Will Tim Flannery Draw Proper Conclusion From Experience?

Well, it’s a start. The Guardian carried a piece by climate alarmist team member Tim Flannery.

Australians were naive. Dingoes are versatile predators

Many of you many recall this near ancient event.  Flannery writes…..

When nine-week-old Azaria Chamberlain vanished at Uluru on 17 August 1980, Australians should have taken more seriously the possibility that dingoes were responsible. Tragically, such was our naivety of the danger they represent back then that a media firestorm, the likes of which the country had never known, pushed people towards the wrong conclusions. Many of us were only too prepared to believe that Azaria was a victim of infanticide.

At the time of the first two coronial inquests I was a doctoral student in the biology department of a major Australian university, and my biases were such that I accepted Lindy Chamberlain’s guilt uncritically. Her religion was one factor. The Chamberlains were Seventh-day Adventists and media reports of the strange practices of their “cult” (as we were led to think of it) included inferences of child sacrifice that did not strike me as beyond belief. At the time I was one of many Australian scientists fighting to keep creationism out of the classroom, and fundamentalist beliefs were seen as the enemy.

But even more significant, I think, was Lindy’s assertion that a dingo had taken her baby. Dingoes were introduced to Australia from southeast Asia around 4,000 years ago, and most Australians thought of them as part of the continent’s native fauna. Biologists feared that they would face widespread persecution if the coronerfound them to be the cause of Azaria’s death.

I have long been deeply regretful of the way I leaped to judgment of the Chamberlains. I should have known better –………..

I’m very glad to see this.  But, I wonder if there are any lessons we can learn from this?  A biologist student uncritically accepting someone’s guilt.  The religious persecution of Seventh-day-Adventists.  Again, we see a reoccurring theme….. the children are at risk.  People actually believed Seventh-day-Adventists participated in child sacrifice.  Biologists placed their fear of wild dogs being persecuted over the fear of people being persecuted.  They were, after all, only cultish Christians.

Uncritical acceptance by scientists, weighted by their biases, were worried more about a part nature, (a dog really, one that isn’t even indigenous) than worried about their fellow man.  Does this ring familiar?  Maybe a new day will dawn for humanity.  I’m not holding my breath.

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