define scientists.  If we define them by those who seek to ask questions and challenge hypotheses and conclusions through experimentation, maybe this is a problem.  But if we include those who have degrees and positions suppposedly as “scientists.” he might well know more science than many who call themselves scientists.  Too many ‘scientists’ are technicians primarily and not natural philosophers.  In other words, very narrow in understanding and viewpoint.  So depends on what meant by “scientists.”

Communicating science requires the utmost of accuracy, not sloppy and muddled interpretation that cannot stand up to the scrutiny of other scientists.  Unfortunately, a lot of authors are cashing in by trying to popularize science but take liberties in their interpretation, well beyond what the original author of the work would do.  To my thinking, this is not serious science, it is biopolitics.

This was not a dissertation. That does not excuse the author completely, but this arrogant witch hunt by a jealous critic is unwarranted and unhelpful. We need people relating complex science to the layperson, and Lehrer does this quite well. Report his major errors, allow a response, and let it go.

 Well said!  I’ve known many technicians and not enough natural philosophers.  Great point!

 Right.  On Star Trek the writers will throw in the occasional scientific term to explain some phenomenon, and I don’t see how imprecise scientific writing, as engaging as it might be, is any better than an episode where Captain Kirk fights an energy being named Melvar.

 Agreed.  Lehrer should be jealous of Chabris.

Can’t you have good writing and correct information?

“Might it be more valuable, rather than dumbing down science for lay people, for lay people to smarten themselves up to understand science and scientific writing?” Seriously? That is your response? Smarten themselves up? Arrogant much? 

I’d save the gritty details for the footnotes for the more intrepid readers

Readers are adults and can’t be force fed their “scientific vegetables” like children in a high chair. What we should expect from readers is that they’re not stupid enough to think one book can cover the entirety of a topic down to minutiae. If they’re interested in learning more, they’ll seek it out on their own.

Cramming too much specialized or specific information into prose will easily dissuade all but the most interested readers from picking up the book again once they get bogged down in the over-detailed weeds — which defeats the purpose of writing a book for general consumption. 

I think the presumption of what the reader OUGHT to know for their own good and an understanding of how to communicate what a reader NEEDS to know for the topic is what separates an academic writer from a writer for the masses.

Okay, how about if they enlighten themselves?

Seriously, we have a society in which far too many people believe that if they don’t understand something, then it’s the fault of either the explainer or the concept, rather than their own ability (which they can improve) to understand.

This means, for example, that we have a society in which many people believe in angels as a matter of fact, while disbelieving in evolution and climate change because, as Barbie once said, “Math is hard.”

If we are not to have philosopher-kings then, to paraphrase Luther, every man must be his own philosopher–his (or her) own lover of wisdom. Which begins with a due knowledge and appreciation of fact and system.

I had long been aware of Beowulf, but I never read it until Heaney’s translation appeared; so in that sense I’d have to side with your colleague.  

Accuracy and detail is a fine thing in science writing.  However, much of science is about judgment about what to leave out, rather than chasing down every last detail.  How many of us have labored to get an article down to 10 or fewer pages?  How many of us have used Taylor or other expansions in our work?  How many of us routinely assume that double precision is infinite precision?  It is not wrong to use a flat earth model when it is appropriate to do so.

———-

Of course, a debate about whether “quality” is more or less important than “popularity” is as pointless as debating whether a “fork” is better or worse than a “spoon.”  Presented with a plate of potatoes and a bowl of soup, we see that each has its place. 

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Instead, it’s a blurb from Gladwell that says Lehrer “knows more about science than a lot of scientists.”

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This makes my brain hurt and that Gladwell seriously holds this up as a belief causes me to lose a lot of respect for Gladwell.