Back when I was doing my degree, I studied a subject called “Basic Scientific Practise”. It was, at the time, a one-of-its-kind subject although many other universities around the world were taking an interest in it. Why on earth would a university science course have to offer a course in basic scientific practise?
Because it was painfully obvious that a great many science grads were badly ignorant about the basic tenets of science.
I rather suspect that Tara McAllister would benefit from the course.
In Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, the “engineer” of the Nellie is wholly ignorant of engineering and science. A tribal African, he is nonetheless able to keep the ship’s boiler running because he understands that “should the water in that transparent thing disappear, the evil spirit inside the boiler would get angry through the greatness of his thirst, and take a terrible vengeance. So he sweated and fired up and watched the glass fearfully”.
Too many people claiming to be scientists are like the engineer of the Nellie: they’re capable enough lab techs but their world-view is not science — it’s superstition and magic. Just as the engineer of the Nellie had a protective charm wrapped around his wrist, these credentialled witch-doctors have their own fetishes whom they invoke at every turn: the all-power deities “Racism” and “colonisation”.
What they don’t have, clearly, is a genuinely scientific worldview. And both Richard Dawkins and Elon Musk — who very much do — are sick of their superstitious bullshit.
Dawkins – an evolutionary biologist and writer and author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion – wrote a column for UK magazine the Spectator calling the teaching of matauranga in science classes “ludicrous”.
The Oxford University fellow and former professor said the policy was “ludicrous” and changes to the curriculum were “adolescent virtue-signalling”.
He referenced a letter from seven University of Auckland professors criticising the policy – a letter which has since been rubbished by other scientists.
And there’s the problem, right there. Scientists don’t conduct witch-hunts such as were inflicted on the Listener Seven: religious fanatics and superstitious fanatics do. The Listener Seven affair is quite simply the most shameful episode in science since Lysenkoism, and the anti-science nutjobs who perpetrated it are too violently ignorant to even see it. All they’ve done is screech “She turned me into a newt! Burn her!”
“It is boring, embarrassing, inaccurate and full of racist tropes,” [Dr Tara McAllister] told the Herald.
“It is clear Richard Dawkins has no expertise on matauranga.”
NZ Herald
No doubt he has no expertise in mediaeval demonology, either. That wouldn’t make him wrong if he called it superstitious nonsense.
But, like the superstitious zealot she is, McAllister sweats and fires up her ooga-booga fetishes, invoking the god “Racism” repeatedly.
Lest we nurse any doubt that McAllister doesn’t really understand science, consider her nonsensical arguments about “Western science”.
Let’s make it clear enough that even an ignorant loon might dimly grasp it: there is no such thing as “Western science”.
An absolutely vital, fundamental principle of science is Universalism: scientific claims are subjected to the same impersonal criteria irrespective of nationality, culture, gender, or race of the scientist. The outcome of an experiment is the same, whether conducted by a Jewish-American male, a lesbian feminist Armenian, or an Animist tribal African. A scientific claim should be subject to identical scrutiny, whether made by a transgender French or a heterosexual Chinese.
If the supposed truth of a claim changes according to race, sex or culture, then it’s not a scientific claim. Full stop.
So, on that criteria, there is no “Western science” or “indigenous science”, there is just science.
Anyone who tries to tell that there are “other ways of knowing” is not talking as a scientist. Anyone who tries to tell you that there are “other types of science” is a charlatan. Anyone who tries to silence debate is not a scientist, but a cult leader.
