Someone recently posted a fun question to the AskReddit community. They wrote: “Richard Feynman said, “Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.” What are some real life examples of this?” Here are 12 of the most upvoted responses:
1. Diabetic Chemist Drinks Ginger Ale
“My wife’s stepfather was a chemist who currently has diabetes. One night he went to the ER because his blood sugar was dangerously high. He claimed he was eating well (he normally doesn’t) so there’s no reason why his blood sugar was high. In his car was a 2-liter bottle of ginger ale mixed in with grape juice. He said that the two canceled their sugars out and we didn’t know what we were talking about because he was a chemist and he knows how to combine things.”
2. Doctor Admits Idiocy
“I have a PhD and I am an idiot in most respects. All it takes to get a PhD is to be really good at or persistent in doing research in one narrow area of study. Edit: So several commenters pointed out that I simplified things too much. A PhD also requires hard work, luck, and some basic competence in a topic. But that doesn’t preclude one from being completely clueless in other aspects of life.”
“The best quote I’ve heard about this is ‘They don’t give PhDs to the smartest people, they give them to the most stubborn.’”
3. Molecular Biologist Denies Link Between HIV and AIDS
“Peter Duesberg. Molecular biologist who works as a researcher at UC Berkeley and has an otherwise stellar career and well-known for his work. Became an AIDS denialist, claiming there’s no link between HIV and AIDS. Led countless people down the rabbit hole, including many who were HIV positive. These individuals ended up infecting others and refusing antiretroviral therapies.”
4. Professors Struggle With Basic Tasks
“I had a professor for higher mathematics who had real difficulties figuring out how to extract a cup of coffee from the vending machine. Bless him.”
“Sounds like a relative of mine. A PhD in veterinary medicine by 30, has worked on genetic research in dogs and developed a new technique on measuring canine metabolism. Same person spent 2 whole lessons of driving school trying to figure out how the steering wheel works.”
5. Medical Students Forget to Call an Ambulance
“I was at a party (in the UK) full of med students and stereotypically everyone was off their face drunk. Well some guy fell over and broke his collar bone and immediately got rushed by a dozen of them all fussing and asking him the same questions over and ‘going through the checklist”. Half an hour later and he’s still on the couch in pain and I go in to ask if anybody knows why the ambulance is taking so long. Nobody had an answer because nobody had called one. A party full of medical students hadn’t called an ambulance or made any transport arrangements for a guy in severe pain with a broken clavicle. Idiots.”
6. Famous Neurosurgeon Has Odd Ideas
“Dr. Ben Carson, one of the most skilled neurosurgeons alive, thinking that the Egyptian pyramids were used to store grain.”
“Winner. This is the perfect example. Truly once-in-a-generation surgeon, yet completely lacking in basic logical reasoning skills.”
7. Doctor Can’t Spell
“I worked IT for a hospital. I was speaking to a doctor who forgot his password. While he was spelling his name phonetically over the phone, he said, “Z as in Xylophone.” Needless to say, my eyebrows raised.”
8. Guy with 4.0 GPA Can’t Use Keg
“I was at a keg party at college and the (gravity keg) was set up. Someone complained that the beer was not flowing, so I check that the keg was still almost full. Turns out someone closed the air intake on top. I opened the intake and poured myself a beer. Problem solved…As she is leaving my suitemate comes in and goes to the intake and closes it. Now my suitemate is a straight A student who gets all A’s mostly due to his photographic memory. Back to the keg.
So I tell him that he needs to leave the intake open to let air in to displace the beer coming out of the lower tap. He then proceeds to tell me that since the beer is carbonated air is not needed to replace the liquid volumn lost when the beer is dispensed. So I asked him two questions; If it is not needed, why is there the upper tap, and does he really think the amount of gas the carbonation gives off in a glass of beer is equal to the volume of the liquid beer? He thought for a few seconds and his only response was, “I have a 4.0, what is your GPA?” Then he walked away.”
9. Scientists Behaving Badly
“I know many people in the science field that conduct Double Blind Randomized controlled experiments in the lab and then go home and check their horoscopes…”
“I used to work in the weather satellites division of NASA. We operated instruments designed to monitor the effects of climate change. One of my coworkers (responsible for the satellite’s solar panels) was a climate change denier.”
10. Engineer Puts Change in Bank’s Pneumatic Drive
“I had a boss who was an engineer who put a couple hundred dollars in change in a bank’s pneumatic drive through tube where it got stuck and they had to use a jack hammer to get it out. He was upset that the bank was charging him for this because he didn’t know this would happen. They had large signs saying not to put change in the tubes, including on the tubes themselves.”
“He just filled the thing with random change, not in rolls or anything? Like he thought it was a f****** Coinstar? That’s hilarious, unless you were in line behind him.”
11. The Forgetful Neuroscientist
“My ex-wife with a PhD in neuroscience driving my car around with the handbrake on calling me to ask about the noise and smell.”
12. Engineer Struggles With Boxed Mac-n-Cheese
“A long time good friend, absolutely brilliant. Can literally beat you at chess blindfolded. Engineering in college and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. But he’s a big picture guy, sees how things develop and great long term vision. Incredibly successful. But little things? Guy couldn’t pack a suitcase, wouldn’t know how to book a flight. Was making boxed Mac-n-cheese and couldn’t figure out why it was so watery. Ya, he didn’t drain the water after the pasta was cooked.”
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Source: Reddit.