Yes, David, This is a metaphor that requires some work;. Indeed. The
problem is that I always somehow imagine that it is the little boy who
calls out the king who is naked. There is some sort of deep thing going on
in the story about nakedness and innocence. The king is, in some sense,
the most innocent of all. and the little boy, who presumably is fully
clothed, is the wise one and yet it is the innocence of the little boy that
drives the story. Sorry, as you see I am confusing myself. However, in my
letter to friam, I meant to imply that those without PhD's are like the
innocent little boy who that can see that the king is naked. Certainly
there is some kind of crazy innocence in Trump that is occasionally
beguiling and horrifying. ("Who knew that healthcare could be so
complicated!")
Perhaps I should just drop the metaphor and speak to the beliefs the
metaphor represents to me. Expertise both sights and blinds us; great
expertise sights and blinds us greatly. The world needs, therefore,
non-experts who stumble around in expert domains, because those people will
occasionally see something important that the experts haven't seen. NSF has
long believed in this principle. Kuhn believed it. I think it is one of the
unspoken beliefs that unified the old FRIAM. I believe that people like
us, who are willing to poke around at the fringes of some field, *sometimes
*make a contribution to it.
I am, as usual, grateful for your willingness to "work" a metaphor. I
think it is some of the most important work scientists can do.
Nick
On Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 6:21 AM Prof David West <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Nick, may I ask for some clarification? You said, "one of my favorite
> myth's is the Emperor's New Clothes, *"the idea that one can go PhD-less
> into some expert world and see something that expert practitioners are
> blind to."* What is mythical—i.e., who has 'not clothes', the one(s) with
> the Ph.D.s or the one without?
>
> dave west
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2026, at 6:24 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
>
> Hi, all,
>
> Meteorology, like psychology, and quantum theory, etc. is a subject matter
> that collects fringy theorists. Since I am such a person, I cant really
> fault another human being for being one. Also, one of my favorite myth's is
> the Emperor's New Clothes, the idea that one can go PhD-less into some
> expert world and see something that expert practitioners are blind to.
> Today's post is thus an invitation to Shumlik Hazin's Substack and a
> summary of my interaction with its author over the last few weeks. I am
> not sure it's everybody's cup of tea, but those of you interested in the
> role of metaphor in science might ponder on it.
>
> All the best,
>
> Nick
> --
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> [email protected]
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
> https://substack.com/@monist
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--
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[email protected]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
https://substack.com/@monist
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