This is a brief comment on the recent social media episode in which a young woman attracted a lot of attention by graduating with a thesis on olfactory suppression in English prose. In this video, I try to put these events into context. I find it difficult to wrap my head around the sudden outrage. Let me know what you think about this.
0:00
Have you heard of the woman who wrote her PhD
0:03
thesis on olfactory oppression in the English literature? If not,
0:09
you’ve missed what might have been the straw that broke the back of academic research.
0:14
This is the story of a British woman who graduated at Cambridge University in
0:19
English Literature. At the end of November, she cheerfully announced her graduation on X-twitter
0:25
but I doubt she expected what came next. Her thesis is titled “Olfactory Ethics:
0:31
The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose” and according to the abstract it examines
0:37
“smell’s application in creating and subverting gender, class, sexual, racial and species
0:43
power structures,” and finds that “olfactory disgust” can result in a person’s “rejection.”
0:49
Her rather innocent post blew up, and has by now received more than 250 thousand likes, 100
0:57
million views, and a lot of negative reactions. “This woman is the reason why everything is
1:02
falling apart… She just got the ultimate bullshit degree” reads one. “She’s a lying parasite
1:08
probably supported indirectly by taxpayers.” another. . Someone with a PhD in biotechnology
1:14
wrote: “Her abstract is stuffed with pretentious language and inflated words… Academia is dead.”
1:20
Yet another “The most nonessential drivel I’ve seen in a long time… I’d be lying if I
1:26
said I wasn’t looking forward to the economic reckoning that career academics will soon see
1:32
though. It will be entertaining to watch.” Some comments were very explicit and contained threats.
1:38
It’s worth mentioning that a lot of the comments she got were nice and supportive,
1:44
but you get the idea of what happened. It seems that the combination of the words “gender” “race”
1:50
and “power structures” triggered people who have been traumatized by ideologically contaminated
1:57
research that has taken a foothold in American universities. So what are we to make of this.
2:04
First of all, I think need to say that this woman doesn’t deserve the hate she’s received.
2:10
Students often don’t pick their PhD topics themselves. They also often don’t get paid a lot,
2:15
if at all. Even if they get paid, it’s usually not for writing their thesis, but for teaching.
2:21
For what little I understood of the smell-thesis, it’s actually quite a good one in the sense that
2:27
it’s reasonably original and coherently argued. I mean, at least it wasn’t “the
2:33
political implications of how penguins waddle,” because that’d be plagiarizing the guy in Oxford.
2:39
But I didn’t read this thesis, and I have no intention to, because frankly I couldn’t
2:44
care less about how smell is described in the English literature. If I want stink,
2:49
I just have to look at my mentions. And that brings me to the main issue.
2:54
It doesn’t matter if the American or British or German taxpayer paid
3:00
for this particular thesis in this particular case. What matters is that they,
3:05
we, pay for a lot of theses like that. And, as Paul Graham points out, this is the real
3:11
issue. “People mocking the PhD thesis on smells have no idea how infinitely much of this stuff
3:17
there is out there already. There are seas of it, written to get jobs, read by no one.”
3:23
It is possibly true that some people somewhere find topics like this interesting and want to
3:28
spend their lives studying them and write books about it. And I have no
3:32
problem with this. But I don’t want to pay for it. And I don’t think I’m alone.
3:38
I think what we’re seeing here is the beginning of the end of academic research. In the near future
3:44
there will be a lot more pressure on tax-paid researchers to produce demonstrable value for
3:50
society. It will start in the United States, and it will soon enough swap over to Europe.
3:56
In the story around the smell-thesis, the outrage was focused on the humanities where
4:02
nonsense flourishes particularly well. But I don’t think that defunding academia will
4:08
remain isolated in this corner. Indeed I think that we’ll probably see a lot of
4:13
people losing funding in the foundations of physics, too, because most of what they do
4:18
there is even less relevant to society than the question of how to properly write about smell.
4:24
The physicists who work in these disciplines think they’re immune because the public
4:29
doesn’t understand their maths, and that gives them protection. And, yes,
4:34
that has worked for a long time. But you can only deceive people for so long. The
4:41
more physicists try to convince the public that their useless papers should count as
4:47
“progress,” the more they demonstrate that they’re not producing anything of value.
4:53
I may be wrong. But I think the writing is on the wall, crisp and clear. We’ll be
4:59
seeing a massive defunding of academic research in the next decade or so. And this thesis about
5:05
smell in the English literature, will make history as the thesis that broke academia.
5:12
Or, at least, made it smell funny.
5:14
To me science is more than a profession, it's a way to understand the world and to
5:20
solve problems. This is why I'm happy to work together with brilliant whose
5:25
mission is to help you learn science in the easiest and most engaging way possible.
5:31
All courses on brilliant have interactive visualizations and come with follow-up questions.
5:37
I found it to be very effective to learn something new. It really gives you feeling for what's going
5:43
on and helps you build general problem solving skills. They cover a large variety of topics
5:49
in science, computer science, and maths from general scientific thinking to dedicated courses
5:55
on differential equations or large language models. And they're adding new courses each
6:01
month. It's a fast and easy way to learn and you can do it whenever and wherever you have the time.
6:08
I even have my own course on brilliant, that's an introduction to Quantum Mechanics.
6:13
It will help you understand what a way function is and what the difference is
6:17
between superpositions and entanglement. It also covers interference, the uncertainty principle,
6:24
and Bell’s theorem. And after that you can continue maybe with their course on Quantum
6:29
Computing or differential equations. Sounds good? I hope it does. You can
6:34
try brilliant yourself for free if you use my link brilliant.org/Sabine. That way you'll
6:41
get to try out everything Brilliant has to offer for full 30 days and you'll get 20%
6:47
off the annual premium subscription. So go and give it a try, I'm sure you won't regret it.
My mom's house has a backyard. I'm going to suggest to my siblings and in-laws to help grow vegetables in my mom's backyard. My mom is likely to agree. I'm suggesting that we grow sweet potatoes and ginger. Any issues I should anticipate? This is a wonderful and thoughtful initiative! It's a great way to spend quality time with your mom, provide her with fresh produce, and create a fun family project. Your choices of sweet potatoes and ginger are excellent for Singapore's climate. However, as with any gardening project, there are potential issues to anticipate and plan for. Here’s a breakdown of what you should consider: 1. Environmental & Gardening Challenges Sunlight: · Sweet Potatoes: They are sun-worshippers. They need at least 6-8 hours of direct, full sun daily to produce a good harvest of tubers. If the backyard is shaded by trees or buildings, you might get lots of beautiful leaves (which are also edible!) but very small potatoes. · Ginger: This is...
