6 ms·

Why punish a scientist for defending science?

62 points by EvgeniyZh 5y ago

aurizon 5y ago
Strange? I wonder if this is an imitative of classic religions (which are fading everywhere) to create a support base for mysticism in general - what next? Astrology?
- thrill 5y ago
  Eight ball says, "future murky".
- bobthechef 5y ago
  What do you mean by "classic religions"? If you mean faiths like Christianity and Islam, then they're not fading everywhere. Globally, they're growing. Only in the West do we see a decline in Christianity and the rise of various New Age-y mythologies and superstitions.
  - quenix 5y ago
    Growing only by virtue of sheer population growth (religiosity is well correlated with poverty[1] and thus a higher fertility rate). Proportionally it is fading. [1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-worl...
  - aurizon 5y ago
    There exists a strange statistical effect - if you ask people a large number say they are religious, but if you put a meter on the pews, attendance is in free fall in most of Canada. Quebec, hitherto a staunchly Catholic province, now has one of the lowest rates in Canada. Ontario is similar. There was a huge abuse scandal all across Canada where priests and ministers had selectively chosen to work at schools where they and their female counterparts physically and sexually abused young boys and girls - in many cases to murder and death by suicide. This led to thousands of prosecutions and huge fines and many jail sentences both for the crime and abetting these crimes. Hundreds of them were awarded compensation and a huge number of church properties had to be sold, and the recruitment of new ministers and priests became impossible in Canada(there were a few areas that were spared by the presence of strong people who rid their parishes of bad people). To this day there is a near total absence of newly trained Canadian priests, nuns and ministers. Immigrants help, but tend to stay within their countrymen in the cities - leaving the country full of vacant parishes. The general populace cares little, most have moved on to a fully secular life and have not looked back. Recent immigrants are fading as they see nothing happens, the old time highly supervisory religious structure is gone. Muslims try the hardest to maintain the full supervisory panoply, but few workplaces have enough adherents to self-supervise, and if they are alone, they often meet and marry outside the faith and carry on in a near secular manner. These are observations. In areas of high numbers of faithful a social structure often keeps a faith going, whatever kind it is.
- dharmaturtle 5y ago
  > While religiously unaffiliated people currently make up 16% of the global population, only an estimated 10% of the world’s newborns between 2010 and 2015 were born to religiously unaffiliated mothers. This dearth of newborns among the unaffiliated helps explain why religious “nones” (including people who identity as atheist or agnostic, as well as those who have no particular religion) are projected to decline as a share of the world’s population in the coming decades. https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/ https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-reli...
  - aurizon 5y ago
    As more women are freed from their own fecundity, the average age rises, fewer children with better lives and education, and less religiosity endures.
    - dharmaturtle 5y ago
      Sorry, but I don't think this rebuffs Pew.
hw-guy 5y ago
The Scopes trial only settled things in the U.S.; presumably other nations and institutions needed at some point along the way to have their own equivalent. It's sad that New Zealand, normally regarded as a "developed nation" is nearly 100 years behind the U.S.
- quantified 5y ago
  Scopes originally lost the trial too. It’s hard to see things as firmly settled in the US as well, “God says so” coming from another person’s lips is powerful to a great many people.
  - hw-guy 5y ago
    You're absolutely right--I had misremembered the outcome of the trial--but it set in motion the idea of separating religion from science education, which now seems obvious to most Americans. And while the U.S. does have a wide contingent of (mostly uneducated) people as you describe, I could not imagine a serious research institution in the U.S. today recommending giving Biblical creation equal time with science in the public schools; even less, the mobbing of a scientist who objects to it by thousands of his colleagues crying for him to be removed from the National Academy of Sciences--with his provost and the society itself in agreement!
    - leephillips 5y ago
      I can't imagine that either, but only because that particular religion is out if favor in academia. But I can easily imagine it, and in fact think it has happened, to those offending against other religions. It’s just that these belief systems are not usually described as “religions”.
guender 5y ago
Who needs science if there is lived experience?
spats1990 5y ago
New Zealander here, not that it really matters.* It appears that "...a proposal by a government working group that schools should give the same weight to Maori mythology as they do to science in the classroom" is a misrepresentation. The author of this article has taken up this issue because it appears to fit a political hobby horse of his. One might read this article and conclude that The Woke Have Done It Again, they have Defied Science and Suggested that Mythology is Just As Important As Darwin. However, one of the authors of the government working group material has also commented publicly about this and her take casts things in a slightly different light: "The sentence quoted in the Listener letter as proof of the need to ‘defend’ science was from a section I largely wrote about the strand of the Pūtaiao curriculum that did not have a direct equivalent in the NZC Science learning area, on the history and philosophy of science. The sentence quoted was part of a description of the possible scope of studies of socioscientific issues, from a Māori perspective, by senior secondary students of Pūtaiao. To respond as fearfully as these seven professors, from the top science university in the country, to a single sentence that suggests taking a critical look at the involvement of science in colonisation of Māori, does the public face of science no favours at all. This failure in terms of academic standards explains the strong criticism of the letter that was expressed by the Royal Society as well as many leading scientists and academics (May, 2021)."[1] Are those crazy (left-wing, out of touch, 'woke') government working groups really Denying Science? Or did some scientists take something out of context and misunderstand it, then scream that they were being cancelled when other academics expressed disagreement with their ideas? [1]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1966415 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1... * (Edit: actually, I thought about it, and I decided that it does matter: I'm not really comfortable with our politics, which are quite different from UK/US politics, being used for grist in northern culture-war mills.)
- ryan93 5y ago
  That link you provide does not give any examples of how maori knowledge contributes anything valuable for science students.
  - pstuart 5y ago
hirundo 5y ago
You're picking a family physician. Dr. A was trained with traditional western cell theory, evolution, antibiotics, vaccines, etc. Dr. B studies some of that but less, plus on equal footing, training in Maori mythology and traditional health practices. That's all you know. Pick one. If you pick A you're necessarily discriminating against Maori. If you pick B you're picking a non-scientific paradigm of health treatment. Since you'd have to be an unusual and independent thinker to pick Dr. B, training track B is a large handicap for the student ... and their future patients.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- b215826 5y ago
  The people who're lining up to cancel Dr. Cooper wouldn't waste a moment calling Dr. A if someone they care about is sick. Virtue-signalling hacks embrace diversity and New Age crackpottery only when it applies to others.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  Allowing B to practice medicine and calling it medicine on the same footing as A is medical malpractice and should open them up to serious financial liability. The same way homeopaths, naturopaths, and similar should not be allowed to make medical claims.
b215826 5y ago
I really don't understand the psychology of the woke who seem to like punishment more than dialogue and I don't see anything particularly troubling in the letter published in the Listener [1]. What's even more shocking is that Prof. Cooper is of Maori descent himself [2][3]. [1]: https://www.fsu.nz/in_defence_of_science_article https://www.fsu.nz/in_defence_of_science_article [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Cooper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Cooper [3]: https://www.fsu.nz/m_ori_professor_under_investigation_for_views_on_m_tauranga_m_ori https://www.fsu.nz/m_ori_professor_under_investigation_for_v...
- spats1990 5y ago
  And a response from one of the authors of the government working group material (see my other post ITT): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1966415 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1... edit: the user above has made significant changes to their post since I replied initially; at first, the post above only contained a single link to the letter...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  You don't understand it because you bring a scientific argument to a political fight for power.
- postsantum 5y ago
  They want power inside institutions and he, a dissident, was in their way. The cause is irrelevant here
- rackjack 5y ago
  Social media has turned everyone into a politician. People like it when other people they dislike get punished. By being punishing, people become more popular, and gain social power. Truth is irrelevant, because politicians don't become popular and powerful by being truthful. This is a fundamental sickness that social media creates. It is not just the "woke", it is basically everyone attached to non-anonymous social media.
sancho_panza 5y ago
Wasn’t the Scopes Trial a farce
Traster 5y ago
"As a defender of free speech" This man is no defender of free speech. In fact, he lobbied to get himself a position to dictate what was allowed speech in UK universities. He has continually dressed up his own bigotry in psuedo-intellectual terms. Essentially, Toby is just a straight up controversy merchant, and I think it's important to understand that. this isn't about "the culture war" - Toby, and the Spectator have a long history of just staking out far right positions in order to draw controversy. You may think "Well. what's wrong with this, it stimulates debate" - that might be an interesting philosophical point, but in practice, what ends up happening is that The Specatator and its lackeys like Young continually just push mindless nonsense in the name of "stimulating debate"- at what point do you draw the line and say "Actually, this guy is just continually spouting inconsistent nonsense". There's all sorts that just don't make sense in this article- the biochemist is "eminently" qualified to weigh in on education policy. I'm sure he studied public policy and civics in his spare time. Or > Knowing about Rangi and Papa won’t get you into medical school. Well sure, and knowing about advanced calculus won't get you into med school either, but that's not really the point is it. I think in general I just want to highlight that this whole opinion peice - does a piss poor job of reporting the facts. I would suggest to you that you shouldn't be listening to a guy who peppers his reporting of details with insults for his subjects (let alonea a guy who publicly acknoledges even his own friends can't stand him, that's bye-the-bye). I think the question really is - why is Toby Young in any way interested in what happens literally on the opposite side of the world. The answer is he's not, he needs to fill column inches with controversy and this is his taste of the week. I look forward to his fake accounts named after characters in his books attacking me (yes, that actually does happen).
twic 5y ago
Toby Young is an idiot and a thoroughly unreliable source. Can we find a better article covering this case and change the link? This is a bit more detailed, but i don't know the Kiwi media landscape well enough to know what weaknesses it might have: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/royal-society-investigation-into-matauranga-maori-letter-sparks-academic-debate https://www.newsroom.co.nz/royal-society-investigation-into-...

62 points by EvgeniyZh 5y ago

Strange? I wonder if this is an imitative of classic religions (which are fading everywhere) to create a support base for mysticism in general - what next? Astrology?

thrill 5y ago
Eight ball says, "future murky".
bobthechef 5y ago
What do you mean by "classic religions"? If you mean faiths like Christianity and Islam, then they're not fading everywhere. Globally, they're growing. Only in the West do we see a decline in Christianity and the rise of various New Age-y mythologies and superstitions.
- quenix 5y ago
  Growing only by virtue of sheer population growth (religiosity is well correlated with poverty[1] and thus a higher fertility rate). Proportionally it is fading. [1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-world-poorest-nations.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/142727/religiosity-highest-worl...
- aurizon 5y ago
  There exists a strange statistical effect - if you ask people a large number say they are religious, but if you put a meter on the pews, attendance is in free fall in most of Canada. Quebec, hitherto a staunchly Catholic province, now has one of the lowest rates in Canada. Ontario is similar. There was a huge abuse scandal all across Canada where priests and ministers had selectively chosen to work at schools where they and their female counterparts physically and sexually abused young boys and girls - in many cases to murder and death by suicide. This led to thousands of prosecutions and huge fines and many jail sentences both for the crime and abetting these crimes. Hundreds of them were awarded compensation and a huge number of church properties had to be sold, and the recruitment of new ministers and priests became impossible in Canada(there were a few areas that were spared by the presence of strong people who rid their parishes of bad people). To this day there is a near total absence of newly trained Canadian priests, nuns and ministers. Immigrants help, but tend to stay within their countrymen in the cities - leaving the country full of vacant parishes. The general populace cares little, most have moved on to a fully secular life and have not looked back. Recent immigrants are fading as they see nothing happens, the old time highly supervisory religious structure is gone. Muslims try the hardest to maintain the full supervisory panoply, but few workplaces have enough adherents to self-supervise, and if they are alone, they often meet and marry outside the faith and carry on in a near secular manner. These are observations. In areas of high numbers of faithful a social structure often keeps a faith going, whatever kind it is.
dharmaturtle 5y ago
> While religiously unaffiliated people currently make up 16% of the global population, only an estimated 10% of the world’s newborns between 2010 and 2015 were born to religiously unaffiliated mothers. This dearth of newborns among the unaffiliated helps explain why religious “nones” (including people who identity as atheist or agnostic, as well as those who have no particular religion) are projected to decline as a share of the world’s population in the coming decades. https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/ https://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-reli...
- aurizon 5y ago
  As more women are freed from their own fecundity, the average age rises, fewer children with better lives and education, and less religiosity endures.
  - dharmaturtle 5y ago
    Sorry, but I don't think this rebuffs Pew.

hw-guy 5y ago

The Scopes trial only settled things in the U.S.; presumably other nations and institutions needed at some point along the way to have their own equivalent. It's sad that New Zealand, normally regarded as a "developed nation" is nearly 100 years behind the U.S.

quantified 5y ago
Scopes originally lost the trial too. It’s hard to see things as firmly settled in the US as well, “God says so” coming from another person’s lips is powerful to a great many people.
- hw-guy 5y ago
  You're absolutely right--I had misremembered the outcome of the trial--but it set in motion the idea of separating religion from science education, which now seems obvious to most Americans. And while the U.S. does have a wide contingent of (mostly uneducated) people as you describe, I could not imagine a serious research institution in the U.S. today recommending giving Biblical creation equal time with science in the public schools; even less, the mobbing of a scientist who objects to it by thousands of his colleagues crying for him to be removed from the National Academy of Sciences--with his provost and the society itself in agreement!
  - leephillips 5y ago
    I can't imagine that either, but only because that particular religion is out if favor in academia. But I can easily imagine it, and in fact think it has happened, to those offending against other religions. It’s just that these belief systems are not usually described as “religions”.

guender 5y ago

Who needs science if there is lived experience?

spats1990 5y ago

New Zealander here, not that it really matters.* It appears that "...a proposal by a government working group that schools should give the same weight to Maori mythology as they do to science in the classroom" is a misrepresentation. The author of this article has taken up this issue because it appears to fit a political hobby horse of his. One might read this article and conclude that The Woke Have Done It Again, they have Defied Science and Suggested that Mythology is Just As Important As Darwin. However, one of the authors of the government working group material has also commented publicly about this and her take casts things in a slightly different light: "The sentence quoted in the Listener letter as proof of the need to ‘defend’ science was from a section I largely wrote about the strand of the Pūtaiao curriculum that did not have a direct equivalent in the NZC Science learning area, on the history and philosophy of science. The sentence quoted was part of a description of the possible scope of studies of socioscientific issues, from a Māori perspective, by senior secondary students of Pūtaiao. To respond as fearfully as these seven professors, from the top science university in the country, to a single sentence that suggests taking a critical look at the involvement of science in colonisation of Māori, does the public face of science no favours at all. This failure in terms of academic standards explains the strong criticism of the letter that was expressed by the Royal Society as well as many leading scientists and academics (May, 2021)."[1] Are those crazy (left-wing, out of touch, 'woke') government working groups really Denying Science? Or did some scientists take something out of context and misunderstand it, then scream that they were being cancelled when other academics expressed disagreement with their ideas? [1]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1966415 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1... * (Edit: actually, I thought about it, and I decided that it does matter: I'm not really comfortable with our politics, which are quite different from UK/US politics, being used for grist in northern culture-war mills.)

ryan93 5y ago
That link you provide does not give any examples of how maori knowledge contributes anything valuable for science students.
- pstuart 5y ago

hirundo 5y ago

You're picking a family physician. Dr. A was trained with traditional western cell theory, evolution, antibiotics, vaccines, etc. Dr. B studies some of that but less, plus on equal footing, training in Maori mythology and traditional health practices. That's all you know. Pick one. If you pick A you're necessarily discriminating against Maori. If you pick B you're picking a non-scientific paradigm of health treatment. Since you'd have to be an unusual and independent thinker to pick Dr. B, training track B is a large handicap for the student ... and their future patients.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
b215826 5y ago
The people who're lining up to cancel Dr. Cooper wouldn't waste a moment calling Dr. A if someone they care about is sick. Virtue-signalling hacks embrace diversity and New Age crackpottery only when it applies to others.
LegitShady 5y ago
Allowing B to practice medicine and calling it medicine on the same footing as A is medical malpractice and should open them up to serious financial liability. The same way homeopaths, naturopaths, and similar should not be allowed to make medical claims.

b215826 5y ago

I really don't understand the psychology of the woke who seem to like punishment more than dialogue and I don't see anything particularly troubling in the letter published in the Listener [1]. What's even more shocking is that Prof. Cooper is of Maori descent himself [2][3]. [1]: https://www.fsu.nz/in_defence_of_science_article https://www.fsu.nz/in_defence_of_science_article [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Cooper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Cooper [3]: https://www.fsu.nz/m_ori_professor_under_investigation_for_views_on_m_tauranga_m_ori https://www.fsu.nz/m_ori_professor_under_investigation_for_v...

spats1990 5y ago
And a response from one of the authors of the government working group material (see my other post ITT): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1966415 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1... edit: the user above has made significant changes to their post since I replied initially; at first, the post above only contained a single link to the letter...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
You don't understand it because you bring a scientific argument to a political fight for power.
postsantum 5y ago
They want power inside institutions and he, a dissident, was in their way. The cause is irrelevant here
rackjack 5y ago
Social media has turned everyone into a politician. People like it when other people they dislike get punished. By being punishing, people become more popular, and gain social power. Truth is irrelevant, because politicians don't become popular and powerful by being truthful. This is a fundamental sickness that social media creates. It is not just the "woke", it is basically everyone attached to non-anonymous social media.

sancho_panza 5y ago

Wasn’t the Scopes Trial a farce

Traster 5y ago

"As a defender of free speech" This man is no defender of free speech. In fact, he lobbied to get himself a position to dictate what was allowed speech in UK universities. He has continually dressed up his own bigotry in psuedo-intellectual terms. Essentially, Toby is just a straight up controversy merchant, and I think it's important to understand that. this isn't about "the culture war" - Toby, and the Spectator have a long history of just staking out far right positions in order to draw controversy. You may think "Well. what's wrong with this, it stimulates debate" - that might be an interesting philosophical point, but in practice, what ends up happening is that The Specatator and its lackeys like Young continually just push mindless nonsense in the name of "stimulating debate"- at what point do you draw the line and say "Actually, this guy is just continually spouting inconsistent nonsense". There's all sorts that just don't make sense in this article- the biochemist is "eminently" qualified to weigh in on education policy. I'm sure he studied public policy and civics in his spare time. Or > Knowing about Rangi and Papa won’t get you into medical school. Well sure, and knowing about advanced calculus won't get you into med school either, but that's not really the point is it. I think in general I just want to highlight that this whole opinion peice - does a piss poor job of reporting the facts. I would suggest to you that you shouldn't be listening to a guy who peppers his reporting of details with insults for his subjects (let alonea a guy who publicly acknoledges even his own friends can't stand him, that's bye-the-bye). I think the question really is - why is Toby Young in any way interested in what happens literally on the opposite side of the world. The answer is he's not, he needs to fill column inches with controversy and this is his taste of the week. I look forward to his fake accounts named after characters in his books attacking me (yes, that actually does happen).

twic 5y ago

Toby Young is an idiot and a thoroughly unreliable source. Can we find a better article covering this case and change the link? This is a bit more detailed, but i don't know the Kiwi media landscape well enough to know what weaknesses it might have: https://www.newsroom.co.nz/royal-society-investigation-into-matauranga-maori-letter-sparks-academic-debate https://www.newsroom.co.nz/royal-society-investigation-into-...