An important idea

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I'm a big fan of public radio - in Australia that's Radio National, but the BBC and even NPR are terrific as well.

This morning as I paddock harrowed Radio National's Paul Comrie Thomson introduced me to a guy called Jonah Lehrer and an article he wrote for the New Yorker.  It's about something Lehrer calls the Decline Effect. 

I guess I accept that the 'scientific method' has bought benefits to the world - even if I have had a growing sense of it bringing problems as well.  Now I understand a little more of the why. 

The decline effect focuses on just how much science turns out to be .... well .... wrong.  And then it seeks to explain why - a mix of methodological errors, publication biases, randomness and commercial interests.  Better you read the article yourself.

This is why 'the science' needs to be put up against, particularly, ancient knowledge and the observations of the wise on a much more equal basis than is common.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a seminar that featured Peter Andrews and his ideas about Australian landscapes.  Most people know Andrews from a TV program called Australian Story, but a better sense of what he's on about can be got from his books Back from the Brink and Beyond the Brink.

Anyone with an open mind and a minimum of common sense reads his books or listens to him quickly suspects that much of what passes for scientific knowledge of the Australian landscape is seriously misguided.  Andrews is a equal opportunity detractor of scientists in thrall to industrial agriculture and those steeped in 'Green'.  Two of his clearest positions illustrate this well:  he thinks monocultures (the core of industrial agriculture) are crazy, but he then thinks Eucalypts are often the wrong trees for Australian landscapes and that planting willows in a watercourse is a great idea!

I know I'd back Peter Andrews over a hundred Monsanto or Cargill employed scientists - or two hundred from the academy or the Department of Natural Resources paid from the public purse.  Now I know a little bit more about why ......... the Decline Effect.
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