From BreakingViews archives: Brian Gill - Who promotes science thinking when everyone defers to culture?

With New Zealand science agencies shy to push the general power and wonder of science, and instead applauding ethnic world views, the science view-point flounders.

The seven University of Auckland academics whose letter to the Listener in July 2021 provoked what a former newspaper editor called "the full, vindictive fury of the woke academic left", weren't just concerned that a government educational working group proposed making science and Maori knowledge of the natural world equivalent in the school science curriculum. They also worried generally about "disturbing misunderstandings of science emerging at all levels of education and in science funding".

Brian Gill: New Zealand museums need neutral organisational viewpoints and stronger science

Publicly-owned museums enjoy public support—tax-payer (or rate-payer) funding and high visitation—only while they are trusted and respected. To preserve trust, museums must be politically neutral. Institutions such as museums and universities can maintain a degree of political neutrality by being a forum for ideas and discussion, rather than a protagonist in debates.

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.

Brian Gill: Who promotes science thinking when everyone defers to culture?

With New Zealand science agencies shy to push the general power and wonder of science, and instead applauding ethnic world views, the science view-point flounders.

 The seven University of Auckland academics whose letter to the Listener in July 2021 provoked what a former newspaper editor called "the full, vindictive fury of the woke academic left", weren't just concerned that a government educational working group proposed making science and Maori knowledge of the natural world equivalent in the school science curriculum.  They also worried generally about "disturbing misunderstandings of science emerging at all levels of education and in science funding".