“Unscientific American” | City Journal

There’s something similar -- Unscientific Australian -- happening in Australia at the moment, regarding Domestic Violence. And specifically, the number of women killed by their male partners. 

The concern is that Australian Domestic Violence, the number of murders of females by male partners, is out of control. 

There was a demo on the lawns of Parliament House, last week. Where the PM, Anthony Albanese, spoke, but got into trouble for “lying”, according the rally organiser, because he said that he’d asked to talk, but had been told that he couldn’t. But then he was asked. “That’s a complete lie”, said Sarah Williams. 

But the bigger picture. And the one that I want to highlight here. What is the case of DV in Australia. 

What’s happening? Because when people call for “more should be done”, well…the fact is.. there’s always more that can be done. 

It took about 4.7 seconds to find out.

Since 1990, the rate of homicide in Australia has declined 68%. That includes Domestic Violence homicide, which has also declined. The only homicide rates that have risen are those amongst Aboriginal communities. And thus — you’ve guessed it — you can’t talk about it.

Australia: Murder rates per 100,000. Source: Global Economy

Aha! You see the problem. You can’t really say, as PM, "things are OK". Amongst us non-indigenous, at least. The only problems are in the aboriginal communities. You just can’t say that. 

Even if that’s the truth. The carry on about DV is essentially hysteria. And to the extent that it is happening, it’s in the aboriginal community. 

Yet, even if the PM can’t say it, someone has to. Because if not there’s no data to back anything. Nothing is done on the basis of an facts. “The Other Side” does that, very well, IMO.

The same problem is affecting science and data and facts more generally. 

As the City Journal reports, in the case of the famous sceptic Michael Shermer: 

Michael Shermer got his first clue that things were changing at Scientific American in late 2018. The author had been writing his “Skeptic” column for the magazine since 2001. His monthly essays, aimed at an audience of both scientists and laymen, championed the scientific method, defended the need for evidence-based debate, and explored how cognitive and ideological biases can derail the search for truth. Shermer’s role models included two twentieth-century thinkers who, like him, relished explaining science to the public: Carl Sagan, the ebullient astronomer and TV commentator; and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who wrote a popular monthly column in Natural History magazine for 25 years. Shermer hoped someday to match Gould’s record of producing 300 consecutive columns. That goal would elude him.

In continuous publication since 1845, Scientific American is the country’s leading mainstream science magazine. Authors published in its pages have included Albert Einstein, Francis Crick, Jonas Salk, and J. Robert Oppenheimer—some 200 Nobel Prize winners in all. SciAm, as many readers call it, had long encouraged its authors to challenge established viewpoints. In the mid-twentieth century, for example, the magazine published a series of articles building the case for the then-radical concept of plate tectonics. In the twenty-first century, however, American scientific media, including Scientific American, began to slip into lockstep with progressive beliefs. Suddenly, certain orthodoxies—especially concerning race, gender, or climate—couldn’t be questioned. More...

ADDED: Back to Oz, with Bettina Arndt:

Message to our politicians: If you have deluded yourself that you could ever harness the angry women’s vote, take a good look at the Albanese debacle last week.

Our Prime Minister indulged in classic virtue signalling by sucking up to the Canberra women’s protest rally, joining hundreds of women who had been cynically whipped up into a frenzy over the latest domestic violence tragedies – with the usual false claims of an epidemic of violence being used to fuel anti-male hatred and demands for more funding.

From “Winning over young men”.