Academia is utterly broken - here's why.

Pro-Jab 'Experts' fail to understand accountability - Wiles follows Hotez into covid denialism.

Why engage with ‘anti-vaxxers’? In fact, why respond to anyone at all? After all, its not like you have to be accountable to the public, eh? Answering to Parliament is my Top Priority, right? Joe Public are just ignorant, uneducated conspiracy-theory, far-right extremists. I just want to be allowed to get on with spending time on my social media feed, which by the way earns my University academic brownie-points. (I kid you not).

The above is my interpretation of the views of certain academics. Is it me? Can someone please explain how academia has got this far into total egotistical nihilism? Are these institutions gradually turning into psychopathic entities? Since when does any senior academic (or any professional, for that matter) refuse to engage in any meaningful discussions with someone genuinely interested in the topic of discussion? What is the point of posting on social media, if you then refuse to respond to any comments that follow? Too many questions, I know.

Every country (every country which experienced the recent onset of totalitarianism, that is) during the covid-era madness, had an ‘Expert’. Often this was someone who had no qualifications in pandemics, epidemiology or immunology, but who became the Government’s go-to spokesperson. Said Expert would be on TV daily - sometimes more. Across the world, we would witness bizarre out-of-character behaviours, such as rap-songs or animations starring these new ‘celebrity-personalities’ that helped re-enforce The Narrative along with the “Safe and Effective”.

One such Expert in NZ was Dr Siouxsie Wiles, a UK-trained ‘micro-biologist’ who some reason likes to stand out in a crowd with her bright purple hair. Each to their own.

{Screenshot from the NZ Gov-funded media}

Twitter was a favourite medium back then for promoting The Narrative, you’ll remember. So convenient as an echo-chamber with many of the dissenting views banned. (As was Linkedin, where I was banned too).

But Wiles and a colleague became subjected to intense ‘abuse’ from the public for the claims they were making and the views they were promoting. NB As I think I made clear in my previous post:

I’m absolutely against any type of bullying or harassment, and likewise any kind of threats, however mediated. But it would be understandable if like-minded taxpayers like myself, found they wanted to politely enquire to Wiles about some of the contradictory or missing evidence in her claims, or ask her whether she had read an important peer-reviewed article that could inform her writing.

But as we discovered over time, many such actors did not engage with any of these questions for requests for data to back-up any (quite frankly, often ludicrously inaccurate) claims of the “Safe and Effective”. Presumably unable to comprehend why her paying public were getting more and more frustrated with the lack of engagement with the seriousness of the situation, Wiles (and two colleagues) even lodged a complaint at the NZ Employment Court. They apparently believed that their institution wasn’t protecting them from the claimed ‘hostile’ pressures from the taxpaying public. Needless to say that approach didn’t quite work out.

Now you would think that this experience would allow someone like Wiles time to reflect on her position, investigate properly all the reasons why the public appear angry with her, and to re/frame her opinions in a slightly more sensitive manner. Nope.

This week, as the wonderful Dr Guy Hatchard points out, Wiles is once more publishing opinion pieces in the NZ-Gov-funded and appropriately-named ‘Stuff’ media outlet, which tries to support the position of US pro-jab health ‘Expert’ Dr Peter Hotez. Apparently it’s now a virtue to refuse to enter into a debate. The mind boggles.

Hotez, for those not familiar with master podcaster Joe Rogan, has recently turned-down a US$multi-million offer for his favourite charity, in exchange for a fair and untimed debate about the “Safe and Effective” with Presidential Candidate Robert F Kennedy Jnr. Why? Because “we don’t engage with anti-vaxxers” says Hotez. Indeed.

Prompted by this irrational denialism, I emailed Dr Wiles to ask whether she was familiar with this favourite TedX talk from a few years ago (Wiles is a TedX speaker herself, so should be interested in the content, surely?):

In this talk (8 mins), Attkisson articulately summarises the propaganda of BigPharma and how easily it is to be fooled into thinking you’re doing ‘independent research’ when in reality the opposite is true. Not really expecting any response (I rarely do to these kinds of emails), I was surprised to get THE LONGEST auto-response email I have ever received. It must have taken her quite a while to collate all these links (copied in it’s entirely below):

From: Siouxsie Wiles <s.wiles@auckland.ac.nz>

Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2023 at 19:19

Subject: Automatic reply: [title]

To: Ursula Edgington

Kia ora and thanks for your email.

I am currently receiving a large volume of emails so there may be a delay in responding to your message or I may miss it entirely. Please feel free to resend if you do not receive a response. In the meantime, I have put together this autoreply which answers many of the common reasons people email me.

Please note, under my current employment contract at the University of Auckland, it has been stipulated that I spend no more than one day a week on average on Service and Leadership tasks and that responding to media queries and other science communication activities fall under this category. This may mean I am unable to respond to your request to remain within my Service and Leadership allocation.

If you are a journalist or calling from a media organisation and have my mobile number, then please feel free to text me and I will reply if I can. I have had to remove my number from this autoreply due to harassment and abuse, so if you don't have my number you can get in touch with the Science Media Centre (https://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/contact-us/) who can pass it on to you, or find you someone else who can help with your query. Please note, I do not answer calls from numbers I don't recognise, so please send a text.

If you are emailing to ask me to speak at an event/conference, and you have a budget or can afford to pay me a speaker fee, please contact Amy@johnsonlaird.co.nz to discuss. As research funding is so hard to get in New Zealand, I use these funds to support some of my research.

If you are emailing to tell me you don’t agree with me and you do so in an unkind or threatening way, then please take some time to familiarise yourself with the Harmful Digital Communications Act and the Harassment Act and think about why you thought it appropriate to email me. Next time, before pressing send, ask yourself whether you might not be in full possession of the facts and whether you might be wrong. Please note, depending on how threatening your email is, I may report you to the police.

If you are emailing to ask if you can use any of the graphics created by Spinoff cartoonist Toby Morris and myself, we have released these under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-4.0 licence. This means you are free to use them providing you give us credit and share under the same conditions. Please do send me a link to where or how you have used them for our records. You can download the illustrations and gifs by right-clicking on them in the posts and selecting "save picture as". Toby and I have recently published a paper (open access) which documents all the graphics we have created and links to where you can find each one online: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2023.1087120/full. Any questions for Toby Morris should go to info@thespinoff.co.nz.

If you are a member of the public emailing me with your questions about COVID-19, then please start by seeing if I have already answered them in any of my articles published by the Spinoff: https://thespinoff.co.nz/author/siouxsie-wiles/ or in any of the graphics Toby Morris and I have collaborated on: https://thespinoff.co.nz/media/07-09-2021/the-great-toby-morris-siouxsie-wiles-covid-19-omnibus/.

If you are emailing me to alert me to some misinformation/disinformation you have seen or received, please forward it to the Disinformation Project (disinformationproject@gmail.com) and report it to CERT NZ (covid@ops.cert.govt.nz).

If you are asking whether something is misinformation/disinformation, I explain how to spot it here: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/21-08-2021/siouxsie-wiles-toby-morris-the-red-flags-of-covid-misinformation/ and I explain why I don't debunk it here: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/15-05-2021/siouxsie-wiles-theres-a-lot-of-vaccine-bs-around-heres-why-i-wont-be-debunking-it/ There are also lots of excellent reports by the Center for Countering Digital Hate on who the main people creating misinformation/disinformation are globally and how they are profiteering from the pandemic. You can access those reports here: https://counterhate.com/our-work/

If you are asking how to talk to family and friends who have fallen for misinformation/disinformation, the Workshop has an excellent resource here: https://www.theworkshop.org.nz/publications/conversations-with-friends-whanau-about-covid-19-vaccination-connecting-not-correcting-2021 It might also help to talk to family and friends about whose agenda they are actually supporting. The Stuff Circult team have put together a really good documentary on this: https://interactives.stuff.co.nz/2022/08/circuit/fire-and-fury-disinformation-in-new-zealand/.

If you are emailing to demand evidence that the virus responsible for COVID-19 has been 'isolated', I wrote about this back in November 2020: https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/15-11-2020/siouxsie-wiles-kochs-postulates-covid-and-misinformation-rabbit-holes/

If you are emailing to tell me your thoughts on the matauranga versus science "debate" then I'm sure you would be very keen to engage with some of the excellent scholarship in this space. Here are a couple of references to get you started: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00288330.2018.1539404 and https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03036758.2016.1252407.

If you are emailing to say something kind, then thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to get in touch. It means a lot to me. You might be interested to watch Gwen Isaac's little documentary about me filmed just before New Zealand went into lockdown back in March 2020: https://loadingdocs.net/siouxsie/

If you would like to say thanks by supporting my research, you can make a donation here: https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/giving/donate/a-z-list-of-funds/new-medicines-to-kill-superbugs-fund.html. Every little helps! Alternatively, head over to my redbubble site for t-shirts and other things made using pictures taken from the many science-art exhibitions I have curated. All profits from your purchase go to my research. https://www.redbubble.com/people/SiouxsieW/explore?page=1&sortOrder=recent

Finally, a quick note about the spelling of my name. While it is pronounced Suzy, it is spelled Siouxsie. I honestly don't mind if you get the order of the vowels mixed up or miss off the x or second s. I appreciate that you tried. Please do me the courtesy of not addressing me as Susie, Susi, Suzi, Suzie, Suzy, or Sowsie (and yes, I know what the people calling me this are implying. It's hardly subtle).

Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles MNZM

Bioluminescent Superbugs Lab,

The University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau

Te Pūnaha Matatini, Principal Investigator

(So glad she added that last para about the spelling of her name).

Is this normal?

Do other academics, caught-up in this lunacy feel obliged to write such long auto-responses? What am I supposed to think when receiving this response? Like the UK, Australia and other countries, we now have these kinds of Experts involved internationally paid for by BigPharma’s [Pseudo]-Science Science Journalism Fund named the Science Media Centre. (I was already very familiar with the latter due to it’s unethical support of aerial poisoning operations over New Zealand’s forests and drinking-water catchments). ‘The Disinformation Project’ aims to ‘Fact Check’ anyone who dares speak-out against The Narrative and encourages neighbours to snitch on each other if they DO NOT COMPLY.

In NZ we even had the equivalent of the UK BBC’s ‘Unvaccinated’ '[pseudo]documentary: Fire and Fury which as expected is nothing but BigPharma propaganda aimed to discredit the anti-mandate protest at Wellington Parliament Building. It probably included Wiles (I couldn’t stomach watching it, tbh). The piece was very effectively Truth-Bombed mainly with grass-roots live-streams in the artistic and sensitively directed, two-part doco We Came Here for Freedom (1.5 hours x 2, highly recommended).

The issue for me - as an interested by-stander and (ex?)-academic of educational psychology and sociology - is…. IS the mass formation really so deep, that those professionals who (must, surely) really believe that they are ‘doing the right thing’, also believe they don’t have to answer to any public questions? Even if people like Hotez are scared they may get bamboozled by Kennedy’s scientific references to the data, shouldn’t they just ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’? Just to prove their point? Why is it that they cannot enter that space, even for $millions for charity?

Does Wiles consider this ‘auto-response’ lets her off the hook, that she can filter-out any uncomfortable knowledge forever?

And more unanswerable questions:

Do these Experts secretly know that they are unable to support their claims?

and perhaps even more importantly:

What’s next for these “Experts” when these lies are finally exposed?