A new comment in Sept. 2024.
John,
Doesn't "blind" peeer review by two reviewers say it all?
You can interchange 2018 with 2024 because nothing has changed in those years. They are still willfully "blind."
Maurine

Thanks John , another well pointed out dispute in basic common sense .
Guideline stoodgies galore is the ideal for workplace equiblibrium . Equality and diversity is a great thing but when it is being applied as overall sameness for all people in all situations ,that sounsd like a hive mentality wanting a compliant herd compliant population with a motto indoctrination that the needs of the many outway the needs of the few ?
so them pointing the finger of conspirosy theories etc might want to stop and reflect for a moment as if they point a finger at someone there is three fingers pointing straight back at their own silly we selfies .

Hi all,
John Stone, thank you so much for your measured and to the point letters that call organizations out. It is such a comfort to know that you are out their taking on giants politely , in ways that they have to respond to.
E A Greenhalg; Probably many of the people here were busy caring for or raising their disabled children during the time period you are referring to. Some may choose to visit your, no doubt informative, website, but it isn't a requirement , and those who choose not to aren't necessarily or even probably "hypocrites". As per your comments, you seem to indicate that so far your approach hasn't actually changed anything yet.
Maybe it will take a lot of people, with lots of different approaches, for change to occur.
Things have happened and changed that once seemed impossible ( the Berlin wall coming down is one I never thought would happen in my lifetime) so change and improvement can happen even when the situation seems insurmountable.

It's interesting to see Janice Kay CBE, Provost & Professor of Cognitive Neuropsychology, at Exeter University, effectively 'passing the buck' back to the Politics faculty and the journal which published this paper. Psychology is properly classed as a science and Professor Kay will be well aware of the deficiencies in the Lyons et al paper, in particular the paid online responses from Amazon Mechanical Turk, used as the basis for the paper
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/01/amazon-mechanical-turk/551192/
"The Internet Is Enabling a New Kind of Poorly Paid Hell
For some Americans, sub-minimum-wage online tasks are the only work available."

When one to one questioning of participants is a part of the study, this needs to be done under controlled conditions, usually with the questioner behind a screen to prevent any subliminal messages being picked up by the participants and influencing their responses, since participants might give answers which they perceive as being the wanted responses. The online responses used as a basis for the Lyons et al paper are effectively worthless for any kind of proper scientific analysis. These have the same dubious scientific value as those political ‘opinion polls’ which are often wrong in their predictions.

Furthermore, the chosen ‘conspiracy’ that GM mozzies spread Zika virus by a company with links to the pharmaceutical industry, in order to promote the need for a Zika vaccine is ridiculous. Zika is universally acknowledged to be a very mild transient infection. There was a lot of publicity at the time of the Brazil outbreak about Zika possibly causing fetal microcephaly, if pregnant mothers caught Zika, but again I could find no mention of this in the Lyons et al paper.

John please go back to Professor Kay and ask her what she thinks about the Politics department producing so called ‘scientific’ papers in what is definitely the ‘domain’ of the Psychology department. Even better, in her reply to you she talks about ‘colleagues’ in the Politics department, Was this paper a collaboration between the departments? If not why not? I would guess Prof Kay is attempting to distance herself from this.
Don't let her!!

John and False Scientists :- A huge expansion of the number of UK Universities during the last 2+ decades has resulted in an over supply of persons with degrees, not matched by job opportunities. Persons with masters and PhDs are often now finding themselves unemployed with a mountain of dept.
There's currently plenty of jobs for Doctors, Teachers, Nurses and those with specialist IT skills, but the 'social sciences' including 'politics' are struggling. Potential students are belatedly realising they are better off with apprenticeships where they earn a wage whilst learning 'on the job'. As a result universities are struggling financially. Some are said to be facing bankruptcy.

These days Universities encourage everyone to be a 'scientist' regardless of their academic backgrounds. Lecturers and academic staff are obliged to produce 'Research Papers', in order to secure a slice of UK and European research cash. The Horizon 2020 fund awards grants to 12% of applications, but the subject matter has to comply with the current agendas of the current governments. This has resulted in Politics and other Social Science faculties becoming psychologists. The psychologists have become neurologists and evolutionists. As for the science faculties - they are more or less forced to 'toe the line'. Independent research and original thinking is discouraged.

It's a long time since my own science studies, but I was taught to critically evaluate research papers, taking nothing at face value. Dominic Sandbrook's 'Micky Mouse' assessment of some university courses these days, extends in my opinion to a large number of those so called 'scientific papers' which have proliferated in recent years. So called 'peer reviews', mostly anonymous, have become meaningless.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-6344343/DOMINIC-SANDBROOK-looks-three-universities-brink-bankruptcy.html
As three universities teeter on bankruptcy, former lecturer DOMINIC SANDBROOK says an explosion of Mickey Mouse courses and student places have led to idiocy of the first degree
By DOMINIC SANDBROOK FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 00:04, 2 November 2018
Quote:-
"I can already hear the howls from university managers. According to their adverts, university gives students unique 'transferable skills'.
Graduates, they claim, will earn a 'premium' of £100,000 over their lifetime, thanks to a degree certificate.
The first of these points is, to be frank, a complete lie. A history degree gives you no skills that you would not get from a degree in plenty of other subjects.
It certainly gives you little that you would not also get from A-level studies, training in all kinds of white-collar jobs, or just reading a book and being a reasonably intelligent adult."

John, Fantastic challenge to Exeter U’s pathetic non-defence of their agenda-driven garbage. All of the uni’s have unfortunately become nothing more than Marxist factories. It will take some time before true academics return, but I am hopeful that the Dan is bursting and their ugly agenda is being laid bare to see.

Why people believe in conspiracy theories
13/02/2018 / ESRC
by Benjamin Lyons, Vittorio Merola, and Jason Reifler

Conspiracy theories are finally out of the shadows.
https://blog.esrc.ac.uk/2018/02/13/why-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories/
Quote:-"(for example, people who see the world as a battle between good and evil are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories) and situational reasons (for example, people who experience a loss of control are more likely to believe conspiracy theories).

Well now you know folks!!

The experiment concentrated on what these researchers called a real conspiracy belief; (quote):- "The belief that the Zika epidemic in Brazil was caused by the release of genetically modified mosquitoes by a subsidiary of a pharmaceutical company that was hoping to profit from a future vaccine." More than 1000 participants were given limited information, including the actual release of GM mosquitoes and the apparent need for a vaccine, and asked if they thought the conspiracy theory was true or believable. Only the control group was told the GM mozzies were released after the event and the company involved had no links to the pharmaceutical industry.

In fact, the Zika outbreak in Brazil was very soon over. Some babies were born with microcephaly, but it is difficult to find accurate numbers, and it is now admitted more research is needed to prove a link to the Zika virus. Some pharmaceutical companies were keen to develop a vaccine, against Zika, but funding issues and the time taken to develop such a vaccine meant this could not be an immediate priority.

This stuff is what passes for 'science' in universities these days and everyone is out for a slice of the funding. In this case something called the European Horizon 2020 fund with nearly 80 billion euros to give away to 'researchers'.
https://www.pnoconsultants.com/uk/grants/horizon-2020/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIr_O-zr253gIV67DtCh1neAN8EAAYASAAEgJw_vD_BwE

Quote:- "Within H2020 Societal Challenges are projects seeking solutions for challenges within society. Grants are available for:
 Health, demographic change and wellbeing
 Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research
 Secure, clean and efficient energy
 Smart, green and integrated transport
 Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials
 Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies
 Secure societies"

I think that covers everything including such contentious issues as vaccines, GM foods and environmental controls and of course, climate change.
It's a nice big trough for researchers to feed from. Roll on Brexit!!

Thanks, John, for everything. Hold their feet to the fire.

Bob

Many thanks - I was just checking out the quote on Wikiquotes and found this commentary:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
"This is probably the most quoted statement attributed to Burke, and an extraordinary number of variants of it exist, but all without any definite original source. They closely resemble remarks known to have been made by the Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill, in an address at the University of St. Andrew (1 February 1867) : Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. The very extensively used remarks attributed to Burke might be based on a paraphrase of some of his ideas, but he is not known to have ever declared them in so succinct a manner in any of his writings. It has been suggested that they may have been adapted from these lines of Burke's in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770): "When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." (see above)
"This purported quote bears a resemblance to the narrated theme of Sergei Bondarchuk's Soviet film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, produced in 1966. In it the narrator declares "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing", although since the original is in Russian various translations to English are possible. This purported quote also bears resemblance to a quote widely attributed to Plato, that said "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." It also bears resemblance to what Albert Einstein wrote as part of his tribute to Pablo Casals: "The world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it."

So lots of people almost said it including Burke. There are lots of other interesting things Burke also said listed in the entry. I particularly liked:

"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion."

Well done John, superb as always!

At one point Exeter was seen as a respected university, they need to retract this immediately to show they are not compromised.

One would have expected an improvement there after Edzard Ernst retired, but unfortunately it hasn't happened.