Useless people with useless knowledge

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Among the “useless knowledge” promulgated by Bertrand Russell I do not include those university studies and doctoral theses bordering on swindle that set new milestones in the waste of taxes extracted from citizens. Nor do I refer to the increasingly prolific platforms that generate the final thesis or dissertation in exchange for a small fee. Nor am I referring to the practice of generating scientific studies in areas in which one is not an expert, appearing as co-author with researchers from exotic countries on extravagant topics.

Científica de pegatina

No, I was simply going to put a list -not exhaustive- of titles of doctoral theses and ridiculous university studies to expose, for public scorn, research that contributed nothing to society nor will do so in the future; where the only benefit is the fattening of the curriculum of the doctoral student, of his/her thesis director, and of the corresponding university department as well, of course. They are often news because of the incredible and absurdity of the object of analysis and study. A web search returns several newspaper articles that jokingly highlight these pseudo-studies, without delving into what is really regrettable: many are financed with public money, and generate another “doctor” who officially rises in the labor and social ladder, the antithesis of meritocracy. This is not “useless knowledge” but useless people without useful knowledge, although holding great cushy jobs.

But instead of making a selection myself, I prefer to leave the link to the repository of theses from several Spanish universities. Just read the title of some of them and you will be flipping.

And more, and more… all around, everywhere you look… Next, International Edition:

Ah! and Dunning-Kruger effect my 4$$. This simply looks like legalized corruption, with behaviors perversely incentivized by a reward based on the number of annual scientific publications -whether they make sense or not, let alone their practical application-. “Publish! keep on publishing!” some universities demanded -in order to climb the rankings. Of course, this also devalue the real PhDs who have generated new knowledge and paved the way for the future wellbeing of all. And it distracts from the fact that doctoral scholarships and research personnel training have a very meager monetary allocation and doctoral students have to survive precariously. Unfortunately, it is a club that strives for self-perpetuation.

Científico de pegatina

Honorable mention – but in a positive way!- to those heroes without a cape who do their bit by trying to break the infernal wheel of pressures to publish new articles that good and honest researchers have to suffer: some “scientific” publications harass researchers by offering to publish their studies but, of course, for a small fee. And some of them researchers deliberately sent scientific studies which do not make any sense, or even directly insulting to them fake publishers. It didn’t matter; those studies were, of course, published – once the required payment was made:

Honorable mentions for the “Improbable research” website, which annually awards prizes for the most absurd research in the world. The winners are invited to collect the award at a ceremony held at Harvard. They don’t get my award for their “good” concept: they are researches that may seem absurd at first sight, but according to them they really only need a more detailed and deep analysis to understand their real value. Examples of the award winners taken from their own website, judge for yourselves 😂:

This deleterious maremagnum of corruption may be symptomatic of the current pre-collapse stage of the late post-relativist Academy that, through inbreeding, the unjustified growth of departments (for the sake of a greater gain in power share), and the invulnerability of the public function -among many other things-, set new milestones in the waste of resources provided by citizens through their taxes. As the enormous Luciana Ofman, creator of Argentina Polenta, says “thanks to yours, taxpayer!“

It looks like Academia is also going to receive the Big Swing Back. Today there are already leading companies that when hiring do not look at the title, but at the Github repository, thus plunging official degrees into irrelevance. The Academy has to optimize its size and return to being a place of cultivation and production of intellectual elites.