Has anyone meet a scientist or a professor that was not geeky about their specific topic of interest.

Abso-freakin-lutely. I've met:

  1. A professor of biology who was (thankfully) ultimately fired because he (a)stopped keeping up with the state of his profession after achieving tenure, and (b)slowly forgot even some fairly basic biology. He was actually imparting misinformation to his students.
  2. A political science professor who insisted that the modern Republican party were on the "far left" of the political spectrum, but refused to explain that position.
  3. A neuroscientist that believes in Facilitated Communication (which has been thoroughly debunked by the neuroscience community on mechanistic grounds, and by skeptics of many stripes on "it has failed every controlled test" grounds).

And that's just in recent memory. Just like with programmers, there are a lot of professors and scientists that entered their field for some reason other than interest/love, and either fake it or only do well enough not to get ousted.

<–radiant.matrix–>
Ramblings and references
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.” — Herm Albright
I haven't found a problem yet that can't be solved by a well-placed trebuchet

In reply to Re^2: Least favorite non-geek(s) at my job: by radiantmatrix
in thread Least favorite non-geek(s) at my job: by jacques

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