I had a college psychology professor who tried to win us all over to the old abstinence only crock.  About 80% of us just sat and looked at him like he was a retarded guy and the college was playing a prank on us.

DM, three of the students in my government class are also in other classes with me. They have all asked me what I thought of our professor’s advocacy of curcumin. After explaining my viewpoint they seem more skeptical than they did in class. I encouraged them to contact the department chairman regarding this matter. I hope they do. I plan to rebut his points this Friday in class (it meets once per week). With any luck I can educate some people about not accepting something just because an authority figure endorses it.

Occam. - 23 October 2010 08:09 PM

They’re probably thinking, “Why do we allow mature adults in?  They just stir things up, not like compliant kids who don’t know any better and aren’t aware of their rights.”

Occam

I’m willing to bet our professor will be thinking that about five minutes into this week’s class.

Well, he was at it again last Friday. When I challenged him on curcumin he told, in front of the class, that is I couldn’t bother reading the information he provided there was nothing he could do to help me. I ignored the last part of the class lecture and found in the PDF he provided the results of a study on 25 cancer patients, 13 of whom elected curcumin as treatment and 12 who elected for traditional treatment. Three years later the recurrence rate the curcumin group was 55 percent, while it was 26 percent for the traditional treatment group. Funny the professor neglected to mention that point while extolling the virtues of curcumin. He also never mentioned that 25 people is far too small a sample size to draw any conclusions.

I’m going to drop the class and follow up with the department chairman again. I’m undecided on just dropping and not showing up again, or going to class Friday morning and asking to address the class. I’m a bit pissed because when I challenged the professor on how many studies have been done using curcmumin on cancer patients he pointed to a table in the PDF that listed seven human studies and said they were all on cancer patients. That’s when he made the condescending remark above. Reading through the file in class I found that only two studies were done on cancer patients, and the other five were studies testing delivery agents and how long curcumin stays in the body with various agents.

I made a mistake saying there have been no studies testing curcumin’s efficacy against cancer in humans (my independent research turned up none), but the professor made a more egregious error saying this one file contained results from seven such studies, and he was especially wrong when he overlooked the recurrence rate.

What to do? I’m leaning toward telling the prof I would like to address the class to admit my error, then after doing so point out the professor’s intellectual dishonesty.

I would confront him about what the paper actually said, in front of the vulnerable class. I would follow up with the department head, because the class has been a total waste of your valuable time and the least you deserve is a refund of the tuition.

Hi DarronS,

I’ve been following your situation at school and its certainly drawn my concerns. I was wondering if you have any updates? Has there been a resolution?

No resolution yet. I am going to drop the class and set up a meeting with the department chairman. What this professor is doing is unprofessional and unethical.

DarronS - 08 November 2010 08:30 AM

No resolution yet. I am going to drop the class and set up a meeting with the department chairman. What this professor is doing is unprofessional and unethical.

Sorry to hear that. This is a sad commentary on our educational systems.