Not everyone is lucky enough to find a job that both pays a good living and interests them enough that they'd do it as a hobby. If you can't, then you have to decide which is more important to you.

Just don't blame others when you regret your choices.

I had an aunt who was a brilliant mathematician but it has been my experience that women with her gifts are few and far between, I'm talking about the truly brilliant who *get* advanced mathematics at a fudamental level.

There are more men at both the top and the bottom of the bell curve and because of this, men, who can really *get* advanced math at the savant level outnumber women about 20 to one.

Also most mathematicians have an Apsbergery like focus on their area of interest to the exclusion of everything else, including things like tying their own shoelaces, and any kind of social life.

Most women lack this focus, So even women who have the intellect for advanced math, often dont have the interest or the focus it takes for the merely smart to become proficient at advanced math. And unfortunately those individuals are the majority of Engineers and mathamaticians because there arent enough of the really brilliant to go around.

Persistence is a wonderful characteristic but I maintain that it is impossible to do *real science* without an excellent command of math and statitics.

An individual is totally incapeable of quatifying results or drawing meaning from the data without excellent math skills.

If someone else is doing the science and math part for you in a scientific study, than you have assumed the role of journalist to a study, and are not the actual "scientist" because you are relying on information and work done by another that you dont have the skills to verify.

Climate science suffers from a lot of this second hand reporting and cherry picking of data, among other glaring flaws.

Social science is almost entirely bogus because there is no way to quantify the results, and there is no control group.

Two great new sentences published on Amy's blog earlier this evening:

> Persistence is a wonderful
> characteristic but I maintain
> that it is impossible to do *real
> science* without an excellent
> command of math and statitics.
>
> An individual is totally
> incapeable of quatifying results
> or drawing meaning from the data
> without excellent math skills.

That's important. Scientific truth is often mathematical. To 'know' science by playful, digestible metaphors is merely to trust the person who presents those metaphors to you... Whether or not they understand the relevant math.

Meanwhile...

Consider this unremarkable artifact from this week's discussion. Set aside any willful misrepresentation of the Google memo's contents, and set aside the irony posited by Parker.

1. In the second tweet, "Fuck off" is really aggressive rhetoric.

2. The third tweet's threat of doxxing is real, even if the spreadsheet is not.

3. In that same tweet, she's teenage-sarcastic.

Social justice warriors are eager to be very angry about something, even if their response appears only on keyboards (and voting booths)... And these are some of the best-rewarded people in human history.

This argument really resonates with me. I scored in the top 5% in both reading and math on my SAT. The difference was that I completed the reading portion in about 20 minutes while I took every second to complete the math portion.

In college I took a math course. One of our tests was a group test. I had never taken one of those before. One of my partners told everyone not to worry because she was great in math. I told everyone that was great because math is my worst subject. When test time came I struggled through the questions. I had come up with the plan: 2 students would start at the beginning and work their way forward while I worked from the back along with another student. If the partners got different answers the other team could work on it or we could discuss it. The other team agreed on everything while there were differences in several answers for our team. My answers were over-ridden. Our grade was 82. The math genius said, "See. I told you that I was great at math and you would get a great grade! It can pull your average up." I kept my mouth shut but my lowest grade was a 93 before this. The 82 pulled my grade down and put my 4.0 in jeapardy. My averages in my other closed floated close to 100. I thus learned that it's all about perspective.

i can't imagine that I would be happy in a STEM field since I find it such a struggle and seek balance in life. If I wasn't just as strong or stronger in other subjects I could see myself pouring myself into my field and being successful. I might even enjoy it.

"In college I took a math course. One of our tests was a group test"

What kind of legitimate college math course offers a group test?

I know - it was crazy. It was the one and only group test I ever took. My guess was that it was designed to bump up the averages of weak students so that they could pass.

Every class that I was in had a group project because we were told that the number one complaint from employers is that graduates don't know how to collaborate or work together so every professor focused on that.

"I know - it was crazy. It was the one and only group test I ever took. My guess was that it was designed to bump up the averages of weak students so that they could pass."

So I am assuming it was one of those putrid basic math for Teachers courses that the education departments require? So they can pretend that elementary teachers can do math?

My point is that *real math*starts at Caluclus 1 and moves up from there. Although linear Algebra probably qualifies as well.

This happens when they realize that too many are going to fail their course if they (the teachers) don't do something about it. It's likely a CYA move.

It could be worse, ever seen engineers teach math courses to MBAs? They pull dick moves like This thing that I'm going to show you, you'll never need it, it's not important to your career but it's good for you to understand it for the sake of knowledge; and that thing becomes 80% of the contents of the test finals.

Engineering isn't free from that rubbish Isab. I've never had a group test (what a horrid idea) but I had an engineering math class where class participation was a significant part of your grade. My test grades were 100, 99, and 98 for our three tests and I think I got a B because I didn't participate enough.

For those who aren't aware engineering, science, and math courses are not participation based. There is a right answer and there is a wrong answer. You are almost universally judged based on that. Either the building stayed standing or it collapsed and killed people. Half falling down is still falling down. Humanities courses where there is no right answer so people are more concerned with the process than the outcome are different.

"Engineering isn't free from that rubbish Isab. I've never had a group test (what a horrid idea) but I had an engineering math class where class participation was a significant part of your grade. My test grades were 100, 99, and 98 for our three tests and I think I got a B because I didn't participate enough."

This is rubbish. Probably spillover from the liberal arts which have slowly infected STEM.

Group participation needs to be evaluated somewhere else. No place for it in STEM unless you are trying to cover up a dumbed down curriculum or unprepared students who cant handle the course work.

" . . . feel uncomfortable in math department common spaces."

Amy, I so agree with your "Oh boo frigging hoo."

I, too, felt "uncomfortable" in college. No, actually it was more than uncomfortable - I was miserable.

Why?

I was the first (and to date, only) one in my family to go to college. Everyone else is in the "trades" in my family. (And, there is nothing wrong with actual working for a living! I've often wondered what my life would have been like if I didn't go to college)

It was by luck and with family backing that I got to go to college.

And just who did I met there? Spoiled brats - just down-low rotten spoiled brats. They didn't realize just how "privileged" we were to be in college; they all wanted to just "party!" (seriously, who beyond third grade, uses "party" as a verb beside idiot college jerks?) Most in my freshman dorm made sure they didn't have classes until noon and they had Fridays off.

This left me living in a dorm with a bunch of animals who didn't care that I had a morning class and also had classes on Fridays. Not to mention that I worked afternoons to pay for my stuff that they all got for "free" from mommy and daddy.

I hated it! Every effing minute of life in that dorm. I hated it! Most were nothing but pot heads who had mommy and daddy bail them out (and to think many of them are now running our country and corporations - wow! no wonder the country is a mess)

I hated that they felt it was okay to ruin my experience at college. I PAID for that dorm room and college tuition. And I wasn't getting my money's worth because of some loud obnoxious jerks.

And when they often mocked me for my "odd" scheduled I knew, just knew, that I was better than them.

Further, I didn't quit. I knew that if I stuck with it I would get out and onto something better. By the end of my sophomore year I was living off campus. It helped that I was determined and had great support from my professors. Blaming others, even when they are to blame, for your situation doesn't help.

Every class that I was in had a group project because we were told that the number one complaint from employers is that graduates don't know how to collaborate or work together so every professor focused on that. ~ Jen at August 12, 2017 7:42 AM

Business school worshipped at the altar of the group project. I ended up carrying more than a couple of my fellow students through.

One didn't understand the financial models and insisted I explain them to her each time - even though I used and explained the same models on every single group project and they were the ones the professor used in his lectures and cases. Since I was the only one in the group who understood how to use them, I got the "privilege" of analyzing the project data.

Another insisted that we should do just enough work to get the minimum passing grade and "go home." He complained to the professor that I didn't work well with others when I told him in no uncertain terms that he was lazy; that was about an hour before I'd had enough and complained to the professor about him not doing enough work. The professor's viewpoint was that it was a personality conflict and both of us were to blame, so he did nothing, leaving me with a choice of doing all the work or taking a bad grade for this guy's laziness. I did all the work and we got an A.

I wish I could say that having to deal with free riders ends at graduation. Nope.

"This is rubbish. Probably spillover from the liberal arts which have slowly infected STEM."

In my case at least that wasn't the issue. You had non-uniform inputs. Some students took the course in their first year. I was taking it in my third. Someone decided it was a universal requirement so all engineering degrees had to take it but where it was placed in the degree schedule was a mess. As part of that no one really wanted to teach the course either. So the dumbest guy in the faculty got stuck with it and he kinda had it out for intelligent students.

Do women imagine that MEN are comfortable and that people encourage them? No one ever encouraged me. What does that even mean in an engineering program where the goal is to flunk 30% (or more) out. Hard science/engineering/IT profs don't hold hands with the students and pass out kleenex. Not for men or women. The universe in general and the university or job in particular don't care about you, don't notice you, and aren't going to give you a hug.
For group projects (a crazy idea) I had one in an applied field. The other 3 did not understand computers at all (this was back in punch-card land). I did all the hard parts. They told the prof that I did most of the work so he gave me an A and them a B. Love honesty.

"Scientific truth is often mathematical."
Insightful, as you intended, but incomplete: uncertainty factors are always part of a proper observation, and the only distinction between a measurement and a standard (being definitions, standards have no uncertainty); uncertainties are always mathematically expressed somewhere, even if the reader avoids or otherwise neglects them.

"To 'know' science by playful, digestible metaphors is merely to trust the person who presents those metaphors to you... Whether or not they understand the relevant math."
A fine parallel to the observation of "news", especially as it is presented for profit.

Disregarding an uncertainty factor leads to all sorts of errors, some of which people will refuse to acknowledge because they do not know or want to know they exist. They are so SURE!

Are you thirteen?

I was in the 97th %ile for my math SATs in the late 80s. My verbal scores were average. I took AP math and I think got a 4.

I was able to skip the 1st semester of college math. The 2nd semester, I expected to be similar to AP math. I was in for a surprise. I figured I could coast like I did in HS. Sure the first half I could, but the second half went to places I still have no idea.

I'm in programming. My math aptitude helps, but I am very under qualified for a career advanced math. Maybe I could learn it, I also don't want to.

I mean I know you said something nice... But dood... Do you or do you not believe in free, capitalist media? And can't you be clear about it?

Isab,

You continually poke your nose into the area of what you call *real science* when you haven't the foggiest idea of what being a scientist entails.

I might as well continually lecture folks on what it means to be a *real lawyer*.

While I agree with you that a solid grasp of mathematics is important when reporting scientific results, the problem is that you lack the requisite mathematical expertise to know when a study has been performed properly and when it hasn't.

Climate science for example has robust mathematical support that is fully justified by rigorous statistical analysis... yet you continually deny the existence of such analysis for what I can only guess is your political leanings.

Let me remind you that this isn't a court room... facts here aren't fuzzy and intended to be manipulated for the purpose of swaying a jury. This is realist and it does not care about which side of the political spectrum you are on.

The great barrier reef is bleaching due to the acidification of the oceans. A Delaware sized ice sheet just broke off of Antarctica. These are all recent indisputable facts.

Both of these events are consistent with long standing predictions of an overall warming trend to the climate.

Your position is on extremely thin ice and I think it is at least in part because you are jumping way outside of your sphere of knowledge.

The experts do not agree with you.

Back in 1975 I was a Physics major at the University of Oregon. The campus SJW crowd started to raise Hell with the Physics dept because there were not enough women in it. Evidence of discrimination, supposedly. Nothing could have been more ridiculous than the notion, that a bunch of lonely Physics nerds didn't want any gals in their classes. There is a lot of bullshit in this world; approximately 80% I would say.

The experts do not agree with you. - Artemis

The experts also take jets to five star resorts to accept awards while eating imported foods and bitch about the excess of people living paycheck to paycheck.

The experts dont seem to think its that big a problem based on the way they live their lives

A Delaware sized ice sheet just broke off of Antarctica. - Artemis

One, they predicted Texas sized

Two, they predicted at SEVERAL points in the last 6o years that as of the time that ice sheet broke there would be no more ice anywhere on the planet

Three, they discovered barely five years ago there is nearly three time as much Antarctic ice as previous estimated

When the doomsayers are so consistently wrong, and live their lives in a way that demonstrates they dont believe in the dogma they peddle, it get hard to take them seriously

In a discussion sparked by the google thing I had an interesting observation. Based on what the longer timers were saying there used to be a lot more 9-5 type jobs around computers rather than the now more common long hours/no work-life balance jobs. As the 9-5 jobs decreased so did the % of women in the field.

No research on that, just based on individuals statements.

A recent tale by my father does seem to echo that.

He was saying in the late 70s he would write-up notes and send this to person would create a formal document on the main-frame's word processor. He described her as a super secretary. There was 1 of these assigned to his work of group of 3. Then in the early 80s he would write a rough draft that would then be polished by a secretary type person...now it was 1 for 10. Still on main frame at that point. Mid 80s, now PCs and it was about 3 for department of 50. And now these assistants were actually considered secretaries.

"Do you or do you not believe in free, capitalist media? And can't you be clear about it?"

Without snark ("believe in" represents an emotional bias, not a professional relationship), NO. "News" is what it is today precisely because it sells product, and that is its key purpose. It's not just capitalist - it's craven.

When the giants we recall (Murrow, Cronkite, Huntley/Brinkley) cast our news, their divisions were supported by other revenue at the networks, not by sales directly tracked to the minute. I suggest someone should return to that model, because twenty talking heads without ten minutes of practical experience between them, programmed to ask the same questions to keep fearful eyeballs on the tube aren't serving the public - they're serving advertisers.

That's why I am always calling for people to THINK about what has been said, not simply trust it. Every story is incomplete at best and always biased - that is media's "uncertainty factor".

Ideally, you'd think a buncha media would be immune to having its sources controlled by government, which would then be held accountable by the press.
How'd that work out with Hillary? Obama?

So, set aside press activism for a minute...You know the media gets your own job's details wrong if they talk about you - why the hell wouldja think they ever get it right?

Fred Reed is more fun to read than I am.

> The experts do not agree
> with you.

Cites.

Or, don't bother... Is there any reason we should trust you, of all commenters here, to know anything about science or anything else? I'm fifty times as inclined to trust Lenona, right out of the gate. (Or maybe a hundred times as inclined, given her comfortable habit of sharing long passages of expository —or just interesting— material for us to consider.)

You write kinda like a kid, not like an academic or a researcher. Given your profound and childlike skittishness about being judged by your own background, what credibility could you carry on matters of scientific accountability?

For grins, let's posit that you are in fact an undergraduate bottle washer in the lab of some community college in Utah, with at least the most meager of scientific credentials. It doesn't help: The work of your argument is still all ahead of you.

Consider Cosh's argument here, which points gently at the larger matter of political life today: Okay, global warming, fine... What do you want to DO?

The answer, from muddled academics and researchers (and readily cowed journalists) across our culture, appears to be [1.] Continue to fund my career whether or not I educate your children or create any wealth, [2.] Extend government power ever-deeper into every life and enterprise, thus following my directives (yet to be composed), and [3.] Trust me when I tell you stuff, whether or not I present any evidence.

Science is like any other human enterprise... The vast majority of it is egotistical careerism. Global warming, whatever its trends, doesn't diminish the necessity of judging scientists and their work (and their motivations) with the fiercest skepticism at our command.

And as in the headline irritations of our political age, you seem more enthused about slagging on Isab than in building & documenting an argument.

> When the giants we recall (Murrow,
> Cronkite, Huntley/Brinkley)...

Raddy, those were baboons in suits, not giants. Broadcasting, like publishing, was a despicably closed, exclusionary and stultifying business. Read any history of that era, from Paley to Reston... It's impossible not to regard today's fractured, roiling communications bazaar as an enormous and ennobling improvement.

You and a handful of others here are so inexplicably fascinated with the phrase "mainstream media" that you've lost sight of the liberating revolution. You can reach out to almost anyone in the world, inexpensively, whether for consultation about details or for an opportunity at persuasion. The word "mainstream" means less than ever before. But you apparently pine for the (authoritarian) days...

> It's not just capitalist -
> it's craven.

...When it oppressed us all. 'Just capitalist,' as if we'd of course agree there were a better scheme at hand.

You guys help me understand how Venezuela happened.

While your parents were considering the impact of acne, Walter was riding a B-17 over Germany. And you cite CNN. Barbarian. It remains that popular media takes a side on the issues and promotes them. Back to the topic...

"Our survey indicated that many women would like to be involved in the math department and aren't, most women feel uncomfortable as a result of the gender gap, and women feel uncomfortable in math department common spaces."

Have any of you looked at Math 55? This is possibly on the level of talent and dedication a violinist might need to study with Heifetz*. If a dictionaryful of arcane symbols doesn't hold you back, the lunchroom is supposed to?

*possibly another baboon

Crid Says:

"Cites.

Or, don't bother... Is there any reason we should trust you, of all commenters here, to know anything about science or anything else?"

Are you a crazy person Crid?

You need citations to "trust" that climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that the planet is experiencing a significant warming trend?

Have you been living in a hole for the last 30 years?

I'm not asking you to trust me... I would have thought being awake for the last 3 decades and paying attention would have been enough for you to know that what I said is an accurate representation of the expert consensus.

Can I provide you with citations???... yeah, thousands of them. There is an entire Nature sub-journal dedicated to the publication of climate science papers:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/index.html

In fact it is called "Nature Climate Change".

If you want to have a serious conversation regarding the science I am happy to engage. When you question whether or not there is a scientific consensus on this issue because you need citations you sound like a lunatic with an aluminum hat on.

People like that don't have serious scientific conversations. They sit in their living room concocting ever more extravagant conspiracy theories.

Now I have already provided you a link to an entire journal that is devoted to publishing papers on the subject so you now have hundreds of citations to keep you busy on getting up to speed, but here is a recent one you can start with:

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3357.html

"Due to the lifetime of CO2, the thermal inertia of the oceans1, 2, and the temporary impacts of short-lived aerosols3, 4, 5 and reactive greenhouse gases6, the Earth’s climate is not equilibrated with anthropogenic forcing. As a result, even if fossil-fuel emissions were to suddenly cease, some level of committed warming is expected due to past emissions as studied previously using climate models6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Here, we provide an observational-based quantification of this committed warming using the instrument record of global-mean warming12, recently improved estimates of Earth’s energy imbalance13, and estimates of radiative forcing from the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change14. Compared with pre-industrial levels, we find a committed warming of 1.5 K (0.9–3.6, 5th–95th percentile) at equilibrium, and of 1.3 K (0.9–2.3) within this century. However, when assuming that ocean carbon uptake cancels remnant greenhouse gas-induced warming on centennial timescales, committed warming is reduced to 1.1 K (0.7–1.8). In the latter case there is a 13% risk that committed warming already exceeds the 1.5 K target set in Paris15. Regular updates of these observationally constrained committed warming estimates, although simplistic, can provide transparent guidance as uncertainty regarding transient climate sensitivity inevitably narrows16 and the understanding of the limitations of the framework11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 is advanced."

Please note that the authors assess statistical confidence intervals and assign risk percentages associated with varying levels of committed warming.

These scientists are not folks who have an aversion toward statistical analysis.

The results aren't about ego... it is about data and reality.

You are projecting. Just because you might be all about egotistical careerism doesn't suddenly discredit an entire field of study.

Crid Says:

"And as in the headline irritations of our political age, you seem more enthused about slagging on Isab than in building & documenting an argument."

I forgot to address this part.

I "slag" on Isab regarding this topic precisely because I have presented to her evidence and citations over and over with respect to this subject.

She then conveniently "forgets" those previous conversations and continues to rant and rave about how an entire field of study in the following manner:

"Climate science suffers from a lot of this second hand reporting and cherry picking of data, among other glaring flaws."

I note that her criticisms NEVER come with citations, documentation, or evidence that her statements are legitimate criticisms.

If you want me to address her contentions with care then they need to be clear and point to exactly what she is criticizing. This never happens.

Instead her criticisms are vague and never point to anything concrete that can be addressed.

In fact the one and only time she made a claim why she didn't buy the conclusions of climate science experts was when she asserted that the scientists weren't taking into account that trees have a net positive C02 contribution to the atmosphere.

At the time I patiently explained to her why that wasn't scientifically accurate. That the rate of photosynthesis was ~10x faster than the rate of respiration, which is why trees and other plants have a net negative C02 contribution.

That wasn't a trivial error in understanding on her part. That is as fundamental a problem as thinking that rocks fall up and then calling gravity into question.

Despite correcting this misunderstanding the needle didn't budge.

That conversation took place probably 3 years ago and she has learned nothing since then and continues to beat this drum.

I "slag" on her for this because she is constantly trying to spread scientific falsehoods under the guise of criticism regarding statistics when her understanding of the science is hopelessly flawed.

I would similarly "slag" on anti-vaxers.

I have a low tolerance for ignorant bullshit.

Crid. Artemis has a religion. One that he is deeply attached to.

He can't be reasoned with, and he worships credentials.

He is also a troll. Let him say whatever he wants, and ignore him. When you do that he goes away faster.

"Climate science for example has robust mathematical support that is fully justified by rigorous statistical analysis... yet you continually deny the existence of such analysis for what I can only guess is your political leanings."

Nah. First of all, the data they are using is, at the least, highly suspect. They rely on surface thermometer readings collected over the past two centuries or so. For most of these, there has never been any rigor in collecting the data: the calibration of the thermometers is unknown, the time of day of data collection varied and was not documented, a number of different types of instruments were used (and it wasn't usually documented when one was replaced), measuring stations were moved periodically, and the micro-climate immediately around the station was effected by development in the vicinity (the well-documented "urban heat island" effect). And surface thermometers have no coverage over the oceans, which constitute the bulk of the Earth's surface.

Second of all, the people collecting this data have applied "adjustments". They don't document the nature of the adjustments or the rationales behind them, except in the most general sense. Independent researchers, to the extent that they have been able to examine the data, have noted that the adjustments themselves apply an upward trend, independently of the base data. However, no one is really sure, because...

Third: The leading global-warming proponent researchers, like Michael Mann and East Anglia, refuse to release their raw data sets. This is despite the fact that taxpayer money is paying for their research. Mann continues to defy Freedom of Information Act requests for his data. (How he is getting away with that, I don't know.) So no one else is able to reproduce their results, because they can't get their data. This is highly irregular among scientists in general. Are they hiding something?

John Christy, one of the leading skeptics among climate reserachers, doesn't use surface thermometers. He uses data from satellite instruments that measure the total heat radiated from the atmosphere. You want to see Christy's raw data? Download it here. Christsy's data has been examined by other researchers, and although there is some debate about the continuity of the data (the data set covers several different satellites that were in service at different times), and about technical details of the sensing instruments, none of the other researchers have disputed Christy's basic conclusion that the Earth's overall temperature has been flat, or maybe very slightly declining, since about 1998. Christy's work gets attacked a lot on the Left, but most of the attacks are credential based... Christy isn't associated with an Ivy League school, so his research can't possibly be valid, so they say.

Finally, the famous models. James Hanson's model work in the 1990s convinced him that Manhattan would be under water by... 2010. East Anglia predicted that North Pole ice would permanently disappear by 2015. Some independent researchers have noted that one can generate a set of completely random data and feed it into the models, and they will predict a warming trend. Clearly there is a built-in bias somewhere. If you go back to 1990 or so and plug in data from that time into the models, none of them succeed in predicting the conditions that exist now. Almost without exception, they say that the Earth should be significantly hotter than it is now.

(Note in here that I haven't even discussed the East Anglia emails...)

Government funding, across the Western hemisphere, has corrupted scientific research. Governments want climate science to produce results which would justify curtailing civil rights and implementing authoritarian policies. What better excuse to have than one that holds the middle-class lifestyle to be an existential threat to humanity? Clearly there is a preferred conclusion that Mann's and East Anglia's paymasters want to see. Researchers know that reaching incorrect conclusions jeopardizes their funding and their status in the scientific community. Why are they so anxious to see skeptics ostracized from society, or even imprisoned? Gentlemen, we have to protect our phony-baloney jobs.

Oh, and the Antarctic ice thing? It's a glacier. A glacier is basically an ice river. It moves very slowly, but it does move. And like any river, at the mouth, stuff comes out. The stuff in this case is ice (mixed with a bunch of sediment and debris), and ice being what it is, it breaks off the end in chunks. It's what glaciers do. Actually, the fact that the glaciers shed ice is a good sign... it means precipitation is normal across the continent. If the glaciers stopped shedding ice, then it would be time to worry.

> You need citations to "trust"
> that climate scientists
> overwhelmingly agree that the
> planet is experiencing a
> significant warming trend?

I said nothing of the kind.

Also, what's with the quotation marks around the word "trust"? You are not a guy who's been to college... You don't read for pleasure.

> he worships credentials.

Weird then that he's too timid to buff his own.

People often worship what they don't have. In a similar vein familiarity brings contempt.