Brian Gill: A science career in three shocks

Initial delight and optimism with a science vocation hit turbulence as the decades unfolded.

The first shock was pleasant.  In the 1970s, after finishing secondary school in a small country town, I moved to Palmerston North to start a science degree.  Massey University's huge science blocks were monumental.  I was awe-struck by the number and size of the lecture halls and laboratories.  The dozens of white-coated science lecturers, so knowledgeable in their specialised fields, were inspiring.  It seemed a cutting edge where sceptical enquiry, evidence and objectivity were providing new scientific understanding.  I wanted to join in.

The contest of ideas in teaching, and on the campus generally, was open and fearless.  Staff and visiting academics gave public talks on controversial subjects and endured debate and heckling without anyone being "cancelled".  Rallies and debates were anti-war (Vietnam), pro-abortion, and pro-environment (concern about over-population and pollution).  I remember a large lecture theatre packed out one evening to hear competing claims from a visiting U.S. creationist and from some Massey science lecturers promoting evolutionary biology.

I attended two other universities, then worked as a natural history curator at Auckland Museum.  Besides other things, the museum is a science organisation, employing a handful of science curators and maintaining biological research collections and a research library.  When I started, in 1982, the museum's administration was small.  Curators were trusted, given great freedom of action, and expected to be self-driven.  Common sense prevailed.  Staff reciprocated with intense loyalty, and no curatorial staff felt the need to join a union.

Working in science was sweet, but a shock developed year by year after Labour won the 1984 election and implemented "Rogernomics" (the New Zealand version of "Thatcherism" and "Reagonomics").  Our public not-for-profit science and educational institutions were slowly taken over by growing numbers of managers (1).  They pretended they were running commercial corporations.  Trust in staff gave way to constant audit and micromanagement (2).  External consultants came in waves.  As numbers of bureaucrats multiplied, administrative tasks were made ever more difficult.  Process was often more important than results.  There were periodic restructurings and staff lay-offs, with plummeting institutional morale (3).  This shock was the take-over of organisations by Managerialism (4).

Everyone sees that excessive bureaucracy wastes resources and drains people's energy and initiative.  But commentators have now explained how the neoliberal reforms created a large, high-paid "professional-managerial class" (5, 6), whose self-interest keeps the system deeply entrenched.  I briefly knew the simpler, happier working life before the managerialist take-over.  Pity the younger workers who have experienced nothing else and may think Managerialism a normal part of the human condition.

I retired, staying active with science in small ways.  But this otherwise happy time is haunted by a new shock: the capture of organisations by Social Justice Activism.  I was concerned at increasing public misunderstanding of science, when, in July 2021 the letter of the "Listener seven" (7) tackled this very subject.  Instead of wide support, this reasoned commentary attracted what a former newspaper editor called "the full, vindictive fury of the woke academic left" (8).  An on-line petition against the letter-writers (9), organised and signed by scientists, was a chilling case of academic bullying and intolerance.

I had naively assumed there was an unshakeable bond between scientists, arising from our supposed embrace of scepticism and analytical thinking, underpinned by understanding of the history and philosophy of science.  It's a shock to see instead an ugly schism in science.  On one side, a few academics like the "Listener seven" try to uphold traditional science thinking.  The views of "Traditionalists" are under-reported because many keep quiet and self-censor from fear of being mislabelled "racist" (10).  On the other side, the "Activists" enjoy the limelight because their views are currently the party-line of the professional-managerial class that dominates our institutions.  Activists consider it possible and desirable to blend ethnic world views with science, presumably to make science more appealing to minorities.  They seem to see no problem twisting science into an agent for activism.

Supporting social justice seems an obvious good, but scientists beware!  The current Critical Social Justice philosophy is grounded in post-modernism (11).  The post-modernist capture of the humanities in universities since the 1960s has produced such intellectual distortion that the British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton called for university humanities departments to be dismantled (12).

Post-modernism holds that there are no universal truths or objective realities (13, 14).  It regards all knowledge as culturally constructed and determined by power differentials between "oppressors" and "oppressed".  Scientists endorse this outlook when they support "decolonisation" and other fad elements of Social Justice Activism.  They then surely have a dilemma pursuing a science career that assumes science to be a valid, objective and fruitful search for the truth about the structures and processes of the natural world.

Post-modernism is an enemy of science, of Enlightenment thinking (which, among other things, brought an end to slavery) and of democracy (15).  If scientists deliberately or unwittingly aid and abet the social justice take-over of institutions (which seeks to undermine imagined Western, colonial, patriarchal, oppressive power structures and narratives) what kinds of science careers, or science organisations, do they think will remain?  Science has its own essential job to do for humanity and the modern world.  It is universal, transcending cultures, and will be hijacked for local political agendas only at a cost.  An admonishment comes to mind using the title of the book by American academic Stanley Fish: leave science alone, and "save the world on your own time" (16).

Brian Gill is an Auckland zoologist.  His most recent book, promoting natural history to the general reader, is "The Unburnt Egg: More Stories of a Museum Curator" (www.awapress.com).

REFERENCES

(1) Hazledine, T. 2016 (4 Oct.). Auckland University losing its academic values. New Zealand Herald.

(2) Haworth, N. 2011 (10 Mar.). Corporate model poses threat to university’s excellence. New Zealand Herald.

(3) Spencer, K. 2018 (13 Dec.). Continual restructuring – it’s such a waste. Posted on www.stuff.co.nz.

(4) Gill, B.J. 2021. Science and managerialism in New Zealand. New Zealand Science Review 77(1-2): 13-18.

(5) Trotter, C. 2017 (17 Feb.). Capitalism's saviours: the professional-managerial class. Otago Daily Times.

(6) Edwards, B. 2022 (8 Sep.). How politics got captured by the middle class, and why it's a problem. Democracy Project NZ (Victoria University).

(7) Clements, K.; Cooper, G.; Corballis, M.; Elliffe, D.; Nola, R.; Rata, E.; Werry, J. 2021 (Jul.). In defence of science [letter to the editor]. New Zealand Listener 276(4206): 4.

(8) du Fresne, K. 2021 (1 Aug.). Another dismal setback for intellectual freedom. Breaking Views NZ [www.nzcpr.com].

(9) On-line petition ("An open response to 'In defence of science' Listener (July 23)"); posted on Twitter 28 Jul. 2021; also docs.google.com.

(10) Raine, J.; Lillis, D.; Schwerdtfeger, P. 2023 (7 Jul.). Will social justice activists destroy New Zealand universities? The Spectator Australia.

(11) Mills, M.; Maranto, R.; Redding, R. 2024. What type of social justice do we want? Skeptic Magazine 29(2): 52-58.

(12) Bennett, R. 2019 (16 May). Scrap universities to end left-wing bias, says Roger Scruton. The Times (London).

(13) Dale, H. 2020. Postmodernism meets the hotel quarantine. Or how Diversity beats PPE. The Spectator Australia 343(10018): viii.

(14) Saad, G. 2023 (27 Nov.). The progressive diversity cult is killing the West by a thousand cuts. National Post (Canada).

(15) Grayling, A.C. 2008. How humans dared to know. New Scientist 2666: 42-43.

(16) Fish, S. 2008. Save the World On Your Own Time. Oxford University Press.