Three Chords and Forsooth!<p>This one time in maybe 2018 I pissed off a few uni colleagues. At a "senate" meeting (it deserves quotation marks at my school) some people with <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/psychometrics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>psychometrics</span></a> training & experience, including me, explained that a specific kind of <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/assessment" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>assessment</span></a> was invalid--as in <em>zero</em> validity for intended purpose--so we should not use it. It literally provides no information about what it says, so we might as well roll dice or draw <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/random" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>random</span></a> words from a hat. </p><p>The administration argued vehemently for keeping the assessment. They claimed it was valid (we showed them it wasn't). They claimed that a "caring" or "astute" instructor could glean valuable information (we showed them that this wasn't possible). They appealed to the other professors, implying that not using this assessment meant they didn't care about their students, and that voting to eliminate this assessment meant they (the eggheaded intellectuals) were being dunked on by the eggheaded intellectuals. </p><p>The measure failed and we still use the assessment. After the meeting I and someone else were bemoaning the result. I said something like "What happened in there was Trumpian." A colleague walking by overheard and angrily asked, "What do you mean by that?!"</p><p>I said, "The faculty heard from the experts telling them something they didn't like and they chose to go with the people who had no expertise telling them what they wanted to hear."</p><p>(I am sometimes not diplomatic; this makes a good story, but I really wish I had found a better way to say that.)</p><p>The person audibly huffed, actually <em>turned on their heel</em>, and walked away. They haven't spoken to me since.</p><p><a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/story" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>story</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/highered" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>highered</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/university" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>university</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/uspol" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>uspol</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/expertise" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>expertise</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/trumpism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>trumpism</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/management" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>management</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.exchange/tags/labor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>labor</span></a></p>