Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Ignorance as Career Path

Click to make bigger.
It explains so much!
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Years ago, as a PhD student, I used to do a bit of teaching work, and one exceptionally easy job was working as a demonstrator in undergrad practical lessons. One such lesson, for first years, was a poster demo (mostly pictures and some specimens) on fish, which the students were expected to take notes on.

To add a spot of interest the marine biologist in charge, Dr John Fish, added in one exhibit which did not and could not exist: Heinkel's Arctic Trout. This is a salmonid which lives in seasonally freezing freshwater ponds in the high arctic and as an adaptation to avoiding freezing, has a coat of fur.

Patently ridiculous, and dead easy to spot, you might think (and so did most people). Not so for undergrads; the average first-year NEVER managed to spot the ringer, and even when the thing was pointed out were unable to spot the non sequiteur. Mature students (i.e. anyone over about 25 years old) spotted the spoof instantly.