https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/inside-the-bungled-bir...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41940687

Points: 39

# Comments: 12

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33851907

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

They may have been dragging their feet in the last few years but they are still Toyota. Not to be underestimated.

I will further note that understanding the royal society vs university distinction here is pretty important, but it seems that you've already made up your mind.

I won't be responding again here, thanks.

I was talking about the columnist from the Spectator, not the scientist.

> I mean really, what did the guy that was so bad that the university decided it needed to take disciplinary action?

The university didn't take action (apart from the email from the VC, the full content of which we don't have to hand). It was the Royal Society of New Zealand that set up the panel. Totally different. I think your question here is answered by the text I quoted in my earlier post:

"To respond as fearfully as these seven professors, from the top science university in the country, to a single sentence that suggests taking a critical look at the involvement of science in colonisation of Māori, does the public face of science no favours at all. This failure in terms of academic standards explains the strong criticism of the letter that was expressed by the Royal Society as well as many leading scientists and academics."

edit: >Is he being investigated for taking someone out of context? I see what you are getting at, but I think the issue is more that the letter publicly misrepresented something in a way that was in itself not scientific.

I'll have to think about it, but I'm leaning toward thinking the Spectator columnist, at least, is badly misrepresenting what has happened.

Beyond that I actually don't really have strong feelings about this yet because it's honestly the first I've heard of it, even though I live in NZ.

edit: the user above has made significant changes to their post since I replied initially; at first, the post above only contained a single link to the letter...

It appears that "...a proposal by a government working group that schools should give the same weight to Maori mythology as they do to science in the classroom" is a misrepresentation. The author of this article has taken up this issue because it appears to fit a political hobby horse of his.

One might read this article and conclude that The Woke Have Done It Again, they have Defied Science and Suggested that Mythology is Just As Important As Darwin.

However, one of the authors of the government working group material has also commented publicly about this and her take casts things in a slightly different light:

"The sentence quoted in the Listener letter as proof of the need to ‘defend’ science was from a section I largely wrote about the strand of the Pūtaiao curriculum that did not have a direct equivalent in the NZC Science learning area, on the history and philosophy of science. The sentence quoted was part of a description of the possible scope of studies of socioscientific issues, from a Māori perspective, by senior secondary students of Pūtaiao. To respond as fearfully as these seven professors, from the top science university in the country, to a single sentence that suggests taking a critical look at the involvement of science in colonisation of Māori, does the public face of science no favours at all. This failure in terms of academic standards explains the strong criticism of the letter that was expressed by the Royal Society as well as many leading scientists and academics (May, 2021)."[1]

Are those crazy (left-wing, out of touch, 'woke') government working groups really Denying Science?

Or did some scientists take something out of context and misunderstand it, then scream that they were being cancelled when other academics expressed disagreement with their ideas?

[1]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2021.1...

* (Edit: actually, I thought about it, and I decided that it does matter: I'm not really comfortable with our politics, which are quite different from UK/US politics, being used for grist in northern culture-war mills.)

So in your ideal world it is 100% personal responsibility and 0% corporate responsibility, right?

"Phillip Morris produces valuable goods, if you choose to take an action that leads to your body growing a tumour, it's your fault, you don't get to blame Phillip Morris."

Corporations like Coca-Cola have successfully pushed the negative externalities of their product into the world we all have to live in, while keeping the profits.

I think it should lie at least half with manufacturers who provide their product in plastic bottles that can costlessly be thrown away, into the sea, by consumers.

There is no penalty to the individual for doing so.

Gasoline used to have lead in it. Now it doesn't, because people realised it's bad for us and the world we live in.

When supermarkets used to give plastic bags away for free, it would be common to see them blowing around, floating down rivers in urban areas like jellyfish, etc. Now, in places where supermarkets have either been forced to charge for them (or eliminate them) etc, you rarely see plastic bags as a form of roaming trash.

Somebody took a 1% hit to their profits, maybe. But the world didn't end.

Only one country is home to the Coca-Cola Company, the world's largest producer of plastic waste.

1. A 30c-$1 increase in the price of Coke relative to its current baseline will not break the bank.

2. Tens/hundreds of millions of slowly degrading plastic bottles in the ocean certainly do have an environmental impact.

There are lots of things in what we call civilised society that act as gentle guidance mechanisms to encourage compliance toward some end that is desirable for everybody.

Without some incentive to transport single use items to an appropriate receptacle some people will always just throw them on the ground, as it costs them nothing to do so.

The makers of single use drink bottles have thus privatised profit and socialised the negative externalities of their product. The money goes in their pockets, and the bottles go in the ocean.

It's in no way clear from your post alone that the book you're talking about is fiction.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi are consistently the biggest offenders in plastic waste.

The United States should be the shining global role model we are so often told it is, and legislate to force better corporate behaviour around these issues.

At this point the consumer-blaming logic regarding single use plastic bottles is like "Well, we just make cigarettes, we can't help it if people smoke them and get sick."

Not good enough.

Coca Cola and others are largely responsible for the notion that it is the individual's responsibility not to "litter" single-use products that are extremely profitable for corporations: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-li...

To your link, evidence, Adrian Zenz, etc, are things I would prefer not to discuss on this site. :)