[michaelt]

Well, there are challenges and there are challenges.

A professor teaching about evolution will answer students' questions within reason - and students with a religious background might have heard some anti-evolution gotchas the professor will be happy to explain - like how something as complex as the eye could evolve.

But that doesn't extend to debating bible verses, allowing so many challenges that it disrupts the class, or changing the exam so you can pass it while denying evolution exists.

[p-e-w]

That you leap from "basic challenges" to anti-science fundamentalism really shows how deep-rooted this problem is. Most educated people today earnestly believe that the only ones who would disagree on basic issues with the high priests of academia are fanatics, conspiracy nuts, and quacks.

The idea that academics are on the right path has turned from something that must be continuously demonstrated to something that is assumed by default, as part of a new orthodoxy that ironically is almost indistinguishable from the religious and ideological orthodoxies that science once sought to replace.

[fn-mote]

> The idea that academics are on the right path has turned from something that must be continuously demonstrated to something that is assumed by default [...]

You're talking about a Ph.D. level investigation, not something that is usually considered at the level of an undergraduate in the US.

Most beginners lack the contextual knowledge to recognize even glaring errors. For example, I once saw a distributed application that occasionally updated a central database without any locking. Occasionally the data would get corrupted by simultaneous writes, and the original dev had no idea why.

Consider adding more context if you want to continue to write about dogma in academia. Share your own experence. At the level of generality you are writing it's impossible to engage more because we don't share the same context.

[michaelt]

I don't know how you arrived at that interpretation of my post.

I chose evolution merely because a substantial and politically important group of Americans earnestly disagree with the academic consensus; it's an area where there has been genuine public debate; it's foundational to some academic fields; and it would believably come up in first year compulsory classes.

I might disagree with academics about whether mailing a survey to mentally competent adults counts as human experimentation that needs ethics board approval, as outside of academia people use surveys all the time. But that's hardly something an academic would refuse to discuss.

I might disagree with academics about feminism or marxism or underwater basket weaving - but that stuff's all elective, why would I have taken an elective module from a teacher I thought was full of shit?

I might disagree with the high tuition costs of universities, and the money wasted on sports, overpaid administrators, and overpriced journal subscriptions. But most academics would actively agree with me, they just can't change it.

I might disagree with details of how a course is taught, like whether Java is a good language for an introductory CS class. Or whether we really need so much math in the CS curriculum. But that's not really a fundamental belief.

I might disagree with academics because I think the moon is made of cheese, but that would be a straw man argument.