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An artificial intelligence (AI) model that can estimate with high accuracy a person's lung function just by using a chest radiograph has been successfully developed.

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New Zealand’s attempt to integrate indigenous ways of knowing with modern science takes place not only on the secondary-school level, but also at universities, including the most prestigious one in the country: The University of Auckland. The course below (“Aotearoa” is the Māori word for New Zealand, and is now inseparable from “New Zealand”) is required for all first-year science students at the University under the University’s “Curriculum Framework Transformation” (CFT) plan. There will be a version of this course for all other faculties as well, so it’s a general requirement.

Click below to read it (and download a pdf), and I’ll put the gist of the course below (bolding is mine):

 

Course Prescription What does it mean to do science here and now? This course considers how knowledge of place enhances your learning, the significance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and how knowledge systems frame understanding. Students will think critically about the relationships between science and our environment, along with the ethics of science in practice. Course Overview

Contemporary science is deeply entwined with place, knowledge systems and ethics. This course examines these concepts through the lens of sustainability to demonstrate how they shape research agendas, methodologies, and applications of contemporary science. To address the environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainability, science must recognise and navigate the complexities of these interrelated concepts.

Explore the role of place-based knowledge, the importance of embracing diverse knowledge systems for science and the ethical responsibilities inherent in contemporary science in Aotearoa New Zealand. This interdisciplinary course will challenge you to think critically, fostering an awareness of the intricate relationships between science and its broader context, including Te Tiriti o Waitangi. Capabilities Developed in this Course Capability 1: People and Place Capability 2: Sustainability Capability 3: Knowledge and Practice Capability 4: Critical Thinking Capability 6: Communication Capability 7: Collaboration Capability 8: Ethics and Professionalism Graduate Profile: Bachelor of Science Learning Outcomes By the end of this course, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate how place, and an understanding of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, are significant to your field of study (Capability 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8)
2. Critically and constructively engage with knowledge systems, practices and positionality (Capability 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7)
3. Employ a reciprocal, values-based approach to collaborating (Capability 4, 6, 7 and 8)
4. Communicate ideas clearly, effectively and respectfully (Capability 6, 7 and 8)
5. Reflexively engage with the question of ethics in academic practice (Capability 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8)
6. Demonstrate a critical understanding of sustainability (Capability 2, 3 and 4)

Seriously, is this going to be useful to the students, or will it just confuse them and waste their time?

Note that Te Tiriti o Waitangi is the Treaty of Waitangi, signed by some (but not all) Māori tribes in 1840. It established the rights of Māori and the English colonists, giving the Crown full sovereignty over the country but also giving Māori the right to keep their lands while making them full British subjects.  It has been interpreted, with respect to education, as mandating that Māori “ways of knowing” (Mātauranga Māori)  must be given equal treatment in schools to modern “ways of knowing”.  I’ve discussed that requirement ad nauseam, and won’t go over it here, except to say that mandating this coequality is a foolish and counterproductive thing to do, at least if New Zealand wants to enter the era of modern science.

 

This educational coequality of modern science with a mixture of trial-and-error empirical knowledge indigenous practices, which include spirituality, religion, ideology, eommunality, tradition, and ethics—this coequality is a dubious and contested interpretation of the Treaty. But the Māori are regarded as sacred victims, and an ethos has arisen in New Zealand that this coequality cannot be questioned. People have been fired or demonized for questioning it. Nevertheless, if the country wants its students given a proper science education, infusing it with local lore is not the way to go.  As one local said when he saw this course, “Its primary purposes seem to be pushing an activist view of the Treaty of Waitangi and pushing the validity of Mātauranga Māori as an alternative knowledge system.”

 

Indeed, and that’s from someone familiar with science education in New Zealand. Now there’s no issue with teaching local “ways of knowing” in anthropology or sociology courses, but “indigenous science” often proves to be infused with nonscientific stuff like oral tradition, myth, and religion/spirituality.  To pretend that the Treaty is essential for first-year students, and that alternative “ways of knowing” are just as good as modern ones, is to begin propagandizing science students in their first year at University.

At least New Zealand can’t say it hasn’t been warned of the consequences of this form of wokeness. As the country continues to drop in science rankings compared to countries like the U.S. and Canada, it may reach a point where people think, “Wait a minute; what are we doing?”

They haven’t gotten close to that point yet.

While ultra-processed food is the latest buzzword in nutrition, the scientific evidence for how it affects our health continues to point in different directions. Why can't researchers just tell us the perfect diet?

Recent fossil finds suggest that big brains weren't an evolutionary asset to our ancestors but evolved by accident – and are likely to shrink again in the near future

This is one small example, but an important one, of how science in New Zealand is being corrupted by trying to comport it with the indigenous “way of knowing”, Mātauranga Māori (MM).

The article below, from the July 4 New Zealand Herald (the biggest newspaper in the country) describes a science fair in the town of Rotorua, highlighting one student project that “tests” whether they could “prove” that a legend might be true.  (There are other projects highlighting MM and indigenous knowledge.)

This was sent to me anonymously, for of course criticizing stuff like this in New Zealand could cost you your job and/or your reputation.  The indigenous people, their myths, and their “ways of knowing” are regarded as sacred and untouchable.

The story is that of the love story of Tūtānekai and Hinemoa, recounted in Grey’s ‘Polynesian Mythology’, first published in 1855. The legend involves a Māori man who wanted to run away with a woman, and lured her to an island in a lake by playing his flute:

Every night Tūtānekai sat on a high hill and played his flute, the wind carrying his music across the lake to Hinemoa’s home. But Hinemoa did not come. Her people had suspected her intention, and they had pulled all the canoes high up on the shore.

Every night Hinemoa heard the sound of her lover’s flute and wept because she could not go to him. Eventually she wondered if it be possible to swim across to Tūtānekai.

Hinemoa took six hollow gourds and fastened them to her body to buoy her up. The night was dark and the great lake cold. Her heart was beating with terror, but the flute played on. She stood on a rock by the shore and there she left her garments, entered the water and began to swim.

In the darkness she could see no land, having only Tūtānekai’s flute to guide her, and led by that sweet sound she arrived at last to the island.

At the place where she landed, she found a hot pool and went in to warm herself, for she was trembling with cold.

And all went well after that. I find it bizarre that a group of students wanted to test whether this was true, when what they were really testing whether it was possible. 

Click below to read:

Bolding is mine, and the excerpts from the article are indented:

A group of Rotorua children have used science to prove whether the basis of the legendary love story of Hinemoa and Tūtānekai is true.

They concluded it very well could be.

Te Arawa Lakes Trust’s Te Tūkohu Ngāwhā Mātauranga Māori Science and Design Fair is in its third year.

It aimed to celebrate the intersection of Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and science, and give students a platform to showcase innovative projects and designs.

There were 35 exhibits in its first year. Last year grew to about 40, and this year more than 100.

Topics covered five categories and ranged from projects focusing on water quality and rongoā (traditional Māori medicines) to investigating a legendary love story.

The latter involved a group from Te Rangihakahaka Centre for Science and Technology looking at the legend of star-crossed lovers Hinemoa and Tūtānekai.

[Rongoā involves not only herbal medicines, but prayer and massage.]

Note that the intent was to prove whether a legend was true, though this language could have been from the reporter and not the students. But the aim of the project was surely to find whether a Māori legend might actually be based on fact:

 

The story, told in the song Pokarekare Ana, is about how beautiful chief’s daughter, Hinemoa, fell in love with lower-ranked suitor, Tūtānekai, and swam across Lake Rotorua to be with him on Mokoia Island when she heard his flute calling to her.

The students decided to test whether she would have been able to hear the sound of his flute from across the water.

The group looked at how various conditions impacted on how loud the flute would have been and how it would have gotten louder as Hinemoa swam across Lake Rotorua.

With transmission loss expected between 30-40 decibels, it would have been soft at first: “a sound like wind in the trees”.

Conditions needed to be calm. No wind; glassy water; cold; overcast and no ripples.

Conclusion: “it would be audible”.

This, of course, depends on how loudly Tūtānekai was playing and whether conditions were right (which of course we cannot know), but I suppose if he was playing to attract his lady love, it would have been loud. (I saw the famous island when I was in Rotorua.)

But the problem with this is that it melds legend with science and, by so doing, mistakes the question “is the story not ruled out by analysis of sound?” with the question that science would ask: “what is the evidence that the story is true?”  And since the story is based solely on a legend transmitted orally and then written down by a European in a book on Polynesian mythology, it has low credibility from the outset.  There are of course dozens of such stories that could be analyzed to see if  bits of them are ruled out by what we know of physical reality, but saying that “they’re not” is not the same as “proving” them. In other words, the Bayesian priors for the truth of this myth were low at the outset, and the probability that this really happened is not substantially increased by analysis of flute sounds.

Further, there are dozens of Māori legends that could not have been true, like the claim that their Polynesian ancestors discovered Antarctica in the seventh century, and in a canoe made of human bones. (This claim is still being advanced by a group of Māori academics.) Maybe there should be a science-fair project seeing if a canoe made of human bones could even float!

There’s a bit more:

Te Arawa Lakes Trust environment officer Keeley Grantham said categories were broad, which meant there was an “amazing array” of projects.

. . .“We’re not just looking at Western science, we’re looking at mitigating environmental issues through a whole heap of different lenses, especially through our te ao Māori lens.

“And enabling kids to broaden their scope of knowledge and just really build upon what they already know and just continue networking and sharing their kaupapa with other tamariki and other people that work in this field.”

About 16 kura (schools) were involved and “at least” 250 children. Groups and individuals could take part.

We have the usual mischaracterization of science as “Western” (science is now worldwide), as opposed to another way of knowing:  “looking at things through our “te ao Māori lens.”  A translation of “te ao Māori“:

Te Ao Māori encompasses the holistic worldview of the Māori people, reflecting an interconnected relationship between the natural world, people, and spirituality. The values embedded within Te Ao Māori offer a framework that aligns seamlessly with collectivist ideals, fostering a sense of unity and shared purpose.

 Whoops, there’s some spirituality in there, as well as values. That is one problem with regarding MM as a “way of knowing”, as the empirical knowledge in it is inextricably bound up with legend, religion, ideology, ethics, and superstition. And this mixture of legend and empirical observation is precisely why the student project is misguided. For surely it was designed to give credibility to Māori legends and to MM.  Were I the teacher, I would have guided students away from projects like this, which simply misleads them about the nature of scientific investigation.

With this kind of stuff encouraged by teachers, is it any wonder that science in New Zealand is circling the drain? Trying to comport it with indigenous legend is simply going to confuse people and, perhaps, drive them out of going into what the article calls “Western” science.

**********

Translation of the other terms above, taken from the Māori dictionary (note that they’re presented in an English-language newspaper without explanation, and I’m guessing very few readers understand them):

kaupapa:  topic, policy, matter for discussion, plan, purpose, scheme, proposal, agenda, subject, programme, theme, issue, initiative.

tamariki:  children – normally used only in the plural.

 

Researchers have identified hexagonal perovskite-related oxides as materials with exceptionally high proton conductivity and thermal stability. Their unique crystal structure and large number of oxygen vacancies enable full hydration and high proton diffusion, making these materials ideal candidates as electrolytes for next-generation protonic ceramic fuel cells that can operate at intermediate temperatures without degradation.

Immobilizing small synthetic molecules inside protein crystals proves to be a promising avenue for studying intermediate compounds formed during chemical reactions, scientists report. By integrating this method with time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography, they successfully visualized reaction dynamics and rapid structural changes occurring within reaction centers immobilized inside protein crystals. This innovative strategy holds significant potential for the intelligent design of drugs, catalysts, and functional materials.

Today’s photos come from UC Davis math professor Abigail Thompson, a recognized “Hero of Intellectual Freedom” (see here). Her captions and IDs are indented, and you can enlarge her photos by clicking on them.

I included a couple pictures of the pools themselves this time, with lots of anemones, Anthopleura xanthogrammica (giant green anemone) and Anthopleura elegantissima (aggregating anemone) and ochre sea star (Pisaster ochraceus), ostrich plume hydroids and sponges (the bright orange/red stuff):

Family Sabellidae (Feather duster worm). Marine worms are fantastic creatures, but narrowing it down even to the genus can be tricky.  The body of the worm is in the cylindrical tube that ends in sand grains.  The feathery orange tentacles bring food into the worm’s mouth.  The pink is a bit of anemone in the foreground:

Triopha catalinae (clown dorid). One of the most spectacular nudibranchs in California:

Triopha maculata (spotted dorid):

Halosydna johnsoni (maybe….) (scale worm):

Granulina margaritula (pear marginella).  This tiny snail (about the size of a sesame seed) brings its flamboyant mantle (the beautiful speckly brown stuff around the edge) up over its shell:

Anthopleura artemisia (moonglow anemone).  This type of anemone has very variable coloring- the next picture is the same species:

Anthopleura artemisia (moonglow anemone) #2:

Aeolidia loui (warty shag-rug nudibranch).  A good argument for using scientific rather than common names; this nudibranch is quite lovely:

Camera info: Olympus TG-7, mostly in microscope mode, with pictures being taken from above the water.