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By Jo Nova
Proving that unpaid anonymous review is worth every cent, the 217 year old Wiley science publisher “peer reviewed” 11,300 papers that were fake, and didn’t even notice. It’s not just a scam, it’s an industry. Naked “gobbledygook sandwiches” got past peer review, and the expert reviewers didn’t so much as blink.
Big Government and Big Money has captured science and strangled it. The more money they pour in, the worse it gets. John Wiley and Sons is a US $2 billion dollar machine, but they got used by criminal gangs to launder fake “science” as something real.
Things are so bad, fake scientists pay professional cheating services who use AI to create papers and torture the words so they look “original”. Thus a paper on ‘breast cancer’ becomes a discovery about “bosom peril” and a ‘naïve Bayes’ classifier became a ‘gullible Bayes’. An ant colony was labeled an ‘underground creepy crawly state’.
And what do we make of the flag to clamor ratio? Well, old fashioned scientists might call it ‘signal to noise’. The nonsense never ends.
A ‘random forest’ is not always the same thing as an ‘irregular backwoods’ or an ‘arbitrary timberland’ — especially […]
Image by Donna Kirby from Pixabay
By Jo Nova
University degrees aren’t what they used to be
After years of universities turning out smug self-obsessed graduates of Woke ideology, Big Business has realized they might be better off hiring people with experience in the real world instead. They are also doing their own testing — with 2 out of 3 setting their own test assignments for candidates.
This year more than half of the 800 employers surveyed had already dropped bachelor degree requirements for at least some of their roles. It must have worked out, because next year almost all of those same companies plan on dropping the requirement for even more roles. That looks like a trend…
This surely must be ringing some warning bells in a few Ivory Towers? Fewer students, means less income, less influence, and fewer alumni:
How the college degree lost its value: Nearly half of US companies plan to ax Bachelor’s degree requirements – after Walmart, Accenture and IBM led the charge
DailyMail
Nearly half of US companies intend to eliminate Bachelor’s degree requirements for some job positions next year, a new survey has revealed.
By Jo Nova
Apparently some New Zealand officials are toying with a whole new science curriculum which sounds like a return to the stone age. All the hard stuff about electromagnetism, elements, mass, motion, and molecular bonding has been replaced with UN Agenda 21 items like climate change and biodiversity.
Who needs to know the periodic table when you can learn the new religion of “Climate Change”? Knowing actual physics and chemistry will just hold you back in your drive to understand the intersectional suffering of the oppressed swamp antechinus.
NZ Teachers Shocked Physics, Chemistry, Biology Missing From New Science Curriculum
By Rebecca Zhu, Epoch Times
New Zealand science teachers have raised alarm over an early draft science curriculum, which lacks any mention of physics, chemistry, and biology.
Mr. Johnston [senior fellow of the New Zealand Initiative think tank] warned that if this draft went through, high school graduates wanting to pursue studies in physical sciences or engineering would need to be taught from scratch by their university.
Who is Mr Johnston kidding? As if universities will fight for the physical sciences… they didn’t even fight for “male and female”. Academics are driving this […]
By TheMartian
By Jo Nova
Blame Exxon for the dead children of Turkey, eh? It’s not the corrupt building codes, the crustal plates, or the solar magnetic field. Climate change sets off earthquakes, you know.
A High Priest Ecologist has read the chicken entrails and prophesies that things will get worse. Your car creates earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis — unless it’s an EV. It’s hard to satirize this, it’s too stupid.
Climate change is triggering more earthquakes. Big Oil’s interests are a factor
By Prof İbrahim Özdemir, UN advisor, Euronews
It’s not just earthquakes — it’s tsunamis and volcanoes too:
We do not know for sure what triggered this horrific natural disaster, but we do know there is growing scientific evidence that climate change increases the risk of such tremors, together with tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.
Here comes Occult Science:
“If a fault is primed or ready to rupture, all that is needed is the pressure of a handshake to set if off […] Environmental changes associated with rapid and accelerating climate breakdown could easily do the job,” professor of geophysics and climate hazards at University College London Bill McGuire pointed out […]
Someone who knows what life in a poor country and what having children means explains why Woke Culture has gone too far to young people at the Oxford Union.
The only thing Wokeness has to offer in exchange is to brainwash bright minds like you that you are victims and to complain, to protest, to throw soup on paintings.
Konstantine Kisin is a British satirist, author, and commentator who was born and raised in Moscow.
9.7 out of 10 based on 91 ratings
By Jo Nova (and UPDATED)
Across all branches of science, new ideas that reset the paradigms have quietly vanished
The spark never started in the star-ideas that should have shone, and we find ourselves suddenly under a dark sky, looking up at a galaxy of burnt gravy, thinking something is missing. As dominant paradigms became entrenched in every field of science, the great new replacement ideas starved.
Nature might as well have labeled this “A graph of Original Thought at University”
It’s like some sole giant entity infected every area of science and crushed original thinkers.
‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why
Disruptive science sounds like something impossible to measure, but the researchers found way to test for the arrival of new papers that replace past paradigms. Genius discoveries may still have happened, but no one picked them up.
The authors reasoned that if a study was highly disruptive, subsequent research would be less likely to cite the study’s references, and instead would cite the study itself. Using the citation data from 45 million manuscripts and 3.9 million patents, the researchers calculated a measure of disruptiveness, called the CD index, in which […]
The oldest university in Europe has been running since 1088AD.
It took a thousand years of hard work to create a reputation of excellence and honor that is being casually vaporized and bled dry in a fashion frenzy of Wokery.
This year in the US undergraduate enrollments fell by 650,000 in a single year — and the departure was led by young men.
For the last thirty years people in Ivory towers were treated like Gods and came to believe their own advertising. Who could blame them? No one in the media asked them a single hard question so the illusion of their glorious prophesies remained intact even as their absurd predictions crashed upon the shore.
The academics fell over themselves to outscore each other in a pointless Victimhood status game where they earn points by insulting one of their main client groups. No wonder men are leaving.
Victor Davis Hanson asks Are Universities Doomed?
The Daily Signal
Nationwide undergraduate enrollment has dropped by more than 650,000 students in a single year—or over 4% alone from spring 2021 to 2022, and some 14% in the last decade. Yet the U.S. population still increases by about 2 million […]
We’re sacking Vaccine Professors for not taking the right vaccine?
Who knew? The first traditional vaccine for Covid that’s based on protein anywhere in the world has been approved for use. It was designed in Australia, but can’t be used here. The Professor of the team that invented it received no help from the Australian Government, and is about to be sacked from Flinders Medical Centre** because he won’t take the mandatory Pfizer, Astra Zenica or Moderna injections. What would he know — he’s just a vaccine developer?
UPDATE: The SA Govt will now recognise the Covax-19 trial participants. This is a small step but good news. Prof Petrovsky won’t be forced to quit.
Instead of the committee-approved ones, has taken his own vaccine called Covax-19 or Spikogen. It has just been approved for use in Iran where Stage 2 and 3 trials were conducted. He said he would stand by his vaccine and even accept liability, unlike all the current vaccine makers who demand waivers.
Professor Nikolai Petrovsky is hopeful though, that after “the excellent Phase 3 trial results” he will be able to get approval in many countries, maybe even in Australia? But our government-funded […]
Tony Thomas has been reading academic papers so you don’t have to. Dr Blanche Verlie at the Uni of Sydney explores “the affective geographies of eco-anxiety” and seems to help create victims to study at the same time. A good business model maybe, but at the expense of mental health.
The more young people suffer, the more useful they are as political activists:
Getting Kids’ Climate Misery Just Right
Tony Thomas, Quadrant
Dr Blanche Verlie,Uni Sydney
Verlie correctly concedes that “climate anxiety can intersect with and contribute to clinically diagnosable mental illness” born of “hopelessness, disillusionment or apathy”. But she explains helpfully (if I might paraphrase) that the more kids suffer the better chance they’ll become green activists. In her own words,
climate anxiety is not an illness or disorder, but an appropriate and even valuable source of discomfort that can provide an important lens to help people re-evaluate what is important to them and find meaningful ways to inhabit the world. Education’s remit for cultivating critical thinking and empowerment thus makes it an exciting realm for supporting young people to contribute to what Verlie (2019a) [she is speaking of herself in […]
Former Professor Peter Ridd was sacked for criticizing his university colleagues at James Cook Uni. He won a $1.2m claim for wrongful dismissal, but JCU appealed, and won the appeal. So Ridd is taking his case to the High Court. Today’s small win merely means they will hear his appeal.
Meanwhile academics all over Australia know that right now, if they spotted fraud, poor reasoning, or incompetence they can’t point that out publicly. Our academic system is corrupt to the very core, seeking not the truth, but just more grants and to act as a machine to elect the kind of governments that will give them more money, easier conditions and suits most of their personal political tastes too. James Cook Uni has wasted a million or two of taxpayers funds seeking to protect the Vice Chancellors ability to sack anyone she damn-well likes for spurious reasons like “not being collegial” or daring to write a sarcastic line in an email. A few months ago, JAmes Cook still hadn’t got far investigating the actual alleged fraud, nor in releasing data about the Great Barrier Reef that they profess to care so much about. What matters to JCU? Not science.
Peter […]
“Clark et al. (2020) found 100% replication failure. None of the findings of the original eight studies were found to be correct.”
Scientists tried to repeat eight experiments that showed “acidification” would make reef fish get hyper, act like their predators smell nice, and generally swim in the wrong circles, behave weirdly and need therapy sessions. Turns out the fish will be OK, but James Cook Uni’s reputation may never recover. The original junk experiments and press releases came out of the coral reef centre at JCU.
This is the “replication crisis” Peter Ridd warned us about. He was fired from JCU in 2018 after stating that work from JCU’s coral reef centre (ARCCoE) was not trustworthy. He also helped expose manipulated photos of reef fish. Obviously this latest reef research shows he was right to be concerned about quality assurance at JCU. One JCU researcher, Oona Lönnstedt, had already been caught fabricating data in Sweden, and yet JCU “investigated” and sacked Ridd faster than it investigated her suspicious lionfish shots. Indeed, two years on, JCU has not even officially appointed the committee to investigate her potentially fraudulent work. It seems JCU would rather employ untrustworthy scientists than […]
Add Susan Crockford’s name to the list of scientists being tossed out of the academic cathedral because they dare speak the truth. University of Victoria give no reasons for suddenly ending her long unpaid role as adjunct professor, but if they had evidence of incompetence, misinformation, deceit or poor performance, you can be sure they would say so.
The academic casualty list includes Peter Ridd, Bob Carter, Murry Salby, Bjorn Lomborg, David Legates, Nick Drapela, Pat Michaels, Mitchell Taylor, and now Susan Crockford. Outside academia those expunged from screens include David Bellamy, Johnny Ball, Phillip Vernier. Forced out of institutes were Caleb Rossiter and Lennart Bengtsson. The threat of RICO investigations drove Roger Pielke into a different career. Read “my unhappy life as a climate heretic“. Likewise Al Gore sacked Will Happer.
Others put up with the bullying and stay silent til they retire like Dr Rex Fleming from NOAA or they report anonymously after working for 40 years at the National Weather Service. Sometimes the bullying even follows people home, like Dr Fisher, economist and former ABARE manager who’s house was egged. All he did was model the costs of climate policies. Art Robinson ran for Congress and his […]
JCU protects reputations not the reef
….
Despite losing on all 17 points in a case that should never have gone to trial —
Sarah Elks, The Australian:
James Cook University is appealing a decision … Federal Court documents reveal JCU has briefed one of Australia’s top barristers, Bret Walker SC, to argue it was legal for the north Queensland university to sack Dr Ridd last year after he publicly criticised its climate change science.
Physics professor Dr Ridd will on Monday launch an online bid for crowd-funding to help pay his legal costs, asking for an extra $1.5m, after supporters already tipped in $260,000 to help fund his unfair dismissal claim. Dr Ridd has spent $200,000 of his own money.
“It’s diabolically expensive because we expect it to go all the way to the High Court,” he said. “In the end, this is a battle for academic freedom. It’s about not allowing universities to stifle free speech.
James Cook Uni will dig deeper into taxpayer funds instead of doing research, in order to protect the reputation of overpaid bureaucrats:
Liberal senator James Paterson tells Alan Jones: “It looks like, so […]
The battle continues for Peter Ridd.
James Cook Uni lost every single point against Peter Ridd. Today at the penalty hearing we find out they plan to appeal.
The fake fish uni has learnt nothing:
Charlie Peel, The Australian
James Cook University risks contempt rap for response to verdict
James Cook University is poised to appeal against the Federal Court finding that its sacking of physics professor Peter Ridd was unlawful.
JCU’s response was so far from the mark, apparently Justice Vasta is considering whether to refer it to the Federal Court Marshall. Vasta said the statement attributed to Chris Cocklin of JCU was “almost contemptuous”.
The IPA, bless them, filed an FOI to find out how much money was burnt in the quest, and says it’s high time JCU stops:
Gideon Rozner: The details of a freedom of information request lodged by the Institute of Public Affairs with James Cook University and released today reveal the University has already spent at least $630,000 on legal fees in the Dr Peter Ridd case.
“The very fact that an Australian university is willing to force the weight of an entire […]
Peter Ridd in Brisbane getting ready for the trial.
Peter Ridd’s court case is set for 26 to 28th March in Brisbane. He invites you to watch the proceedings (Jennifer Marohasy says she’ll be there, all three days!). Go on…
If James Cook Uni (JCU) wins, they lose. Whatever happens, the taxpayer lost a long time ago.
On a philosophical note, in my opinion JCU will lose the ethical argument even if they manage to win on some narrow legal definition. If they win, it will mean that a judge has decided that a university has set up legally binding contracts that give them the power to effectively take away the right to intellectual freedom of an academic and silence him/her. That would be something of a pyrrhic victory. The university hierarchy may feel vindicated but the general public, especially those in North Queensland who are most affected by the questionable Great Barrier Reef science, will take a different view. But without getting over-confident, I reckon the chances of us winning are considerably above average, so we will see. — Peter Ridd, March 2019
Ridd’s employment contract says he has the right to speak freely, […]
The university grant engine is just a part of the whole Green Scare Machine. Click to enlarge.
Science Funding is monopsonistic, one-sided and poses a real threat to science. Governments are strangling research. The more money governments throw at politicized science, the tighter the deadly grip.
Read the cutting commentary from Don Aitkin — the former vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra and foundation chairman of the Australian Research Council. There’s a vested interest here, rarely discussed, that has ballooned in the last thirty years to billions of dollars.
In The Australian and on Aitken’s blog
Don’t you Dare Upset The Money Making Machine
The engine works this way. There is strong pressure on all academics to bring in research grant money for the department, the faculty and university. Those who do it well find their careers advancing quickly. To assist them there are media sections in universities whose job it is to frame the research work of academics in a way that will gain the attention of the media. Such media releases will come with as arresting a headline as the media section can devise. Buzzwords like ‘breakthrough’, ‘crucial’, ‘cutting edge’ and ‘revolution’ will […]
UPDATE Watch Peter Ridd on Sky News. I’ll be on the show myself next Sunday. – Jo
Peter Ridd as a first year undergraduate science student at James Cook University back in 1978.
This is so much bigger than just one man and one university. Academic staff everywhere will be watching, most to see if they can say what they really think, but others, conversely to see whether James Cook University can get away with this. Can they squelch opinions they don’t like this easily?
James Cook Uni needs to be punished, mocked and heads should roll. We didn’t ask for this test, but it’s here. JCU don’t deserve a single dollar of taxpayer funds while they maintain this ridiculous anti-intellectual and political pogrom.
Peter Ridd wants his job back and he’s willing to fight to get it. Let’s help him!
Peter Ridd’s new website. Donate at his GoFundMe page.
Summary of Allegations with brief explanation
First they tried to punish Peter Ridd for daring to question divine institutions and sacred peer review. These are the words JCU wanted banned:
“…we can no longer trust the scientific organisations like the Australian […]
UPDATE: Funding target reached already. Thank you! I am astonished, very relieved and most importantly incredibly grateful for the support. I would also particularly like to thank Anthony, Jennifer Marohasy, Jo Nova, Willie Soon, Benny Peiser and many others for getting the issue up on blogs and spreading the word. Kind regards, Peter _________________________ JCU is trying (and failing) to gag Peter Ridd from discussing why we can’t trust scientific organisations
Last August Professor Peter Ridd said the unsayable — that we can no longer trust scientific institutions. His employer, James Cook University (JCU) could have explained why they were trustworthy, but instead they fired back with a formal censure and ordered him to be silent, effectively to stop him criticizing the current state of science or scientific institutions. Then knowing exactly how respectable, ethical, and scientific this is, they also ordered him not to mention the censure too. Let’s censor the censure!
If there was a crisis in science, what academic would be allowed to point it out?
It gets dirtier, apparently now they are even trawling through his private emails as well, hunting for more ammunition for their misconduct case. Who’s a bit desperate?
Hypothetically, […]
Alan Jones, interviews Peter Ridd, James Cook university professor of physics about the state of the Great Barrier Reef
The coral reef recovers.
Peter Ridd: Coral Reefs recover — “the scientists make hay when it dies in a spectacular way but they are quiet when it recovers.”
On symbionts — “There is a large variety of symbionts and some allow coral to grow faster but are more sensitive to bleaching.”
All the corals on the Great Barrier Reef live and grow much faster in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Thailand where the water is much hotter than it is on the reef and the corals just juggle these symbionts. 4:20
Corals have a little thermometer built in them, when you take a core of them from many years ago we know what the temperature of the water was back when Captain Cook sailed up the coast, it was actually about the same temperature then. It was colder 100 years ago, but it has recovered from that. The temperatures on the reef are not even significantly warmer than average on a hundred year timescale.
Corals that bleach in one year will […]
Welcome to Higher Education 2016: Whatever you do, don’t ask questions, don’t ask for evidence, and don’t discuss your doubts on class forums. “We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change’” All outside sources for research must be peer reviewed by the IPCC.
Students in the University of Colorado expressed concern about the first online lecture in “Medical Humanities in the Digital Age”. All three Professors together replied via email that students should Drop class if they dispute man-made climate change
“The point of departure for this course is based on the scientific premise that human induced climate change is valid and occurring. We will not, at any time, debate the science of climate change, nor will the ‘other side’ of the climate change debate be taught or discussed in this course,” states the email, a copy of which was provided to The College Fix by a student in the course.
“Opening up a debate that 98% of climate scientists unequivocally agree to be a non-debate would detract from the central concerns of environment and health addressed in this course,” the professors’ email continued.
“… If you believe this premise […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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