Wow, very powerful stuff. This article rapidly expands from indictment Noam Chomsky as linguist to indictment of modern academia. As a parent about to pay large sums to one of these institutions for my son's education, it depresses me more than a little.
I don't know anything about linguistics, but the argument hangs together pretty well. It's consonant with what I know about Chomsky as political prophet and myth-maker.
I notice that this article, a decade old, also indicts science in general. The author was perhaps ahead of his time:
Well, happily a lot of people are realizing that Chomsky's linguistic theories (transformational generative grammar, universal grammar) are the scientific equivalent of ptolemaic epicycles, i.e. overly complex nonsense used to justify their own preconceptions. However he is still fairly influential in syntax (and to a lesser extent phonology) which are two branches of linguistics. Sadly his theories (and his name) get thrown around a lot more than actual pioneering linguists like Edward Sapir (who only gets brought up when people talk about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis).
Chomsky was an early visionary, and his intuition was very good. I would compare him more to Freud than to Ptolemaic astronomers. He started from a single notion, and built a theory around it that was justified by anecdote.
But many of the tools and constructs that fell out of this theory are important. Consider the work with grammar. CTF is equivalent to PDA, but much easier to use conceptually.
Well, you can't deny that he contributed some ideas that PLT people make use of, but the question here is whether TGG is any good as a _scientific theory of language_ and I think the answer is no. The reason I compared him to Ptolemaic theorists is because he came up with some interesting mathematical ideas, but he doesn't care about systematically collecting data and attempting to falsify the theory. See: http://norvig.com/chomsky.html
Engineers, of which I am one, tend to see the world in pure dialectics, so they often have very difficult time understanding why accomplishment is not purely evaluated by some rational universal force and recognition made manifest commensurately.
Self promotion is a skill that we all need, and do not think for a moment that people like Einstein were not well skilled in it.
As for claiming credit in higher proportion to one's contribution, that is evil in proportion to the exaggeration. However, perception being limited as it is, no one, not even the other contributors are in a good position to judge.
As for outright lies, they are, well, outright lies.
What caught my attention was the use of "analytic tools" as a euphemism for "surveillance tools." One could dismiss it as corporate-speak or techie-speak, but it rings in my head more like newspeak, and you know the purpose of that.
I agree with almost all of what you said. I'm a coder, agilist, craftsman, blah, blah who has worked on a startup more than once. On the last one I wrote almost no unit tests. The whole thing was so experimental from the start that I never go around to it. I explained it to myself that I was being a hustler. I'm okay with that.
However, I gotta say it. If unit tests are making it harder to restructure your code, you're doing it wrong. The opposite should be true. The greatest purpose of unit tests is to add comfort and safety (and thus speed) to very big refactors and restructuring. If your system behavior changes, yes, your tests gotta change, and that takes effort. But if you restructure your code (e.g., break it apart to add an intermediate abstraction) and unit tests slow you down because you got get all up in 'em, then brother you got yourself some bad tests. Those should not have written.
I don't know anything about linguistics, but the argument hangs together pretty well. It's consonant with what I know about Chomsky as political prophet and myth-maker.
I notice that this article, a decade old, also indicts science in general. The author was perhaps ahead of his time:
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-re...
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-t...
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-feynman-201...
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20131027,0,122...
http://www.livescience.com/27262-psychology-studies-question...