On the train ride back from grading tonight, I made good inroads into Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. I was really enjoying it until I completely stumbled over a sentence that began "Throughout history".* Then, secure in an instance of shoddy history, I felt gullible. It's a book about reading critically, and that one phrase made me realize I'd been reading it uncritically. The rest of it may be entirely sound, but I'd fallen right into the collegial teacher-student relationship implied in its friendly, easy-to-read didacticism, and, being entertained, feel I failed to think.
On the bright side, I felt entirely tuned in yesterday when an insult delighted me. Two teenagers, passed me on the street in bright sunlight when, just past, one muttered, "Ginger nut". And I got it. I knew what it meant! I knew that it was meant to be an insult, and I not only knew that, but I was paying enough attention to hear it in the first place! I was proud of my cultural indoctrination, having been raised without this apparently frequent English baggage. Rarely are insults so pleasing.
* p. 64 "Throughout history, the placebo effect has been particularly well documented in the field of pain, and some of the stories are striking."
On the bright side, I felt entirely tuned in yesterday when an insult delighted me. Two teenagers, passed me on the street in bright sunlight when, just past, one muttered, "Ginger nut". And I got it. I knew what it meant! I knew that it was meant to be an insult, and I not only knew that, but I was paying enough attention to hear it in the first place! I was proud of my cultural indoctrination, having been raised without this apparently frequent English baggage. Rarely are insults so pleasing.
* p. 64 "Throughout history, the placebo effect has been particularly well documented in the field of pain, and some of the stories are striking."
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owlfish- S. Worthen
- S. Worthen
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Edited at 2009-05-15 11:57 pm (UTC)
"Throughout history" implies that something has always been the case: there is nothing for which this is the case. My favourite has been to point out to students that there is no time at which they can assume monogamy to be a worldwide norm.
In fact (a phrase also verbotten because it's either a fact--in which case show me your evidence--or it's not, but it doesn't need labelling)about the only things you can get away with describing as being consistent throughout history, are the physical laws of the universe and the inconsistency/pick and mix nature of pretty much everything else.
Ah... I must admit that that interpretation of the phrase had never even occurred to me.
But Goldacre has annoyed me before with his dissing of humanities people, which to my mind includes historians and their emphasis on the importance of not making unsustainable transhistorical assertions.
Um ... yeah. Except that ... no. What kind of slavery? what kind of oppression? Did the women feel oppressed? Were they co-conspirators in the support of the patriarchy?
I just don't trust that kind of lumping. I am a splitter, thanks.
My objection to "throughout history" is more rhetorical in that it is something of a tired cliché, usually a hyperboyle and overly general for the argument at hand [not quite as bad a start as "Since the beginning of time..."]. Still, I think I've caught myself doing it (I probably should do a penance for that).
Now this sentence is also ambiguous and could easily suggest that people in the past classified things as the placebo effect. Rather than what I assume is happening that he is analyzing reported incidents from some points in the past as examples of the placebo effect.
The only prejudicial thing I ever recall hearing about red heads in my Canadian youth was that they have fiery tempers. Which always struck me as a hilariously unlikely proposition (also risks being self-fulfilling). I had no idea the Brits had so many insults referring to them.