Guest Work • Jul 26, 2017 •
Neera Bhatia, Deakin University The tragic case of Charlie Gard, the British infant whose parents have just ended their legal fight to send him to the US for experimental treatment, has captured global attention. The case is significant for a number of reasons, both in the huge amount of publicity it has attracted, its progression … Read More
Guest Work • Jun 03, 2017 •
By Bill Hare, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research In the short term, the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement will certainly have ripple effects globally. But rather than fatally undermine the Paris Agreement, it will likely cause other countries to reaffirm their firm commitment to the full implementation of the climate deal. We are already … Read More
Guest Work • May 15, 2017 •
By Rod Lamberts, Australian National University In 2016, conservative, pro-Brexit, British politician Michael Gove announced that people in England “…have had enough of experts with organisations from acronyms saying that they know what is best and getting it consistently wrong”. In the US, Donald Trump famously doesn’t believe any expert who doesn’t agree with … Read More
Guest Work • Apr 19, 2017 •
By Peter Ellerton, The University of Queensland Which is more important, a fact or an opinion on any given subject? It might be tempting to say the fact. But not so fast… Lately, we find ourselves lamenting the post-truth world, in which facts seem no more important than opinions, and sometimes less so. We also tend … Read More
Guest Work • Apr 04, 2017 •
By Andy Miah, University of Salford It’s not an easy time for scientists to talk to the wider public. The US president, Donald Trump, has called global warming “bullshit” and a “Chinese hoax”. In the UK, leave campaigner and MP Michael Gove famously declared that people “have had enough of experts”. But now UK MPs have published … Read More
Guest Work • Mar 28, 2017 •
From the NZ March for Science Organisers Since the Science March on DC was first announced in January, after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the President of the USA, scientists and people who care about science in New Zealand have been working together behind the scenes to make sure that when we march for science and knowledge, and … Read More
Guest Work • Mar 07, 2017 •
By Paul Ralph, University of Auckland On January 30 – three days after US President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries – an American scientist employed by NASA was detained at the US border until he relinquished his phone and PIN to border agents. Travellers are also reporting … Read More
Grant Jacobs • Jan 26, 2017 •
[A follow-up of sorts is given in the Footnotes.] Better people offer to do better, not remove or block what they can’t compete against. Yesterday the Trump administration gagged several scientific institutes from communicating with the public. Grants were frozen to the EPA. And more. Are these Republications so frightened that their ideas can’t stand up against evidence that they need … Read More
Ken Perrott • Jan 25, 2017 •
Maybe just a small lesson – but an important one. We should always look at context and not cherry-pick that which confirms our bias. In particular, we shouldn’t simply repeat social media claims without doing a bit of fact-checking for ourselves. It’s an important lesson at the moment because there is a lot of this going on in the social … Read More
Michael Reddell • Dec 14, 2016 •
Last week, The Treasury hosted a guest lecture featuring two visiting academics under the heading Brexit, Trump & Economics: Where did we go wrong. One of the visitors – Samuel Bowles, now a professor at the Santa Fe Insitute -had been around long enough that in his youth he had served as an economic adviser in Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, … Read More