Are some topics inherently unscholarly?

[Jabberwocky]

I've not participated in College & University because I'm way out of age range and I've never done any college whatsoever, though some of my favorite BLers frequent this place.

But I have a question likely best suited to C&U. It seems to me that even though certain areas of study are intricate and interesting as well as socially worthy, they are unlikely to have a academic legitimacy. A thesis on the five mafia families and the formation of The Commission would likely not be as academically acceptable as a thesis on the Mukden Incident. I realize documented sources are an issue in choosing or accepting thesis topics. Sometimes though the absence of acceptable topic sources indicates previous academic disinterest or taboo status.

I'm asking this as someone who only has a sense of academia only through the internet and the stories of friends.

No restrictions by OP, to keep this threads topic broad any of these questions relate:

• Are there topics that lack academic credibility unfairly in your opinion?
  
• Are some subjects getting unfair academic esteem in your experience?
  
• What topics do you think are very appropriately denied academic credence?
  
• Personal experience with finding out a topic was vogue or proscribed. Did you discover the 'hot or not' status of things by explicit communication or more subtle indications?
  
• Do you think the academic status as vogue or pariah tends to be specific to only a few universities or do you think academia is most often of one mind on topics worthy of scholarly attention?
  
• Any observations about up and coming vogue or uncool topics? Any thoughts about your local C&U environment and current subjects that are in or out?

Note to C&U mods, if this isn't the best venue my second choice was P&S and third Second Opinion.

 

[Chaos Butterfly]

I haven't really come across this. But then my PhD is in Engineering

Basically, if you can get the funding to research something, then it is legitimate research. That doesn't mean that it isn't questionable research. In fact not having the funding to do it and doing it anyway is probably more legitimate research...

Research for the sake of research generally isn't particularly useful, but that doesn't make it illegitimate.

CB

 

[xxkcxx]

I'll tell you that in my area at least, any topic that is pro-conservative politically is scoffed at by teachers and peers.

 

[Roger&Me]

The research and development of recreational psychoactives completely lacks academic credibility. In fact perhaps the only legitimate context that recreational drugs occupy within the academic community is the study of how to make them less recreational and abusable -- although even then, most of this endeavor has been undertaken by industrial chemists within the pharmaceutical industry.

Kind of fucked up considering the research and development of weaponry and explosives is considered perfectly reasonable. In fact I've had a professor (a chemical engineer by training) who was prone to exploding alkali metals in the sink at the front of the lecture hall while we were taking tests -- just to fuck with our concentration. 8(

 

[Jamshyd]

^ Hmm, I'd have to disagree.

In the field of religious studies (and, I assume, Anthropology), for example, it is perfectly acceptable to do research on shamanic use of psychoactives in a cultural context.

Unless, of course, you were thinking of research on how to make drugs more fun and how to make new fun drugs

 

[An Iz]

^ Well I think you guys have hit the nail on the head with 'drugs' being taboo.

They're such a complicated, sensitive topic and people can't seem to handle objective research on them. Look at what happened to leary.. haha. But seriously, read R. Strassman's The Spirit Molecule and you can imagine how hard whoever funded that guy must have been kicking himself after it was all over. Imagine anyone you know that seriously 'wants to study drugs'... Are they high all the time? Chances are at least 50%, and that half works twice as hard to discredit anyone who could do intelligent research.

~~~

Other taboo topics? Anything Politically Incorrect. For example, Watson of Watson & Crick recently said that he thought certain 'races' were 'less intelligent' than others. If you ever tried to get a grant for some research about that, your name would probably go on a list somewhere. Anything to do with finding genetic labels for race in general would probably be taboo.