Australian Scientist’s Victory for Free Speech and Science

When global warming campaigners misled people about the status of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Dr. Peter Ridd of James Cook University spoke up.

He engaged in such over-the-top conduct as sharing pictures of areas of the reef that had been deemed dead, but were in fact experiencing “spectacular coral growth,” and postulating that the coral had died and regrown following natural cyclones in ways it has for ages past.

Temporary coral bleaching, not an indictment of human civilization and its CO2 emissions? Heresy!

What was Dr. Ridd’s reward for raising important scientific questions and attempting to correct the record about the reef?

He was censured, censored, and sacked.

Think of the chilling impact the university’s effort to destroy a scientist’s career for speaking out had, not only on Dr. Ridd, but on all researchers at James Cook or any place of learning. The message was clear: “Shut up, toe the party line, or out you go.” How many researchers labor in silence, escape to other work, or mouth what their intellect tells them is rank PC dogma from fear of being treated like Peter Ridd?

If unvetted academic groupthink is what you want, this is how you get it.

Unlike so many of his colleagues, Dr. Ridd fought back and won. Resoundingly.

More From CFACT: