This article originally appeared at Forbes and has been republished here with the author’s permission.
Vandana Shiva, the Indian activist who opposes modern agriculture and modern science–and well, modernity in general–is a popular guest lecturer (for huge lecture fees) on American campuses. Although she is the darling of New Agey types and gets good press from left-wing and environmental publications, Shiva is widely considered by the scientific community to be unbalanced (in both senses of the word) for advocating unsound, anti-social policies and promulgating disproven theories about agriculture. Some of her delusions and lies are discussed here.
Not all non-experts have been taken in by Shiva’s glib, only-I-can-see-the-Truth bombast. To protest her lecture appearance today at the “Peace Center” at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon, local musician and educator Scotty Perey expressed his objection eloquently in the (previously unpublished) essay below, which is presented here with his permission.
Mr. Perey’s commentary begins here:
The promise of our Brave New “Information Age” is being seriously compromised. As sensational, profitable clickbait spreads like online wildfire, a new skill set is emerging needed to separate fact from fiction. In this effort, I rely on our educational institutions to help me understand the problems we face today with solid evidence and sound reasoning.
As an teacher and an activist, I am troubled that Dr. Vandana Shiva is being promoted this week at a local community college by an otherwise quite respectable peace center. My own university training is in music and political science, not biology and chemistry. So when I first heard Dr. Shiva’s claims some years ago, I was compelled to fact-check her questionable statements with those who are far more expertly trained in the matter at hand.
My initial misgivings have been increasingly validated.
Dr. Shiva advertises herself as a scientist, but this is not the case. Her degree is in philosophy, which even then might lead one to believe that her positions would be founded on the highest caliber of critical thinking, but that is not what I have observed. To the contrary, Dr. Shiva consistently makes assertions that fail even the most superficial tests of intellectual and ethical rigor.
Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy & Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Follow him on Twitter @henryimiller.
