Read Ilyka's Post, NOW!
July 27, 2008
Ilyka published a post yesterday that further reinforces what a deep thinker and powerful writer she is. All the wackaloon hypocritical fuckwits that respond to attention being drawn to their privilege with “Where’s your argument; where’s your evidence; you’re not convincing; waah, waah, waah” should be forced to read her post over and over and over and over. (Not that they’d ever get it, but at least it would keep them out of my fucking hair!)
DrugMonkey 
July 27, 2008 at 11:53 am
One example (which is all you gave) is not a pattern.
LikeLike
July 27, 2008 at 1:19 pm
I’m generally a fan of your posts, but does it occur to you that it makes you look like an asshole (and a hypocrite) when you post an apology for over-generalizing on a statement you made and then say something like this, ‘…and also about some wackaloon fake-ass
LikeLike
July 27, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Anything to save your sorry ass from the hole of crap in which you have found yourself. If there is any pattern here, it is your pomposity.
LikeLike
July 27, 2008 at 6:47 pm
“Waah, waah, waah.” “FUCK YOU, ASSHOLES!” “wackaloon fake-ass”
I criticized MarkH’s reaction, but I must ask: What are you, two years old? Like you, I have a PhD, and I try to conduct myself in a dignified manner on the internet. You don’t behave that while teaching, I trust.
LikeLike
July 27, 2008 at 8:10 pm
I’m sorry.. this post is supposed to be by an educated professor?
This is pathetic.
LikeLike
July 27, 2008 at 8:15 pm
BTW, just to be clear, we’re not calling you an idiot because of your views on white male privilege or whatever, it’s because you’re using this to continue your flame war against the likes of Orac and PalMD:
“wackaloon fake-ass
LikeLike
July 27, 2008 at 8:34 pm
A lifetime experience has taught me to sense pomposity (including among surgeons), even when they make an effort to hide it. Either through their speeches, writings or, if given the opportunity to meet them face to face, by watching them react and interact with me and others I can read them clearly. From the first exchange I had with Pee Pee, I could smell this scientist’s arrogance.
LikeLike
July 27, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Dude, it is amazing the subtle powers of intuition and deep insight you have employed in making the staggering discovery that PP is pompous and arrogant. This news is going to shock the entire blogosphere!
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 8:27 am
Repeated sarcasm is another sign of arrogance and pomposity, dude. You are so full of yourself.
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 10:47 am
Sol, my friend, you are master of the fucking obvious. Has PP ever claimed not to be pompous, arrogant, or full of himself?
Now cut this boring repetitive shit out and stay on topic, or we’re gonna have to ban your fucking ass. No joke.
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 11:26 am
Huh? What the hell is going on here? Is everyone just mad because of the swearing? That’s PP’s shtick. How come there are people who haven’t got this yet?
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Anon, there’s rather more than that going on, but you are also seeing a pile-on effect. In general–not universally–complaints about specific text refer to the something more, and complaints about swearing are the equivalent of “and your mother dresses you funny.” That probably doesn’t help you at all, but I found it interesting.
Wow, I’ve been watching way too many of these things lately.
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 4:30 pm
If I may state the obvious, if you don’t like it, take a hike. You know to that blog of yours that no one else reads. Same for MarkH, Greg Laden, and the like. The whole point of this blog is for the authors to express their opinions, not to start a 100 years’ war with people who will (forever) disagree. Personally, I haven’t lost respect for PP (yet). Second, if one has nothing further to contribute to the discussion but insults, thanks, but no thanks.
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Geezer, chill. If you’ve bothered to follow me around the webs, you ought to know I’m not a fan of the pile-on. Pointing out that there’s one going on is hardly an insult to PP when he’s at the bottom of the pile.
Dude, I read the blog. Don’t comment much–not my field, not much to add usually. But yeah, I find it much more interesting when there’s not a flame war going on. Same with Greg’s blog, denialism, and Pharyngula.
And as for contributing insults…?
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Pee Pee,
You are correct, I never read a post in which you claim not to be pompous and arrogant. However, haven’t you complained about one surgeon’s pomposity and arrogance? If he is “good enough” example to generalize about all surgeons, I am afraid that, due to your pomposity and arrogance, surgeons will generalize about all scientists being pompous and arrogant. I hope this response qualifies as “staying on topic”.
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Who cares what surgeons think?
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Sol, I think he complained that the surgeon committed battery, which is a crime.
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Sol, you are correct that some aspects of science encourage arrogant idiocy. It is not universal but it is part of the system. Standing on credentials instead of acts is one of those problems. Read that editorial at J Neurophys for starters. See response of GlamourMag editors to any such critique and you will see our industry also has its share of nutters taking mortal offense at the slightest criticism.
Honesty and sunlight is far better than faked up mortal offense that is transparently false in basis.
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Junior, you are right, PP picked a specific case of battery, yet he also generalized from it on other surgeons and specifically hit on their arrogance. My point is that there is really no difference between the population of surgeons and the population of scientists in regard to the percentage of assholes in each of them. If arrogance is the trait we condemn here, then, for the sake of fairness, we should condemn arrogance on both sides. Drugmonkey seems to understand it.
LikeLike
July 28, 2008 at 10:19 pm
There are arrogant hairdressers, backhoe operators, traffic cops, investment bankers, party clowns, cooks, secretaries, astronauts, and panhandlers. Get right the fuck on condemning their arrogance, Sol, and don’t come back until you’re fucking finished! And then we’ll get you started on all the other professions that have arrogant practitioners.
You know, cause it wouldn’t be fair to draw attention to arrogant physicians and scientists when all these other professions also have arrogant people in them.
(And if you say one single fucking off-topic word about foul language, your ass is fucking banned. This is not a joke. I have put up with your boring repetitive bortching long enough. This is our motherfucking blog, and we decide what goes on here.)
LikeLike
July 29, 2008 at 1:08 am
Sol, I don’t think we accept every profession’s jerk rate, throw up our hands and call it a day. Actually PalMD has some thoughts blogged on the way medicine is changing. Those efforts should be congratulated, but one suspects this is hardly a completed job. Scientific fields might do well to launch similar self-examination efforts to identify systematic issues which encourage detrimental behavior. Evidence-based Science?
LikeLike
July 29, 2008 at 10:53 am
DM,
My comments never intended to defend badly behaving MDs. I have worked with several and did my best to out them. I am a scientist (PhD) and is concerned as much, if not more, about badly behaving scientists. I must say that, at least with my limited experience dealing with the badly behaving kind, arrogance is usually part of the equation. This is not to say, of course, that every arrogant MD or PhD is behaving badly. I absolutely believe that we must do everything in our power to out every badly behaving physician and scientist there is. Yet, we better concentrate on our own house first and make sure it is clean. The badly behaving MDs I am talking about are the academic type who are part of our house and I consider them to be scientists, since they do research, publish papers, applying for and being awarded research grants, etc. If you read my book you know that I have described in it several badly behaving academicians with either MD degree, PhD degree or both. All of them are arrogant bastards who felt that they can get away with their bad behavior because of their power positions and the control they wield over others. And although the number of bastards I exposed in my career has been greater than the one badly behaving physician in PP’s post, I never generalized on our profession’s dark side. For me, on a science blog, to condemn the arrogant hairdressers, backhoe operators, traffic cops, investment bankers, party clowns, cooks, secretaries, astronauts, and panhandlers, just so PP could feel that he is not alone with his arrogance, will be an absurd. You, as one of the bloggers on this blog, must understand that a response to your postings, including a response that criticize your language, is “on topic,” but especially when the response is absolutely on the topic. Just because you don’t like the criticism, a threat to ban the critic from your blog would be counter-productive. You appear to be the cooler head among the two, PP and you, and I hope that you can send PP to take a cold shower. I understand that all the criticizing responses he received over the past week over his post could be tough to swallow, but he should be used to it as a NIH-funded scientist who also publishes papers in peer-reviewed journals.
LikeLike
July 29, 2008 at 10:57 am
“I am a scientist (PhD) and am concerned ….”
Sorry for the error!
LikeLike
July 29, 2008 at 11:09 am
Sorry, Sol. We define what is on-topic and what is off-topic. Criticize the content of what we post all you want. But if you criticize the use of language on this blog one more fucking time, your ass is banned. Period. It’s boring, it’s distracting to our other readers, and it serves no purpose.
And just to be clear: If you even so much as meta-complain again about this clear and absolute position on your “language bortching”, you are also banned. No more “PP is a potty mouth”. If this is not clear to you, then you better find someone who can fucking explain it, because this discussion is OVER.
LikeLike
August 2, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Steve Novella has an excellent post on PP’s generalizations about medical doctors.
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=346
LikeLike
August 2, 2008 at 5:18 pm
S.Rivlin, this post was about Ilkya’s blog, not PP’s generalizations. Talk about beating a dead horse. Did you bother to read her blog at all?
LikeLike
August 3, 2008 at 10:33 am
Sol is an infamous beater of dead horses, and his pathetic antics are best ignored.
LikeLike
August 4, 2008 at 11:33 am
As for those folks out there saying, “it’s only one example, it’s not a pattern, blah blah,” doesn’t anybody remember the story of the gynecologist who cauterized the initials “U.K.” on the uteruses he removed for hysterectomy? That U.K. was for University of Kentucky, his med school alma mater.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2003/01/57442
Ok, so we have n=2. Both male doctors. Both female patients. Are we getting warmer? And there are lots of other examples, the surgeon who left a patient on the table when he went to cash a check, etc. etc. In my opinion that’s not the main point.
What I really want to know is, in all these cases, what made it possible for this kind of thing to happen when there are A LOT of other people in the room, without one of them getting in the surgeon’s face (hmm…mostly surgeons…more patterns?) and saying, “back the f*** up, we are not gonna let you tattoo/brand/leave this patient!”
That’s the system that allows that to happen. Sure, many, most, nearly all surgeons aren’t like that. Sure, younger surgeons might be different or better. But why are they letting their colleagues get away with it? This is not something where it’s okay to just ignore it and it’ll die out.
LikeLike
August 4, 2008 at 11:44 am
Interestingly, one of the bloggers who led the over-the-top aggressive and threatening charge against me for my general observations of a problem with the medical profession has said essentially the exact same thing you just did:
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2008/07/why_am_i_hearing_this_nonsense.php#comment-1014570
It is interesting to speculate about the mindset of someone who can simultaneously make that observation about the medical profession and excoriate me for my own observations.
LikeLike
August 4, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Ah, I saw PalMDs post, but missed Hoofnagle’s post actually, as I don’t follow their blog. Now I understand the “threatening” and “aggressive” adjectives you used, which I initially looked quizzically at when I read them.
That dude took it way too personally. And the focus on you, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, is just weird.
LikeLike