The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss - Elizabeth Weiss | The War on Science Interviews | Day 8

Episode Date: August 1, 2025

To celebrate the release on July 29th of The War on Science, we have recorded 20 podcast interviews with authors from the book. Starting on July 22nd, with Richard Dawkins, we will be releasing one interview per day. Interviewees in order, will be:Richard Dawkins July 23rdNiall Ferguson July 24thNicholas Christakis July 25thMaarten Boudry July 26thAbigail Thompson July 27thJohn Armstrong July 28thSally Satel – July 30Elizabeth Weiss – July 31Solveig Gold and Joshua Katz – August 1Frances Widdowson – August 2Carole Hooven – August 3Janice Fiamengo – August 4Geoff Horsman – August 5Alessandro Strumia – August 6Roger Cohen and Amy Wax – August 7Peter Boghossian – August 8Lauren Schwartz and Arthur Rousseau – August 9Alex Byrne and Moti Gorin – August 10Judith Suissa and Alice Sullivan – August 11Karleen Gribble – August 12Dorian Abbot – August 13The topics these authors discuss range over ideas including the ideological corruption of science, historical examples of the demise of academia, free speech in academia, social justice activism replacing scholarship in many disciplines, disruptions of science from mathematics to medicine, cancel culture, the harm caused by DEI bureaucracies at universities, distortions of biology, disingenous and dangerous distortions of the distinctions between gender and sex in medicine, and false premises impacting on gender affirming care for minors, to, finally, a set of principles universities should adopt to recover from the current internal culture war. The dialogues are blunt, and provocative, and point out the negative effects that the current war on science going on within universities is having on the progress of science and scholarship in the west. We are hoping that the essays penned by this remarkable group of scholars will help provoke discussion both within universities and the public at large about how to restore trust, excellence, merit, and most important sound science, free speech and free inquiry on university campuses. Many academics have buried their heads in the sand hoping this nonsense will go away. It hasn’t and we now need to become more vocal, and unified in combatting this modern attack on science and scholarship. The book was completed before the new external war on science being waged by the Trump administration began. Fighting this new effort to dismantle the scientific infrastructure of the country is important, and we don’t want to minimized that threat. But even if the new attacks can be successfully combatted in Congress, the Courts, and the ballot box, the longstanding internal issues we describe in the new book, and in the interviews we are releasing, will still need to be addressed to restore the rightful place of science and scholarship in the west. I am hoping that you will find the interviews enlightening and encourage you to look at the new book when it is released, and help become part of the effort to restore sound science and scholarship in academia. With no further ado, The War on Science interviews…As always, an ad-free video version of this podcast is also available to paid Critical Mass subscribers. Your subscriptions support the non-profit Origins Project Foundation, which produces the podcast. The audio version is available free on the Critical Mass site and on all podcast sites, and the video version will also be available on the Origins Project YouTube. Get full access to Critical Mass at lawrencekrauss.substack.com/subscribe

Hi, and welcome to the Origins Podcast. I'm your host Lawrence Krause. As many of you know, my new book, The War on Science, is appearing July 29th of this year in the United States and Canada. And to celebrate that, we've interviewed many of the authors of the 39 authors who have contributed to this volume, and we have 20 separate podcast interviews

that will be airing over the next 20 days, starting July 22nd, before and after the last. the book first appears with many of the authors in the book on a host of different subjects. The authors we will have interviews with in order of appearance over the next 20 days are Richard Dawkins, Neil Ferguson, Nicholas Christakis, Martin Budry, Abigail Thompson, John Armstrong, Sally Sattel, Solveig Gold, and Joshua Katz, Francis Woodison, Carol Hoven, Janice Fiamengo, Jeff Horsman, Alessandro Strumia, Roger Cohen and Amy Wax, Peter Bogosian, Lauren Schwartz and Arthur Rousseau, Alex

Byrne and Modi Gorin, Judith Sisa, and Alice Sullivan, Carleen Grible, and finally Dorian Abbott. The topics that will be discussed will range over the need for free speech and open inquiry and science and the need to preserve scientific integrity, stressed by our first podcast interviewer Richard Dawkins, and will once again go, go. over historical examples of how academia has been hijacked by ideology in the past and the negative consequences that have come from that to issues of how specific disciplines, including mathematics have been distorted, and how certain departments at universities now specifically claim that they are social activists and a degree in their field is a degree in either critical

social justice or social activism, not a degree in a specific area of scholarship, how ideology has permeated universities. We'll proceed also to discuss issues in medicine. Sally Settel will talk about how social justice is hijacked medicine. And also when it comes to issues of gender affirming care, we have a variety of authors who are going to speak about the issues there and how too often gender affirming care claims are made that are not based on empirical evidence. In fact, falsely discuss the literature in ways that are harmful to young people. We will talk to several people who, for one reason, another, have been cancelled for saying things.

Francis Whittleson at Mount Royal University in Canada and Carol Hoeven from Harvard, who eventually had to leave Harvard after saying on television that sex is binary in biology. We'll be talking to people who've looking at the impact of diversity, inclusion in academia and how it's restricting free inquiry and also restricting in many ways scientific merit at those universities. And finally, Dorian Abbott, the last contributor to our series, we'll be talking about three principles he believes are essential to separate science and politics and keep academia free from ideology and more for open questioning and progress and to make sure that science is based on empirical evidence and where we go where

the evidence is, whether it's convenient or not, whether it's politically correct or not, and we're willing to debate all ideas that nothing is sacred, a central feature of what science should be about and what in some sense this podcast is about. So I hope you really enjoy the next 20 days and we've enjoyed bringing it to you. So with no further ado, the war on science, the interviews. Well, Elizabeth, it is great to have you back on the program. And in a lovely, in a lovely studio here we have in California. And I'm really excited to be talking to you again because we're going to be, this is part of a program of having interviews with all the people who've contributed to the new book, The War on Science. And I'm very happy to say to you that you're

the very first of the people I'm talking to. Obviously, having edited the book, I know the content, but it was really fun for me to go through it again and talk about what some of the highlights were about it and be able to go, yeah, preparing this allowed me to even go in more depth than I did when I was editing. You know, for people who didn't see our past podcast, which was, which I really enjoyed, as I do every time I talk to you, I don't want to spend a long time going about your background, but you did just tell me your favorite thing. It's funny because when we were doing a sound test, I asked what your favorite thing as a child was, and you told me, why don't you tell me again now when we're on the air?

Sure. I think one of my favorite things to do as a child was go to museums. And basically, natural history museums were my favorite. I always love to see the exhibits of skeletal remains, whether they are animal remains or human remains. Sometimes you get lucky and there'd be an exhibit on mummies. Also, just anatomy exhibits always fascinated me. My favorite section of some of the museums that I went to were on comparative anatomy where they'd have like a human skeleton next to a chimpanzee skeleton.

And so that is like one of the things that I remember quite early on in childhood. And we spent from 1980, I believe, to 84 living in McLean, Virginia, so close to Washington, D.C. So I went to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum of lot during those years. Oh, well, there you go. And obviously, it was formative for you because you spend a lot of, you spend a lot of, you spend your career dealing with comparative anatomy of ancient skeletons. And

as we talk about before, your interest in that also led to having to confront a problem. Why do you just, in again, for people who haven't listened to the podcast, why do you talk about, you know, just in a few sentences or a paragraph, your own

horrific experience of dealing with the ideological corruption of science. And I should say that you're the article in the book that you that that that you wrote is part of a section called the ideological corruption of academic disciplines and you're certainly talking about the ideological corruption of anthropology in a very specific way your your your your piece is entitled burying science under indigenous religion and you're talking about bearing it literally as well

as metaphorically but why don't you talk about your own experience and that that certainly prompted it briefly so i'm what i would call a physical anthropologist, I do skeletal remains studies. So studies mainly on Native American skeletal remains, but other skeletons as well. And there's a law in the U.S. called NACRA, the Native Americans Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. And there are other laws that are similar that are used Native American creationist narratives to make claims of links between, the Pileo-Indians and modern tribes and then to bury these ancient remains, whether it's a 9,000-year-old Kennewick man or more recent remains. And I have always been concerned that we're losing

scientific evidence, the skeletal remains, to understand the past, and especially a past where people didn't leave a written record. And so I've been against this reburial of remains, or the burial of remains. And that seemed to be fine for most of my career. People would disagree with me but didn't cancel me until I wrote a book called Repatriation and Erasing the Past that I co-authored with now retired attorney. And all hell broke loose because now it was a different era

and even being slightly against repatriation labeled me as anti-Indigenous. because if I didn't accept the full animistic creation beliefs, I was being anti-Indigenous and racist. And other things fell out from that. For example, I had a photograph of me with a skull, a photograph that would have been perfectly fine prior to 2019. And basically, my university said it was scandalous,

and ended up basically locking me out of the curation facility. The curation facility that held skeletal remains that I had been curating and ensuring that people get access to them for research for nearly 20 years. They literally changed the locks. It's the fastest we've ever seen facilities in a university move and then proceeded to try to get rid of me. And so I basically hired an attorney, a Pacific Legal Foundation, and we sued the university to protect my job,

but also to protect the academic freedom. And I wrote about all that on the warpath, my battles with Indians, Pretendians, and Wolf Warious. This is what we did, which was the subject of our last podcast. Yes. We went through that in detail. And although you hired an attorney, eventually the situation was such that you couldn't continue, no matter what, it became a hostile environment, but also an unproductive one because you really weren't giving access to any of the signs you want to do. So you eventually left the university, right?

Yes. And since I left, things have not gotten better. I mean, just recently, and some of the California State universities, administrators, everybody from, librarians to deans to chairs have been getting messages, email messages saying, do you have anything of California in Native Oregon, regardless of whether this was a gift, a replica, you know, something that was commerce? And they're planning on, you know, going from office to office to remove these things, whether it's modern art or ancient artifacts.

Jesus. Okay. Well, let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's just give a brief summary of the article some of the key salient features which I love the title bearing science under under indigenous religion and the key point you make which I think you know I've heard make it in different contexts but the really because people get hung up on the on this notion of respect for indigenous traditions they lose focus of the key fact that really when I first heard it resonated with me because I think I spent my I first I think I even before my books became popular perhaps I can't remember I I got involved in the public profile by fighting creationism in the high schools and this was Christian creationism which the scientific community bandied art not well enough but were

certainly supported, try and get behind the destruction of science by teaching superstition in high schools. And what's interesting is there's no debate about trying to ensure that Christian creationism is not a part of high school biology classes. And the point that you're making and you are making is that that's great. But for some reason, there's never a concern about having discussions of indigenous creationism replace science in anthropology and other areas. And And part of this comes from, you focus on NAGPRA. So why do you explain what NAGPRA is briefly? Sure.

So Nagra is a Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. And it's a federal law that was passed in 1990 that was meant to assist modern tribes who are affiliated with remains, skeletal remains, and certain artifacts such as sacred objects or objects of cultural patrimony or burial goods and to be able to repatriate those objects so that the museum would give it back to the affiliated tribe. The problem with that is that initially there was a compromise that if the artifact is just a everyday artifact, it can stay in the museums. Also, the evidence of the linkage between the modern and the past was to be done through preponderance of evidence.

Think like historic documents, biological evidence, you know, archaeological investigations of continuity, right? But they let slip in that one of the pieces of evidence could be oral traditional. and that led in creation myths. And now how Nagra has devolved over time through regulatory recommendations is that creation myths are enough to make the link between the past and the present and to re-burry the remains. And so what we're seeing is that the tribes are claiming that they are linked to. the materials and that these then need to be repatriated and that the only evidence of linkage

is a religious story, a myth. And the courts should be like, well, we can't assess this because the separation of church and state should have never been allowed into the law in the first place. But even if you would say, well, let's take apart this story and say, what is left when you take out all the supernatural BS in the story. And what is less is not much. And so we're losing American archaeological evidence because of creation myths. And if this was a Christian creation myths,

I'm sure that all my colleagues would have been behind me. And yet, since it's indigenous creation myths, which are so similar to the Christian, creation myths, that they're almost indistinguishable. If you just replace like the animals with things like, you know, other, with, you know, okay, this, the thunder god caused a flood instead of God caused a flood. They're really indistinguishable and it's because they're just made up. And many of them, even in many Native American religiousness, even include characters that must have entered into their history after colonialism, after missionaries, because they talk about Jesus in some of these.

So yeah, they got, yeah, so that they, exactly, so they got polluted in their own way and with a different creation myth. But, well, look, that's a key point. And I think one of the points you make early in your piece, which I think is important is how a law, which, again, well-intended, gets perverted. And the idea was anthropologists, as you point out, wanted to think of this as a human's rights issue,

was all along Native Americans were thinking of this in terms of religious terms. And so originally, the argument was affiliation, you know, talking about repatriation, was repatriation of materials associated with current tribes. And affiliation was defined, as you described in the article, as a relationship of shared group identity, which can reasonably, which can be reasonably traced historically

or prehistoricly between a present-day Indian tribe or a native, in this case, Native Hawaiian organization and an identifiable early group. And that relationship was to be determined through a preponderance of the evidence based upon geographical, kinship, biological, archaeological, anthropological, linguistic, folkloric or oral tradition, historical or other relevant information. So there's all this scientific stuff or oral tradition added. And that's what a number of people, including yourself, presently, began to worry, would pervert

things. And you talked about an article by Clement Mahan, did I get, did I say his name right? From 1992, he wrote, as you say, that we balance our own values with the professional ethic of cultural relativism by, quote, compromise and mutual respect. Doing that is not realistic because archaeologists will not compromise their scholarly beliefs, while many Indian activists are not going to compromise away their beliefs that every Indian bone for the past 12,000 years belongs to one of their ancestors. And as you point out,

it turned out that Maine was right about what he called the Indian activist's beliefs that they wouldn't compromise religious beliefs. But surprisingly, archaeologists quite quickly compromised their scholarly views. And that led to your writing this book, Repatriation and Erasing the Past. And in every sense,

I think you argue that that NAGPRA has any administrative change of NAGPRA has been associated with supporting Native American religious beliefs, including, and why do you describe this, and particularly adding a category of evidence called Native American traditional knowledge. Right. What is that? Well, Native American traditional knowledge was added to NAGPRA very recently just in the last couple of years, but it was also added to. to, in the Biden administration, has added that to a lot of their, to a lot of their grants and verbiage and, you know, from the Environmental Protection Act to the, you know, the CDC and, you know, this traditional, Native American traditional knowledge is kind of funny because it doesn't need to

be passed on. So it's different from other traditions. It doesn't need to be passed on. It can change any time. It's, if two tribes disagree, then they're both correct because neither one can be denied their truth. And it encompasses spiritual and religious beliefs in a way that it doesn't differentiate those beliefs from reality. So it literally is a part of that traditional knowledge. And they decided to consider it expert knowledge or when it's given expert witness. And so you can't question it. Some of it is sacred and secret. And so you can't answer. You mentioned that really surprised me because there's a word, if there's a word, if there anything gets my hackles up or at least my attention. It's that it's not only is this knowledge

not describable, but it's confidential. And and the word confidential is antithetical to science. You can't have confidential science because science is based on on, on a, on a dialectic where ideas can be attacked by other people. So what do they mean confidential? I, I was, I was shocked. They mean that this knowledge should not be shared with outsiders. And, Even just the other day, just yesterday, for example, I was at anacra webinar. And they said, if there is information for traditional indigenous knowledge information or knowledge being given by an elder or tribesman, basically that you should not write it down to make sure that it's not leaked out,

that it's not is not able to be questioned and that it's not, doesn't turn out in any Freedom of Information Act. And they argue that this is not only sacred and secret, but that it can cause harm. And what kind of harm could these things cause? And the main argument is usually that if this kind of knowledge gets out, then spirits will harm the living. and cause illness. And this is part of the reason perhaps that we have the high rates of abuse in Native Americans, drug abuse, missing and murdered children and women is all because these spirits are restless. And if we can just get everything into the ground and have all the information kept away from everybody, everything's going to be resolved. We know this

not the answer to anything. And I get that religious people would believe this foolishness. I don't understand why anthropologists and other scientists would not along and, you know, appease such foolishness. Now, well, absolutely. The other thing you've mentioned is that

it's that this traditional knowledge can be made up as long. traditional knowledge could suddenly be added today. I have new traditional logic. You want to elaborate on that a little bit because that shocked me as well. Yeah. You know, one of the things in the addition of Indian traditional knowledge or indigenous traditional knowledge is that it doesn't have to be passed on,

but it can be added and it can be changed. So in the Department of Interior, for example, there's a section on sacred land. and the section talks about using this type of traditional indigenous knowledge to determine what land is sacred and therefore cannot be built on, cannot be excavated, cannot be analyzed. And they say that what land was sacred yesterday may not be the same land that is sacred tomorrow. and that it changes, and we cannot question that change. So really, it's whatever they say it is, whenever they say it is.

And if they disagree with each other, if one tribe disagrees with another, they're both right, even though, you know, obviously it can't be. And one of the big problems with a lot of the reburial question is what happens when tribe to disagree? And the government, the federal government's office, the NIPRA office, they never like that question and they never want to address it. They're always like, don't go in with an attitude of there's going to be a problem. Go in positively. It's like, no, people are going in with that question, museum curators coming to these webinars because they're experiencing that. And it used to be that if there was a disagreement or if there was nobody claim who was trying to get access to the skull remains, then those materials would be still available for research.

No longer is that the case. Nagra has said that you cannot conduct research without tribal approval. even if the tribe doesn't respond, even if you don't know a tribe, even if there's no tribe linking it, it doesn't matter. Then you can't do research. Unbelievable. Sorry. Yeah. Well, when we talk about the ideological corruption of disciplines, this is a clear example.

When you stop research for ideological reasons, not scientific ones, and in this sense, religion is ideology. There's no distinction in this case. And it's not that one's criticizing the religion so much. It's criticizing the fact that the religion is getting in the way of doing science. And it's not as if people are saying you can't believe this. It's just that that belief should not get in the way of trying to really understand things about the past that's relevant to actually understanding the tribal relationships as well. But the other thing that's corrupted, and you give a lot of examples, starting with the American Museum of Natural History, talk about how this is infiltrated museums, which are trying to educate. After all, the next generation, the kind of kids who one would hope would get inspired like you were when you were a kid. If you walked in the American Museum and Natural History now, you'd get a very different picture than you would have when you were a kid. Yes. So why are you going to? One of the things is that they have shuttered all Native American

exhibits and they're still closed because what they're doing is they're taking everything off the shelf, so covering everything, and then having the tribes come into the museums, consulting, and then putting the exhibits back up with the tribe's input. Which some people are saying, well, what's wrong with that? What's wrong with that is that those tribes are putting in their religious input, not their They're not scientific information or historical information. We see this at the American Museum of Natural History's Northwest Coast exhibit that was redone a few years ago. It took five years to put up.

It cost 19 million and it's full of religious tales being told as if they are historical. historic facts. But it's also full of other ridiculous. Yes, sure. Okay, good. For example, one of the things, one of the tales is about the founding of a village. And it talks about how the chief came across this thunder god. And the thunder god led them to that place.

And there was a talking whale. And this is lit in the, in the museum, it is literally stated as a historic event even though there is no Sundergod and there are no talking whales. It's not a historic event.

It's a myth. That's a, you know. Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the problems. What about the artifacts, too? Aren't there ridiculous statements associated with one of the artifacts? Another aspect is that

there's a case that is darkened, that has some medicine man masks in them. And before you get to the case, there's a sign that says, warning, these are objects of power and they are dangerous. And then no photography is allowed. Of course, I took photos. But the thing is, we don't want our kids to go into these museums, learning these kind of myths and horror stories as real, oh, to be scared of this artifact, they should be going in there to learn about how it was created, why they were done, what past beliefs there might have been, but that those were real, that those were beliefs

and not reality. And so I think that if they are putting forth tales, origin myths, As these were beliefs, but we know, we actually do know that people came from the old world into the new world, even though the origin myths don't tell it that way. That's fine. But instead, they're treating origin myths such as, you know, evolving from a sea animal from the bottom of the Grand Canyon as reality. And that is not fine. We don't want our children to learn these kinds of myths as realities. Absolutely. To distinguish myth from reality is part of the process of not only growing up, but part of science in particular. Let's jump to, it's not just an American issue. And there are the museums you talk about in Tennessee and Rochester, but I think I'll skip to talk to other countries. Canada, where I happen to live now is an example. And I was shocked at the Canadian Museum Guide, which again, the Canadian Museum Guide restrict gives, restricts which sex can handle exhibits and allows certain restricted access and talks about what can be activated

by supernatural power and objects. And you give this amazing quote that they say these objects, can be have an inherent power. And they say there's no simple answer to the question. They compare radioactivity of sacred power. And I want to read this quote from your article, which it amazes me. This is a quote. This is from a museum guide. Some sacred and sensitive objects carry inherent power.

Yet what is inherent power? How does it manifest itself? And what does this mean for people who come into contact with the object? An analogy for power might be found in a comparative. between a sample of granite and a sample of uranium in a natural history collection. Both have a physical integrity that can be described by standard procedures, but the uranium has a powerful and visible and intrinsic attribute. Those who know how to use it can do so for helpful or harmful purposes. Those who ignore it can be damaged. Thus, there are strict protocols

for handling and using it. And they treat that radioactivity as if it's on par with some inherent spiritual power in these objects. And it's a science, I mean, that's, one can say that, but this is a scientific museum guide. Do you want to comment? Yeah. I think that that's such as powerful quote to highlight the absurdity of it all. They don't, what they're doing there is they're setting up this kind of straw man example of, oh, well, you don't see radioactivity.

And therefore, you know, just because you don't see the other inherent power. and the sacredness, they're the same, but you can measure radioactivity. And of course, it is a real thing. Just because you don't see germs doesn't mean that they're the same things as ghosts. And so I think that this is a real, you know, straw man argument. But it's used to basically discriminate against various groups of people, one, people who don't want to engage in this kind of foolishness. One of the things that you see in many of the tales about indigenous knowledge and museum collaboration is the separation of men and women, that women can only handle, that women are not allowed to handle certain objects.

and then this feeds into other myths such as the menstruation, menstrual taboo myths, and they use the same type of logic. Oh, women have an inherent power to when they're menstruating, and therefore they shouldn't be in the curation facility. Well, we know that this is not why menstrual myths and menstrual taboos arose. they arose because people thought that women were filthy during that time. And yet places, museums in Canada to field schools in Berkeley are using these types of discrimination and acting like there's some inherent intrinsic spiritual power about it. And really, it's just religious nonsense to. believe this. And I would say that, you know, the inherent power of objects that they're talking

about is seen when the same type of argument comes across when people talk about not showing skeletal remains, hiding photos of skeletal remains, because a spirit can be released. And one of the examples I give is that in Australia, they are super obsessed about keeping away photos, recordings, data, because spirits could be in those. And so it goes beyond artifact, and then it creeps into even the things we've made as scientists, this data sets. You brought, you know, that's a great say we brought up Australia. We've talked about Canada.

There are a bunch of other countries you talk about in New Zealand, Australia, and again, their museum guides are somewhere similar. But you also talk about what seems to me to be, I mean, you know, how scientists buy in. I've seen to happen where they apologize for things that they don't want to hurt and they buy into this stuff. And one of the more tragic ones is the oldest remain to be repatriated are 42,000-year-old mongo man, which was excavated in 1974 by Jim Bowler, geology professor at ANU. University where I had a visiting professorship for a while. And then it was repatriated in 2017 and re-buried in 2018. And Bowler, who'd once studied it, once studied he'd become a Jesuit priest,

wrote a letter in support of the repatriation. And he lamented the discovery, which is amazing, a scientist lamenting such an interesting and important discovery, and then stated that he'd asked Mungo Man for guidance, which is just sort of like the kind of, almost Maoist apology for doing science. Right. And we see this kind of behavior in scientists now all the time in anthropology.

That is a really good example. The mungo man is a huge loss. Cow swamp skull, which is younger, it's about 12,000 years old. one of the oldest skulls to be modified into an elongated skull. And, you know, you are reburying these remains and asking for forgiveness for having excavated them. Asking sometimes for permission from spirits to excavate remains is another thing we see. But, you know, it's interesting when you look at how swamp skull that was repatriated, you're basically hitting two myths or beliefs.

Of course, the origin and the creation beliefs and the concerns about spirits being loose and harming people. But then by doing this, you're also feeding into the pseudoscience belief that, oh, elongated skulls are somehow special and maybe they're part alien or were influenced by aliens. And you just know, if you start reburying all the elongated skulls, those conspiracy theories are just going to get stronger. That's a really good point, because the only way to confound these conspiracy theories is with facts. But in fact, it's what is, you know, beyond the And beyond that, when you talk about Australia, what really hit me is that if you want to go on the website and learn, you know, there's a, the website has a return, reconcile and renew project, states on its website that, you know, basically we have to, you know, they're religious and spiritual reasons why human reigns must not be disturbed, not scientific ones, but religious ones. And, and disturbing this can lead to sickness and ill health for people in the environment. You know, again, just without any obviously evidence, but,

just a religious least. But what amazed me is you say, prior to gaining entry to the website, anyone who wants to see this must click on an I agree button that includes a statement, support the process of returning old people to the country so that their spirits and their rest. So you cannot look at this unless you agree that you have to have their spirits arrest. You also talk about New Zealand. And one of the quotes, I think really when we get to the point of the article in the chapter and the section of which your articles apart, the ideological corruption of science. There's a statement, a narrative when it talks about repatriation in a program in

in New Zealand associated with the tragedy of Captain Cook in 1769. The narrative has an anti-specific an anti-science narrative in the program, the written program. It says repatriation is important as it shows respect for the dead, for cultural beliefs, and for the hurt that's been caused to source communities as a result of the development of science and museum collections. So it clearly states the development of science and museum collections is a bad thing. And this isn't, I mean, one might expect other groups to complain, but this is the science and museum collection itself complaining saying science is bad.

Yes, there's a lot of self-hate in anthropology and in the museum communities. And it goes back to that wanting to atone for past sins. And it's interesting that this is in a part of it is about the tattooed mummified heads that were collected. and they were collected by a former Navy, I think British Navy, Admiral, if I'm not wrong, Robly. And he was really interested in the technique, and he drew them, and it was actually, he was profoundly interested in it. But not as a, oh, these are terrible.

keep all. He was just interested in it and the aesthetic and how it was done. These hats, tattooed heads, were part of the New Zealand's culture that the tribes people themselves would keep. And if it was an enemy head, they would mutilate. So they had, it wasn't like these heads were excavated. They were sold to robberley. And he tried to sell them back to New Zealand after he had studied them. They didn't want it. And then afterwards, you know, I can't remember exactly when, you know, in 70s or 80s, they decided to take them back. But what's interesting is they tried to paint probably in other people who had a scientific interest in this as somehow ghoulish.

and, you know, unlike the noble spiritual tribesmen. Whereas one of the reasons why European scientists' interest in these human remains dropped drastically is because the New Zealand mayor were basically creating fakes. They were using it. they no longer were the tattooed's heads only of chiefs, but they would like take the slaves or lower people and tattoo them and then tried to sell them as, oh, these are traditional. And the Europeans were like, I don't know.

There seems to be a lot of these around now. And this is not to talk bad about, oh, what the indigenous people were doing. They thought they had a good thing going. and they didn't see it as a bad thing for their culture to have these spread. And now the history is being rewritten as a evil scientist, anti-science, who would want to show these and want to display these. And these are so sacred and should have never been done. Yeah, no, that's a great example.

Well, as we come to a conclusion, you know, you point out, Paleoanthropologist Jeffrey Clark wrote in 1998, an article NAGPRA and the conflict between science and religion, which gets back to the point of your piece and the political consequences, says, you know, defines very well what science is. And it's exactly what we haven't seen in our discussion in terms of what's going on now. Science can be defined as a collection of methods for evaluating the credibility of knowledge claims about the experiential world. science does not pretend a certainty, it only seeks better and a better approximation of it. Scientific conclusions are continuously subject to critical scrutiny.

Science is therefore self-correcting. A great discretion of science, which we're not seeing now. And as you point out, and I want to end with this, is that this repatriation fad or phobia is now spreading like a cancer beyond anthropology and is now entering other sciences. and you pointed out by, in this case, by the former Biden administration's mandate to incorporate, quote, indigenous knowledge and nearly all government-related funding from the EPA to National Institutes of Health. And the 2019 traditional medicine summit, maintaining and protecting culture through healing, which includes no information on medicine and multiple references to spirituality, God, and the creator. and going back to Mayan again, the last quote you give in your piece in 1992, Clement Mayn asked,

when scholarly classes in the United States by archaeology and ethnology are no longer taught in academic departments, when the existing collections have been selectively destroyed or concealed, and when all new archaeology in the United States is a political exercise rather than a scientific investigation, will the world be a better place? And you answer a resounding no. When you hide science, when you stop science,

it doesn't make the world a better place. When you stop knowing and you stop asking questions and inevitably gets in the way not just of knowledge, but of acting appropriately. And I think that's why I think this is so important because this direct attack, not just an anthropology, but in the process of science would you describe is so relevant. I do want to ask you one last question.

Maybe you want to add something else there. But, you know, there, we are in a new, there's a new administration, one that I have great problems with, to be frank, but one, one which nevertheless has turned back several of the, of certain of the excesses of the Biden administration. And is all of this sort of mandate about, you know, to incorporate indigenous knowledge and nearly all government fund of research, has that been changed or is that mandate still there? As far as I know, it's still there. You know, the problem is, and you probably know this better than it, than almost everybody, the problem is that, When religion and politics come together, you get, you know, pushback from both the liberals and the conservatives or the Democrats and the Republicans.

And so, you know, I would love it if Doge said, we're cutting out the indigenous knowledge mandate. Or, you know, we're getting rid of all the NARC press stuff. Of course, I would love it if that's what we see in this administration. I don't think we will. I think that the problem is that it cuts too close to religion. And if there's such a protection from religion from both sides in odd ways. Particularly from this new administration, which I think the religious saviors of the country. I mean, they've just new instrument.

I'll say it numerous times. This new administration is interested in free inquiry. They're interested in just stopping the inquiry of things they don't like. Yeah, and so I have my doubts. Yeah, and that's really what we've seen here. Stopping the inquiry about our early history as hominids is stopping inquiry that you don't like, in this case, for religious regions. And I really appreciate the examples you give in and the article in the book. And I'm really happy we got to summarize it a little bit.

And it's always a pleasure to talk to you again, Elizabeth. So thank you very much. Thank you so much. And I'm really looking forward to seeing this book out in print. Yeah, me too. And just a little while. And hopefully these recordings will help people know what it's about and help promote it. You take care.

And I'll see you once again somewhere. Hi, it's Lawrence again. As the Origins podcast continues to reach millions of people around the world, I just wanted to say thank you. It's because of your support, whether you listen or watch, that we're able to help enrich the perspective of listeners by providing access to the people and ideas that are changing our understanding of ourselves and our world and driving the future of our society in the 21st century.

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