Professor Jerry Coyne: A Māori defends indigenous “ways of knowing” against my critique

The other day I put up a post about an indigenous “science initiative” in New Zealand with a wonky aim: to cure the country’s iconic kauri trees of a fungal blight by, yes, playing whale songs to sick trees and rubbing them with whale oil and pulverized whale bones. This endeavor, I asserted, had no empirical basis to justify its funding—by New Zealand taxpayers, of course.

Indeed, the project came from a Māori legend that whales once roamed the land and were BFFs with kauri trees, but then got separated. The project was based on the supposition that bringing tree and whale back together again could not only revive their erstwhile friendship but also save the sick trees. (I can guarantee you here that they’re not talking about evolution of the trees and whales from a common ancestor, nor about terrestrial ancestors of whales.)

A quote from the initiative: