Dr. Miller’s Lack of Willpower
The internet is abuzz today, over this tweet from Dr. Geoffrey Miller, a psychology professor at the University of New Mexico (currently a visiting instructor at NYU).
Dear obese PhD applicants: If you don’t have the willpower to stop eating carbs, you won’t have the willpower to do a dissertation. #truth.
Dr. Miller has already deleted and apologized for the tweet, but only after the internet (deservedly) fell on his head (AtlanticWire has a good summary here). I don’t doubt that attitudes like his play a role in the weight bias observed by Burmeister et. al in graduate school admissions.
Call me naive, but I’m routinely amazed by professionals like Miller who exhibit a total lack of professionalism when using social media – Twitter in particular. If anything, Dr. Miller seems to be the one lacking in “willpower,” since he couldn’t resist the impulse to be a judgmental ass.
(h/t Jezebel)
June 4, 2013
From what I can see of Twitter it causes more problems than it’s worth. It seems like there are a lot of people out there waiting to stick their foot in their mouth. Twitter seems like a way to help them out.
Yes this guy is a judgemental ass!