Deepak Chopra has been in a bit of a row with Jerry Coyne and, predictably, has been making highly illogical arguments. Coyne has rightly bashed him for pseudo-scientific blathering and Chopra has fallen back on a blatant argument from authority.
I regularly write articles and books co-authored by full professors, researchers and scientists at Harvard Medical School, Mount Sinai Medical School – New York, Duke, and Chapman University.
As a member of the American College of Physicians, I am board certified and maintain licenses in Massachusetts and California. I am annually invited to give a keynote address at the Update in Internal Medicine Conference sponsored by Harvard Medical School, Department of Continuing Education and the Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center since 1997. I also serve as a Senior Scientist and Advisor at The Gallup Organization, Adjunct Professor of Executive Programs at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and Adjunct Professor at Columbia School of Business.
Steven Salzberg points out the obvious:
When I was in the 10th grade I wrote a paper for an English class about Oedipus Rex. The teacher had lectured about how the whole point of the story was hubris, but I disagreed and wrote a paper arguing that the point was the primacy of fate. I got the paper back and on the top of the page it said “Good content, persuasively argued, C-.” When I asked her why I got a C- on a paper she admits is very well written, she told me it’s because I was wrong about the relative importance of hubris and fate to the story. And she actually pulled out the teacher’s companion to the book and pointed out that it was written by a professor from Harvard and that he says I’m wrong, so I’m wrong. I asked her how she would decide who was correct if a professor from Yale said the opposite, but I might as well have been speaking to a turnip. This is really a pathetic argument.
