Restoring the Standing and Reputation of Science in New Zealand - Open Letter to the Coalition Government
The recent news that GeoNet has been merging science with the myth, mysticism and legend of Māori traditional knowledge in their 2024 Geohazard Information has provoked a scathing response from international commentator, Professor Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago). This follows close behind publicity around the public funding of research projects that involve mixing of traditional knowledge and modern science which invited the inference that New Zealand had given equivalence to traditional knowledge and modern science.
Traditional knowledges of the world are to be treasured and preserved, and matauranga Māori retains great cultural, social and historic value to New Zealand. However, if we are serious about maintaining our international education and science research reputation, we must maintain a clear separation between traditional knowledge and modern science, while acknowledging that there are areas, such as environmental science, where traditional knowledge complements modern science.
Our concern about the ongoing forces at play in diversity, equity and inclusion politics, and the loss of science research effort in our university system as a result of an increased focus on Treaty-focused social justice agendas, led us to write to Government Ministers, urging their intervention in the education and research systems for their future wellbeing. An edited version of this letter follows.
Dear Ministers,
At a time when New Zealand’s education system has embraced social engineering and knowledge-poor curricula, it is a critical responsibility of Government to have the courage to address these issues and make the necessary and urgent corrections.
For some years now, many scientists and education professionals, both within and outside the country, have expressed deep concerns about excessive intrusion of anti-scientific relativist “other ways of knowing” and traditional knowledge (Mātauranga Māori) in New Zealand’s national early childhood, primary and secondary curricula (e.g. Corballis, Rata & Nola (2019), Young (2021), Matthews (2022), Dawkins (2021), Matzke (2024) and Ahdar et al. (2024)). However, this intrusion has also occurred within university programmes and courses in a most aggressive way, and within science funding policies that have been conferring preference to researchers on the basis of race and ancestry, strongly favouring grant applications that draw on matauranga Māori and Māori researchers.
Michael Matthews (University of New South Wales and formerly the Foundation Professor of Science Education at University of Auckland) correctly maintains:
Traditional knowledges of the world are to be treasured and preserved, and matauranga Māori retains great cultural, social and historic value to New Zealand. However, if we are serious about maintaining our international education and science research reputation, we must maintain a clear separation between traditional knowledge and modern science, while acknowledging that there are areas, such as environmental science, where traditional knowledge complements modern science.
Our concern about the ongoing forces at play in diversity, equity and inclusion politics, and the loss of science research effort in our university system as a result of an increased focus on Treaty-focused social justice agendas, led us to write to Government Ministers, urging their intervention in the education and research systems for their future wellbeing. An edited version of this letter follows.
……………………………………………………………………………………………
Dear Ministers,
Restoring the Standing and Reputation of Science in New Zealand
Correcting the System
At a time when New Zealand’s education system has embraced social engineering and knowledge-poor curricula, it is a critical responsibility of Government to have the courage to address these issues and make the necessary and urgent corrections.
For some years now, many scientists and education professionals, both within and outside the country, have expressed deep concerns about excessive intrusion of anti-scientific relativist “other ways of knowing” and traditional knowledge (Mātauranga Māori) in New Zealand’s national early childhood, primary and secondary curricula (e.g. Corballis, Rata & Nola (2019), Young (2021), Matthews (2022), Dawkins (2021), Matzke (2024) and Ahdar et al. (2024)). However, this intrusion has also occurred within university programmes and courses in a most aggressive way, and within science funding policies that have been conferring preference to researchers on the basis of race and ancestry, strongly favouring grant applications that draw on matauranga Māori and Māori researchers.
Michael Matthews (University of New South Wales and formerly the Foundation Professor of Science Education at University of Auckland) correctly maintains:
“There are educational, cultural, ethical, and political reasons for the teaching and learning of local ethnosciences. But these reasons are all independent of the scientificity, or otherwise, of Māori or any other ethnoscience. The placement of ethnosciences in the school or university science programme depends upon confusing the first sets of reasons with scientificity. Indigenous knowledge systems or, more loosely, ways of knowing can be respected, championed, and learnt from without them needing to be called ‘science’. Much less deemed the equivalent of science.” (Matthews, 2022, p.15)
Today it can be very difficult for physical sciences, engineering, mathematics and computer science researchers to qualify for government funding when assessment criteria that are irrelevant to the advancement of science and innovation are given high importance. This situation has led to the assessment by many researchers that it is currently impossible to undertake research in mainstream, high-value, science.
We hope that that Minister Erica Stanford and her Ministerial Advisory Group will make strong progress in creating a content-rich curriculum that will remove the saturation of traditional knowledge which was evident in the previous Government’s curriculum refresh. We anticipate a truly modern, knowledge-based curriculum that stands comparison with the best curricula of other developed nations, where these curricula have not been adversely affected by the excessive intrusion of postmodernism and critical social justice agendas.
Restoring Rational Science Funding
It is also vital that Sir Peter Gluckman and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Science System Advisory Group will develop funding policies that will contribute significantly to New Zealand’s international competitiveness over the coming decades and restore the credibility of New Zealand’s science programme.
Diversion of funding from science to activities that are unrelated to science is a problem in several other countries. For example, Efimov et al. (2024) discuss how federal funding agencies in the USA are revising the criteria by which they distribute taxpayer money intended for scientific research. They report that science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine funding agencies now require applicants to provide plans to advance diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within their proposals and to dedicate part of any ensuing research budget to implementation of DEI. This retrogressive policy step is leading to a loss of science activity and a focus away from excellence.
Efimov and colleagues believe that such mandates undermine the academic freedom of researchers and the unbiased generation of knowledge needed for a well-functioning democracy. We wholeheartedly agree. Efimov et al. state:
“Maintaining excellence in science is fundamental to the continuation of the U.S. as a global economic leader. Science provides a basis for solving important global challenges such as security, energy, climate, and health. Diverting funding from science into activities unrelated to the production of knowledge undermines science’s ability to serve humankind. When funding agencies politicize science by using their power to further a particular ideological agenda, they contribute to public mistrust in science. Hijacking science funding to promote DEI is thus a threat to our society.”
In concurrence with Efimov and colleagues, we remain concerned that in New Zealand science continues to be infused inappropriately with alternative knowledge generated through non-scientific methods and mythology, thus leading to student and public confusion, and even to the incorporation of non-scientific notions (e.g. mysticism and spiritual beliefs) within science. International students are already concerned about not learning the basics in science any more when studying in New Zealand.
A Recent Example
As an example of what concerns us, we refer to an article from GeoNet, an organization that provides geological hazard information for New Zealand (GeoNet, 2024), which states:
“According to Ngāi Tahu creation stories, earthquakes are caused by Rūaumoko, the son of Ranginui (the Sky Father) and his wife Papatūanuku (the Earth Mother). Māori have experienced rū whenua, which means ‘the shaking of the land’ for centuries.”
Articulation and teaching of traditional lore clearly adds value and richness to the study of history, languages and the social sciences. By contrast, it has deleterious consequences when imposed on the study of the natural sciences. When it is conflated with science, it only serves to diminish the credibility of New Zealand’s science scholarship and our research system. Professor Jerry Coyne (University of Chicago) has responded to this Geonet article, noting that:
“Dragging in Māori religion not only doesn’t add anything to the prediction of earthquakes but is likely to confuse students who think that religious mythology is inherent in this prediction. What on earth can it mean to say that “Science tells us that Rūaumoko rumbles the Alpine Fault about every 300 years. . . “? That is simply a flat-out lie. The pressures on the tectonic plates makes them slip roughly once every 300 years. It’s not due to the actions of a god who decides to rumble the earth about every 300 years...” (Coyne, 2024).
We agree fully with Professor Coyne. Further, we believe that many initiatives introduced by the last Labour Government are unhelpful and contrary, to say the least. Examples of this were:
- The creation of a bicultural public service when New Zealand is a truly multicultural nation,
- Writing a national curriculum that was oriented very heavily towards one ethnic and cultural group and saturated with traditional knowledge, within every learning area, and that is protected from normal methods of scientific testing.
- Funding policies that favor one or other ethnicity, and “weaving” of traditional knowledge into modern science.
Meeting the Needs of an Advanced Nation
While traditional knowledges are valuable and should be preserved, we urge the Coalition Government to reconfigure both secondary education and university programmes along lines expected of an advanced 21st century nation. There is an urgent need for authoritative and determined interventions by Government to require CRIs, universities, the Ministry of Education, learned societies and MBIE to review and remove myth, legend and other pseudo-science aspects of traditional knowledge from their programmes, policies and practices. We reiterate the critical importance of the Science System Advisory Group addressing this issue in their recommendations to Government and returning into a merit-based system (Abbot, 2023).
Yours sincerely,
David Lillis, John Raine, Peter Schwerdtfeger, Rex Ahdar and Cathy Downes
25th July 2024
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Dr David Lillis trained in physics and mathematics and took a PhD at Curtin University in Perth, working as a teacher, researcher, statistician and lecturer for most of his career. He has published many articles and scientific papers, as well as a book on graphing and statistics.
Emeritus Professor John Raine obtained his PhD in Engineering at the University of Canterbury, and worked in industry in the UK before returning to academia. He has a had a long-term involvement in New Zealand’s innovation system. He held Pro Vice Chancellor or Deputy Vice Chancellor roles at three New Zealand universities.
Distinguished Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger holds a Chair in Theoretical Chemistry and Physics at Massey University and is Head of the Institute for Advanced Study. His research is concerned with fundamental aspects of science.
Emeritus Professor Rex Ahdar is a retired professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Otago, where he taught from 1985 to 2022. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the School of Law, the University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney. His PhD was on the Christian worldview, and he is the author and editor of books on religious freedom, law and religion, and competition law.
Dr Cathy Downes joined Victoria University of Wellington’s Centre for Strategic Studies in 2018 and retired from full time teaching in 2024. She worked formerly for 18 years as a Professor of Information Strategy and Policy at the U.S. National Defense University. Prior to that she held research fellowships at Harvard, Melbourne and Australian National Universities.
References
Abbot D. et al. In Defense of Merit in Science. Journal of Controversial Ideas 3, 1.
https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/3/1/236
Rex Ahdar, Brian Boyd, Ananish Chaudhuri, Kendall D. Clements, Garth Cooper, Douglas Elliffe, Brian Gill, Russell D. Gray, Natasha Hamilton-Hart, David Lillis, Michael Matthews, John Raine, Elizabeth Rata and Peter Schwerdtfeger. World science and Indigenous knowledge. Science. 12 July 2024, Vol 385, Issue 6705, pp 151 - 152.
Corballis, M., Rata, E. & Nola, R. (2019). The Defence of Science and the Status of Māori Knowledge. History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Newsletter, November, pp.13-19.
https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/novoped2019.pdf
Coyne, J. (2024). The New Zealand government unites indigenous knowledge with “western science” by claiming that gods cause earthquakes
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/07/24/the-new-zealand-government-argues-that-indigenous-knowledge-improves-western-science-in-this-case-by-saying-that-local-gods-create-earthquakes/
Dawkins, R. (2021). Myths do not belong in science classes: Letter to the Royal Society of New Zealand. Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, December 4, 2021.
https://richarddawkins.net/2021/12/myths-do-not-belong-in-science-classes-letter-to-the-royal-society-ofnew-zealand/
Efimov, I. R., Flier, J. S., George, R. P., Krylov, A. I., Maroja, L. A., Schaletzky, J., Tanzman, J., and Thompson, A. (2024). Politicizing science funding undermines public trust in science, academic freedom, and the unbiased generation of knowledge. Frontiers in Research metrics and Analytics. 23 July, 2024.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/research-metrics-and-analytics/articles/10.3389/frma.2024.1418065/full
GeoNet (2024). Weaving Mātauranga Māori and western science to strengthen our understanding of the Alpine Fault
https://www.geonet.org.nz/news/7jQ9BUiWfkBi59jzpiCl6f
Matthews, M. R. (2022). Indigenous Science and the Science Curriculum: The New Zealand Debate. History, Philosophy and Science Teaching Newsletter, March, pp. 1 - 17.
https://www.hpsst.com/uploads/6/2/9/3/62931075/2022marchoped.pdf
Matzke, N. (2024). Vitalism in New Zealand science education. Science. 12 July 2024, Vol 385, Issue 6705, pp 152.
Young, T. (2021). Why punish a scientist for defending science? The Spectator, 6 December 2021.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-punish-a-scientist-for-defending-science-/
16 comments:
It all comes down to taxpayer's money and funding.
If you think Prof Coyne's response was scathing you should read some of the international medical journals' views on Labour budgeting $100,000,000.00 for the Maori Health Authority's planned medical treatment based on the Moon. This was when our health system was in crisis, with critical shortages of real medical staff.
As one journal put it, if you were going to spend a hundred million dollars on a particular treatment you should at least expect it to work.
Nice. Kick the caveman waffle into touch.
An excellent letter that summarises the damaging effects of identity politics being imposed on STEM in New Zealand. It seems to be only getting more pervasive in universities at the present time. Sadly, it is unlikely that the letter writers will received any support from the Royal Society of New Zealand, in fact it is more likely RSNZ would disapprove.
LFC
“. . . an urgent need for authoritative and determined interventions. . . “
Good luck with that.
"The creation of a bicultural public service when New Zealand "
This has been going on for many years.
Back in the 1980's when I was working in the Wellington Regional Office of the (then) Dept of Health, we had a directive from Head Office that we were to celebrate becoming a bi-cultural nation and our workplace was thus a bi-cultural workplace. i.e. Maori and Pakeha. Many of us wondered how the Indian, Chinese, Portuguese, Malayan, Samoan, and native African staff members in our office would fit into this "bi-cultural" model.
Excellent work team. Keep it up, and to the forefront of peoples minds. If only our newsrags would publish this letter.
I hope the govt is listening.
This nonsense comes from the woke DEI agenda prescription that evidence-based science is white, privileged, elitist, exclusionary, and oppressive.
“Other ways of knowing [sic]” are equally valid and in the interests of diversity, equity, and inclusion need to be incorporated into the science curriculum to redress and remove “white privilege” in the dissemination of knowledge.
This has everything to do with woke identity politics, and nothing whatsoever to do with science.
This gobshite belongs in a social anthropology department, not anywhere near a knowledge-based science curriculum.
Congrats to the open letter’s signatories for having the grapefruits to swim against the tide in what is a particularly nasty intellectual sewer.
Sadly the newsrags do not have the requisite level of intelligence to understand and besides the $55m bribe holds back anyone who might dare to publish. As for the govt, some may listen but are too busy fighting off the alligators to recall that the object was to drain the swamp.
It puzzles me as to the reason that so many supposedly intelligent people are so obsessed with trying to undermine NZ education and particularly science with this transparently nonsense ( as seen by the rest of the world) of matauranga.
How is this period in NZ history going to be regarded by future generations?
I'm certain that they will see it in the same way that we regard other histotical cults that foisted their ideologies onto naive uneducated populations.
Enough said, stop this thickening edge of the wedge splitting us apart.
Surely, all of us want our workplaces, secondary schools, tertiary institutions (including universities) to be fair and welcoming to everyone, especially minorities. However, in New Zealand we are up against a mindset that is potentially very destructive to our society.
For example, Azarmandi and Tolbert (reference below) write:
. . . decolonising practices “are not all about theory or all about action, but they are all about praxis”, we’d like to offer insights into how we, as tauiwi (non-Indigenous) scholars, can work to unsettle the settler colonial university. We agree with Max Liboiron, who recently wrote that decolonisation is “a very promiscuous term. I’ve stopped using it because it’s been so heavily co-opted.” Instead, these insights focus on anticolonial and feminist praxis.
AND
As non-Indigenous scholars, we can engage in anticolonial and feminist practices that subvert the settler colonial university, but we cannot promise “decolonisation”, especially in a country such as New Zealand, where the effects of colonisation are ongoing and where, in the words of Indigenous climate activist India Logan-Riley, “land back, oceans back” is yet to be realised. Unless the university is fully engaged in land back, oceans back, decolonisation will be used by the settler colonial university to justify settler occupation of stolen land, water and knowledge.
Yes - in New Zealand we do have racism, but clearly it works in both directions and, clearly, we have mindless stupidity on all sides too. Who gave Azarmandi and Tolbert the mandate to unsettle the "settler colonial university", who will carry out the "unsettling" and what will our "unsettled" universities look like in the next decades?
What kind of curricula will our "unsettled" physics, mathematics, biology and chemistry departments deliver and who will staff them? What will our law, commerce, language, social science, medicine and education departments look like?
David Lillis
REFERENCE
Can we really decolonise the university?
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/can-we-really-decolonise-university?utm_source=mkg&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=showcase&spMailingID=29483826&spUserID=MTQzNDc1MjA0OTQyMgS2&spJobID=2511635949&spReportId=MjUxMTYzNTk0OQS2
A laudable effort. Let us hope the Minister has ears to listen.
If I lived somewhere in S.E. Asia and was thinking of sending one or more of my children abroad for part of their education, at a considerable cost, this would cross N.Z. off my list instantly. No wonder our Universities are struggling.
All educational metrics are on the decline, except one, truancy.
Science is nothing if it isn't about truth. We now live in an ideological world where there is no truth anymore just relativism and Marxist ideas of DEI.
We need to abandon Progressivism ,on which this nonsense is founded. Traditional education was not just more effective in its teaching methods but valued ideas like work ethic, truth and other traditional values.Not examining the ideologies behind all this foolishness is to not determine the root cause. Western Science uniquely began in Christian Europe and does not incorporate concepts like superstition,legends or myths but does believe the predictive laws of nature which govern the natural world an be determined by man for his benefit and edification.
All cultures have used observation and trial and error experiments for improvement but that is technology not true science.
"However, if we are serious about maintaining our international education and science research reputation, we must maintain a clear separation between"... actual science that can't prove CO2 causes global warming, or the atmosphere warms the oceans not the other way around, and the fanciful dreams of scientists who will spout any rubbish to get on the giant cashflow from the IPCC.
I look forward to NZ dismantling this UN rubbish with some serious science!
If one cannot count beyond ten with any expectation that one's audience will comprehend, any prediction of an event 300 years into the future is vacuous nonsense
At the lookout parking space above the Rakaia Gorge bridge are some information signs telling visitors that what you see is the result of Maori folklore and legends. Never mind that actual evidence tells us that an 80km glacier advanced thru here 140,000 years ago and were repeated until 10,000yrs ago. Evidence of an old glacial lake can be seen by taking the walkway near the bridge. No signs about those facts. Local Councils prefer the myth and legend options!!
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