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This will without a doubt trigger a lot of people pretty badly but it's an interesting read.
With Sam Harris consistently being promoted as “a neuroscientist,” and using this label to bash religion and other leading scientists, perhaps we should take a closer look at Sam Harris’s PhD work. After all, since Harris abandoned science after securing his PhD, it is the PhD work alone, all by itself, that Harris uses to self-label as “a neuroscientist.”
It’s not clear how long it took Harris to get his PhD. According to Wiki, he received his BA in Philosophy in 2000 and his PhD in Neuroscience in 2009. He, along with several others, published their work in PLoS ONE: The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief
Statistician William Briggs analyzed the contents of this paper in an in-depth, 7-part series that begins here.
"During the course of my investigation of scientism and bad science, I have read a great many bad, poorly reasoned papers. This one might not be the worst, but it deserves a prize for mangling the largest number of things simultaneously. What is fascinating, and what I do not here explore, is why this paper was not only published but why it is believed by others. It is sure evidence, I think, that scientists are no different than anybody else in wanting their cherished beliefs upheld such that they are willing to grasp at any confirmatory evidence, no matter how slight, blemished, or suspect that evidence might be.
I do not claim, and I do not believe, that Harris and his team cheated, lied, or willfully misled. I have given sufficient argument to show the authors wore such opaque blinders that they could not see what they were doing and so choose to write down that which they imagined they saw, which was a preconceived, incoherent concoction about how “Christians” would differ from “rational” thinkers."
The post covers much more and concludes:
1. Since getting his PhD, he has conducted no scientific research.
2. Since getting his PhD, he has taught no university/college courses in neuroscience.
3. Since getting his PhD, he has devoted his efforts to his anti-religious think tank and publishing books, such as the one on using drugs and meditation to discover truths about our reality.
4. He received his PhD through partial funding from his own atheist organization.
5. He didn’t do any of the experiments for his own thesis work.
6. His PhD thesis was about how science can determine what is right and wrong and he turned it into a book for sale.
7. Since publishing his thesis/book, Harris has yet to use science to resolve a single moral dispute.
I'd say rather than 'a neuroscientist', let alone 'the neuroscientist', he's somebody who got a PhD in neuroscience with an extraordinary bad dissertation, sponsored by an organization he started himself and which doesn't really exist anymore (in its original sense) and hasn't done any scientific work at all other than his not so valuable dissertation. I mean that doesn't make him a fraud, he has his PhD after all but it's a bit cringy.
The blog post isn't new and the author clearly has an agenda but his claims are bulletproof facts.
https://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/neuroscientist-sam-harris/
With Sam Harris consistently being promoted as “a neuroscientist,” and using this label to bash religion and other leading scientists, perhaps we should take a closer look at Sam Harris’s PhD work. After all, since Harris abandoned science after securing his PhD, it is the PhD work alone, all by itself, that Harris uses to self-label as “a neuroscientist.”
It’s not clear how long it took Harris to get his PhD. According to Wiki, he received his BA in Philosophy in 2000 and his PhD in Neuroscience in 2009. He, along with several others, published their work in PLoS ONE: The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief
Statistician William Briggs analyzed the contents of this paper in an in-depth, 7-part series that begins here.
"During the course of my investigation of scientism and bad science, I have read a great many bad, poorly reasoned papers. This one might not be the worst, but it deserves a prize for mangling the largest number of things simultaneously. What is fascinating, and what I do not here explore, is why this paper was not only published but why it is believed by others. It is sure evidence, I think, that scientists are no different than anybody else in wanting their cherished beliefs upheld such that they are willing to grasp at any confirmatory evidence, no matter how slight, blemished, or suspect that evidence might be.
I do not claim, and I do not believe, that Harris and his team cheated, lied, or willfully misled. I have given sufficient argument to show the authors wore such opaque blinders that they could not see what they were doing and so choose to write down that which they imagined they saw, which was a preconceived, incoherent concoction about how “Christians” would differ from “rational” thinkers."
The post covers much more and concludes:
1. Since getting his PhD, he has conducted no scientific research.
2. Since getting his PhD, he has taught no university/college courses in neuroscience.
3. Since getting his PhD, he has devoted his efforts to his anti-religious think tank and publishing books, such as the one on using drugs and meditation to discover truths about our reality.
4. He received his PhD through partial funding from his own atheist organization.
5. He didn’t do any of the experiments for his own thesis work.
6. His PhD thesis was about how science can determine what is right and wrong and he turned it into a book for sale.
7. Since publishing his thesis/book, Harris has yet to use science to resolve a single moral dispute.
I'd say rather than 'a neuroscientist', let alone 'the neuroscientist', he's somebody who got a PhD in neuroscience with an extraordinary bad dissertation, sponsored by an organization he started himself and which doesn't really exist anymore (in its original sense) and hasn't done any scientific work at all other than his not so valuable dissertation. I mean that doesn't make him a fraud, he has his PhD after all but it's a bit cringy.
The blog post isn't new and the author clearly has an agenda but his claims are bulletproof facts.
https://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2015/01/07/neuroscientist-sam-harris/
