Outside a small percentage of fraudsters, having a Ph.D. in a subject is hard proof that one has devoted thousands of hours into said subject and has treaded a more or less established path, with at least a modicum of quality assurance from field experts. That doesn't automatically make someone an expert (depending on the definition of course), but it does indicate one can have a serious conversation on said subject with said individual. It also depends on the institution of course: I would place high confidence on someone with a Ph.D. from Princeton Physics, and less on someone with a Ph.D. from a no-name school/department.
With alternative scientists (I've seen many even when I was only a Ph.D. candidate -- some like to email an entire department at a time) there's simply no quality assurance whatsoever. You may review their work, but 99% of the time it's nonsense, so you probably don't want to waste time on the next one. And that's when you're qualified to review their work; when you're not, it only makes sense to assume it's nonsense, unless their work is endorsed by multiple field experts (without conflict of interest, which can be a murky issue in certain fields).
So, you're welcome to propose better noise filters, but I maintain that having a Ph.D. or not is the first question to ask when anyone is trying to sell you a scientific theory you're not qualified to evaluate.
I agree that it's a filter for someone that has put in the work to learn the research, which is very helpful.
But my take is if a guy can go and sell 2 million books and the PhDs get in a tizzy because he doesn't have a PhD, and the lay person can't tell the difference, then the problem is these whining "PhD experts" and their pseudoscience, and not the non-PhD who wrote the book.
The layperson can immediately tell whether a phone was made by electrical engineering experts or some crank amateur. If someone is buying some "fraudsters" theory over some PhD's, perhaps it's because neither of them work so it doesn't really matter.
My take on the field of psychology (and many human bio fields) is we just don't have the scientific tools yet to make it a true science. But technology is finally making in roads (ie, wearables), so perhaps there's hope yet.
If you reduce your standard from a Ph.D. to a 4 year degree from an accredited university, how well does the filter work?
If someone is speaking physics and has a B.S. in physics, while it isn't as good a check as a Ph.D., they are fare more likely to know what they are talking about than someone without any degree in physics.
I would also add another standard of career experience at applying knowledge, though I might just limit that to programming and computer science fields.
I’m a physicist so I can say for certain that a typical college graduate majoring in physics but not looking into a Ph.D. isn’t equipped to discuss any advanced topic (say, quantum field theory). They are usually fifty to a hundred years behind frontier research.
That doesn’t necessarily translate to psychology, which I have no idea.
In matters of layman discussion, would you trust their input more than someone with no formal education in physics?
To go with a more practical example, say a news report comes out that some new exercise called joopies are better than burpees. Then say someone with a B.S. in Exercise Science says the article is wrong and says burpees are better than joopies. Without either peer reviewed research nor an expert with a Ph.D. (or other doctorate) to weigh in on the issue, would you think that joopies are better, that burpees are better, or that you don't have enough evidence to decide either are better.
And if you would recommend the third option as a matter of course, would the same hold true if we replace joopies with staring at a clock?
Thus far the discussion has focused on non-Ph.D. posing as field expert and coming up with original research. However, if you’re trying to evaluate some pop science in media (which is likely garbage, so always start with negative points) and have a friend or family member with a B.S. to talk to, they’re often qualified to debunk a large class of bullshit. For instance, if there’s a news report of a perpetual motion machine, and a physics major tells you it’s obviously bullshit because it violates the first and/or second law of thermodynamics, they’re likely correct. In less obvious scenarios, hopefully they would try to track down the source and try to make sense of it, and tell you if the source is garbage (in case they’re qualified to evaluate it), and/or if the source is misrepresented in media. This isn’t always possible and assumes a humble person who don’t brag about things they don’t understand, though; if the person is known to be boastful then you probably won’t place too much trust on them anyway.
The above is probably more useful for hard sciences though. Honestly when it comes to psychology I take theories endorsed by actual field experts with a grain of salt.
>Thus far the discussion has focused on non-Ph.D. posing as field expert and coming up with original research.
I had thought we had already diverged from that when we were discussing noise filtering. In regards to original research in the actual field, I agree the standard must be tougher and personally wouldn't depend upon a single expert or peer reviewed paper to accept something as truth, especially in the social sciences. In physics, I assume any ground breaking results would be quickly redone by independent researchers and a consensus for or against would follow.
Ah, I would say physics is much more amenable to science than psychology presently is. Big data, cheap and endlessly repeatable experiments, etc.
> isn’t equipped to discuss any advanced topic (say, quantum field theory). They are usually fifty to a hundred years behind frontier research.
I don't disagree, but I do wish in the future we have an easier way to visualize all of known information, so one can see what one knows and what one is in the dark about, and "see the frontier".
The purpose of a 4 year degree and a PhD is very different.
Roughly speaking, coming out of a 4 year degree doesn't signal expertise in anything. It means you have learned to "think like an X" to some degree, and have a working knowledge of some of the foundational stuff in an an area.
Coming out of a PhD signals you have achieved expertise in a pretty narrow area of a subfield (and explored the bleeding edge a bit), but also that you have learned how to gain that sort of mastery again, alone, in at least related areas.
With alternative scientists (I've seen many even when I was only a Ph.D. candidate -- some like to email an entire department at a time) there's simply no quality assurance whatsoever. You may review their work, but 99% of the time it's nonsense, so you probably don't want to waste time on the next one. And that's when you're qualified to review their work; when you're not, it only makes sense to assume it's nonsense, unless their work is endorsed by multiple field experts (without conflict of interest, which can be a murky issue in certain fields).
So, you're welcome to propose better noise filters, but I maintain that having a Ph.D. or not is the first question to ask when anyone is trying to sell you a scientific theory you're not qualified to evaluate.
Obligatory mention of The Crackpot Index. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html