Any experiences in the workplace with the new academic/postmodern left? 19

[beej67]

A lot of talk on this topic in the podcast circles, vis a vis the Weinsteins, Jordan Peterson, etc. I ran across this gem today:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19378629.2017.1408631?journalCode=test20&

Rigor/Us: Building Boundaries and Disciplining Diversity with Standards of Merit

ABSTRACT

Rigor is the aspirational quality academics apply to disciplinary standards of quality. Rigor's particular role in engineering created conditions for its transfer and adaptation in the recently emergent discipline of engineering education research. ‘Rigorous engineering education research’ and the related ‘evidence-based’ research and practice movement in STEM education have resulted in a proliferation of boundary drawing exercises that mimic those in engineering disciplines, shaping the development of new knowledge and ‘improved’ practice in engineering education. Rigor accomplishes dirty deeds, however, serving three primary ends across engineering, engineering education, and engineering education research: disciplining, demarcating boundaries, and demonstrating white male heterosexual privilege. Understanding how rigor reproduces inequality, we cannot reinvent it but rather must relinquish it, looking to alternative conceptualizations for evaluating knowledge, welcoming diverse ways of knowing, doing, and being, and moving from compliance to engagement, from rigor to vigor.

KEYWORDS: Feminist theory, liberal education, engineering education

Has anyone here seen this sort of nonsense leak into the workplace yet, or is it still basically confined to the education sector?

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[IRstuff]

The first one is a pretty long one (TLDR) but it looks plausible:

https://repositorium.sdum.uminho.pt/bitstream/1822/15249/1/submited.pdf

3rd one:

https://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/handle/10016/15188/multi_EO_2012_ps.pdf

last one:

https://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstream/handle/10016/19449/multi_EO_2012_ps.pdf?sequence=1

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[beej67]

[ul]
[li]Multi-objective ant colony optimization for the twin-screw configuration problem[/li]
[li]Adaptive multi-objective archive-based hybrid scatter search for segmentation in lung computed tomography imaging[/li]
[li]Multi-objective metaheuristics for preprocessing EEG data in brain–computer interfaces[/li]
[li]A bi-objective model for the retail spatial design problem[/li]
[li]A multi-objective approach for the segmentation issue[/li]
[/ul]

Meh.

I don't see that as too different from the general media headline generation toolkit.

[ul]
[li]Everything You Know About ____ is Wrong[/li]
[li]Why (horrible/controversial thing) and That's Okay[/li]
[li](Authority Figure) Doesn't Want You to Know _____[/li]
[li]___ _____ Trump ___ ____ ____[/li]
[li]___ (Obama/Hillary) ___ ___ _____[/li]
[li][/li]
[/ul]
It's just tailored to a different crowd.

I really wish I knew artificial neural networks and deep machine learning better. I could generate an entire website that would just crank out fake news that would be indistinguishable from most of the major networks on both sides of the political aisle automatically, and farm the internet for clicks. It'd pay a lot better than civil engineering.



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[hpaircraft]

I see that everybody here is really excited about the abstract.

Has anybody here actually read the article itself?

Anybody?

 

[drawoh]

hpaircraft,

The article is behind a paywall, so probably, none of us have read it. Twenty four hours access is fifty bucks. Go for it!

The abstract states that rigor in engineering demonstrates white male heterosexual privilege. The author claims that rigor reproduces inequality, and that we must relinquish it, looking to alternative conceptualizations for evaluating knowledge. Maybe the author is using precise definitions for rigor and vigor that we need explained to us if we are to understand the article. Either the article is idiotic, or the abstract completely fails to describe it.

--
JHG

 

[hpaircraft]

The article is behind a paywall, so probably, none of us have read it. Twenty four hours access is fifty bucks. Go for it!...

I have requested it from the author through my institution.

...Either the article is idiotic, or the abstract completely fails to describe it.

You haven't read the article. But you dismiss it with a false dilemma. That doesn't sound very rigorous.

--Bob K.

 

[IRstuff]

"That doesn't sound very rigorous."

Only a rigorous analysis of the abstract is necessary to make a judgement; sometimes you can tell a book by its cover.

Now, someone has read it:

http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists...andculture/2017/12/academic-rigor-racist.html

and comes to a similar, but more strident conclusion, albeit, there's likely a bias factor involved.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[Sparweb]

I kept digging... IRStuff beat me to it... here's a quote:

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a relatively recent and powerful
metaheuristic for tackling combinatorial problems. ACO takes inspiration from real
ants’ foraging behaviour to define algorithmic solutions to computationally hard
optimization problems.

So it is a real scientific paper and I learned something. Like other analytical routines that involve random elements (ie. Monte Carlo analysis) the subject of this paper uses a model inspired by nature, so it got a cute name. OK this passes the smell test. For those wondering what the point is... they want to know if counter-rotating screws can mix fluids better than co-rotating screws. Something like that, rather picayune, TLDR.

Circling back to my comment about "preformatted" scientific paper titles, this could be explained with a bit of common culture in academic circles, and a style guide for submissions, etc. rather than with a creepy computer algorithm.
I retract my derision of the Taylor & Francis journal.
But I still won't subscribe to it.



STF

 

[SkipVought]

“Go to the ant, you lazy man! Observe its ways and become wise.”

Skip,
[sub]
Just traded in my OLD subtlety...
for a NUance![/sub]

 

[beej67]

This guy seems to think it's in engineering academia now:

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/201...social-engineering-rather-actual-engineering/

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[vthomidis]

Well...all house(s) of cards collapse one way or the other - one day or the other (ask Obama and Hillary they seem to have had some relevant experience on that...)

 

[drawoh]

I found an interesting interview of Margaret Hamilton on YouTube.

Margaret Hamilton, NASA's First Software Engineer

--
JHG

 

[berkshire]

hpaircraft (Aeronautics)
Hi Bob fancy seeing you on here.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[Sparweb]

drawoh,
Thank you for the Margaret Hamilton story.
It also sheds light on the "program alarm" story that has always been a moment of dramatic attention on the Apollo 11 landing. Her side of the story is VERY different, and in this day, very plausible even if it wasn't believed at the time.

No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
STF