News from the New Party

Sovietised science betrays Enlightenment values

“Science as a means of inquiry into how the world works has been so successful because it has developed a series of principles, methods and techniques for being able to make such judgments. For example, we now understand the major transmission routes for HIV/Aids, that smoking injures health, and that wearing seat belts saves lives.”

“But there are two other characteristics of science that are also important when it comes to deploying its knowledge for the benefit of public policy and society: that scientific knowledge is always provisional knowledge, and that it can be modified through its interaction with society.” [our emphasis] 

 “Philosophers and practitioners of science have identified this particular mode of scientific activity as one that occurs where the stakes are high, uncertainties large and decisions urgent, and where values are embedded in the way science is done and spoken.

It has been labelled "post-normal" science. Climate change seems to fall in this category. Disputes in post-normal science focus as often on the process of science - who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy - as on the facts of science.”

 “Self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking, although science will gain some insights into the question if it recognises the socially contingent dimensions of a post-normal science. But to proffer such insights, scientists - and politicians - must trade (normal) truth for influence. If scientists want to remain listened to, to bear influence on policy, they must recognise the social limits of their truth seeking and reveal fully the values and beliefs they bring to their scientific activity.” [our emphases]

“The real fight is between scientists who believe in empirical observation and the truth, and ‘post-normal’ scientists who believe in ideology and lies. It’s a battle between Enlightenment values of rationality and those who wish to return us to a pre-rational era where thought was controlled and truth was a heresy. The stakes could not have been delineated more clearly.”

“Among their several complaints against Professor Coleman is that he has used his status as a university professor to legitimise the views and reports produced by Migration Watch UK.

In the apparent absence of any reasons or arguments adduced by the students against these views and reports, one feels like retorting it is they who are using their status as Oxford university students to de-legitimise free debate about an important public issue and to stifle academic freedom.”

“A leading university has been accused of "selling out" academic freedom of speech by scrapping a talk on links between the Nazis and Islamic anti-semitism after allegedly receiving emails from Muslims protesting about the event.

Matthias Küntzel, a German author and political scientist who specialises in the threat of Islamic fundamentalism, was told yesterday by the University of Leeds that a talk scheduled for yesterday evening, and a two-day workshop, on Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Anti-semitism in the Middle East, had been cancelled because of security fears.

In a statement yesterday, two academics in the Leeds German department, which had organised the event, claimed the university had bowed "to Muslim protests". Dr Küntzel said he had given similar addresses around the world and there had been no problems.”