Happy 80th birthday to professor Richard Dawkins

[Take It In Blood]

Respect to the Teacha

 

[Orbital-Fetus]

I visited his grave about a year ago.
Respect.

 

[mitter]

He's very overrated by the general public. He doesn't have much in terms of a scientific record.

 

[Take It In Blood]

He's very overrated by the general public. He doesn't have much in terms of a scientific record.

I don't understand this post, I guess you're expecting scientist to discover or create something new in order to obtain praise and appreciation.

He's a great teacher and opened alot of minds and exposed them to the scientific perspective through his books in the same vien Carl Sagan and now Neil Degrease has.

But from a philosophical perspective, he helped make atheism more acceptable to the general public. (which is also probably what he's most famous for)

So in that sense he's not overrated at all IMO

 

[mitter]

I don't understand this post, I guess you're expecting scientist to discover or create something new in order to obtain praise and appreciation.

He's a great teacher and opened alot of minds and exposed them to the scientific perspective through his books in the same vien Carl Sagan and now Neil Degrease has.

But from a philosophical perspective, he helped make atheism more acceptable to the general public. (which is also probably what he's most famous for)

So in that sense he's not overrated at all IMO

Sure, I get what you are saying.

I should have worded my post differently. My main complaint is that the average person on the street thinks Dawkins is a leading scientist. He's not.

 

[Take It In Blood]

Sure, I get what you are saying.

I should have worded my post differently. My main complaint is that the average person on the street thinks Dawkins is a leading scientist. He's not.

fair enough



but while we're on the topic, u know average people on the street who know who Dawkins is?




My homie thinks Dawkins and Darwin are the same person


and only knows him as being a random cac thats a threat to christianity


didn't even care enough to correct him, no point in ruining our NBA 2K friendship over that shyt


just shoot the ball nikka

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I don't understand this post, I guess you're expecting scientist to discover or create something new in order to obtain praise and appreciation.

He's a great teacher and opened alot of minds and exposed them to the scientific perspective through his books in the same vien Carl Sagan and now Neil Degrease has.

But from a philosophical perspective, he helped make atheism more acceptable to the general public. (which is also probably what he's most famous for)

So in that sense he's not overrated at all IMO

The thing is that one of his biggest claims is that the scientific method reigns supreme over any other source of knowledge. And he plays off his credentials as a "scientist" who forms his opinions via scientific method.

Yet I literally can't name a single experimental result of his that has moved the needle on anything. I don't know if he's even published a peer-reviewed paper in the last 30 years. His most famous "scientific" insight is the heavily debated "selfish gene" hypothesis that is more ideological than anything else and was not supported by any follow-up experimentation. And most of his greatest public claims are similarly more about his own ideologies than any actual experimental results.

He's famous for being an ideologue and opinionated debater, not for actual scientific output. But he is viewed by many as a brilliant scientist. I think that's why @mitter calls him overrated by the general public.

In that respect he reminds me of Sam Harris, tho Harris is much much worse as he basically paid for a PhD so he could claim to be a neuroscientist without ever doing any legitimate science at all.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

fair enough



but while we're on the topic, u know average people on the street who know who Dawkins is?




My homie thinks Dawkins and Darwin are the same person


and only knows him as being a random cac thats a threat to christianity


didn't even care enough to correct him, no point in ruining our NBA 2K friendship over that shyt


just shoot the ball nikka

Too much of this is true.

But Dawkins is legit popular. The God Delusion sold 3 million copies which is insane for a nonfiction book. That's some serious public cred. On the other hand, actual scientists are decidedly less favorable to him.

British scientists really, really dislike Richard Dawkins, new study discover

Though Dawkins wasn’t a part of the interview process, and researchers didn’t ask about him, 48 of the 137 British scientists they spoke to mentioned Dawkins. Of those 48 that referenced him, 80 per cent said they thought that Dawkins misrepresents science and scientists in his books and public speeches, according to the study by Rice University, Texas.

Dawkins has been publicly criticised by colleagues before. In 2014, Harvard professor EO Wilson said that Dawkins wasn’t a scientist at all, instead calling him a “journalist” and implying that he didn’t do any work of his own.

“There is no dispute between me and Richard Dawkins and there never has been, because he’s a journalist, and journalists are people that report what the scientists have found and the arguments I’ve had have actually been with scientists doing research,” said Wilson during an interview on Newsnight.