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An excerpt from a WIRED interview by Stewart Brand with Freeman Dyson on the snobbery of PhDs when it comes to inventors. Priceless and true.
SB: Is it the scientists who are putting them down?
FD: Yes. There is this snobbism among scientists, especially the academic types.
SB: Are there other kinds?
FD: There are scientists in industry who are a bit more broad minded. The academics look down on them, too.
SB: Is that a weird British hangover?
FD: It’s even worse in Germany. Intellectual snobbery is a worldwide disease. It certainly was very bad in China and probably held back development there by 2,000 years.
SB: How would you stop this intellectual snobbery?
FD: I would abolish the PhD system. The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don’t have PhDs.
SB: Are those getting PhDs rewarded in any other way than as an honor?
FD: It’s much more than an honor. It’s a ticket to a job.
SB: So is anybody buying this? Are PhDs being abolished or disregarded?
FD: No. The stranglehold has gotten even tighter over the years. It’s become essentially like the MD – with much less justification. It’s simply a barrier you have to climb over before you can make a career, and it’s being imposed on more and more jobs. At even the smallest liberal arts college, nowadays, they say with pride, “All of our faculty have PhDs.” Many of the best teachers are thrown out because they don’t have a PhD. It’s a paper qualification that poisons the whole field.
