In the thread about evolution, I like the points Cliff Parker and John Denker made about how difficult it can be to get people to look around them, collect data, then use common sense, as opposed to relying on statements by authorities.
Unfortunately, I think it is even worse than Cliff and John have described. After I point out obvious first-hand evidence, many people still defer to an authority even though the authority is incongruent with the evidence. A few years back this occurred with my own children when they believed what their elementary teachers told them about science even after I showed them easy experiments to the contrary. I also see this problem with my college students. They can see things in lab and not believe it, preferring to think it was a trick or an exception. Worse for me, I see this with college administrators. They hire consultants as authorities rather than gather data and analyze the data themselves. And, if the consultants give crazy advice (either because they were involved for too short of time to acquire good data, or simply because the consultants were not very bright), the administrators continue to believe the consultants rather than any evidence I lay before them.
I think part of this occurs in academia because we are so accustomed to chasing diplomas. We fall into the trap of trusting the diploma more than the evidence. We often combine that with the more stupid trap of assuming someone more than 50 miles away is a better expert than local people. Additionally, it is epidemic in our society that people are not trained to think for themselves. Indeed, we usually recommend they don't... for example, we require extensive bibliographies and footnotes in the papers students submit. A research paper typically means collecting a set of ideas and quotations from "authorities" and organizing these into a readable form. New ideas or new analysis of data (other than bibliographic data) is rarely a part of "research" papers required in any discipline other than science, and often this is not even part of science "research" papers.
Carried to the extreme, "scholarly work" becomes learning what others have written and collecting a "better set" of references on the side you prefer than you collect for the side you don't prefer. A former dean, who aspired to be a lawyer, was proud of his ability to win debates even when he was on the "wrong side." He repeatedly boasted that it never matters what is right or wrong, the only thing that matters is who wins the debate. Therefore, don't waste time searching for truth; rather, spend time developing your debating technique and lining up your authorities.
Michael Edmiston
Professor of Physics and Chemistry
Bluffton College, Bluffton, Ohio 45817