A Climate of Mistrust

Not too long ago, the Federal Circuit Court of Australia, in the person of Judge Salvatore Vasta (coincidentally thought by some to be Australia’s worst judge who has recently been benched [not in a good way]), found that the dismissal of Dr Peter Ridd by James Cook University (JCU) was unlawful.  The judge did highlight in his finding that his decision “was purely and simply about the proper construction of a clause in an Enterprise Agreement” and stressed that it was not about “freedom of speech and intellectual freedom”, “the use of non-offensive words when promulgating scientific ideas” or “silencing persons with controversial or unpopular views”.

JCU are now contesting the finding, at least according to Peter Ridd’s Go Fund Me page and a few of the usual suspects (Joanne Nova, Sky News and the Institute of Public Affairs – at least Joanne Nova does provide a source, but it’s Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian, hidden behind a paywall) and some less usual suspects (for example, The Morning Mail [with worrisome Crusader imagery but at least some useful information, indicating that a particular solicitor, Bret Walker, has been engaged by JCU]).

Now, what I want to go through, based on a discussion with an old friend, is the history of Peter Ridd.  Nothing here is new, it’s all available to anyone willing to dig, but I just hope to draw some strings together.  The contention I was responding to was this:

“I guess, like you, I am looking at things and thinking that if it was just one example of misleading information or slandering of scientists, purely because they have a different opinion, then I would not be so skeptical.  When it is so many examples, then my skepticism starts to increase.  The latest example of this treatment is the Queensland scientist Dr Peter Ridd.  He has come out against the narrative that the Great Barrier Reef is in trouble from climate change land uses etc.  What James Cook University did to him was simply appalling.  When I see groupthink being enforced in this way - it rings alarm bells.  I really think that this is a major problem.”

So, my question was … was the action by JCU appalling?  Where they enforcing groupthink?

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According to the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC), JCU argued that he was not sacked for his views, but rather for his conduct:

JCU argues the sacking of Peter Ridd had nothing to do with his questioning of the science of climate change or the decline of the Great Barrier Reef, but rather the manner in which he made his arguments.

"Peter has always been allowed to conduct himself in relation to what our expectations of academic freedom are, it's the fact that he has broken the code of conduct on many occasions," said Professor Gordon.

Peter Ridd received an official warning in 2016 for critical comments he made about a colleague in an email he sent to a journalist.

Just looking at the wording of what he was apparentlycensured for and eventually dismissed, it sounds fair enough.  As I understand it, the finding against JCU came down to whether or not the Code of Conduct and the Enterprise Agreement were worded tightly enough to justify sacking him for denigrating his colleagues, his employer and some associated organisations.

Here are the key things that he said/wrote and was censured for:

• (email to journalist while acting as a sort of whistleblower) GBRMPA (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority), and the ARC (Australian Research Council) Centre of Excellence should check their facts before they spin their story.  [- implication of dishonesty on the part of these organisations which are linked to JCU]

• (in same email to journalist) My guess is that they (implied - GBRMPA and the ARC) will both wiggle and squirm because they actually know that these pictures are likely to be telling a misleading story - and they will smell a trap.  [- disrespectful characterisation, even if might be true, and also another implication of dishonesty]

• (to Alan Jones on Sky’s Jones and Co.) “the basic problem is that we can no longer trust the scientific organisations like the Australian Institute of Marine Science even things like the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.  A lot of this stuff is coming out, the science is coming not properly checked, tested or replicated and this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions.  And the fact is, I do not think we can anymore.”  [- implication of a dishonesty or incompetence]

• (to Alan Jones) “He who pays the piper calls the tune, that’s possibly a bit harsh. I think that most of the scientists who are pushing out this stuff, they genuinely believe that there are problems with the reef. I just don’t think that they are very objective about the science they do. I think their emotionally attached to their subject // You know you can’t blame them, the reef is a beautiful thing”  [- implication of unprofessionalism]

• (to Alan Jones) “And I just wonder, this has been going on for close to 50 years, how many more years will it take for us to cotton-on to the fact that you can no longer trust this stuff, unfortunately”  [- implication of dishonesty or incompetence]

There are some other “strikes” detailed in the legal finding but I don’t think they are worth worrying about, Peter Ridd had antagonised the authorities, he was whining about them and he wrote and said some bitter and snarky things, but I don’t consider that they in themselves constitute a hanging offence.  Note that there is no “three strikes” provision, so the university didn’t seem to need to have waited for him to offend three times before dismissing him.

I don’t want to bother too much about whether the EA and CoC were written well or badly but instead to just think about the situation in terms of whether it’s acceptable to sack someone for denigrating an organisation when there is a formal agreement to not denigrate that organisation (Failure to comply with the Code may lead to disciplinary action, and in serious cases may lead to termination of employment and/or criminal prosecution).  I’d say, yes, it’s okay.  We might get a little hung up on what constitutes a serious case, but in principle he’d been warned that dismissal was a potential consequence of his actions.

After the first instance, he was censured and basically warned to not do it again, and that doing something similar could amount to “serious misconduct”.  But he did do it again (with Alan Jones – who hosts a show which regularly promotes climate change denial).  At that point, I believe that he did stray into serious misconduct, not only in the choice of language, but also purely by putting himself in that situation by getting into an interview with Alan Jones (and Peta Credlin – Jones’ colleague on a Sky News show, noting that Sky News belongs to Rupert Murdoch and has a number of hosts who are at least climate change denial friendly [or curious]).

A defence of Peter Ridd could be that he was acting as a noble whistle-blower.  Now my ethical position on whistle-blowers is somewhat nuanced, but basically it comes down to not being able to be a “whistle-blower” per se if there isn’t risk involved.  What he did was wrong, by denigrating his employer, even if (hypothetically) he were to have been doing the right thing by speaking out about systemic corruption of data regarding the Great Barrier Reef – he needed to weigh his options and decide whether he was willing to suffer the consequences of his actions, but being right about the latter would not have made him right about the former.  Plus, he didn’t go about his “whistle-blowing” (if that’s what it was) the right way, and his approach to the journalist didn’t really come across as whistle-blowing.  Talking to a well-known climate denial apologist like Alan Jones on a cable news channel that leans heavily towards climate denial certainly didn’t.

Think about it slightly differently.  Take an extreme case, wherein Peter Ridd argues eloquently that the Earth is in fact flat and that organisations associated with JCU are misrepresenting the evidence in support of a round Earth, a geometry on which there is considerable consensus.

Imagine further that we are talking about America here, a couple of years down the track when Flearthers are as ubiquitous as the various forms of creationists.  At such a benighted time, Ridd’s flearthing isn’t immediately written off as the ravings of a lunatic even though, to us as rational beings, he’s clearly 100% wrong.  In terms of the world that he inhabits, in the eyes of the layman and in the eyes of certain groups who have a vested interest in a flat Earth, there’s this idea that the science isn’t completely in yet.  The people who actually study this stuff on the other hand are pretty much all saying that the world is roundish (let’s say 97% of them).

Flearther Ridd writes to a journalist, making the same sort of arguments, and makes the same sort of denigrating comments about his university.  This comes to light and he gets censured and told “don’t do this again please”.  Then he gets on TV with a Flearther equivalent of Alan Jones (Alex Jones, perhaps?) and says, out loud, similar sorts of derogatory things about his university.  Should the university be allowed to sack him?  Not because he’s a Flearther, but because he’s denigrated his employer in contravention of their code of conduct and doubled down following a warning to not do it again.

I agree that we probably need some sort of protection for legitimate whistle-blowers, including a provision for them to be supported when they are forced to act for the greater good at cost to their jobs, but that’s a separate issue.

I believe that it might be worth looking at Peter Ridd a little more deeply before mak him a poster boy for intellectual or academic freedom (from Desmog):

(Andrew Bolt to Ridd [October 2011]: “Peter, what also struck me is the use of the word 'pollution.' Carbon pollution. Can you tell us, are we talking 'carbon pollution', are we talking carbon dioxide? Is carbon dioxide a pollutant?”

Ridd: “Well, I mean, it's a natural gas and it's important, it's in fact essential, to plants. It's actually stretching it a little bit to say it's pollution […] Sometimes you maybe wonder if it's being used as a media thing more than using it as a fact.”

Bolt:  “I've just looked up the latest satellite data on my iPad of warming over the last 30 years, and it's about, as you can see, about one-third of a degree. Is that really a big warming? Can Julia Gillard say that's caused by our gases?”

Ridd: “No, I don't think there's any way we can do that. I mean, essentially all this boils down to looking at these big models that predict the climate, and when you look at the details, the uncertainties involved in those make it, in my view, that in fact they have no predictive value whatsoever in fact.”

Or, the fact that he was, in 2005, a director of the Australian Environment Foundation – which is sceptical on climate change and currently has, on its front page, a large photo of Peter Ridd and details of his upcoming lecture tour, followed by an article titled “The scare is settled? Have the climate catastrophists won?” by Alan Moran, a climate change sceptic from the Institute of Public Affairs, an organisation that rejects climate change.

Basically, Peter Ridd has been in the climate change denial game for a quite a while now.  JCU’s recent action, to dismiss him for the things he wrote and said in association with his climate change denial, has served only to make him a bit of a martyr.  They probably should have just given him more rope but then again, I don’t know the full story of why JCU finally took the action that they did, whether it was because they were embarrassed to have such a provocative climate denial in their midst, or because the people he was denigrating complained, or something else.

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So, were the actions of JCU appalling?  No, not really.  Misguided perhaps, due to the increased publicity around questionable scientific claims (by which I mean the ideologically sourced opinions on climate change from organisations like the Institute of Public Affairs and people like Joanne Nova as championed by people like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt).

As to the truth or otherwise of climate change claims … well, we’d need to look at the facts, which I’ll put together for a future article.