When free speech equals career suicide
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 "Academic freedom - the responsibility to speak your mind and challenge conventional wisdom - defines the university and stands as a model for open debate in wider society," argues Professor Dennis Hayes.
Founder of Academics For Academic Freedom (AFAF), Dennis says:
"In today’s political climate it is harder than ever for academics to defend open debate. Restrictive legislation, and the bureaucratic rules and regulations of government quangos and of universities themselves, have undermined academic freedom.
bq. "Many academics are fearful of upsetting managers and politicians by expressing controversial opinions. Afraid to challenge mainstream thought, many pursue self-censorship. AFAF is a campaign for all lecturers, academic-related staff, students and researchers who want to make a public statement in favour of unimpeded enquiry and expression."
This week AFAF is asking academics and students in universities and colleges everywhere to organise events that focus on issues of academic freedom and free speech. Writing on The Free Society website today, Dennis argues that:
When Academics For Academic Freedom declared the birth date of John Stuart Mill (May 20), author of On Liberty, as International Academic Freedom Day, our focus was not on how relatively comfortable academics in liberal Western could support those suffering persecution abroad, but to raise the issue of academic freedom everywhere. There are almost daily attacks on academic freedom in even the most liberal countries and they are just as important, even more important, for Western academics to take up. If you don’t defend academic freedom in your own backyard you can’t consistently defend it elsewhere.
AFAF has learned that even raising the question of academic freedom in the abstract was not easy in liberal democracies and very dangerous in many countries. Defending academic freedom in the West may affect your career. In illiberal countries career suicide may be the least consequence of speaking out.
Full article HERE.
Details of International Academic Freedom Day HERE.
PS. Ever wondered why so few scientists or academics challenge the "evidence" on issues such as passive smoking? Two words: "career suicide".
Reader Comments (13)
Curiously how times have not changed at all.
Gallileo.
Darwin.
The oppresor then was the church.
The new church ?
Big government.
Constriction of free speech is madness.
Madder still are the constrictors themselves.
Simply because it will eventually harm them as well.
Or will it ?
"Follow the money" ,how many times do I read that line ,well I suppose it is because there is such a ring of truth to it.
The greatest of good fortune to Professor Hayes.
It's truly appalling that in THIS - of all countries - we should even need to be discussing the importance of the Freedom of Ideas.
Richly ironic, too.
Not so long ago, the Royal Society effectively censored a paper on 'race' on the grounds (naturally) that it might 'offend' someone or other. And this in a self-styled 'democracy'. And we all know of its stance on 'Climate Change'.
If you can have a 'stance' with a spine made of jelly.
And yet in National Socialist Germany various scientists were frequently applauded for their papers on the gruesome experiments carried out in the death camps.
Both are good examples of what happens when we -or our elected representatives - yield our autonomy to a faceless, dictatorial bureaucracy.
Appalling as it may seem, however, it could even be argued - all that bogus Race Science apart - that the Nazis were displaying greater scientific integrity in THIS instance than the Royal Society now seems capable of.
You wanna save some money, Mr Cameron (and The Other One) ?
This would be a good place to start.
Our bloated, constipated, rapacious and all-too-frequently incompetent Administratocracy.
(And YOU, at least, won't have to worry about your 'career', will you ?)
PS:
There's an excellent - if disturbing - article on the Royal Society's departure from its original mission of True Scientific Vigour ('Nullius In Verba', and all that) on the ever-readable 'Spiked' website at:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3357/
Expressing scepticism about man-made climate change can often be very career-limiting too.
I am sure most of us are aware of Enstrom/Kabat report into passive smoking published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 2003 and demonstrated no correlation between SHS, lung cancer and heart disease.
After publication the American Cancer Society (ACS) mounted a systematic campaign to get Professor Enstrom removed from his post at University of Califoria, Los Angeles. The ACS smeared Enstrom in the BMJ for taking tobacco money and using unsound data.
The problem was that the data used was from the ACS themselves and funding from 1960 to 1999 was largely money extracted by anti tobacco organisations from tobacco companies. The study finished in 1998 and had come up with the "wrong results." It was only indirectly funded by tobacco companies from 1999 to 2003 for the publication costs, they were not allowed to see the results.
In the link below is Professor Enstrom's own website in the public domain where he documents the authoritarian tactics of of the ACS, Dr. John Seffrin their CEO is in particular a venal person.
http://www.scientificintegrityinstitute.org/
You may also like to read this article by Professor Carl V Phillips a Candian public health academic entitled "Warning: Anti-tobacco activism may be hazardous to epidemiologic science."
In it Professor Phillips says amongst other things: "These stories suggest a willingness of influential anti-tobacco activists, including academics, to hurt legitimate scientists and turn epidemiology into junk science in order to further their agendas. The willingness of epidemiologists to embrace such anti-scientific influences bodes ill for the field's reputation as a legitimate science."
"Enstrom cites the reign of terror over biology under Stalin as one example of politics trumping science. Though the Soviet case is rather extreme (we North Americans who dare question the scientific orthodoxy only have our careers threatened; not our lives, at least so far), it is not the most extreme. Many cultures were hobbled for centuries because of religious adherence to pseudoscience, and damage to people's health was one of the many results."
Read and weep.
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articlerender.cgi?accid=pmcA2173898&tool=pmcentrez
Read and weep indeed, Dave.
You'd have thought that the ACS - concerned as it claimed to be for the welfare of its fellow humans - would have felt heartened by the Enstrom/Kabat report, wouldn't you ?
One thing less to worry about in the noble fight against Cancer.
Yeah, right.................
One day, some Political Scientist should do some research into the cancerous effect upon our Body Politic of the Lobby Group.
Far from being an expression of our democracy, it has become a complete denial of it - whatever it says in the 'A' Level Politics textbooks.
Give me the Medellin Cartel any day: at least its members don't pretend to be acting on behalf of the Public Good.
Pablo Escobar never harmed me.
Wish I could say the same of Liam Donaldson and his meddlesome halo-wearing friends.
Something else to investigate in my Domesday Survey of the 21st century..................
"Expressing scepticism about man-made climate change can often be very career-limiting too."
Yes, Curmudgeon:
Just ask David Bellamy.
Luckily, expressing scepticism about (er) Climate Change Scepticism (aka Real Word Science) can be VERY career-enhancing.
Just ask George ("It says so in the latest IPPC Report") Monbiot.
The reason we have to endure all this crap is summed up beautifully in 'Tinker, Tailor....':
GEORGE SMILEY: "Ever bought a fake picture, Toby ?"
TOBY ESTERHASE: "Sold a couple once."
GEORGE SMILEY: "The more you pay for it, the less inclined you are to doubt it."
Hole in one !
The real problem is the rich and powerfull have put their shirts on this one.
We will now get it whether we like it or not.
Wanna know who.
Just look at the worlds rich list.
Most of them are on it.
The emporers new clothes syndrome .
Again ...................
Every time a house is burgled, or a car stolen, or an old lady mugged on the street, or a teenager stabbed to death, there is a very good chance that some of those crimes are drug related. There is also a very good chance that you Martin, or someone you know, has been the victim of one of these crimes during the last few years, so to say "Pablo Escobar never harmed me" is an understatement to say the least.
I realise that you were probably saying what you said "tongue in cheek", but when we, as ordinary people who like to smoke tobacco, which I might add, is not classed as a drug, or illegal in any way, are victimised in the way we are, I do not think we should be trivialising drugs, as supplied by Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel in any way.
Pablo Escobar has harmed you Martin. He has harmed the world and all our children.
Peter -
You're beginning to sound like a leader-writer for the 'Daily Mail', excoriating the latest piece by Christopher Morris.
'Drugs' are an emotive topic, of course, and I recognise that the Comombian drug barons (and their CIA partners) are Not Very Nice People.
But one of the reasons that these scum have been given the POWER to harm and corrupt society is that politicians - whether acting through stupidity or cupidity - have made their product illegal.
When something is a) desirable, b) in short supply, and c) criminalised, it always represents a money-making opportunity to the criminals.
Which in turn provides a great incentive to peddle it to the more vulnerable members of society to maintain demand.
Al Capone and his friends didn't come to power by marketing fake girdles for the overweight.
In other words, 'drugs' have been made a FAR greater problem in our society than they need ever to have become - not least because of the meddling incompetence of health-care professionals combined (ironically) with a woeful disregard for human psychology.
And I wouldn't mind betting that the current fashion for feeding psychotropic drugs to our children - to cure some recently-invented 'psychiatric disorder' (such as Not Paying Attention To Teacher 'Cos He's Boring) will in the long run do even greater harm to society than Senor Escobar's pals.
Yes, the drug cartels are evil and corrosive entities, and I detest them and their activities.
But, compared to the State.....................
The SAME State, incidentally, which denied the most basic healthcare items to Iraqi hospitals, destroying well over half a million children in the process.
On the ludicrous basis that aspirin and morphine (and Elastoplast, probably) might just be turned into Weapons of Terror against OUR dictatorships.
I repeat: Pablo Escobar has never harmed ME (directly) - any more than Saddam Hussein ever did.
But Liam Donaldson and his WHO cronies......
(Whose wages I help to pay, incidentally).
Make no mistake about it, Peter: I take the subject VERY seriously.
Very seriously indeed.
PS:
Since 'we' invaded Afghanistan, opium - and hence heroin - production has reportedly RISEN well over ten-fold. Now, why would THAT be, I wonder ?
I personally would be very cautious in legalising class A drugs. However heroin and crack cocaine users should get their drugs supplied by the state. Class A drug consumption is 6% or less of the population but is responsible for:
"…. the great majority of some types of crime, such as shoplifting and burglary” (inc 85% of shoplifting, 70-80% of burglaries, 54% of robberies).”
The UK would be a lot more peaceful and law abiding if we did.
http://www.tdpf.org.uk/Policy_General_Strategy_Unit_Drugs_Report_phase_1.htm
Sorry to hog all the posts here but as a postscript I have written to tens of epidemiologists geneticists and scientists some are world renoun. To be fair I usually get a reply.
There is indeed an orthodoxy among scientists about passive smoking. Also the troubling thing is that many just accept what others have told them without reasearching or crtiquing. One professor of public health was shocked that I had peer reviewed papers to back up my hypothesis.
One world renoun epidemiologist did not answer my question which was very specific. The most shameful was a geneticist whose research into the p53 gene backs up all of our assumptions that passive smoking does not cause lung cancer, sent me back some ASH propaganda.
Academics are cowered into submission but there are also some who believe it is noble to lie "for the greater good."
Dave -
Re:
"The UK would be a lot more peaceful and law abiding if we did."
Exactly.
And a LOT less corrupt.
But by baulking at choosing the Lesser Evil, we allow the Greater Evil to flourish.
I regard THAT as irresponsible, frankly.
As to your second post, and the 'troubling' fact about scientists' meek acceptance of the current orthodoxy, one of my favourite Climate Change Sceptics has pointed out what should be an Obvious Truth to most of us (but, apparently, is not): that most scientists are pretty mediocre.
As, indeed, are most Lawyers, Doctors, Teachers, Journalists, Politicians, and Traffic Wardens - 'most' everyone, in fact.
The Curse of the Bell Curve, you might say.
In fact, the Special Air Service seems just about the only body left that positively DIS-allows mediocrity (never mind reward it).
It IS a very small regiment, of course.
Whilst there are entire NATO Divisions of 'experts' to guide and direct us these days -from the moment we pop out of the uterus.
Therein, perhaps, lies a moral...............