Is Sam Harris a Legitimate Neuroscientist?

[PdotdQ]

Before I answer, my main point is that

@PdotdQ

I am against the fetishizing of scientists in society. A scientist is a job like a car mechanic is. All my answers to the questions you ask can be answered just by substituting “car mechanic” into “scientist”.

I believe that the fetishizing of scientist in society is the cause of scientists reaching beyond their expertise to make naive statements about philosophy/morals/politics/etc with false authority.

That said,

@NLENTS

What about someone who gets a PhD, postdoc, faculty position, publishes a lot, moves up the ranks, tenured, then full professor… but then moves into administration. If she becomes a dean and gives up her lab, is she not a scientist anymore

If she does not work in science anymore, then no, she is not a scientist. A car mechanic that moves to become an admin is not a car mechanic still.

@NLENTS

Could it be that once you’ve earned the label, you get it for life?

Again, in my view scientist is a profession, not a label that one gets for life.

@NLENTS

Another example… Ian Tattersall is retired and doesn’t do any lab work anymore, but he publishes about a book a year (mostly in university presses, so scholarly and peer-reviewed) and still writes articles in the peer reviewed literature, mostly commentaries and review articles, but those are scholarly and can have impact, even if they aren’t primary papers.

I don’t know what these books are, and how much science is in it. If he is still engaging in science, then he is still a scientist. One does not need to work at a lab to engage in scientific work. I am a theoretical physicist. I have not been in a lab for over half a decade.

@NLENTS

I said he made me think differently. Can you ask your question without putting words in my mouth or exaggerating what I actually say?

I apologize, I have then misinterpreted your previous statements:

My thinking on this has been impacted by Sam Harris’s work and I urge you to read “the moral landscape.”

this is grounded in scholarship on moral philosophy and it came to me through the writings of Sam Harris, a neuroscientist

But the question stands:
If you did not go “all the way there”, then how far did you go? Do you affirm anything more than the typical utilitarianist/consequentialist? If so, then science cannot demonstrate that racism or genocide is morally wrong.