Renowned, multi-award winning science writer Dr. David Whitehouse – who has an asteroid named after him – has slammed the New Scientist as “offensive and prejudicial” for rejecting a feature it commissioned from him on the Earth’s inner core after it discovered that he serves on the Academic Advisory Board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The GWPF is a climate contrarian think tank founded by the former Conservative Chancellor Nigel Lawson.
In an email exchange seen by the Daily Sceptic, Daniel Cousins, Head of Features at the New Scientist, made the focus of the proposed piece clear:
…it would be first about how we’ve finally confirmed the existence of this inner core… then I guess it becomes about what we know about it’s structure (speculation about iron crystals, etc.) and how it formed… And finally, I guess we’d want to explore what the various scenarios for how it formed might inform how we think about habitability on other planets.
However, just 21 minutes after the commission was agreed, Dr. Whitehouse received a follow-up email from Mr. Cousins informing him that his affiliation with the GWPF rendered him “unsuitable” to write for the magazine:
Hi David,
I am writing with bad news, I’m afraid.
Barely a moment after I sent the email around my colleagues regarding that commission, one of my managers called to ask me if I was aware that you are on the board of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and therefore not someone we can having writing for us.
I am of course as disappointed as you, because this is a good idea for a story – and we now can’t do aid [sic] story, because it not be fair [sic] to have someone else report and write it. Regardless, we can no longer proceed.
Clearly, I should have done my due diligence on this – and I am sorry to have wasted your time.
Thanks, Dan
Dr. Whitehouse wrote to Nina Wright, the New Scientist’s Chief Executive, demanding an explanation:
The reason given for the cancellation of the contract was stated to be my association with the Global Warming Policy Foundation – a policy organisation that is in broad agreement with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the absence of any further explanation, it is clear that New Scientist has censored and reneged on a contract based solely on my professional affiliation. The cancellation of the article, which was on a completely unrelated topic, after it was negotiated and commissioned, is offensive and prejudicial treatment. More alarmingly, it could be taken as evidence of New Scientist exhibiting media bias and a cancel culture that would belittle its reputation.
Eventually, the Editor-in-Chief, Emily Wilson, responded:
…whilst it is a matter of regret that the New Scientist was not able to proceed with the proposed commission, we do not agree that the cancelling of the commission was “offensive” or “prejudicial”. Furthermore, any suggestion of a media bias is firmly denied.
Instead, it is simply the case that each and every item published in the New Scientist is done so at the Editor’s discretion and with the final approval of the Editor.
Needless to say, Dr. Whitehouse was unimpressed by this explanation:
Your reply completely fails to address the serious issues I have raised of media bias and censorship at New Scientist.
Having been an editor myself, and at one time was approached to consider applying for the Editorship of New Scientist, I find your lengthy explanation of the rights of an editor rather patronising. New Scientist can cancel a commission for whatever reason it wants, but in this instance you told me the reason. It had nothing to do with the subject or the quality of the commissioned article about which you were very enthusiastic, and having written a book on the topic I was an ideal contributor.
The reason New Scientist gave for cancelation after the commission was agreed, along with submission date, possible publication date and fee, was, you wrote, that you had just become aware of my association with a think tank – the Global Warming Policy Foundation – that, as its name suggests, considers climate change policy. The GWPF is supportive of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change. Whilst I understand that some of New Scientist’s environmental reporters would take issue with the GWPF on some matters, science thrives on debate and scrutiny. Developing policy of course depends upon many factors of which science is but one.
According to New Scientist’s intolerance this meant that I should be censored even though the commissioned article was about a subject about as far removed from climate change as it is possible to get.
In so doing New Scientist has demonstrated clear prejudice, censorship and a no-platforming seen so often in examples of cancel culture. It is irrelevant you maintaining a firm denial of media bias when it was clearly expressed on two occasions in the email New Scientist sent me. I am sure anyone who reads the email would be in no doubt as to its prejudicial nature.
The snub echoes one received by Professor Norman Fenton earlier this month and reported in the Daily Sceptic when an NHS conference cancelled his presentation over an unrelated “Twitter vaccine controversy”, citing fears that “it may distract”.
The cancellation of eminent science writers and statisticians like Dr. Whitehouse and Professor Fenton for ‘wrongthink’ highlights the ever-shrinking boundaries of the discourse around science and medicine and the unwillingness of science’s gatekeepers to challenge groupthink and politically sensitive dogmas. As Dr. Whitehouse says, “science thrives on debate and scrutiny”. Silencing those who challenge prevailing orthodoxies was the approach favoured by the Catholic church in 17th Century Italy and is completely at odds with the scientific method.
Stop Press: The corruption of science by politics is the theme of a brilliant essay in the July/August edition of the Skeptical Inquirer by the scientists Jerry Coyne and Luana Moraja, who raise the alarm about the capture of biology (their subject) by critical social justice ideology. They argue that “the science that has brought us so much progress and understanding… is endangered by political dogma strangling our essential tradition of open research and scientific communication”.
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I’m afraid facts and arguments aren’t going to change the minds of Net Zero advocates.
What will change their minds is the sense that those who don’t want it are getting angry and might start going for Net Zero zealots in ways they might not like.
They need to feel the need to change position at an emotional level. And we all know fear works best.
Personally I make a point of ensuring that anyone who defends climate change policy perceives my anger and a certain sense of menace that I’m not standing for it.
That’s the sort of emotional response that gets people re-thinking, in my view.
Indeed. Righteous anger coupled with a couple of winters freezing in one’s home and – heaven forbid – being deprived of the internet and one’s dumb-down-the-owner ‘smart’ phone (due to power blackouts) and we will probably see some change in direction. Recent history shows how quickly zealots can change sides – 2 years ago there were millions standing in line for untested poison, now they can’t give it away. Reality bites big.
Yep everyone wants to “save the planet” till the penny eventually drops that the planet is fine and it was never about the planet in the first place.
We see the same tactics used against those who put rational arguments and science up against the loony climate change protagonists.
The loonies are not loony and those with rational arguments and science are the loonies.
All achieved using the same approach to so many other issues that are destroying our social values and structures and done using
useful idiotswhatever activists they can fund to implement this madness.The end justifies the means for those behind all this crap who see the destruction of social values and structures as the ends which justify the means.
DS is invaluable as a source of information and a forum to read what sensible people have to say against this backdrop of madness.
Or “never let a good crisis go to waste”, and parasite governments of both parties are certainly putting the manufactured climate crisis to good use to implement all the progressive policies they have long craved
No facts and reason……Just faith and emotion. Climate activists and those who glue themselves to things decided long ago what is true and there is no budging them. But we need to remember it is government and their phony climate models masquerading as science that brainwashed them all. —–Thos governments can hardly come down hard on their own useful idiots that do all their dirty work for them now can they?
Until the liberal mainstream media, and especially the BBC, do honest reporting over the utter folly of spending trillions on completely worthless and highly dangerous Net Zero madness nothing will change.
I would suggest that everyone complain to the BBC via. their Make A Complaint web portal. Find a climate change article on the BBC website, it’ll almost always state that greenhouse gas emissions are the main cause of climate change, something that we all know is complete rubbish. They always make this dumb statement without any dissenting views allowed. That’s complaint-worthy in itself.
Do you really think complaining to the BBC achieves anything? It is impervious to complaints.
Hopefully one low level individual there might start to think for him/her self and light a spark. A long shot, I know.
At a stroke, we could cut the staggering 0.0016% of the atmosphere that is human-caused CO2 by wiping out most of the world’s population by toxic medical interventions, geoengineering, gmo food and electrosmog. Unless some people have already thought of that.
Just as a matter of interest – have any of the Net Zero zealots ever clarified what’s the target internal winter temperature people are expected to maintain in this brave new world of theirs, or hasn’t that sort of practical reality crossed their tiny minds? I see the WHO, NHS and others currently recommend 18-21C, and building ‘sperts recommend above 16C to stop condensation and mould. Are those numbers likely to drop, I wonder? (My place regularly drops well below those already; wonder if that means I get extra brownie points?!)
Off topic, but who cares..
So.. 2.30 pm tomorrow Andrew Bridgen after 20 refusals and the pressure of constitutants harassing their MPs there will be a debate (1 hr slot) about excess deaths.
Its the first parliamentary debate in the world… You couldn’t make this up in your widest of dreams..
https://youtu.be/uWP6mGiDveI?si=sYVcJHZC-SLCDsYQ
More off topic…. Was all this about provoking Iran..
Brand talking sense… Yet again (don’t believe the narrative about him, it’s an attempted matrix takedown)
https://youtu.be/jWO-mtt4_lU?si=vUDuZ1TDB4O-iFMW
”Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you,”
This is a momentous nightmare social experiment, the current technology cannot deliver, the current resources are inadequate. As this nonsense progresses and it becomes increasingly obvious that our current population cannot go ‘net-zero’ and live at anything like present living standards, what is going to happen? Are people meekly going to accept immiseration and a degeneration of living standards back to medieval times? If we do go down this route the UK will become a weird basket case like the mad uncle you keep in the attic while the rest of the world gets on with life. This is a recipe for huge social upheaval and turmoil, the end result of which is hard to predict?
Something similar to North Korea, I expect. Only without the abundant luxuries…
‘Saving the planet’ is worth any cost in some eyes. Even if you can’t afford it, and it wouldn’t save the planet anyway, (primarily because it doesn’t need saving from CO2).
Useless people trying to give themselves a sense of destiny.
The NIC should be closed down and sent back to school while we find some adults to carry on the essential work.
The can will need to be continually kicked down the road because what the parasite political class are trying to do is not just impossible, it is unaffordable, but the pain and suffering inflicted will be a severe blow to hard pressed taxpayers suffering the fallout from the malady infecting all of parliament called PSPS (Pretend to Save the Planet Syndrome)