SILENCING SCIENCE IN NEW ZEALAND
SILENCING SCIENCE SHAUN HENDY
The nuclear meltdown at Fukushima … the Fonterra botulism scare … the Christchurch earthquakes – in all these recent crises the role played by scientists has been under the spotlight.
What is the first duty of scientists in a crisis – to the government, to their employer, or to the wider public desperate for information? And what if these different objectives clash?
In this penetrating BWB Text, leading scientist Shaun Hendy finds that in New Zealand, the public obligation of the scientist is often far from clear and that there have been many disturbing instances of scientists being silenced. Experts who have information the public seeks, he finds, have been prevented from speaking out. His own experiences have led him to conclude that New Zealanders have few scientific institutions that feel secure enough to criticise the government of the day.
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/04-11-2016/science-experts-waikato-jacqueline-rowarth
Are New Zealand’s scientific experts really dead – or just resting?
Guest writer
The row over Jacqueline Rowarth’s strange suggestion that the Waikato River is one of the world’s five cleanest reveals a need for more scientists to be heard in public, not fewer, writes Shaun Hendy.
In post-Brexit Britain, failure to heed the warnings of economists on the risks of leaving the EU has spawned many a thinkpiece on the death of the expert. Indeed, experts might be forgiven for ending it all after a British scientist who pointed out that the moon causes the tides was called out by a UKIP MP and accused of fear-mongering. Britain may have once ruled the waves, but now finds itself ruled by folk who find waves a little bit confusing.
Here in New Zealand, we know full well that the tides are caused by the decision of the previous Labour government to extend daylight saving. And with minds untroubled by tidal forces, Kiwis have had time to contemplate a deeper question:
Why are our rivers full of shit?
Traditionally Kiwis worry less about whether their experts are dead than whether they left a forwarding address before they moved to Australia. Sure enough, when more than 5,000 people became sick thanks to the contamination of Havelock North’s water supply in August, our experts made themselves rather scarce.
When Hawke’s Bay Regional Council chair, Fenton Wilson, was asked by Radio New Zealand about his Council’s reports concerning the woefully unhealthy state of the nearby Tukituki river, he said “I don’t have any of that information to hand.” When it was put to him that recent flooding may have driven contaminated water into one of the town’s aquifers, Wilson speculated that “speculation is not helpful at this time”.
Did we really not have any scientists who could speak knowledgably on whether contaminated surface water could have gotten into Havelock North’s groundwater?
Remarkably, science confirms that remnant populations of such scientists do still reside in New Zealand. They work for the government, and as I wrote in Silencing Science earlier this year, they are the sorts of experts we almost never hear from.
Check them out in happier times, speculating wildly at their Te Papa workshop last year on “Groundwater-Surface Water interaction”. Unfortunately the last thing a government scientist is allowed to do is to speak – I mean, speculate – about something that actually affects the public.
And who needs an expert when helpful prime ministers can always find you another with a different point of view?
Cue Jacqueline Rowarth, the newly minted chief scientist at our Environmental Protection Authority, who, before taking the job, was telling the public that the Waikato River is “one of the five cleanest rivers in the world”
Rowarth, previously a professor of agribusiness at the University of Waikato, was hired by the EPA to use her “expertise to explain our science, so people can have trust and confidence in the decisions we make”, according to EPA chief executive Dr Allan Freeth.
This may have sounded like a good plan at the time, but Rowarth’s stance on water quality has had other experts increasingly alarmed.
New Zealand Freshwater Sciences Society president Marc Schallenberg said that Rowarth’s “comments concerning the condition of the Waikato River are not only false, but distract from the important work being done to improve water quality in New Zealand”.
Bryce Cooper, a water quality expert at NIWA, said, “Water quality in its [the Waikato River’s] lower reaches ranks in the bottom half of 500 sites nationally for key indicators such as nitrogen, phosphorus, E.coli (a measure of faecal contamination) and water clarity.”
If you are predisposed to think that the science of tides was fabricated 400 years ago in preparation for Project Fear, then you may also be tempted to dismiss these water quality experts as having a vested interest in spreading alarm in order to keep themselves employed.
But if you actually want to be better informed about our rivers, you do need to hear from scientists like Cooper and Schallenberg – and, yes, Rowarth too. Because this is how science works. Scientists make claims, present their evidence, and wait for the judgement of their peers.
Better that we know how Rowarth views the evidence than not. Now those views are in the open, they can be scrutinised and critiqued.
Rowarth herself has now gone quiet, joining the ranks of New Zealand’s silent scientists. When Rowarth was asked to comment on her views by Radio New Zealand, the EPA replied, saying, “it would be inappropriate for her to comment on statements she made while employed in a previous role.”
So New Zealand’s experts aren’t yet extinct. Not quite.
On a calm day, if you listen very carefully, you can almost make out what they are saying.
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https://www.stuff.co.nz/science/79716207/the-high-public-cost-of-muzzling-scientists The high public cost of muzzling scientists
Shaun Hendy
May 06, 2016
Workers decontaminate a building near the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2011. At the time, New Zealand government agencies responsible for nuclear research refused to talk to the media, leaving people in the dark about whether the country faced any risks.KYODO / Not-For-Syndication
OPINION: To whom is the first duty of a scientist in a crisis – to the politicians who fund them, the employer who pays them, or the wider public, desperate for information? In the course of writing my new book, Silencing Science, I have found that scientists’ duty to the public often comes last.
The Canterbury and Christchurch earthquakes, for example, put New Zealand science on the spot. Cantabrians wanted to know why them? Why now? And what might happen next?
These were not easy questions for scientists to answer. There was a lot that wasn’t known about the geological structures that lay below the city, and even in the best of times, the forecasting of aftershocks is an uncertain business.
But it was much more difficult than it should have been. Scientists at Crown Research Institute GNS Science were focused on briefing officials to ensure that government had the best information. Others found themselves challenged by officials when they tried to disseminate aftershock forecasts, lest they undermine the recovery. Communications were supposed to be channelled through the joint emergency operations centre, but science had a low priority and the centre became a bottleneck.
These problems extend well beyond the Canterbury earthquakes.
After explosions at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, Kiwis were left without expert advice on the risks from radioactive fallout. Our government agencies responsible for nuclear research refused to talk to the media, only issuing terse written statements days after the event that radiation would not reach our shores.
In the days following Fonterra’s product recall after its botulism scare, the country’s leading food safety experts were muzzled because of the commercial risks, leaving the public in the dark.
In 2014, more than 150 New Zealand scientists confirmed in a survey that they had been prevented from talking to the media by their employers or for fearing of losing their funding.
Scientists at our Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) are particularly vulnerable. NIWA, the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research, refuses to provide advice on climate change policy, but at the same time consults for the oil and gas industry. “How as a CRI scientist can I ever speak out against an industry that my CRI serves? I just cannot,” wrote one scientist under the protection of anonymity.
Scientists who do speak out can find themselves the victims of misinformation campaigns orchestrated by corporate lobbyists. Some are even criticised by their own colleagues for violating unwritten rules that govern who can speak for science.
The silence of New Zealand’s scientists means that the government freely ignores the advice of its own science advisor. Sir Peter Gluckman, the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, has found that his advice falls on deaf ears when it stands to hurt the profits of big business.
The Royal Society of New Zealand, our peak scientific body, is paid to advise the government. When one of the Society’s expert panels recently recommended that the government take urgent action to reduce carbon emissions, Climate Change Minister, Paula Bennett, simply said: “I hope it sparks more innovation and discussions on how we achieve this.”
And its advice is as easily silenced as it is dismissed. Last year one Royal Society advisory panel was shut down before it could report at the request of the government
The Prime Minister has a science advisor. I believe it is time that the public had one too. This is why in Silencing Science, I call for New Zealand to establish a Parliamentary Commission for Science.
It would be modelled on Dr Jan Wright’s Parliamentary Commission for the Environment. It would be independent of the government of the day, and would have the power to investigate claims of scientific misconduct, while protecting whistle-blowers.
Unlike the role that Sir Peter Gluckman has played, the Commission’s mandate would not extend to matters of science funding and policy. This would allow it to maintain the trust of scientists and the organisations they work for.
The Commission would have the responsibility and resources to ensure that the public and Parliament was well advised in times of crisis. It would also procure advice from the science community on matters of long-term importance for the well being of New Zealanders, such as public health and climate. It would challenge the government where it saw scientific advice being ignored.
The public is demanding greater transparency from the science community, something that our current scientific institutions cannot, or will not, provide. A Commission for Science would forge a new relationship between scientists and an increasingly frustrated public.
A Commission will ensure that science is silent no more.
Shaun Hendy is the Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini, a Centre of Research Excellence for Complex Systems and Networks, and a Professor of Physics at the University of Auckland
A prominent professor says New Zealand needs a commission for science as many scientists are being gagged.
Professor Shaun Hendy, a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize, this week launches his book Silencing Science, in which he lays out concerns in the scientific community
VA prominent professor says New Zealand needs a commission for science as many scientists are being gagged.
Professor Shaun Hendy, a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Science Communication Prize, this week launches his book Silencing Science, in which he lays out concerns in the scientific community
Journalists were finding it harder to get comment from scientists, he said, and scientists in many cases were constrained by strict media policy or fear of jeopardising funding.
“Scientists anxiously watch the Government’s Budget announcements every year, and many worry that speaking out or challenging Government policy will put science funding at risk,” he told the Herald.
His book follows a 2014 report by the New Zealand Association of Scientists, which he formerly presided over, that found 40 per cent of the scientists it surveyed said they had been prevented from making public comment on a controversial issue due to policy or fear of losing funding.
Professor Hendy claimed Crown research institutes were increasingly under pressure to find private funding, so had tight, corporate-like policies filtering what scientists could say to journalists.
“This is not to say that publicly employed scientists shouldn’t work with the private sector, but in a science community that is as thinly spread as New Zealand’s, it can mean that in times of crisis we simply run out of experts who are free to speak.”
He proposed a Commission for Science, responsible to Parliament rather than the Government, which could investigate complaints from whistle-blowers and increase transparency
But Science and Innovation Minister Steven Joyce rejected the notion scientists were being muzzled, saying the only potential issue was where contracted research was involved.
“In general terms, you’d have to say New Zealand has a very robust scientific communication environment; there are lots of issues that scientists speak on, as they should, and they get the opportunity to do so.”
In discussions with the research community about new potential guidelines around public engagement, the Royal Society of New Zealand found only a few comments around constraints, president Professor Richard Bedford said.
Mr Joyce said a commission was not needed, arguing the interests of science and scientists were already served by the democratic process
The Prime Minister’s chief science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman, said New Zealand had a strong science advisory system, with groups such as the Parliamentary Library and the Royal Society, which he described as “fiercely independent” of Government.
His own role was independent, he said, but was largely around providing evidence for policy, “rather than policy for science”.
“Science, policy and society is a three-way thing: science does not make policy, and in fact the worst thing we can do as scientists is exhibit hubris and think we know what policy-making is all about.”
Gagging science: ‘It’s worldwide’
By Jamie Morton
Multimedia Journalist·NZ Herald·
8 Jun, 2016
Deranged’ policy has experts scared to speak up, doctor says.
Claims that New Zealand scientists are being silenced is something seen around the world, says a renowned author, doctor and outspoken science commentator visiting Auckland this year.
UK academic Ben Goldacre said concerns raised in a new book by Auckland physicist Professor Shaun Hendy – which argues many scientists feel constrained by strict media policies or fear of jeopardising funding – have popped up “all around the world”.
“In the UK, we’ve had a similar problem recently, where the Government has proposed a new policy on all science funding, where scientists won’t be allowed to lobby politicians or government with the results of their scientific research, which is obviously deranged,” said Dr Goldacre, best known for his books Bad Science and Bad Pharma.
“And obviously there are lots of individual stories of scientists having pressure put on them by funders,” he said.
“As always, I think these problems aren’t just about individual episodes where people have been silenced, and it’s not just about where somebody’s got something that might be a little bit difficult for their funder to hear, I think it’s because of a wider problem and a wider lack of respect for the importance of communicating science to the public.”
But Dr Goldacre wasn’t convinced by Professor Hendy’s suggestion in Silencing Science that the problem could be addressed by a new independent commission to represent science in policy.
“Big organisations, inevitably, are vulnerable,” he said. “They can become captured by their funders and become part of the establishment, just like the people they think they are going to come out and fight against.”
He believed the benefits of a more science-literate public, something the Government was pushing through various programmes, was “absolutely enormous”.
When somebody understands how to critically appraise, how to critically review, a piece of scientific research or a claim that is being put in front of them, then they can make much better, informed choices themselves as a citizen, about their own healthcare [and] about the policies around them.”
Asked why so many people reject scientific consensus on matters such as vaccination and climate change, he suspected the reasons varied.
“We have to accept that there are people who actually don’t care about facts,” he said. “They would make the rest of our lives a little bit easier, or less frustrating, if they could at least acknowledge that fact openly, and obviously none of them ever do.”
Dr Goldacre described himself as an “equal opportunities quack-buster” who took on anyone who misrepresented statistics, whether they were journalists, politicians, “herbal remedy peddlers” or researchers.
At present, he is running a campaign to stop drug companies and academics from withholding the results of clinical trials, and another that calls out journals for misreporting the results of clinical trials.
Dr Ben Goldacre on …
- Bad science in different countries: “It’s a bit like when you hear crappy eastern European pop trance music, and you say, ‘this is exactly the same as Italian pop trance, and French trance – it’s just that the words are a little bit different, in a different language’.”
- Appreciating science: “If you don’t understand science, then you are denying yourself access to all of the most significant intellectual achievements of the past two centuries of human history.”
- People who reject scientific evidence: “Everybody knows, from having arguments in the pub, or over dinner, that there are people who just don’t care what the facts are.”
- Climate sceptics: “What you have is a middle-aged person who chooses to ignore the scientific evidence on climate change, and who is inflicting harm on people they will never meet, 50, 100, or 150 years from now.”
- Ben Goldacre will be speaking at The Mercury Theatre in Auckland on September 24. For tickets, visit www.eventfinda.co.nz
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