There shall be no dissent;
A world-renowned expert in animal bone identification has lost her position at the University of Victoria (UVic), she believes for telling school kids politically incorrect facts about polar bears.
Zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford is routinely hired by biologists and archeologists in Canada and abroad to identify the remains of mammals, birds and fish. She has helped catalog museum collections, and assisted police with forensic analyses. But UVic students will no longer benefit from her expertise, and her ability to apply for research grants has come to a screeching halt. In May, the Anthropology Department withdrew her Adjunct Professor status, depriving her of a university affiliation.
Crockford describes her expulsion as “an academic hanging without a trial, conducted behind closed doors.” After being renewed unanimously in 2016 for a three-year term, her adjunct status was not renewed the next time around.
Crockford is the author of a popular blog, polarbearscience.com, as well as five books about these animals. Polar Bear Facts and Myths has been translated into four languages. She says that, contrary to the claims of environmental activists, polar bears are currently thriving and are at no risk of extinction from climate change.
UVIC and greater surrounding habitat is a hotbed of green theocracy. The institutional left has no qualms in censoring all dissenting voices. They haven’t quite got the political power to intern or execute dissenters yet but give them time.
Precisely right. The UVic collective, as in Communist China and Islam, will brook no dissent.
But it’s worse than censoring.
Questioning the UVic collective’s world-view results in expulsion from said collective.
In other collectives, such as Communist China and Islam, dissent or questioning can go so far as expulsion from the face of the earth.
And here are the actual facts. There is no AGW, it is just a form of Green COMMUNISM. The earth is actually returning to a cooling cycle. With the Grand Solar Minimum which will deepen in Solar Cycle 25 we will see more temperature records fall this winter and next year. Prepare. Professor Valentina Zharkova who so far has an over 90% accuracy prediction rate based on science not politics saying that we will be at cold levels not seen since the Maunder Minimum, And all our Leadership want to do is talk about CO2 which is only .03% of the atmosphere. Instead of preparing the citizens for the coming cold. Which will mean food inflation, and necessity of fossil fuels to survive.
https://electroverse.net/u-s-broke-a-staggering-2159-low-temp-records/
Watcher,
The fact that temperatures are going down means that the reductions in Carbon have worked, no need for more reductions, or the planet will cease to support life…..quick feed the plants…..
If they would have sold the BS AGW 20 years ago, Gore & everybody would be celebrating now…
Yup. Individuals on the right own weapons for self-defense. The People on the Left use the Collective’s arms for any offense.
Where is the common sense in firing Dr. Crawford for telling the TRUTH to all Canadians. Then we have a Prime Minister that continually lies to all Canadians….WHY HASN’T HE BEEN FIRED!! Where is the JUSTICE!! My political views since we Canadians are to VOTE Oct 21st 2019!
The power of the left. Agree with us. OR!
Stalin would be so proud.
How do you get to consensus? Fire the dissenters.
I thinks it’s the first rule of “new science” or something. But yeah…let’s keep voting for spineless appeasers that will keep appointing far left bureaucrats to soak up our tax dollars and lie to us. Been working great so far.
Thus, the “consensus” is obtained by fear, e.g., fear of expulsion and therefore loss of significant income.
Governments and quasi-government institutions such as universities keep their people in line by paying them high wages and threatening to deprive them of that high income by expulsion.
Consider LeBron James, the new “employee” of the government of China.
Being a former adjunct faculty member, she won’t have much of a case against the uni should she file a wrongful dismissal suit. Adjuncts aren’t permanent like tenured professors and their positions aren’t secure.
That’s one reason universities like them so much. They’re expendable and cheaper than tenure-track faculty, and since there are a lot of under-employed academics out there, universities can always hire themselves more if they chuck someone out or don’t renew that person’s contract.
That’s one side of academe that the system doesn’t want the general public to know too much about.
But doesn’t Greta want us to listen to the scientists?
If polar bears aren’t at risk of extinction, then warmist, alarmist watermelons are at risk of extinction. That was her sin.
And that very wealthy collective called UVic is thereby threatened, too.
It lives and breathes on the so-called Environmentalist world-view.
This is what I said about university professors and herd mentality, even in STEM fields. But usually it is self censored and not so blatant. This is what happens when you go against the herd. There is no more tolerance for dissenters in today’s universities than in medieval Europe.
The side that does this, and thinks consensus is science, and thinks there are one hundred genders, and women can have penises, and men can get pregnant, and yes despite all evidence, polar bears are in danger of extinction, raises the banner of science. Just like the thugs who are the reincarnation of Nazi brown shirts and Chicom Red Guards call themselves anti-fascist. Yes, this is Orwell’s 1984.
I believe any University that censors Scientists whose research they “don’t like” … without due process ensuring a hearing of FACT … should be defunded by every agency of the government, and lose their accreditation. Beto wants to do nothing less to Churches who refuse to toe the line of woke doctrine.
It isn’t that simple. Mostly universities commit sins of omission rather than commission.
Usually several professors with common interest will submit a proposal to the NSF. The subject will be well known before the submittal, and usually have undergone self censorship. Not to mention proposals will be furthered censored by the NSF. The maverick who submits his own proposal to some offbeat foundation may be tolerated as long as he does not stray too far. Since such mavericks do not usually hide their intents well (if indeed their intents were to hide them) they will never get tenure and can be disposed of easily. As in this case, a non-tenured professor will simply have his contract not updated, without any justification. It doesn’t require “censoring” any particular piece of research.
That’s why so many physicists who debunk AGW are professors emeritus. They are retired, and do it with their own money.
So. The Universities, which I had always envisioned to be FACTORIES of unbridled exploration of the unknown … pushing FRONTIERS of knowledge, are simply Rubber Stamp Factories? Exploring ever more complex formulations of the gum rubber used to stamp out their rubber stamps? “Still perfecting ways of making sealing wax”
Good to know.
Just another one of the Institutions of my youth going down the tubes of woke conformity.
In the late eighteenth century, when noblemen in Britain still had wealth and cachet, they had the time to pursue whatever hobby that pleased them. (As I do now, time at least, haha, but I am too old.) A few of them actually chose science, such as Lord Henry Cavendish, who left his name to his endeavors. They spent their own money, and pursued whatever fancied them. It was truly science for the sake of science. This persisted through the early twentieth century, I believe, when the Great War changed the entire social landscape.
That was when your image of the impoverished professor came into being. As I understand, they had social standing and freedom to pursuit their interest, but materially not much more than a room in the residence and privy to the dining hall that fitted their station (per the Oxford or Cambridge model). Maybe it was only a fantasy even then, but I believed many of them chose to pursue truth rather than wealth. That was what I had in mind, and was perfectly willing to take that oath of poverty. Alas, to change metaphor, I was not good enough to even be at the Round Table, let alone be the Sir Galahad who succeeded in the quest for the Holy Grail.
I believe it may even have been somewhat true almost half a century ago when I was a graduate student, even though the NSF administered most of the grants. At least it was so in theoretical physics, but probably not where politics reared its ugly head. But you know a situation like that will eventually get corrupted, where the NSF administration decided what were worthwhile projects based on politics and not science.
Of course communism is the ultimate bureaucracy, but you don’t have to go that far. Bureaucracy ruins any endeavor, with its herd and circle the wagons mentality. My dear departed brother was a neurosurgeon of some renown, but he told me once he would never belong to the AMA, an opinion shared he said by most reputable doctors. That was quite a revelation to me. I later discovered that that situation was hardly unique, it was bureaucrats who wanted to run the professional societies. In industry, they have turned HR from a service organization into an all controlling bureaucracy, ditto universities.
I better stop here before I spend all night typing.
OB … you never disappoint. Your mind is so beautifully analytical in processing all that you’ve read and learned (which is obviously manifest). Indeed, I have a “historic” notion of Academic purity. But what a great reminder of just how science progressed … all it took was money. But THOSE monies were unfiltered and direct. Straight from bank account to purposeful expenditure. The dollars dedicated to academia today dwarf those of yesteryear, despite being heavily filtered and reduced by ‘bureaucrademia’. And the bureaucrats give it with so many strings attached as to make marionettes of today’s “Scientists” (call them confirmation bias engineers?) . Yeah … my notion of science is rooted deep in yesteryear. What a pity.
I am a Professional. And like your dear departed bother (I have one of those too, however he was a humble auto mechanic … who also just happened to be smarter than I, and built electronics and circuit boards for fun) … I have NEVER joined my fields preeminent (three letter) Professional Org. Why? It is nothing more than a lapdog for every woke SJW PC issue dujour. They’re WORSE than bureaucrats.
BTW … I am looking forward to CAL’s LAST football game of the season (hey! when you’re a CAL fan … the END of every season brings great “relief” from our congenital annual frustration). This season’s LAST game opponent is UCLA. The Thanksgiving weekend game will be spent with my two UCLA graduate adult-kids. I will cheer for my quarterback-less BEARS and their entire dependence upon their defense. Hey! We don’t n-e-e-d a REAL QB (witness the UCLA retread expat. over CAL center) . Good luck BEARS … teach them baby-bears a lesson about “new” football, where a team plays without any offense whatsoever.
That “craziest game of all time” wherein we scored 50 points in one and a half quarters, was the only game we won so far. We are at your bitter rival Stanford today.
Something’s got to give in that fraternal struggle between UCLA and Cal. A team with no offense will play a team with no defense.
Congrats on dispatching those Cardinal Trees, the most overrated team in PAC 12 history … all … because they have a “nice guy” afro-American coach. How parochial to fawn over a coach due to his skin color.
If you can’t score, you can’t win … nod to UCLA. Unless you believe a tie is possible … what is it ? … after 3 scoreless OT’s?
It still doesn’t mean we have a defense. We beat a third string QB. But the offense is coming along.
It won’t be three scoreless OT’s. They start on the 25, that’s way too close. Our kicker made two FG longer than that against Furd.
bullying comes in many forms in many venues.
the very FIRST time I was EVER struck violently (didnt even know about that kind of thing) was a go&$^$&med TEACHER.
yep.
grade 1, I made the mishtake of learning to read faster than the rest, ie learned faster and could read faster than speaking pace.
teacherrrrrrrrrrrs in the olden days strictly observed the ‘spare the rod spoil the cute ones’ rule.
yep.
NEVER saw ANY of the handsome lads walloped. not one in 8 years.
why iz dat????
took me till all the way to grade 11 calculus when I decided to impress the hot looking rookie, whereupon my marks went from low 50s to mid 80s in one, ONE term.
I did a lookup of her unusual name years later and lo she called me !!! she called me from Victoria BC !!!!!
found out she only did 1 more year and opted for IT, likewise me. wonderful conversation.
howcum you waited this long she posed?
ummm. . . . . had to wait for the internet to be invented, had a giggle about that.
concluded by telling her that experience of mastering the TOUGHEST aspect of mathematics induced me to go on and pick up a BSc and BA, *knowing* if I did the work I would get the marks.
Related from Oct 1, not sure if anyone posted this.
“I’m referring to Jacqui Tam, the 21st-Century university vice-president who was forced to resign last Sunday because – get this – she approved a billboard campaign that implied very, very indirectly that global warming might not be 100% evil and destructive.”
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-even-barley-yield-data-can-upset-the-politically-correct-mob
“Imaging losing your job merely for differing ever so slightly from the politically correct dogma of the time.”
“However, there is almost no one more intolerant than a liberal who is convinced of his or her own virtue. They are as unwilling to accept dissent as Torquemada – even just the tiniest variation about barley yields.”
Bit more complicated than that. e.g. She is/was on the Heartland Institute payroll:
In 2012, a confidential document leak, dubbed Denialgate, revealed that Crockford had also been receiving payments of $750 per month from the notorious climate change denial think tank, the Heartland Institute, to work on their NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) project. Crockford has also spoken at the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC). Crockford refused to discuss the payments when contacted by a University of Victoria student newspaper. [5], [35]
Crockford regularly produces studies for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a think tank based in the UK run by Nigel Lawson with the purpose of combating what the foundation describes as “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to mitigate climate change. [6]
[…]
“Zero Authority” on Polar Bear Science
Ian Stirling, who has spent more than four decades studying polar bears and publishing over 150 papers and five books on the topic, says Crockford has “zero” authority on the subject. [2], [7]
“If you tell a lie big enough, often enough, people will begin to believe it,” said Ian Stirling. “The denier websites have been using her and building her up as an expert.” [7]
https://www.desmogblog.com/susan-crockford
desmogblog?
— eye roll —
// desmogblog?
— eye roll — //
Thank you for your analysis.
Her non-renewal was probably foreshadowed when an article in Bioscience appeared last year in which she figured prominently, as detailed here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/climate/polar-bears-climate-deniers.html
In response, after having tried to have a preview of the article censored, she went for the #metoo defense:
// Susan Crockford @sjc_pbs
Bioscience article is academic rape: an assertion of power and intimidation. //
You go girl !
Heartland Institute is Lord Monckton as well; his team has just published a paper that, due to a mistake in calculating feedback, all the alarmists are modelling global warming at ten-times its likely result. And the universities having been informed of this, either they mathematically disprove the effect or they’re knowingly conducting fraudulent advocacy for grant money – long stints in the greybar possible.
So, yeah – no love lost there.
750 bucks a month! Wow! That’s some big time cash. Enough to make someone dizzy.
“There’s now a climate of fear on campus.”
Yeah.
When the real culling starts remember this: “Run dizzy run!”
“If you tell a lie big enough, often enough, people will begin to believe it,” said Ian Stirling.
Oh the irony.
Dizzy could you kindly f*** off and go rable.ca where you’d fit right in.
// go rable.ca where you’d fit right in //
I realize that you come here for like-minded companionship. People who scorn any studies but STEM but also scorn science & technology when it goes against their political orientation.
No I do not come here for like mended companionship. I regularly spar with majority here over countless issues, most recently would be Trump’s policy in Middle East or the current election debate, to give you just two most obvious examples. What I do not come here is leftist propaganda that you are spewing while pretending to present objective research. Nor it is true that I scorn any studies but STEM. I am willing to bet that my knowledge of economic theory or history exceeds yours by an order of magnitude.
“Crockford had also been receiving payments of $750 ”
A professor has outside funding for research. Shocking.
And said funding that does not come from a source that prohibits skepticism (hence it is notorious).
Of course the science settled professors who receive funding that requires them to bow to glowbull wormning scam are clearly legit and not at all notorious.
Reminds me of Kruschev’s scientific minds diagnosing dissidents with sluggish schizophrenia.
desmogblog? Really?
That’s lame, even by your standards.
The fascism of the climate change activists shows once again.These people have no tolerance of any dissenting views, nasty little nazis without the brown shirts. Too bad taxpayers have to support a communist propaganda factory like Uvic. newspaper columnist pointed out that most of the educated NDP MLA’s and their cronies in the 1990’s government were grads of Uvic or SFU.
The polar bear narrative that they’re almost extinct is in direct contradiction to what the Inuit who live in the North claim.
Must be the racism of white academics and other activists that causes them to dismiss the claims of the Inuit.
Victoria flushes all its human wastes directly into the water without treatment, yet the place is filled with “environmentalists”. Real environmentalists should sue them. Hypocrites.
Book burning much?
The facism of the left is strong in Communist Lotus land, Obi wan! It is time to start thinking seriously about funding, both private and government of our university system. I quit giving any donations to my alma mater some years back.
And that is why the science is settled. Because when you are unsettling you get cancelled and subhuman scum like dizzy cheer.
Colonialista speaks:
// A professor has outside funding for research. Shocking.//
She was never a professor & she didn’t get paid for research. [see below]
// Of course the science settled professors who receive funding that requires them to bow to glowbull wormning scam are clearly legit //
The matter of scientific legitimacy is addressed in the Bioscience article, [otherwise known as ” the academic rape of Dr. Susan Crockford” ]
” Pimm and Harvey (2000) provided three criteria with which to evaluate the credibility of scientific studies.
First and most importantly, follow the data. They emphasized that the data trails of skeptics generally go cold very quickly.
Second, follow the money. Some of the most prominent AGW deniers, including Crockford, are linked with or receive support from organizations that downplay AGW (e.g., Dr. Crockford has previously been paid for report writing by the Heartland Institute).
Third, follow the credentials. As we have illustrated here, scientists such as Crockford who are described as “experts” on denier blogs in fact typically have little in the way of relevant expertise, and their expertise is often self-manufactured to serve alternative agendas.
[…] Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on the effects of sea ice on the population dynamics of polar bears. ” BioScience April 2018
Speaking of following the money, I hope Soros or some other master of the universe of the green institutional left is paying you well for your devotion to parroting such paragons of science such as Desmogblog run by “communications” spin doctors and the NYTs whose credibility only exists in the tormented minds of the left. Citing junk science doesn’t debunk anything. Guilt by association goes both ways.
“She was never a professor [see below]”
Vs
“In May, the Anthropology Department withdrew her Adjunct Professor status”
Ugh how long is your attention span amoeba?
“& she didn’t get paid for research.”
Yes she did. When you’re a scientist, you use your funding not merely for lab work but also for publishing the results and disseminating your findings. That all broadly counts as research in any academic environment.
“…three criteria with which to evaluate the credibility of scientific studies….”
Three arbitrary criteria that coincidently invalidate the majority of current glowbull wormening “scholarship”. But before we go into details it is important to underline that you do not get use those criteria as a metric that invalidates everything you dislike. This is a cheap logical fallacy.
“First and most importantly, follow the data.”
If that was true than we would need to close all environmental studies departments. They do not follow data they invent it. Have you read Michael Beenstock on the topic or is he not credentialed enough for you?
“Second, follow the money.”
Exactly. When you receive funding from the government or its proxies you advocate for more government. Again close those departments (and plenty of others).
“Third, follow the credentials.”
This is not the third point. This is a corollary of the preceding two points. You establish yourself as an expert by advocating for more government and then you brand all opposed as heretics with no credentials. You dis Heartland that employs the expertise of Ivar Giaevera a freaking Nobel Prize winner. That is not credentials for you? Why? Solely because everyone who disagrees has no credentials because if the had credentials they would agree.
Catch 22.
Sluggish schizophrenia.
Try to wrap your head around the fact that you are simply defending rigging the game, nothing more to it.
Pathetic apparatchik demagogue.
// She was never a professor [see below]”
Vs
“In May, the Anthropology Department withdrew her Adjunct Professor status”
Ugh how long is your attention span amoeba? //
University status terms are rigid. Call someone “Professor” who is only an Associate Professor and you will soon be informed of the differences. There is also Professor Emeritus,
The good ladies position “Adjunct Professor” is an unpaid position, letting her perform various tasks with students and giving her access to libraries etc. That might be some form of remuneration, although these days most academic books and papers are available for free.
“Call someone “Professor” who is only an Associate Professor and you will soon be informed of the differences. ”
Never happens.
Where in Canada did you go to school that you called associate professors by their rank? Tell me which university in Canada does it.
Apart for the fact that you’re desperately trying to nitpick in order to save a pathetically weak point you’re still completely wrong. Professors of every rank from assistant professor to “full” aka “university” professor are commonly called “professors.” Everyone at the university calls them that. Students, staff etc. None ever calls rank (assistant/associate/adjunct/full) apart for promotion process or some award ceremony. Anyone with a Ph.D. who teaches at the university is called professor. This includes limited term (non-tenure track) instructors and even people hired to teach a single course. The only difference between lecturers and professors, if a university observes it in the first place (not all do) is the Ph.D.
Adjunct professors are typically experts in their fields often asked to do some part time teaching in their narrow highly specialized area where the department does not have an expert but still wants to offer a course. These tend to be senior ‘field’ courses. Being a professor isn’t their full time job or a primary source of income. In any case you’re hairsplitting desperately trying to salvage a nonexistent point in order to undermine Crockford’s credibility.
You’re either disingenuous or know nothing.
Don’t lecture your betters.
Correct.
This is nothing new. I was blacklisted by Environment Canada (more precisely, by the PSAC) for holding non-conformist political views in the period 1977 to 1981. One of my thought crimes at that distant point in our past was to question the dominant role of the Liberal Party in civil service activities. Another was to support Solidarity in Poland rather than the communists.
These facts were never written down anywhere so I have no legal proof. But one sympathizer of mine back in those days was so appalled by the situation that he left Canada and eventually committed suicide.
Environment Canada staff then tried to create an entirely fictitious persona for me. A person I had never met was publishing weather forecasts in local newspapers and had some lunatic ideas. During this blacklisting campaign, somebody came up with the idea that this person was me, and that rumour went around in professional circles until several years later when it was reported that the person had died, and here I was, still alive.
Much later, I found out that the actual cause for this hostility may have been because I was present in a private company’s offices on a day when they provided a weather forecast to a Toronto radio station during a one-day work stoppage by PSAC. This was (I recall) in December 1978. This was called scab activity by PSAC. I have continued to believe that my name is on some sort of list of persons to be forever shunned in the public sector in Canada, since there has never been any move made to apologize or compensate me for these anti-social activities. Nor will there ever be. Liberal Canadians don’t have enough class to do the right thing, as we are seeing on a daily basis in this election (and by and large, on a daily basis since 1980 as far as I can recall). I have resigned myself to the obvious fact that this will all stay hidden from public scrutiny until I pass, and then it can be forever forgotten. Too bad I don’t have a friend like Alex S., he could write a book about such things. I could too, but then to find a publisher in Kanada? They’ve been there before me as well.
I’m not saying that I’m an isolated case either. There are at least three others that I could compare if a parliamentary committee ever wanted to look into this. And it has had an impact on public policy too. No doubt with my input there would be a much different “climate” at Environment Canada as I am more even-handed on the climate change issue, going so far as to investigate actual climate records. I have them in print in case anyone there gets wind of this and starts deleting old records. They don’t exactly show what we are being told about climate change, the truth is a lot more subtle. But then what would I know, I’m not a Swedish teenager or a Canadian civil servant, those twin towers of intellectual accomplishment.
Self-publish on Amazon. Costs nothing but your time.
“Another was to support Solidarity in Poland rather than the communists.”
Thanks we needed that there back then. Not everyone had a spine like you. Respect.
I met Drs Crockford and Soon at the book release in Calgary earlier this year. Both brilliant, erudite, and willing to discuss. What a loss for UVic. (UVictim, if you pay for an education here?)
Follow the data:
One of the comments of the article references this Denis Ables article, “Empirical Evidence Refutes Greenhouse Gas Theory”.
https://principia-scientific.org/empirical-evidence-refutes-greenhouse-gas-theory/
“The proponents of anthropogenic-caused global warming invariably, (and ironically) DENY that the Medieval Warming Period (MWP, 1,000 years ago) was global and also likely warmer than it is now”. Ables refutes this hypothesis: “First, the MWP trend is conclusively shown to be global by borehole temperature data. No controversial models needed, the data speaks for itself”.
I love this part about retreating glaciers refuting AGW theory. This is the smoking gun:
“Next, the receding Mendenhall glacier (Alaska, pictured) recently exposed a 1,000-year-old shattered forest, still in its original position. No trees (let alone a forest) have grown at that latitude anywhere near that site since the MWP.”
I found an article, with pictures, in the HuffPost, that confirms this game changing discovery:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mendenhall-glacier_n_3975699
How can modern AGW models explain this? “One of the well-known alarmists, Phil Jones, admitted publicly that if the MWP was global and as warm as now then it’s a “different ballgame””.
Someone please ask Greta to explain this. Makes your head spin, doesn’t it Dizzy?
Universities no longer dabble in education.
Susan Crockford has written quite a lot on polar bear populations. Her latest, “The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened,” is a good read. She names her opponents and discusses their motives. Mildly interesting.
“Adjunct professor” is not much of a position, though. In Canada it is usually used as a cheap way to access expertise. In our shop the physical oceanographers use it to obtain the occasional services of government (DFO) specialists.