Bias in the Classroom
Imagine I’m a professor who is going to lecture my students on global warming. Further assume that after carefully looking at the evidence I conclude that there is a 60% chance that global warming is true. So if I was the only one to lecture on global warming I would devote 60% of my lecture to evidence in support of the theory and 40% to evidence opposed to it.
But now imagine that I know that most of my students will be taught about global warming in other classes. Further assume that all the other professors at my college are 100% certain that global warming is true. These other professors, therefore, will only present evidence in favor of global warming. To cause students to get as unbiased a view as possible of global warming (from my prospective) shouldn’t I devote my entire lecture to criticizing global warming theory?
Imagine a professor has some ideology such as libertarianism or Marxism that is unusual at his college. The professor has this view because after looking at the evidence he decides it provides the best explanation of how the world works. The professor thinks that 20% of an unbiased education would consist of learning his ideology. But the professor knows that students won’t encounter his ideology outside of his classroom. Doesn’t this mean that to help the students get what the professor believes is an unbiased education the professor should devote far more than 20% of his lecture time to discussing his ideology?
Personally, I favor the fruitcake approach: be honest with yourself, present what you believe--but only after due mention of those nasty imbecils that are obviously dead wrong.
And, of course, prepare for the worse in your teaching career.
Here's to the fruitcakes!
http://www.capyblanca.com/2...
>it's the job of plaintiff and defendant to be as biased as possible in their own favor ...
That's not a fault, that's a virtue. A lawyer might believe that an argument in his client's favor is biased or untrue -- but he might be wrong, to the detriment of his client.
Suppose the lawyer, believing argument X to be a bad one, advances it anyway, and it convinces the judge. Should the lawyer not have advanced it? Why should he have assumed that his reasoning was better than the judge's?
The system we have now rewards a lawyer for advancing a subtly-wrong argument, but punishes him for an argument that's so obviously wrong and biased that it peeves off the judge or jury. That seems to me to be quite reasonable.
The "unbiased truth finding" should be left to the judge and jury, and not the lawyers.