Uncategorized patrickmead on 31 Dec 2008 09:05 am
The Value of a Ph.D.
I’ll never forget the time that an associate professor at a Christian college sniffed as he told me my faults. I didn’t understand scripture or how to preach, according to him. He then said “You see, you just don’t understand academia.”
At the time he said that, he was still writing his dissertation for his doctorate — and had been for a couple years. I, on the other hand, had earned two doctoral degrees in science. I decided not to try to play trump card with the guy, but, rather, to use the moment to remind myself of how easy it is to get carried away with your own sense of self importance. I am not immune to that, I’m sure.
One thing that helps me deflate my head is reviewing what we studied and what I wrote and taught back when I was getting those degrees. Almost all of the things we confidently asserted are now considered primitive or just plain wrong. I keep waiting for them to show up at my door and demand the degrees back. They could say something like “Since everything you learned was rubbish or tainted by rubbish, we have to rescind your degrees.” And, you know what? I couldn’t argue with them.
I learned all kinds of things about the immune system which we now know were wrong. We were, we insisted, on the cusp of using interferon to cure all kinds of viral illnesses. Nope. We knew, we told one and all, how to use nutrition and vitamins to turn around many major diseases. Now, twenty years later, we know a lot more about our genetic code and how it affects our ability to ward off illnesses and we know a lot more about vitamins; and everything we know contradicts what I wrote and talked about back then.
I really pushed vitamins back then but every single long term double blind study done on vitamins show a net negative effect for those who take a multi-vitamin mineral every day. And vitamin C? Linus Pauling was dead wrong (and, in fact, he is now dead, as well). There is no correlation between taking vitamin C and resisting or defeating a cold. There is also nothing natural about taking most vitamins. For example, if you are eating an orange, you are probably getting the vitamin C you need today just from that one piece of fruit. Most oranges have about 60mg of C in them and that is about all the human body can work with during a single day. To take a thousand milligram tablet of vitamin C is not natural — it is using C as a drug and all drugs have side effects, including drug-level doses of vitamins. Natural? C’mon, people, Adam and Eve could have eaten fruit all day in the garden and not gotten near that amount of C in their systems. And let’s not even discuss what it would have done to their bowels. I have about a hundred other examples of this — like the long term studies on vitamin E which show that those who take the dosage recommended by the vitamin companies have MORE heart disease than those who don’t take any at all.
I knew a lot about bursa cells, NK cells, T cells, etc. but most of that knowledge has now been replaced with much better research. I suspect that what we know now will also be replaced in fairly short order.
This has been good for me. I need to face the fact that all my degrees and the letters after my name prove is that I mastered what isn’t so! Sadly, in much of academia, there is no double blind study forcing the professors to face the fact that they don’t know what they think they know and what they DO know, ain’t so! A double blind study can show me I was right or I was wrong about using visualization to aid healing, but a professor spouting off socialism or rewritten history has no check on him, no study coming down the line that will knock him off his pulpit. The only ones who check on him and vet him are those who already agree with him/her.
I don’t understand academia? Au contraire. I know that academia is the only place where blind assertions and intellectual incest are considered good things, not to be questioned by those outside the sacred circle and not to be sullied by tacky things like facts. (in some disciplines, only. Hard science has a way of cleaning house every so often — but not often enough)
So what was the value of my Ph.D.s? I learned how to learn, how to research, how to write, and how to say “I was wrong.” A lot of university disciplines don’t teach those things but my instructors and mentors certainly did. I didn’t study so I could get degrees — I got degrees while I was studying. That is a crucial difference, in my mind. My target wasn’t the degree, but the knowledge. And the knowledge brought humility (to be fair, I have found that my knowledge often brings me puffery and pride… for a moment… and then it pops my balloon).
I know my kids, both of whom are in university (Kara has returned to get a Masters), will learn things that bother them. Some of those things will be true, some won’t be, but only time and better research will tell. Some schools are, quite frankly, not worth the money for they will not prepare you for a job or they will charge too much to prepare you (Dave Ramsey quotes the case of one young woman with a Masters in Social Work and $120,000 in college debt… for a job that will top out at $60K a year after ten to twenty years of climbing the ladder).
The greatest thing I learned while getting my degrees was that there was too much out there for me to know it all, so I should quit acting like I do. THAT’S a lesson that hasn’t become outdated through the years.
patrickmead
on 31 Dec 2008 at 1:42 pm # Danny Gill
I have often felt like I was held back by my lack of any degree, both in business and in the church. I have never stopped learning, and I pray I never will. I would happily go back to school today, but the cost is prohibitive. Such is the result of poor decisions in my youth.
on 31 Dec 2008 at 7:02 pm # Dee Andrews
Good post, Patrick.
I’m constantly amazed at how “dumb” I am for all of my education! I’m always telling Tom that I’m vastly over-educated considering the results.
I love learning. Always have, always will. I could stay in school of some sort my whole life, I think, and clamor for more. But, in the end, it seems to me that sometimes those with the least amount of formal education are the wisest people I know.
In this country, especially, I think, we often confuse gaining more education, and even learning, with wisdom. There is a vast difference in my mind. So, what I think I want more than anything else is to request from God wisdom, such as young Solomon did.
Although, in Solomon’s case, wisdom, too, became vanity of vanities. How sad.
Any thoughts on that, Patrick?
Dee
on 01 Jan 2009 at 6:59 am # Lance
I used to think that people with more education were smarter and wiser than others, including myself. While the former may be true I have found that to not always be the case. I love to learn but am not as good at it in a formal setting because we have to go at someone else’s pace.
I think a shot of humility mixed with a loving heart is the most important lesson my parents ever tried to teach me. Maybe with God’s help I can pass it on to my kids.
on 01 Jan 2009 at 3:57 pm # Mommynator
I got my bachelors in Music Education. Haven’t taught much music, but like you I learned a lot about learning. My original love was medicine, but there’s an ugly story behind that about my father’s prejudices that’s too long to relate.
So I went with my second greatest love, music.
My ability to learn, though, has served me very very well and I’ve learned a lot over the years about many many things.
Now I’m back in school to go back to my first love, medicine. My goal is nurse practitioner. I just got an A in my Biology class, and an A in the lab. I guess learning how to learn is not a bad thing, and learning that new information changes things is also good.
on 01 Jan 2009 at 7:03 pm # Greg England
I consider myself extremely brilliant in the fields of . . . well maybe I’m not so brilliant after all!!
I was telling my “OWMBO” (who is a vitamin nazi) about your comments and she and our other funeral director were giving you a hard time. I was just laughing at them.
on 02 Jan 2009 at 12:52 pm # Denise
Patrick,
I have a question about the vitamins, etc. So, if taking a multi-vitamin actually isn’t helpful, what about the Airborn product that has been out the last couple of years? Do you know if that actually helps prevent colds? What can we do, besides constantly washing hands? I’ve also heard conflicts about hand-sanitizer, some say it’s great, others say it causes mutations, and will actually create more long-term problems. As a special education teacher, I’m constantly exposed to all sorts of nasty illnesses. I wash my hands until their chapped, and then wash some more, but still manage to get sick. What do you think?
– Denise
Go here for a quick look at what the FDA and the courts have to say about Airborne: http://toppayingideas.com/blog/2008/03/04/airborne-lawsuit/
Washing your hands is a great way to stay healthier even though you, I fear, are in a germ ridden area. Hand gels are quite effective and do NOT cause mutations of bacteria regardless of what you’ve heard. For them to do that, you would have to cover the earth with them, allowing only the surviving bacteria to breed. We are not running out of run of the mill bacteria!
on 02 Jan 2009 at 3:59 pm # Keith Brenton
I think perhaps the three most important words in the English language are “I was wrong.”
on 03 Jan 2009 at 9:33 am # Denise
Good to know. Thanks!
(By the way, I recently completed a Master’s Degree through an on-line University. I wasn’t sure, when getting into it, about the quality of the program, but colleagues had recently completed degrees that they boasted about being easy, they didn’t really have to do any work to get them. I worked hard on mine, and was able to use everything I learned. I saw the value of a meaningful education, verses a piece of paper and a raise!)