[FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

[Eric Charles]

Glen said:  "Both Firestein and my friend are using physics to lend some
credibility by proxy to their rhetoric."

So... what is the word we use for the assumption that physics will lend
credibility-by-proxy. If you are looking for credibility-by-proxy you must
think whatever you are saying needs a boost, or at least feel like your
audience will need it to get a boost before they will take you as seriously
as you want to be taken. But even then, why not try to get
credibility-by-proxy from marine biology, or medieval literary criticism,
or food science? Why physics? There is some assumption that physics is the
type of thing to reach for if you are looking for credibility-by-proxy, and
a worry that you won't be good enough without it. "Envy" might not be the
exact right word, but it isn't far off, is it? There is an inferiority
complex of some sort, and a wish that you had whatever thing those specific
other people *seem *to have.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
<echarles at american.edu>


On Tue, Jul 7, 2020 at 3:41 PM ∄ uǝlƃ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hm. In these cases, where Firestein talks about quantum mechanics as an
> exemplar of how we navigate ignorance and my cancer survivor friend as a
> defense mechanism for avoiding nihilism or depression or whatnot, there is
> no "I wish I were a physicist". Firestein is a credentialed neuroscientist
> and my friend is a graphic artist. Neither seem to feel inadequate in their
> disciplines or wish their disciplines were more like physics. So, I really
> doubt it's envy. What it sounds more like is captured well by "There are
> more things in heaven and earth ...". Both Firestein and my friend are
> using physics to lend some credibility by proxy to their rhetoric. I just
> can't warp my way to thinking it's physics envy.
>
> Even in this tangent, the clinicians I've worked with don't disregard
> experimentalists or vice versa. It's simply a practical acceptance. Where
> large N experiments can be run, GREAT! Where they can't, we use expert
> experience and heuristics. [†] In fact, gathering "raw", private, data from
> patients is a common practice and the toolkits used to translate between
> contexts is diverse. (We had a meeting about just such a thing yesterday.)
>
> So, I remain unconvinced. It's not physics envy. It's appeal to authority.
>
>
> [†] Now, if you instead argued that by "physics envy", you simply mean
> "we'd like to have more data, but we don't YET", then *maybe*. But why call
> that "physics envy"? That would be a misleading moniker for having to work
> with less data than you'd otherwise prefer.
>
> On 7/7/20 11:53 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> > Clinicians (therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, etc) use data that is
> based on private, highly sensitive personal information, it's very
> difficult and often impossible to apply the methods of experimental
> psychologists to that data.  The clinicians do write papers but by the
> experimenters standards the sample sizes are so tiny as to merit dismissal
> of the results.
> >
> > So, imagine you are a clinician.  Every case you have ever seen of a
> person with paranoid delusions involves significant grandiosity.  (Why
> would the CIA be focusing on you, Marvin) Your colleagues have observed the
> same with few exceptions.  Some clinician writes an article which mentions
> this.  Experimental psychologists read it and say you need to do a double
> blind study to assert that.  You realize that's impossible so you learn to
> disregard experimentalists just as they disregard you.  You both think, "I
> wish I were a physicist but I hated math".
>
>
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
>
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