On Health of the Great Barrier Reef and Case of Sacked Scientist Peter Ridd, Sky News Creates Alternate Reality

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Australiaโ€™s Great Barrier Reef is in some serious trouble, with the latest research in the journal Nature showing the number of new corals has dropped by 89ย percent.

In 2016 and 2017, the reef was smashed by back-to-back mass bleaching events and heat stress caused by global warming that killed about half theย corals.

โ€œDead corals donโ€™t make babies,โ€ said James Cook Universityโ€™s Professor Terry Hughes, the paperโ€™s leadย author.

โ€œWe used to think that the Great Barrier Reef was too big to fail โ€” until now,โ€ added colleague Professor Morganย Pratchett.

The paper was just the latest in a steady and, many would agree, depressing parade of findings for the World Heritage icon.ย And if the scientific papers donโ€™t do it for you, then there are always theย pictures.

But the release of the study served as a remarkable contrast to the way the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky News, furnished with material from climate science denial think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, has been โ€œreportingโ€ on reef science in the pastย week.

On at least five occasions the channel has interviewed the IPAโ€™s policy director Gideon Rozner, who has been updating the channel on the case of Dr.ย Peter Ridd, a marine scientist specializing in sediments who was fired in March 2018 from James Cookย University.

According to the various interviews, the reef is in great shape, the science is probably wrong, and Ridd is a โ€œworld renownedโ€ reef expert in a historic fight for freedom.ย None of this is true, yet the claims have been allowed to standย unchecked.

The Saga of Peterย Ridd

Riddโ€™s saga is a long one, but hereโ€™s the short version (and while we’re here, in the interests of full disclosure, in the time since I first started writing aboutย Ridd’s case, I’ve taken a part-time job at an Australian marine conservation charity as a mediaย adviser).

Ridd does not think that human-caused climate change is a problem, and he thinks the reef is in fabulous health.ย This has been his public position for at least aย decade.

But in 2017, Ridd started to publicly accuse his scientific colleagues, some of which were based at his own university in Townsville, Australia, of being untrustworthy. This went against the universityโ€™s code of conduct.ย The university censured him. Ridd refused to back down and made more statements. He published โ€œprivateโ€ university correspondence on his website.ย He was further disciplined, so he sued his employer.ย Then they firedย him.

Last week, Riddโ€™s case was finally heard in court, with three days of hearings. A judgment is expected in the comingย months.

Now, the IPA has gone all out to create a narrative around Riddโ€™s case.ย Before the court case, Rozner traveled from Melbourne to Townsville (thatโ€™s a three-hour flight, folks) to make an 11-minute movie withย Ridd.

Rozner delivered daily video โ€œreportsโ€ from outside the Brisbane courthouse and gave multiple interviews to Sky News shows where presenters including Alan Jones, Peta Credlin, Andrew Bolt, Chris Kenny, and Rowan Dean, gushed in their admiration forย Ridd.

Collectively, they have painted an alternate reality, where Ridd is a whistleblowing hero who refuses to be beaten down by a tyrannical and powerfulย employer.

His case is not about whether or not he broke the universityโ€™s code of conduct and leveled a serious accusation at his colleagues, but has instead been blown up into what Rozner describes as โ€œthe most significant case about academic freedom and free speech in Australian legalย history.โ€

Whether or not the judge decides if James Cook University was right to discipline and then fire Ridd, or whether he breached his employment agreement, has become lost in a manufacturedย scandal.

Sky News pundits have made some remarkable, and wrong, claims about the case, and aboutย Ridd.

Checkย Ridd

Bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016
A researcher accesses the damage at Day Reef on the Great Barrier Reef following the March 2016 mass coral bleaching event. Credit: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, Gergely Torda,ย CC BYNDย 2.0

Letโ€™s take a few of these claims in turn, starting with the most egregious example of cherry-picking and selectiveย skepticism.

Over and over again, presenters have accepted a claim that Ridd has shown the mainstream science to be shoddy.ย Yet none of his supporters have mentioned what happened when Ridd did outline his concerns in detail in a November 2017 โ€œviewpointโ€ article in aย journal.

Ridd and a former colleague Piers Larcombe claimed they had found flaws in nine scientific papers published between 2003 and 2013, mostly by scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).

But in a response, the AIMS scientists wrote that Riddโ€™s criticism was based on โ€œmisinterpretation, selective use of data, and overย simplification.โ€

Whatโ€™s more important though, is that the paper added: โ€œGiven their sincere call to improve quality control processes in science, it is interesting that nowhere in their Viewpoint article do Larcombe and Ridd make it clear to readers that many of their criticisms of the nine [Great Barrier Reef] papers have been raised previously and have been thoroughly addressed by the originalย authors.โ€

Neither Ridd, nor Rozner, nor any of the Sky News presenters, have mentioned this, because to do so would undermine Riddโ€™s heroย status.

Movieย Magic

Peter Ridd on Sky News
Peter Ridd appearing on the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sky News. Credit: Institute of Public Affairsย YouTube

Excerpts from Roznerโ€™s film have been used at least twice by Sky News. Amongย footage of Ridd tending to his garden pond and standing on a beach gazing wistfully out atย the ocean, Ridd says: โ€œThe reef is in fantasticย shape.โ€

Clearly, it isย not.

Ridd said what had sparked the whole episode was an email to a journalist in 2016 claiming that pictures of reef at Stone Island were being misused by authorities to show how corals were degrading over time. His claims were eventually published uncritically by Murdochโ€™s The Australianย newspaper.

But if The Australian had checked Riddโ€™s story to see if the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority were guilty of a lack of skepticism, they would have found something different. Essentially, they would have found aย strawman.

In another Sky News interview, Rozner told political commentator and climate science denialist Andrew Bolt: โ€œPeter Ridd estimates as much as 50 percent of the so called peer-reviewed science on the Great Barrier Reef might not be completely accurate. According to Peter Ridd, these are a natural sign that the corals are adjusting to warmerย temperatures.โ€

Or to put it another way, the corals naturally adjust to warmer temperatures by dying, after which, they remain dead.ย Naturally.

The โ€œ50 percentโ€ claim was made by Ridd in his Viewpoint article, but it actually referred to a studyย about replication of results in biomedicalย science.

Roznerโ€™s movie is, admittedly, slick. But hereโ€™sย why.

In late 2018, Rozner and IPA colleague Daniel Wild traveled to Los Angeles for a four-day video workshop put on by the Atlas Network โ€” a coordinating group of more than 400 conservative think tanks around theย world.

Atlas itself has been funded by the likes of the Charles Koch Foundation, ExxonMobil, and Donors Trust (a way for rich folk to donate to conservative causes without beingย identified).

Worldย Expert?

Once Ridd decided to sue James Cook Univeristy, he started a crowdfunding campaign, which, thanks to promotions from the IPA and climate science denialists around the world, raised more than AU$250,000.

Ridd then hired a team of lawyers including Stuart Wood QC โ€” described as one of the countryโ€™s leading industrial relations barristers. He wonโ€™t be cheap โ€”ย sources say he usually charges upwards of AU$10,000ย aย day.

โ€œThe IPA have been the source of this,โ€ Ridd told Rozner.ย โ€œNot just for the financial support, but also the moral support that helped me go on.ย  John Roskam (the IPAโ€™s executive director) gave me a call and said he would get some lawyers to look at it and it was not until that happened that we thought we were in with aย fight.โ€

In a segment on another Sky News show, Peta Credlin, who was chief of staff to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, said Peter Ridd was โ€œworld renownedโ€ as a reef scientist, and that in Australia โ€œyou canโ€™t find a better expert on the Great Barrierย Reef.โ€

One way of measuring what scientists think of each otherโ€™s work, is to look at how many times scientists cite the studies of otherย people.

Ridd does not have a Google Scholar profile (the easiest place to check citations), but his ResearchGate page shows his work has been cited 3,113 times. For comparison, according to ResearchGate Terry Hughes has been cited 41,600 times. Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, of the University of Queensland, and a pioneer of coral bleaching research, has also been cited 41,600ย times.

I mention Hoegh-Guldberg, because during one of the Rozner interviews, Andrew Bolt claimed the Queensland scientist had been forced to back-peddle on his claims over theย years.

Hoegh-Guldberg told me: โ€œMy 1999 paper predicted back to back bleaching and loss of corals by mid-century. But thatโ€™s happening right now.ย The impacts we predicted are actually unfolding much quicker than weย thought.โ€

So, is Ridd a world-renowned expert on the reef?ย  โ€œNo,โ€ said Hoegh-Guldberg. โ€œIf he was, it would be reflected in his citations. Heโ€™s not heavilyย cited.โ€

Unequal?

Alan Jones, a Sydney shock jock who thinks climate science is โ€œwitchcraft,โ€ has also tried to pain Ridd as the plucky underdog going up against a bigย institution.

โ€œHere is a bloke who is challenging the groupthink on climate change,โ€ he said,ย โ€œbut itโ€™s unequal wherever youย turn.โ€

Unequal? Unequal, except for the fact that it was Ridd who chose to take his employer to court, not the other wayย around

Unequal, except for the support of an entire news channel and a quarter of a million dollars to hire a top legalย team.

And unequal, except for the support of a think tank that has accepted at least AU$4.5 million in funding since 2016 from Australiaโ€™s richest person, mining magnate Gina Rinehart.

Unequal?

Main image: A YouTube screenshot from the IPA‘s film with Peterย Ridd.

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