# Philosophy professors fail on basic philosophy problems

Imagine someone finding out that "Physics professors fail on basic physics problems". This, of course, would never happen. To become a physicist in academia, one has to (among million other things) demonstrate proficiency on far harder problems than that.

Philosophy professors, however, are a different story. Cosmologist Sean Carroll [tweeted](https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll/status/621363138135371777) a [link](http://cushmanlab.fas.harvard.edu/docs/schwitzgebel_cushman_inpress.pdf) to a paper from the Harvard [Moral Psychology Research Lab](http://cushmanlab.fas.harvard.edu/research.php), which found that professional moral philosophers are no less subject to the effects of [framing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)) and order of presentation on the [Trolley Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem) than non-philosophers. This seems as basic an error as, say, confusing energy with momentum, or mixing up units on a physics test.

Abstract:

We examined the effects of framing and order of presentation on professional philosophers’ judgments about a moral puzzle case (the “trolley problem”) and a version of the [Tversky & Kahneman “Asian disease” scenario](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_(social_sciences)#Experimental_demonstration). Professional philosophers exhibited substantial framing effects and order effects, and were no less subject to such effects than was a comparison group of non-philosopher academic participants. Framing and order effects were not reduced by a forced delay during which participants were encouraged to consider “different variants of the scenario or different ways of describing the case”. Nor were framing and order effects lower among participants reporting familiarity with the trolley problem or with loss-aversion framing effects, nor among those reporting having had a stable opinion on the issues before participating the experiment, nor among those reporting expertise on the very issues in question. Thus, for these scenario types, neither framing effects nor order effects appear to be reduced even by high levels of academic expertise.

Some quotes (emphasis mine):

When scenario pairs were presented in order AB, participants responded differently than when the same scenario pairs were presented in order BA, and the **philosophers showed no less of a shift** than did the comparison groups, across several types of scenario.

\[...\] **we could find no level of philosophical expertise that reduced the size of the order effects or the framing effects** on judgments of specific cases. Across the board, professional philosophers (94% with PhD’s) showed about the same size order and framing effects as similarly educated non-philosophers. Nor were order effects and framing effects reduced by assignment to a condition enforcing a delay before responding and encouraging participants to reflect on “different variants of the scenario or different ways of describing the case”. Nor were order effects any smaller for the majority of philosopher participants reporting antecedent familiarity with the issues. **Nor were order effects any smaller for the minority of philosopher participants reporting expertise on the very issues under investigation.** Nor were order effects any smaller for the minority of philosopher participants reporting that before participating in our experiment they had stable views about the issues under investigation.

I am confused... I assumed that an expert in moral philosophy would not fall prey to the relevant biases so easily... What is going on?