Scientist Under Investigation by the Royal Society of New Zealand for Defending Science
In my column in the Spectator this week I’ve highlighted an egregious assault on free speech in New Zealand that was brought to my attention by the NZ Free Speech Union, which has issued a statement about it. A distinguished biochemist, Professor Garth Cooper, is being subjected to a disciplinary investigation by the Royal Society of New Zealand that could result in his expulsion. Here’s an extract:
Why is this distinguished scientist at risk of being expelled from New Zealand’s most prestigious academic society? Several months ago he was one of seven signatories to a letter in the New Zealand Listener that took issue with 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. That is, the Maori understanding of the world — that all living things originated with Rangi and Papa, the sky mother and sky god, for instance — should be presented as just as valid as the theories of Galileo, Newton and Darwin.
The authors of the letter, “In Defence of Science“, were careful to say that indigenous knowledge was “critical for the preservation and perpetuation of culture and local practices, and plays key roles in management and policy” and should be taught in New Zealand’s schools. But they drew the line at treating it as on a par with physics, chemistry and biology: “In the discovery of empirical, universal truths, it falls far short of what we can define as science itself.”
In a rational world, this letter would have been regarded as uncontroversial. Surely the argument about whether to teach schoolchildren scientific or religious explanations for the origins of the universe and the ascent of man was settled by the Scopes trial in 1925? Apart from the obvious difficulty of prioritising one religious viewpoint in an ethnically diverse society like New Zealand (what about Christianity, Islam and Hinduism?), there is the problem that Maori schoolchildren, already among the least privileged in the country, will be at an even greater disadvantage if their teachers patronise them by saying there’s no need to learn the rudiments of scientific knowledge. Knowing about Rangi and Papa won’t get you into medical school.
But the moment this letter was published all hell broke loose. The views of the authors, who were all professors at Auckland, were denounced by the Royal Society, the New Zealand Association of Scientists, and the Tertiary Education Union, as well as by their own vice-chancellor, Dawn Freshwater. In a hand-wringing, cry-bullying email to all staff at the university, she said the letter had “caused considerable hurt and dismay among our staff, students and alumni” and said it pointed to ‘major problems with some of our colleagues’.
Two of Professor Cooper’s academic colleagues, Dr Siouxsie Wiles and Dr Shaun Hendy, issued an ‘open letter’ condemning the heretics for causing “untold harm and hurt”. They invited anyone who agreed with them to add their names to the ‘open letter’, and more than 2,000 academics duly obliged. Before long, five members of the Royal Society had complained and a panel was set up to investigate.
Worth reading in full.
If you’re a scholar in the sciences or the humanities and want to defend Professor Cooper you should write to Roger Ridley, the Chief Executive of the Royal Society of New Zealand, at roger.ridley@royalsociety.org.nz. He could use your help.
Stop Press: You can read more about this scandal here.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
To be fair, Darwin is a fairytale too.
There is a fundamental difference between modern science (well, last few hundred years) and theology, although you’d not notice it from the popular interpretation of science in the media. Theology says the way the world is. There’s no doubt, it is the way. Science describes the world. It doesn’t say that it is, only that a nature / the universe appears to follow a certain set of rules well. Most people don’t understand this — most people, including many scientists, are seduced by the cult of science and think that science says that it is the way the world actually is. But science doesn’t pretend to say that (well, theoretical physicists excepted — and that really is a religion). So, for example, Darwin doesn’t say that evolution is definitively true, but rather that evolution explains at least some of what we see in the data. It does fail in some regards (in that it doesn’t ‘explain well’ where fundamental leaps in development are required), but in the end it does a better job than the alternative theories. Another good example is gravity as described by Newton — His ‘gravity’ isn’t a fundamental truth (Einstein showed otherwise), but rather that a… Read more »
I don’t think either Darwinism or Neo-Darwinism does a good job at all other than to explain trivial variations like the variations in the beaks of finches.
It does fairly well at explaining how selective pressure and mutations allow viruses to escape immunity.
Only among the jabbed – the gift of pharmacology.
Part of the problem we have is that people learn ‘handy rules’ and think that it is the solution. So Newtonian mechanics is a handy set of rules that handles most situations, but isn’t so good when it comes to very high speeds (close to speed of light), very high gravitational fields or very very small things. Or, to come back to the point about Darwin — a general handy rule is that evolution of vaccine escape viruses occurs in the unvaccinated. This is generally true, as the vaccinated don’t have viruses in them to mutate in the first place. Of course, if you did (hypothetically) create a vaccine that did have high viral loads in the vaccinated-infected (a leaky vaccine, say), and didn’t protect against infection but only serious disease, and only presented a limited selection of proteins to the immune system (the spike protein of a coronavirus, say), and did choose proteins created by a highly mutable part of the virus (the spike proteins of a coronavirus, say), and did choose a virus with a high mutation rate (an RNA virus, say), and was used at a time with high levels of virus about (an epidemic, say) —… Read more »
“…the vaccinated don’t have viruses in them to mutate in the first place.” I don’t think that’s true.
Having looked recently (I had little interest in the subject before 2020) at the history of vaccines in general, the claims made on their behalf are thoroughly unconvincing and don’t really tally with the evidence. The decline in mortality rates for smallpox, measles, whooping cough etc. seem to be the product of better sanitation, clean water, better housing and nutrition, the vaccines often emerging at the tail end of the decline.
Blaming the unvaccinated for the emergence of viruses that are vaccine-resistant makes about as much sense as blaming those who don’t take antibiotics for the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains.
I also don’t buy the argument that the unvaccinated generate vaccine-resistant variants – even with a very good (mostly sterilizing) vaccine. What would be the evolutionary pressure for this to occur? The replication environment is an infected unvaccinated person’s body. This is the environment that is driving any selection pressure. I agree it might be possible for such a vaccine-resistant variant to happen by chance in an unvaccinated person – but it would also have to outcompete the existing virus, or other variants, in the host’s body.
It could theoretically happen, but I think it will not occur with any significant probability.
I also don’t buy the argument that the unvaccinated generate vaccine-resistant variants – even with a very good (mostly sterilizing) vaccine. What would be the evolutionary pressure for this to occur? I agree — I think the theory is that the mutations occur by chance in the unvaccinated and then are selected for by the vaccinated in the population — the dream is that by stopping the random mutations in the unvaccinated you don’t allow selection to occur in the population. The problem with this argument is that it really is handing over ‘to chance’ a process that is very very efficient if allowed to occur via natural selection — I find it much more easy to believe that the selection of escape variants for ‘normal vaccines’ occurs in those whose immune response is sub-optimal for some reason (poor response to vaccination in a minority or perhaps in the immunocompromised). The idea that the virus mutates escape in the unvaccinated appears to me to be similar to an argument that rabbits might evolve to be white and then move to arctic regions where they can thrive — I guess it is possible, but evolution in the presence of environmental pressures… Read more »
Congratulations on that 10-line sentence in the final paragraph. It was like watching someone keeping plates spinning.
I did it all without stopping for breath…
“So Newtonian mechanics is a handy set of rules that handles most situations, but isn’t so good when it comes to very high speeds (close to speed of light), very high gravitational fields or very very small things.”
But very useful for us humans here on earth.
I broadly agree with what you’re saying here – but I think you’re downplaying a few things here. I don’t view “evolution” as a theory – it’s a provable consequence of certain things being in place – things like the possibility of heritable mutations that provide a greater chance of subsequent reproductive success. The evidence for evolution is truly overwhelming – but you’re right that the basic idea of Darwin needs refinement – and we haven’t put all the pieces in place yet. Darwin didn’t know about DNA or epigenetics etc. I also think you’re downplaying the significance of things like Newton’s laws etc. As a theoretical physicist I probably would say that – but I think they are telling us something about the way the world actually IS – and not just a handy set of rules with which to calculate stuff. For example, if you make the assumption that space is isotropic and homogeneous and further assume the Galilean principle of relativity (a symmetry condition that says there is no way to distinguish one inertial frame from another by purely mechanical means) you can then show that there are only 2 possible ways to perform a “translation” (technically… Read more »
or perhaps more succinctly; E=MC2; the thing you look at can be both energy wave and particle at the same time; you can’t actually locate the hting you are looking at because the act of looking at it changes it. For example.
As a matter of interest, would you still say the same thing if it turns out that those are in fact emerging properties which are only circumstantially true?
Great question. I would then be wondering why those emergent properties followed some very interesting symmetries – and whether this was a reflection of a deeper level of symmetry yet to be uncovered.
I don’t think we have anything like all the answers – many more layers to go – I hope so anyway 🙂
Thanks for the reply, Rudolph. Since you said it’s a great question (and your ‘I hope so anyway’ suggests a good attitude to the subject) I thought I’d tell you the background to it. Back in the mid nineties (when I was turning 40) I was trying to get to grips with the fundamentals of physics, after a decade of dipping my toes into it. However, I was so dissatisfied with what I was finding that I decided to try exploring it from first principles, taking the existence of space, time and energy as givens but taking nothing else for granted. I immediately came to the question of whether space and time are fundamentally continuous or discrete. Exploring the less fashionable path (that they are discrete) another early question was how energy moves from point to point (in chess terms, whether it moves as a bishop, rook or queen … or some other way) and I promptly found myself considering the possibility that the material world as described by classical physics is analogous to just one colour of squares on a chequerboard, with quantum processes happening across the whole board (and therefore dependent on the distribution and behaviour of energy… Read more »
As an outsider to both, I’d say you’re comparing a debased reality against an ideal there, Amanuensis.
I don’t think ideal theology ‘says the way the world is’. It doesn’t even say “I/We believe this is the way the world is”; it says “I/We believe this is a meaningful way to describe the way the world is”.
In practice, yes indeed, the worst theologists are no doubt just as arrogant as the worst scientists – but we do need to compare like with like.
Correction: it says “I/We believe this is a meaningful way to explore the way the world is”.
Hmm. Not sure. Perhaps we need to differentiate between theologists and those with religious conviction vs those studying the philosophy of science and scientists in general.
In many respects it wouldn’t be a bad idea.
For each science topic they could cover each religion’s interpretation in turn and try to use that theology to ‘predict what happens next’. Then they could let science have a try.
So you might have, for example — what do a variety of theologies say will happen to a vehicle that’s subjected to a force F, then they could see what science predicts. And after that they could try it out in the lab to see what actually happens, and they could rate theology vs science.
They could do the same with hereditary traits (repeat Mendel’s experiment), chemistry, electrical circuits etc etc.
That way people could decide for themselves which approach is more useful.
The difficult bit would be giving religion ‘equal weight’ — eg, I doubt there’s much that Catholicism has to say about the transistor.
(I’m not saying science trumps religion in all matters — I’m sure children might like to think on the nature of the soul or of society, etc).
“So you might have, for example — what do a variety of theologies say will happen to a vehicle that’s subjected to a force F, then they could see what science predicts.”
To the best of my knowledge what happens to vehicles subjected to specified forces isn’t the subject matter of theology so you couldn’t make the comparison. You might just as well see what any scientific discipline has to say about experimenting on a person that does not consent to being experimented on and then compare that with what is taught by Christianity or Buddhism. Science does not teach morality.
Exactly. Which is why it isn’t helpful to consider theologies in science lessons.
Perhaps, but you could consider the idea of intelligent design when teaching evolution. Inference to the best explanation is after all what we are talking about when we’re looking at Darwinism as an explanation. ID is a modest claim that does not argue for any specific religion (though you might use it to support an argument for the existence of God, but then we’ve moved away from the subject). You could then compare ID with the plausibility or the implausibility (particularly the mathematical implausibility) of Darwinism.
Fair point. I’d actually be happy with that approach — it would be that Natural Selection is useful at the right scale, perhaps with indicating the risks of introducing new species or for viral evolution, say. But it would indicate that science isn’t ‘all knowing’ and that convenient theories fail all too often.
I despair at the level of science taught to my kids at GCSE level — it is either gee-whiz (science is interesting because of the fundamental nature of it, not because things go bang) or all-knowing social engineering (they spend ages doing insulation calculations for houses for some reason). (I’m being a bit mean — they do some fundamental science — it is just that they forego too much proper scientific education to cover useless stuff).
WRT our current situation, it would be helpful if children were educated that science was useful but not magical, that way they might not be so easily seduced by our current set of science-priests that lay wisdom upon them, and were questions are heresy.
Science has been replaced by technology and computer ‘science’ for the most part.
The long march through the institutions really has produced a pot of gold for them hasn’t it. The Bolsheviks never went away, instead they took the long route to bring down the West by infiltrating every avenue, every sinew, of our societies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institutions
Its just so obvious now, wherever you look, corruption reigns, right up to the highest offices of the land. Professor Garth Cooper is yet another victim of those who’ve aligned themselves with the curse that’s destroying our society and culture from within. A 5th Column..
We really are entering a Dark Age.
This sums up the sheer madness and evil of the Davos / Globocap mob.
Perhaps Charlie boy could intervene?
Life imitates art, and also The Simpsons. Very good episode where creationism is taught as science and Lisa is arrested for reading The Origin of Species
In reality economic creationism AKA marxism has been vastly more harmful though.
No. Capitalism is economic creationism. Lives of millions are based on the wealth of a few. Marxism has a completely diffferent opposite narration.
Nope we currently have progressive rent-seeking, a brand of feudalism and marxism is an update on feudalism
If you read Adam Smith (david Ricardo etc) his aim is to let people exchange their time and alleviate shortages based on their relative productivity , this is the opposite to the current artificially created shortages and raised pricing and coerced purchases through subsidised title funded by taxing work.
Do you really want to give everything a different name so you can continue supporting spineless blood suckers like Adam Smith and his followers because you listened to a lot of anti-communist propaganda all these years? You said you’re ready to continue living like this and support this current system of values because as you said marxism and his anti capitalist and purely communist ideas are more harmful? Really? A world where you can be guaranteed a free education, health care and pension is more harmful? They take away your pension you applaud them, they take away your right to earn a degree with your brain and not just pay for it, you take off your hat for them, they withdraw and limit your health care – you beg them to continue? Whenever a majority is severly suppressed it will always give raise to socialism. It is the only reason why we even have that. A solution comes out of the problem. An opposition comes out of the system of injustice that we have today.
Marxism is pure state slavery.
Adam Smith Capitalism has seen the largest rise in living standards in history.
Not a tricky choice there.
The state is the blood sucker.
The same people objecting would presumably be very happy to have Creationism and Intelligent Design taught in science lessons?
Excuse me Toby – the Babylon Bee called. They want their headline back.
Don’t hold your breath!
I was just about to comment that that may be the case at the moment…
Some faculty somewhere must be offering a PhD in Ju-ju and Witch-doctoring?
Maybe the RSNZ should encourage maths departments to redefine pi as 3.0 – it will make it much easier to use for the semi-innumerate… All this 3.14159365… nonsense is just SO elitist.
In 2008, the (UK) Royal Society’s Director of Education, Michael Reiss, a thoroughgoing evolutionist, was expelled for daring to suggest that doubts about evolution raised by the students themselves should be dealt with in the classroom. He said There is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have – hardly a revolutionary idea in science teaching – and doing one’s best to have a genuine discussion Commenting on this disgraceful ejection Melanie Phillips, under the title Secular Inquisition at the Royal Society in The Spectator, wrote Totalitarian atheism has taken another scalp. Michael Reiss, The Royal Society’s embattled director of Education, has been forced out – for daring to suggest that children should be taught to discuss alternative views and subject them to the scrutiny of empirical reasoning…Far from Reiss damaging the reputation of the Royal Society, it has now done this to itself. Appalling. George Pitcher, under the title This Society has lost its grip on reason, wrote in The Daily Telegraph He had let a chink of creationism in, you see, and the new secular scientific establishment decided he was an enemy of the state. A pusillanimous Royal Society duly condemned him. Because… Read more »
Before we throw stones from here the UK (and the rest of the developed world) isnt much different is it?
We are in the mess we are at the moment because we dont have a single scientifically-minded/numerate/objectively questioning person in government (or opposition).
As lawyers etc they are all certain that conviction=fact which is clearly not the case. There is no ‘their truth’ and ‘my truth’, only truth.
If skilled (as Boris is) you can make a convincing case for anything with passion and erudition, and take a lot of people with you. However having done that it doesnt make it true, just that you have put forward a convincing argument.
Facts and the truth will always trump this but our entire system of government and 90% of the population dont seem to understand that. They regard belief and science as of equal merit and have no reason to change that because they are always protected from the consequences of their idiocy.
Follow this medics advice and you could look as healthy as he does!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-mlUdaAulQ
He’s ‘hopeful’ they might help?! Well, I’m convinced (not!).
Wear a parachute when you walk up the stairs…
I know nothing of the Maori mythology exept that it has been passed down through the Maori generations via the spoken word and then translated into a language I can understand. I also understand that throughout history and throughout the world tribes and villages have passed down knowledge through stories told to their children. From here. https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Rangi_and_Papa This Sky-Earth couple appears in a famous Maori creation myth explaining the origin of the world. They are viewed as the original parents who lie locked together in a tight embrace. Sounds a little bit like the atom with the proton and electron tied together in a tight embrace. Science as told by primitive(to our way current way of thinking) tribespeople attempting to explain creation to children. Just as the scientists of today will be seen in the future as nothing more than children with an understanding of the universe that is severley limited, so we look back on these people’s ancestors. Should we look at the actual words, or what lies between them. Should we mock their tales or look for wisdom in their teachings. Wisdom lost to current scientific debate but wisdom non the less. Of course this is not really… Read more »
The problem in NZ is that a bunch of white urban Guardianista types in the NZ Labour Party are just as pig ignorant about science and pretty much everything else as their British equivalent. So of course they see no problem with saying that 2,500 years of empirically provable scientific endeavor, one of the jewels of Western Civilization, is the intellectual equivalent of bunch of creation myths of recent lineage made up by a pre literate culture that engaged in substance (mostly) hunter gathering. So it would be like teaching your kids at school the story that Finn MacCool created the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland so he could fight a giant in Scotland was equally valid as the scientific explanation that it was created by a volcanic eruption. The volcanic eruption explanation is backed a huge amount of verifiable data and observations. The Finn MacCool myth is just a story made up by a story teller trying to entertain people. See the difference? There is no equivalence. Now the Maori and other Polynesians have a lot to be proud about. The knowledge they used to navigated the Pacific is one of the great achievements in human history. David Lewis’s… Read more »
One, very apposite, comment that I heard a while ago was “religion is nothing more than primitive man’s attempts to communicate with the weather”.
You could say that climate “science” is the modern equivalent.
Trust in science is being severely eroded by the scamdemic. Philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend said science is no more valid than magic. To the extent that ‘covid science’ is highly politicised and relativised, wracked with absurdity, fear, and madness, it is indeed not much better than magic.
Given the performance of the NZ government over the past 2+ years, I would say replace them with the Maori.
That’s code for ‘I have no idea how much, but I’m upset, so it must be a lot’.
Following the science?
This was never about science. It’s not science, it’s not even junk science. It’s Scientism – a creed, an ideology, a religion, a tool. Complete with Unassailable Truths, Litanies and Doctrines, all subject to unembarrassed change whenever The Narrative gets a little shaky and the occasional Fact breaks surface. We know how this ends – history is very instructive on this point – the only difference being that this was the last revolution and it’s already over.
But for all you Metaphysicists out there, I invite you to consider the concept of ´Irreducible Wholeness’ as elucidated by Wolfgang Smith. Perhaps start with this – taking the pants off Newton and Darwin…
https://philos-sophia.org/evolutionist-scientism/
Makes you think.
I wish thinking could be made mandatory, nay compulsory.
Speaking of which – will compulsory vaccination be made mandatory, or will mandatory come to mean compulsory? Asking for a friend.
This is not about health it’s about the impostion of a global tyranny on the back of a manufactured medical emergency .. it’s about global Chinafication
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLTuS6tke4344WQD-vbvUTg
Please share far and wide this video needs to go viral
NO to medical passports .. Do NOT Consent .. Do NOT comply
As Stephen Fry said: So you are offended; so fucking what!
It is becoming the norm. Any scientist or medical professional brave enough to speak out against the narrative is suspended from their job. research grants disappear, medical licensure is suspended by medical boards. I would never have believed so many universities, hospitals, and other institutions, like the nhs, could be bought. But there you have it.