Can't leave scientists alone with science

By Denis G. Rancourt, PhD


(This article was first published on my climate blog.)


If the generalized global warming fever and "climate change" hysteria has taught societal observers anything it is that you cannot leave scientists alone with science.

The scientific enterprise is embedded, and scientists are manufactured service intellectuals.

Two outcomes are possible.

In the first extreme scenario, those scientists that are mainly responsible to recruit young minds and to fabricate the illusion of research freedom are given freedom within the framework of professional advancement based solely on peer-reviewed publication output. The result is irrelevant gibberish, as any institutional analyst would predict.

In the other end-point scenario, research funding is tied to professional advancement and is determined by government agencies and corporate interests. The outcome is again precisely as would be predicted: the research output exactly satisfies the contractual conditions.

This is true whether one is patenting a genetically modified organism, or approving a new "non-addictive" pain medication, or developing a next-generation delivery system for nuclear warheads.

The on-going episode of global warming "science" has illustrated a structural flaw in this otherwise functioning state-science system: If scientists are given career-enhancing supra-national political instruments to create exaggerated relevance of their work in driving a globalist agenda, then they will take the opportunity and run.

Such runaway irrelevance is already known to occur on its own within a career-centered science network (the so-called Gold Effect). [1]. With the climate scare example, we see that the phenomenon is highly amplified when there is a strong corporate or institutional and propaganda-supported driver.

Usually, societal observers and ordinary citizens would not notice. In this case however, the shrill alarmism that has been generated, propagated by the mainstream media, and condoned by the science establishment, is stratospheric. The independent-thinking blogger can detect the tenuous nature of the claims of everything from imminent human species extinction to continental flooding to engulfing forest fires to unprecedented mega-storms to war-causing droughts, and so on. [2].

You can't leave scientists alone with science. Thankfully, in this case, the propaganda runaway has caused the insanity to be palpable, influential domestic forces are not buying in, and a large segment of the middle-class is not swallowing it; species extinction or no species extinction, bumblebee migration or no bumblebee migration.

The heroes in this story -- in this unique and historic example where a large segment of society has correctly perceived a widespread profiteering construct -- are the bloggers and vloggers, the domestic industrial interests that resist finance globalization, the USA political networks that reject global governance, and, of course, the exceptional scientists that refused to compromise intellectual integrity and publicly said so.

All of this, in circumstances where the relevant planetary physics is straightforward, if anybody cared. [3].


Endnotes

[1] See the description of the Gold Effect in:  Rancourt, D.G., Cancer arises from stress-induced breakdown of tissue homeostasis, Research Gate (December 2015), 25 pages. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1304.7129

[2] My critical review of the global-warming "science" of forest fires may be one of the best illustrations of how bad the science is, as I document the "runaway" recorded in the scientific literature: Rancourt, D.G., Anatomy of the false link between forest fires and anthropogenic CO2, Research Gate (May 2016), 18 pages. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2059.6087

[3] Rancourt, D.G., Radiation physics constraints on global warming: CO2 increase has little effect, my climate blog (June 2011), http://climateguy.blogspot.ca/2011/06/radiation-physics-constraints-on-global.html

Denis Rancourt's articles and interviews on climate are listed HERE.
Links to all my articles are HERE.

An analysis of the Hackland ruling in Guergis v. Novak et al.

By Prof. Anatole French

Professor of Laws

Law Society of Up Canada University

Capital City

Ontario  K1S A5S

[Guest blogger]

As a legal academic, I have been called upon to review the recent (August 24, 2012, http://canlii.ca/t/fsg9t) ruling of Regional Senior Justice Charles T. Hackland of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in the matter of Guergis v. Novak et al., and to articulate my review in plain language understandable by a discerning public. Senior academics such as myself have academic tenure, which is why we frequently provide cutting edge criticisms of current court rulings of public interest where others, such as journalists and their editors, might not be so daring.

The main facts in the case, concerning Prime Minister Stephen Harper, are simple. The Prime Minister, through his senior officer Mr. V. Raymond Novak, Principle Secretary, wrote to the RCMP to suggest that a criminal investigation be made of, at the time, Member of Parliament, Minister, and member of the caucus of the Conservative Party of Canada, Helena Guergis. The letter alleged: an existence of evidence relevant to fraud, extortion, and prostitution, that the writer and the PMO did not have first-hand knowledge of the said evidence, that a named third party (private investigator Derrick Snowdy) was available to provide the said evidence, and that the PMO had not communicated directly with Mr. Snowdy.

The RCMP found no evidence worthy of acting upon, did not even question Guergis, and closed the case. If the allegations in the Novak letter had any truth then the RCMP’s reaction should be of great concern to all Canadians.

The plaintiff (Guergis) claims that the entire episode was designed to impair her reputation sufficiently to remove her and/or justify her removal from all her positions, including her party candidacy in the Electoral District of Simcoe-Grey.

On the face of it, the plaintiff’s claim is not outlandish. If it can be proven then the actions of the defendants would constitute a conspiracy to harm, and other torts including defamation and misfeasance in public office. That is, if the claim can be proved, then there was illegal behaviour on the part of the defendants and just remedy to the plaintiff should follow.   

This was a (Harper et al.) defendant’s motion to strike the (Guergis) plaintiff’s pleadings (or claim to the Court). Therefore, the question before the Court was: Assuming the plaintiff’s alleged facts to be true, should the claim be allowed to proceed, in that it could possibly lead to some just remedy in law? In legal jargon: “The court must assume that the alleged facts can be proven, and ask whether it is “plain and obvious” that the Statement of Claim discloses no reasonable cause of action?”

To the lay person, it is obvious that of course the action should be allowed to proceed, in order for justice to be found. Ah, but the legal landscape in the eyes of Justice Hackland is sufficiently rocky for there to be a deep enough crevice that this action should never see the light of day…

Hackland’s argument is as follows. A decision of a Prime Minister to can a Minister, remove a party candidate, and so on, is a decision for which the Prime Minister is not answerable to the courts. It is a political decision, the merits of which cannot be questioned by the courts. This established principle is called “Crown Prerogative” or, depending on the type of decision, “Parliamentary Privilege”.

Since the decisions at issue were entirely protected under say Parliamentary Privilege, Hackland argues, then the Court has no jurisdiction to examine the circumstances or reasons for the decisions and the case should not be heard: The pleadings must be struck.

Hackland argues that to allow a Prime Minister’s privileged decisions to be questioned in the courts on the basis of mere allegations of illegal behaviour would render the principle of say Parliamentary Privilege meaningless and, therefore, the practical operation of the legislature impossible. To the lay person, this would mean that illegal behaviour as part of a Prime Minister exercising his/her privileged authority is not subject to the rule of law.

Hackland arrives at this nonsensical conclusion by lack of discernment. A correct analysis would discern all the legitimate political dimensions of a Prime Minister’s privileged decisions, which cannot be questioned by the courts under the true principle of Parliamentary Privilege, from any illegal components of a Prime Minister’s privileged decisions, which must be subject to the rule of law. In this correct analysis, the just remedy may or may not include reversals of decisions, even if the illegal behaviour is proved. But the plaintiff has a right that other remedies also be considered in order to achieve justice.

There is no case law that states that illegal behaviour, involving the misuse of a public officer’s power and influence, can be shielded from the court’s consideration using Parliamentary Privilege. The case law cited by Justice Hackland (Canada (House of Commons) v. Vaid) is consistent with a Parliamentary Privilege which protects political and legislative executive decisions from judicial review, not a Parliamentary Privilege which shields executives from the law in performing illegal acts.

To this observer, Hackland’s error of discernment and broad brush approach depriving the plaintiff of access to justice is so egregious that it needs to be questioned in the public sphere. Such questioning, in Canada, is protected by a Charter guarantee to the Open Court Principle and constitutes an exercise of democracy.

Climatologist Dr. Tim Ball on the politics and professional ethics of global warming agitation

On July 12, 2012, CHUO 89.1 FM (Ottawa) The Train's Denis Rancourt interviewed Professor Dr. Tim Ball, climatologist, about climate science and the politics of global warming. Fascinating history of the climatology profession... Dr. Ball is being sued for defamation in regard to his criticisms of other climate professionals. The lawsuits are on-going and Dr. Ball is committed to getting to the truth and justice.

This is a remarkable interview where you can hear what it is like to respect the memory of decades of acquired scientific knowledge, as opposed to re-defining reality for careerist goals.

 LINK TO RADIO INTERVIEW

Wacko ATI ruling -- Ontario IPC uses academic freedom to restrict transparency

Academic freedom is a protection for what a professor does, not a protection to keep secret what a professor does.

By Denis G. Rancourt

In what can only be characterized as wacko, an Information and Privacy Commissioner (IPC), Ontario, Canada, Adjudicator has ruled (November 7, 2011, Final Order PO-3009-F, PDF-file) that it is legitimate to use academic freedom as a pretext to restrict transparency and accountability of public universities.

Whereas academic freedom exists to legally provide professional independence to professors and to allow professors to freely express their ideas without fear of reprisals -- in order to best serve society, the Adjudicator, in the context of access to information (ATI) requests, interpreted academic freedom as a device to shield professors from public transparency and accountability.

The Adjudicator ruled that, in Ontario, a professor's research and teaching cannot be subject to public transparency and accountability and that even administrative records that the individual professor feels are excluded "taking academic freedom into account" are also not available.

In an era of frequently reported incidents of academic and research fraud, and in a time when education is a highly valued commodity, this total blind spot, carved out using a misguided concept of academic freedom, makes the fact that universities in Ontario are subject to ATI law somewhat of a joke. This is especially true given that professors wholly contribute to the institution's administration via collegial governance.

Not only was a professor's publicly-funded work ruled not subject to transparency but in those cases where the Adjudicator found that certain components of a professor's work may be subject to ATI law, the Adjudicator ruled that the individual professor can decide whether or not ATI law would apply -- thereby making meaningful appeals of access decisions virtually impossible.

How did the IPC Adjudicator come to interpret academic freedom in this way?

Well, this is something about which I have some insider knowledge, as I was the ATI requester and the university in question was my former employer, the University of Ottawa. The request was made in 2006 and it has taken five years to get this brilliant and studied result.

The university refused me access to professors' communications about me. (It allowed me some access to the administration's communications about me but wanted over $28 thousand to service this part of the request. The IPC did not see this as a particularly outrageous fee... but I digress.)

The Adjudicator sought and obtained submissions from the university, from the professors' union (APUO) and from me. Both the university and the union argued (at length and supported by three U of O labour arbitration awards on the matter) that academic freedom meant that access under ATI law needed to be restricted for professors.

I argued the opposite, as follows.

On March 26, 2007:

Professors, as employees of the university, must comply with the Act, regarding all documents that pertain to their numerous functions as professors. For example, professors act on many administrative committees and executive councils and therefore have all kinds of formal and informal work-related exchanges involving the functioning of the institution and the working conditions of their colleagues. Academic freedom protects a professor’s rights to free speech and to professional discretion in fulfilling her responsibilities but it is not meant as a barrier to transparency or as a professor’s right to secrecy in exercising her duties.

And on November 21, 2007:

Professors have nationally-recognized academic freedom and tenure so that they are protected in their roles as independent societal critics and as independent teachers and researchers, not so that they can escape public scrutiny in performing their official duties related to policy, governance and opinion and decision making. Indeed, the very purpose of academic freedom and tenure is that professors not be subjected to undue pressures and reprisals for voicing their opinions. To use academic freedom as a barrier to access is to turn this instrument on its head and apply it against the public good.

... The APUO representations appear to be intended to give undue immunity to professors as a professional group, rather than respecting the true societal purpose and intent of academic freedom...

My arguments were not mentioned or retained by the IPC Adjudicator in the Order. Instead, the Adjudicator chose to delimit a compromise between the similar positions of the university and the union.

The madness of it all is like this. Since the university employer does not have a right to micro-manage a professor's work, and does not have an a priori right to inspect a professor's work or documents or communications, and since the ATI Act foresees that records respondent to a request will be administered in view of possible disclosure by the "head" of the institution, therefore, it was argued, a professor's records are not subject to the Act.

Well, even under the strict logic of the Act, that makes no sense at all because, whenever there is a complaint or evidence of fraud, the employer (the "head") is entirely entitled to obtain and examine all a professor's records arguably relevant to the investigation. The university has control over all records generated in a professor's work for the purpose of employee accountability. And an ATI request is all about accountability.

How did the Adjudicator get it so wrong?

She refused to hear the requester and instead had ears only for two powerful parties both having illegitimate interests to block transparency: The university does not want the public and media to be empowered to investigate academic and research fraud cases and the union does not want its members scrutinized by either the employer or the public. The national association of professors' unions (CAUT) is similarly misguided (here, here).

Academic freedom is a protection for what a professor does, not a protection to keep secret what a professor does.

The problem now is that this bad ruling can only be changed by an expensive judicial review. The IPC knows that institutions and unions can afford judicial reviews but that individual requesters cannot. So the IPC can afford bad rulings that lean towards the institutions.

Thus, Ontario becomes a rare jurisdiction where professors' records are not under the purview of ATI law. Bravo Madame Commissioner. Bravo U of O and bravo APUO.

This was not rocket science. The word that comes to mind for me is "pathetic."


ADDENDUM (November 13, 2011):

Actually (and perversely), a professor's research and teaching are already subject to qualified exclusions in the Act [sections 65.8.1(a) and (b) and qualifications 65.9 and 65.10] but the intended practice is that the "head" (professional ATI officer) decides the exclusions that apply on the particular respondent records which must be found and produced to the "head".

The instant ruling (paragraphs-181-182-183) would have individual professors decide all the exclusions of the Act based on their individual (mis)understandings of academic freedom - without any mechanism to verify a professor's decisions since the excluded records are then by definition excluded from consideration under the Act and are not provided to the head for eventual appeals (which would defeat the intent of letting the professors decide exclusion).

This is contrary to past practice where all respondent records are examined in an IPC appeal, including records argued to be excluded from the Act. It distances or shields the "head" from the burden of proof prescribed by the Act:

53. Where a head refuses access to a record or a part of a record, the burden of proof that the record or the part falls within one of the specified exemptions in this Act lies upon the head.

(Already the section of the Act most disregarded by the IPC, in my view.)

The new method of preventing the head from seeing a professor's records is premised on bad faith use by the head (as the professor's employer) of these records - despite such improper use being disallowed in law.

So one law (the FIPPA = ATI law) is vitiated to prevent an abuse that is against the law. Whereas academic freedom is suppose to be an iron-clad protection against exactly the expected abuse.

In the same breath, therefore, the alleged-sacrosanct academic freedom is acknowledged to be ineffective (except in restricting transparency).

I say: Either apply academic freedom as though it were real or abolish it. It is meant to protect independence not create secrecy. Secrecy is needed where there is no independence. A free society is an open society. Let's get our concepts straight.

See all posts about the IPC at UofOWatch.
See all Ontario IPC rulings HERE.

See November-2011 IPC Order PO-3009-F HERE.

Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science (including physics and environmental science) which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals and several social commentary essays. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009. His dismissal case is in court hearings that will extend into 2012.

Are Physicists Smart?

Disciplined professionals serve power

by Denis G. Rancourt

First published on Global Research in 2006, presently not available on the GR site.


It is generally assumed that physicists are smart people. Even some chemists look up to physicists. Physics is reputed to be a difficult subject, the stuff of nightmares in high school. The greatest scientists that come to mind are often the physicists Einstein and Newton. The inventors of the atomic bomb are held in awe, as are the cosmologists that gave us black holes and worm holes into parallel universes. The proverbial rocket scientists are physicists. It is generally assumed that anyone who has studied quantum mechanics and can work-in the concept of entropy at a cocktail party is pretty smart.

I’m a physicist and I’ve trained physicists and I’d like to advance a different view: That generally, physicists, as a group, are pretty stupid, and certainly no smarter than any other group of self-centered and self-serving professionals.

Physicists limit themselves to physics, to simple phenomena that are amenable to manageable mathematical descriptions or to more complex phenomena that are reduced to simplistic descriptions via appropriate filters that are said to “capture the essential features”. Physicists study only what they can, given their specific and limited methods, possibly more so than in any other natural science discipline.

This in itself is an efficient and productive approach but physicists go much further. As a matter of professional culture, physicists believe that their methods could eventually lead to a deep and thorough understanding of all phenomena (including human consciousness, learning, politics, etc., for example), given time, dedication, sufficient funding, and powerful enough computers. Physicists believe that all sciences and all branches of human knowledge are physics, ultimately. They arrive at this conclusion having never read or studied psychology, pedagogy, philosophy, history, politics, sociology, art, etc. as part of their professional training.

Indeed, the modern professional physicist has usually subjected himself (less often herself) to extreme specialization, to be able to handle the technical side of the profession. This training is also largely about adopting the culture of the professional physicist: Examples and examples of what are “good problems – good questions” and what are “bad (= ‘unmanageable’) problems”; and examples and examples of how one tames a new problem and fits it into the mould of what a physicist can do. The physics student learns to bridle his curiosity and to restrict himself to what is doable, publishable, useful, profitable; using the unique methods of physics and providing “answers” that other professionals could not. That is the name of the game.

A broader education would not be compatible with this strategy – just enough reading outside of the field to spot new physics opportunities is the most that is recommended. A broader education might also cloud one’s professional identity and one’s professionalism: Eighty percent of physicists in North America work for the military, in the world’s largest military economy [1]. But of course physics students are drawn to physics because all can be understood via the physics portal and because worm holes are neat. Students search for meaning and social status and find military and corporate service, often in an environment that maintains the neat-problem mental bubble first cultivated in sci-fi and electronic game land.

If you’re already smarter than everyone else (as is generally the working assumption in most professions), then you don’t really need to venture out into other fields – that are so primitive and qualitative and descriptive in comparison to physics.

Other fields…? Other methods…? Complexity…? Professional physicists have so buried themselves into their culture of the doable, the mappable, the reducible, the solvable, the codable, … that they are largely unable to perceive complexity.

Students are drawn to physics by its promise of a manageable mathematical description, an objective method to own the world, to organise and predict the outside. Emotional immaturity, a need for an objective solution to uncertainty or a need to escape reality, draws students to physics and accompanies them in their professional development. The same naivety that couples so well with the physics culture also blocks perception of the complex.

That is the main reason, in my view, that physicists are stupid: They are unable to perceive complexity, a complexity of the real world that goes far beyond what physics will ever be able to handle in any universe. They are unable to even get a glimpse of the textures and subplots that may be intrinsically incompatible with mathematical description. To them, mathematics is the language of reality, not a mere human invention or genetically delimited expression. To them, the objective mind is all-powerful and able to open all doors. To them, useful perception is physiological and does not benefit from the uncertainties of one’s emotional state. To the physicist, communication is data transmission, not the subtleties that can only be captured by the right configuration of social and emotional attributes. The physicist deals in hard bits, not the imperceptibles that determine our animal and social lives. The physicist is unaware of his blindness and glibly confident in his perception, especially his perception of himself as systematic unraveller of the truth.

If at least he was harmless!

Notes:
[1] Schmidt, Jeff. Disciplined Minds. Rowan and Littlefield Publ., NY, 2000; Parenti, Michael. Democracy for the Few. Bedford St. Martin’s Publ., Boston, 1995; Mitchell, Peter R. and Schoeffel, John (Eds.) Understanding Power – The Indispensable Chomsky. The New Press, NY, 2002.

Why we must despise university professors

On the need to rebel from within academia

by Denis G. Rancourt


Class is stronger than race and sex.

University professors are cowardly deceiving scum. There are no good professors.

They work under a cover of serving community and the public good yet they serve and replicate a system of extreme violence and repression; a system of layered exploitation that uses every method from war and genocide to economic slavery to psychological social engineering in order to maintain and increase its hierarchical domination.

Their work starts in the classroom and extends to the boardroom. They coerce and purify and provide the mental infrastructure of system maintenance and projection. You will “cooperate” and develop “professional ethics” and “universal values”...

It is disgusting to observe university service intellectuals posturing themselves into a self-image of community service and solidarity with the oppressed-other while not raising a finger to dismantle the very machine at its core. They are in a position to alter the production cycle of managers of mind and manners, yet they reinforce and perfect the indoctrination of self and of students instead.

Their lives of privilege are nestled in lies, as are all such lives. The lies that intra-class justice is justice, that privilege produces extra-class benefits, that knowledge arises from breeding and that it can be transferred via an administrative act; all necessary and comforting lies.

Without the armed thugs that preserve their power and the furniture of their lies they would be hapless beggars because they are empty. They pride themselves in being empty and give each other prizes for emptiness. They rise in the academic and administrative hierarchies for achieving emptiness and for celebrating emptiness.

They are truly a disgusting breed, destined to enlighten us all and to guide our leaders.

They excel at taking diversity and forming it into shapeless conformity. They work as a unit, like a meat grinder, with “radical” profs shaping activist students and business profs nurturing corporate service drones. Those that cannot be shaped are denied entry or expelled. There is no space for non-compliance.

They are gifted for selection. They select the emptiest by peer review and the most obedient by grading. And of course effective selection necessarily includes expulsion and failure. They look for and kill those who deserve to fail. And they mob and kill those who would expose them.

This explains why they are all exactly the same. There is no truer generalization at-the-root about a professional class; unless you believe in a difference between conservatives and liberal “progressives” or that a black feminist academic is not also a neutralizer and enforcer.

The university professorial class manages the highest-level institutional indoctrination, and must therefore be more fundamentally and completely aligned than any other class; more the same than politicians are the same or than doctors and lawyers are the same or than teachers, cops and soldiers are the same when they have been segregated and “elevated” into a service professional class.

The needed underlying monochromaticity, beyond school obedience and ordinary graduate or professional school indoctrination, takes another five to ten of the tenure track and is masked by an elaborate illusion of choice and independence supported by its own mythology and bureaucracy of “academic freedom”.

University professors cannot save themselves and will not save their students. We must love humanity and freedom enough to despise them in liberating ourselves. Only their jolt from rejection and our experience of rebellion can produce some result. Freedom means self-determination.

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Denis G. Rancourt was a tenured and full professor of physics at the University of Ottawa in Canada. He practiced several areas of science which were funded by a national agency and ran an internationally recognized laboratory. He published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals. He developed popular activism courses and was an outspoken critic of the university administration and a defender of student and Palestinian rights. He was fired for his dissidence in 2009 by a president who is a staunch supporter of Israeli policy. [See www.academicfreedom.ca]