Attached is an interesting video of a speech by Professor Peter Ridd.
Professor Ridd speaks out about “the supposed demise of the Great Barrier Reef”, and how science doesn’t support the alarmist conclusions. He mentions that various industries and businesses of Queensland — sugar, cattle, mining, port dredging, and tourism — have been negatively affected by restrictions placed upon them, due to the false science produced regarding the Reef (5.07). He also says that some people are becoming depressed by the supposed demise of the Great Barrier Reef. (0.12-5.36 min.)
Ridd also talks about the “replication crisis”, where scientists “trying to repeat science that’s already been done, we find it’s wrong half the time” (5.59-6.05), i.e. the original results can’t be replicated. He cites an article which estimates that about 85% of scientific resources are being wasted on “bad science” (7.01-7.25). So, scientists can often produce incorrect results. (5.39-7.33)
He also refers to his sacking from James Cook University, which — after he publicly gave his opinion on how climate change doesn’t affect the Great Barrier Reef — made allegations of misconduct against him for saying that results of peer-reviewed science couldn’t be trusted (as per the 50% wrong results regarding the replication crisis), and they then sifted through all of his work emails looking for something to hang him with. They also demanded that the allegations, and the university’s actions against him, be kept secret — which he viewed as being against his fundamental rights. (7.34-11.36)
The university administration discovered an email in which Professor Ridd referred to James Cook University as acting in an Orwellian manner, and they then complained about him calling them “Orwellian” — the mind boggles at these Leftist commissars spying on his emails, in a manner befitting that of Orwell’s “1984” dystopia, and then objecting to him (accurately) calling them “Orwellian”! (9.50-10.10)
When he was due to give a talk at the Sydney Institute, and at the Institute of Public Affairs, the James Cook University administrators demanded that they be allowed to vet his PowerPoint presentations, following which they asked him to remove some sections and modify others. When he finally gave his scheduled speech, Professor Ridd found that, following his lecture, in some parts of the “question and answer” section of the event, he found that “I actually couldn’t answer the questions, because of the restrictions that had been placed on me”. (11.37-12.00)
Ridd decided to fight for his right to speak out for his rights. The University administrators decided to go into full-potato mode, and persecute Ridd. In the end, Ridd got the sack. He says that it was vitally important for him to ignore the university’s secrecy demands, as without publicising the issue and raising money on GoFundMe, he would’ve been unable to hire lawyers to fight his legal battles.
Ridd says that “it’s been pretty obvious, for the last couple of decades, that academic freedom has been dead” (18.10). It is also interesting to note that Ridd estimates that “about 80% of the academics, at least, would be on the Cultural Left” (18.36).
This video was made before Ridd’s court case. As it turned out, the court ruled in his favour — although whether or not the university tries to appeal the case is yet to be seen.
Some of the comments posted regarding the YouTube video are worth noting:
* “He was fired for challenging the university’s main research funding stream. They’re in it for the cash and real science doesn’t fit the agenda for getting it.”
* “His life, career destroyed by a supposed institute of freedom of thought and expression.I hope its costs them dearly.”
* “Incredibly, the University has not understood the whole concept of intellectual freedom. In the search for truth, it is an unfortunate consequence that some people may feel denigrated, offended, hurt or upset. It may not always be possible to act collegiately when diametrically opposed views clash in the search for truth.”
* “You can’t have a legitimate stance on climate change until dissenters or challenges to the science are addressed openly and their counter-findings compared and investigated. Frankly, what happened here was NOT about science or his accuracy on his findings. It was about him deciding not to fall in line.” “Otherwise science is turned into dogma.”
*“The fact that JCU and most of our educational institutions have been taken over by the leftist morons that find emotional rhetoric on climate change more important than true scientific fact does not alter the fact that they are wrong and their attempts to silence this man were illegal”
* “Established science shouldn’t be afraid of opposing opinion. I do not see universities fighting Flat Earthers, it’s a waste of effort. I do not understand what scares you so much that you are supporting literal intellectual inquisition instead of simple intellectual argument”
* “Sciencing is hard. Silencing is easy.”
* “Australians can’t get an education because our universities are money whores. Prostitutes! How is educating the rest of the world and not our own, even sustainable?”
* “We are being led down a path from which there can be no recovery. This agenda (if it is adopted on a global scale), will nullify capitalism and bring the common man to his knees. The death toll could easily be in the 3 to 4 billion range.”
* “I used to be depressed about the great barrier reef, but now I’m depressed about universities”
* “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” [Mencken]
* “Freedom in society is under threat. When a leading scientific academic is pressured and fired for practicing his profession this should be a dire warning to everyone. … When did it become the job of universities and colleges to destroy the lives of the people they should be serving? Too much power has gone to the leftist movements of the politically correct and it is beginning to do serious harm to the best and brightest people.”
* “Universities were once the bastions of free thought and free speech. Now they all control thought …and you had better not wander from the “party line”.”
* “Wow… and I thought the Soviet Union was dead. Guess they just moved.”
* “Its not science, it’s a cult. A ludicrously funded cult.”
* “Many public universities have become leftist indoctrination centers. They are no longer organizations which support free inquiry and debate. They are unabashedly pro-authoritarian, the very opposite of their original mission.
* “Ridd’s personal experience of Australian Academia reads like the treatment of a well known Soviet dissident.”
* “Universities, just as with our schools, are little more than Marxist indoctrination camps”
* “We need to open new universities that promote true science and not political agendas!”
* “Universities will no longer be trusted if there is no freedom to question or defend any subject, especially when it is essential that science and debate take place to come to a valid conclusion.”
* “This is supposed to be higher learning and it really is just indoctrination.”
* “Universities are infested with Cultural Marxists. Defund all the humanities departments and kick all the Marxists out.”
* “The more they try to silence the opposition the more credence they give it. Bad ideas cannot stand up to debate.”
* “We need more men and women willing to seek science, not indoctrination”
* “I may not agree with him, but absolutely he should be allowed to speak and present data. it does no one any favors to suppress what may be seen as “the other side”; accepting his data may vet greater accuracy for all sides.”
* “Climate change isn’t a science anymore, it’s a religion to the left. A Cult, and anyone who speaks heresy of such will be punished”
The case of Professor Peter Ridd is just another example of the dark road that the Cultural Leftists are forcing us to go down. Cultural Marxists are anti-Western and authoritarian in nature, and must be fought by anyone who believes in freedom of speech.
Peter Ridd deserves some hearty congratulations on his stand against the Orwellian Cultural Marxists of the Establishment.
Sacked for speaking out about Climate Change – Professor Peter Ridd
Further reading:
Sacked for speaking out about Climate Change – Professor Peter Ridd, LibertyWorks (YouTube channel), 21 December 2018
Ridd v James Cook University [2019] FCCA 997 (16 April 2019) (Federal Circuit Court of Australia), Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), 16 April 2019
Chloe Chomicki, James Cook University ordered to pay $1.2m compensation to wrongly sacked professor, ABC News, 6 September 2019
Alex Epstein, ‘97% Of Climate Scientists Agree’ Is 100% Wrong, Forbes, 6 January 2015
97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists’ Papers, according to the scientists that published them, 21 May 2013
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