Barrie Davis: Science and Universities

The ironic decision to cancel a meeting to discuss free speech at Te Herenga Waka University was because some students were ‘freaked out’ that there were some rightist speakers. That was not an isolated case but rather an example of mass hysteria on the Left and mass decadence on the Right that has taken hold in the West.

In recent times various people have been stopped from speaking in New Zealand because they hold rightist views: In 2018 Don Brash was banned from talking about Treaty issues at Massey University by Vice-Chancellor Jan Thomas after a complaint by some students. Also in 2018 commentators Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux were stopped from coming to New Zealand to speak by Auckland Mayor Phil Goff. In 2023 Kelly-Jay Keen-Minshull abandoned her tour of New Zealand without speaking after being booed, heckled and doused with tomato juice at Auckland.

David Lillis: Debating Education on TV

Going Live

Responding to an invitation, on Tuesday 27 February I joined a brief early-morning TV3 debate with Sir Ian Taylor on the place of matauranga Māori in New Zealand’s curriculum. You can hear the debate using the link given at the end of this article.

I was very reluctant and in going live I had to take the risk of public criticism, but decided to take the chance. 

Dr. David Lillis and Professor Peter Schwerdtfeger: Defending Science – Again!

More on the Listener Letter

We refer to an article by Georgina Stewart, published in the Blog of the American Psychological Association (APA) on 21 August 2023 (Stewart, 2023a). Professor Stewart’s article concerns a debate in New Zealand on the relationship between traditional Māori knowledge and science. This debate has been ongoing for several decades but re-ignited by the well-known Letter to the Listener, signed by seven professors at Auckland University (Clements et al., 2021). Subsequently, the APA has not published a response from us, but nevertheless we believe it important to reply to particular points that were made in her article.

David Lillis, John Raine and Peter Schwerdtfeger: Funding of Research in New Zealand

Mixing Traditional Knowledge and Science

The embedding of the Treaty of Waitangi, and an increased focus on Māori research and Māori researchers in our innovation system, follow similar trends in education and public health. According increased status to Māori culture and Māori researchers, also to Pacific research, in research funding decision-making may enhance the profile of Māori and Pacific in research and create needed role models for young Māori and Pacific people. However, negative consequences for our research sector are sure to follow.

We assert that merit­-based science is both effective and fair, and that replacing merit with social engineering such as critical race theory and ideological control will lead to damage in the foreseeable future (see also Abbot et al, 2023). We hold deep concerns about the proliferation of identity-­based ideology that seeks to replace core liberal principles, essential for scientific and technological advances, with principles derived from postmodernism and Critical Social Justice. Such principles claim routinely that world science is racist, patriarchal, colonial and a tool of oppression.

John Raine: The Laws of Science Haven’t Changed

Those of us who were at secondary school in the 1960’s were a fortunate generation. Back then, English grammar was still taught, and we had emerged from primary school able to spell and do mental arithmetic. Many of us were taught a foreign language that became useful in our later lives.

Those in science streams beyond Year 9 received a solid grounding in basic sciences. Some even completed Year 13 strongly enough grounded in the sciences to enter Year 2 at university.

David Lillis: Comments on the Refreshed Curriculum for Science, Technology and The Arts

Overview

The taxpaying public of New Zealand has the right to be kept aware of proposed changes to our national primary and secondary education curriculum. At this stage in its development the ‘refreshed curriculum’ is very light indeed on prescription and subject matter detail, thus requiring much work on the part of school administrators to develop their own local curricula and potentially giving rise to significant differences in content and delivery across schools and to wide variation in quality.

Further, it embeds traditional knowledge (Matauranga Māori) throughout the curriculum and across all learning areas (English, the Arts, Health and Physical Education, Learning Languages, Mathematics and Statistics, Science, Social Sciences and Technology), most probably requiring students of all ethnicities and backgrounds to spend significant class time on acquiring Matauranga Māori as truth and mastering te reo. In the opinion of many educators (and in my opinion too) both te reo and Matauranga Māori should be treasured, preserved and taught in schools, but the changes are very excessive and fail to recognise the multicultural nature of New Zealand society today.

David Lillis: Fighting for Science

Defending Merit in Science

Imbuing science with ideology harms the scientific enterprise and leads to a loss of public trust. If we continue to undermine merit, our universities will become institutions of mediocrity rather than places of creativity and accomplishment, leading to the loss of the competitive edge in technology. Thus, we need to restore our commitment to practices grounded in epistemic humility and the meritocratic, liberal tradition (Abbot et al., 2023).

In Defense of Merit in Science (Abbot et al., 2023) is now in the public domain. This critical paper was authored by a group of very eminent scientists and thinkers, including Professor Anna Krylov, who initiated the project, and two Nobel prizewinners – Arieh Warshel and Dan Shechtman. Other well-known contributors include Glenn Loury and Jerry Coyne. The list of authors also includes Distinguished Professor Peter Schwerdfeger, an eminent theoretical chemist at Massey University.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Navigating by the stars isn’t science

Plotting  celestial bodies and using them to find one’s way about is no more ‘science’ than is using a road map – and can lead to constructs that are far from ‘scientific’

A great deal has been made by various commentators of the forebears of the Maori having navigated by the stars and that this is an instance of science. Not so.

The word ‘science’ is a bit of a problem. Until the late 19th century, the term as widely used by the educated classes referred to any systematic body of knowledge. It still does in French, hence we see names of university departments containing monikers such as ‘sciences historiques’ which strike someone steeped in modern English as oxymoronic.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: The NZ science curriculum welcomes back the ‘vital force’

The Vital Force is a paranormal concept that was abandoned by science in the 19^th century. It remains prominent in various systems of metaphysics which is where it belongs, not in the science lab!

Vitalism – The philosophical doctrine that the phenomena of life cannot be explained in purely mechanical terms because there is something immaterial which distinguishes living from inanimate matter. - Collins online dictionary

Vitalism has become so disreputable a belief in the last fifty years that no biologist alive today would want to be classified as a vitalist. – Ernst Mayr 1988

It’s official – the doctrine of vitalism, the belief that there is a paranormal force present in living things that makes them living, is back in science. At least that is what the NCEA Chem & Bio Glossary appears to be asserting in relation to the Maori concept of mauri which it defines as, “The vital essence, life force of everything”.

Bob Brockie: The Science v. Matauranga rumpus still smoulders

There has been considerable debate over the last few years on how mātauranga Māori should be regarded in relation to world knowledge and especially science. The Science/Matauranga rumpus still smoulders.

Summarising: In a Listener letter, seven Auckland professors wrote that Maori knowledge (matauranga) ‘falls far short of what we define as science’. The professors were alarmed that the government wants schools to give the same weight to matauranga as to science. Matauranga is a complex set of ideas — a mix of pre-European mythology, traditional and current, knowledge, and ritual. It is virtually a Maori religion.

Graeme Reeves: Ella Henry responds to Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins

Associate professor Ella Henry’s response to Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins, one the world’s leading public intellectuals, to the teaching of Maori mythology as science in New Zealand.

Dawkin’s view is that if Maori mythology is true science then it should be taught in every country on the grounds that science is global whereas mythologies are culturally specific and should be taught in mythology classes separately where those mythologies have agency but not in science classes.

Henry’s response published by Newshub was, “let’s remember that 3000 years before Dawkins’ ancestors dipped their toes in the North Atlantic, mine were traversing the biggest ocean on the planet using nothing more than Polynesian science.”

3000 years ago Henry’s other ancestors were experiencing the early stages of the Bronze Age. Bronze is made from an amalgamation of tin and copper. The process is scientific and represented a great advancement in western civilisation.

Maori by contrast remained in the Stone Age until they came into contact with Europeans with their metal implements and weapons.

Graham Adams: The intimidation of the Fellows

Seventy notable academics have sent a motion of no-confidence to the Royal Society over its handling of the professors’ letter to the Listener — but some of their colleagues say they are too fearful to sign it. Graham Adams reports.

If anyone ever believed universities are institutions where academics can speak their minds freely and openly, the stoush sparked by the letter that seven University of Auckland professors sent to the Listener last July should have thoroughly disabused them of that notion.

What should have been an uncontroversial statement that mātauranga Māori is “not science” and therefore should not be included in the NCEA science syllabus led to a wave of condemnation and vilification of the professors. And this despite the fact they made it clear that indigenous knowledge was valuable both “for the preservation and perpetuation of culture and local practices” and in “key roles in management and policy”. What’s more, prominent Māori scholars such as Professor Sir Mason Durie had already acknowledged that science and indigenous knowledge are incommensurable.