Here's a poll for everybody: in what scientific discipline is arrogance the most prevalent?

My vote goes to: particle physics. I have observed a tendency for people in that field to think they know everything simply because they can draw and interpret Feynman diagrams. The irony is I used to be in that field (I was in the high-energy physics group in grad school way back in the 1990s).

What do y'all think?

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Creationism. (Just kidding)

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

I think that science tends to foster arrogance. It is interesting that new discoveries tend to go to the younger generation and belief of the established order tends to be characteristic of the older generation; but then perhaps that's just human nature. I think it also keeps everyone honest and forces the young to sweat the details that we tend to want to skip. :">

My generation will get its chance to shake up the established order, and we will also some day probably be seen as an obstruction to a younger generation.

True dat. But that arrogance is very off-putting, even to other scientists like me. Can you imagine how it appears to a layman who has no knowledge of science??

No wonder the public image of scientists is so bad!!

Not every scientist is guilty of this; there are plenty of modest people in every field.

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The dose makes the poison--Paracelsus (1493-1541) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus

I don't know. That's why I'm asking--Noclevername

Intelligence may not be clearly defined, but you know stupid when you see it--Noclevername

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge--Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Arrogance pops up everywhere, but I nominate geophysics for the group with the least. At the top of their website, it still says "AGU is a worldwide scientific community that advances, through unselfish cooperation in research, the understanding of Earth and space for the benefit of humanity."

Do you know who devised the theory of plate tectonics? Didn't think so

There's a few self-promoters in the discipline, but it's a rare trait.

Well, as a former particle physicist myself (grad school in the mid 80's) I have to agree at one level. Yes, we can be arrogant, but what of it? You don't think Einstein was arrogant? Or Fermi? Feynman fairly oozed arrogance. Pauli certainly did (it takes arrogance to tell someone they're "not even wrong".) Like successful people in most fields, a certain amount of arrogance is necessary for any good scientist.

I think one reason for this (in this case at least) is that most particle physicists feel they know more about other fields than people in other fields know about physics. Lord knows I feel that way. Now perhaps someone in biology (or chemistry or any other science) would make the same claim. In fact, I'm sure they would. The question to ask is "is the claim is justified?" If the scientist in question can demonstrate knowledge, or even expertise, in a field outside their specialty, then to some extent the arrogance is justified. In Feynman's case, I would say it was. If not, feel free to bust their chops (a la Steven Jones and his misguided claims to engineering expertise on 9-11 issues). Myself, I tend to limit my non-physics pontificating to those areas where I know I've read up a lot in the field, even if I haven't made an academic career of it.

Another reason for this attitude, especially on the part of physicists, is that we tend to view ourselves as the last "Renaissance persons." That is, physicists see themselves as people who perhaps have an area of specialization, but have wide interests outside of that area as well. And in this day of excessive specialization viewing ones self as a broadly based person can be seen as arrogance by others who perhaps are proud of their specialization.

So, to wrap up this bit of arrogance, yes, I'm an arrogant particle physicist. And I'm proud of it.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

Your second data point, PennyRice!

This is true. It's more a human trait than a trait of those humans who study science.

Alfred Wegener of course. Well, he developed the theory of continental drift but with no mechanism for movement. He was pretty much laughed out of geology. His ideas were given a second look though in the 1950's and 60's with the discovery of seafloor spreading.

Is there a difference between arrogance and pontificating? Could Sagan be said to have been a pontificater, without being arrogant? Or do the two necessarily go together? Dawkins is said to be the UK's top scientist. Yet even fellow evolutionists have critisised him for coming across as insufferably arrogant, dictatorial even.

On the other hand, I remember watching the TV from JPL when the Voyager data from Uranus started coming back. The scientists were practically dancing and singing, "Everything we know is wrong! Everything we know is wrong!" How many people in other professions are so happy to be mistaken?

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Yeah, scientists at their best are a pretty humble, inquisitive group. It's why I hope to be one of them someday. Unfortunately, most groups are evaluated by their loud, obnoxious members. In this, unfortunately, science has some very loud, very obnoxious representatives. {{sigh}}

ToSeek, as usual, has put his finger on a very important aspect ...

Arrogant when talking to (or pontificating at) an audience which is not comprised of PhDs in {insert your favourite discipline here} with a minimum of 25 years' of research papers under each's belt is one thing*; humility when confronted with good observational or experimental results which are inconsistent with their favourite theories, at the many sigma level, is quite another ...

FWIW, the calibre of the tilts taken at the windmills of (most) astronomy, these past decades or six, is quite reasonable (objective) grounds for pontification.

Arrogance is a beast of a different hue; its relationship to pride?

Question for the particle physicists: how did you greet the news of the research results showing neutrino oscillations? Well before then, did you feel that astronomers had simply not done enough work (or, worse, done sloppy research)? or did you feel that the 'solar neutrino problem' might reveal something truly wonderous about particle physics?

*and yes, there are quite a few, very notable exceptions.

Which is considered completely different from plate tectonics. Wegener had the continents more or less plowing through the ocean beds.

Anyway, the story of the devising of plate tectonics will be a movie someday. It's got intrigue, and scandal--if the principals would allow that.

Does the perceived arrogance stem from the scientists themselves, or might those who control distribution of the scientists' findings have something to do with it?
(Thinking of Congress' current investigation of NASA's Inspector General, being televised for the last two weeks on C-SPAN.)

I think arrogance doesn't observed only on scientists but in every person who has in-depth background in every scientific discipline he's engaged. An Architect is arrogant when topic is about constructing a building or a residential estate where he know details, but can be ignorant and lost when topic is about Biology or Chemistry.

Certainly.


It depends what kind of personality the person has. Everyone can be arrogant,if he truely and surely believes what he knows and he can present facts.

I think for me, it's part being a person. To be proud and have pride of what you know and accomplished in each field of expertise.

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Jean
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einsteiin

I sure can be arrogant at times

Also, they were proved wrong by a machine. If some snot nosed grad student walks in, points at your chalk board and says, "Hey, that's wrong."
I think your liable to see quite a different reaction.

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

Indeed.

However, if he says "Hey, that's wrong." in the nicest possible way, or if his name was Edward Witten, or ...*

*There's a delightful passage in Zee's "Quantum Field Theory", Chapter I.2 ("The professor's nightmare: a wise guy in the class", my bold): "Suddenly, a very bright student, let us call him Feynmann, asked, [...]"

There's a difference between arrogance and justifiable pride in one's accomplishments. I want people who've put decades of work into a field I couldn't understand in twice the time to be proud of what they've done. They should be. I don't even find people saying, "You couldn't hope to understand it" or being annoyed that someone who's not studied as much as they informs them that they're wrong to be arrogant. I think it's perfectly reasonable in many cases. I couldn't hope to understand particle physics! I could study for decades, and my eyes would still glaze over at every equation. It just doesn't interest me, and I'm not good at it. Since I haven't done the studying, I probably don't know enough to correct them.

Certainly there are arrogant scientists, and I'm certain everyone who works in science can name at least a few. However, pride in one's accomplishments, as I say, is not arrogance unless it's taken to extremes.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

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