Tim Flannery gives evidence
The well-known author of The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers Professor Tim Flannery gave evidence today in biologist Jeremy Griffith and mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape’s Supreme Court defamation trial against the ABC and Reverend David Millikan.
Under cross-examination by counsel for the plaintiffs Kieran Smark, Professor Flannery, who featured briefly in the defamatory Four Corners broadcast in 1995, told the Court of several conversations he had with the program’s guest producer Reverend Millikan prior to being interviewed.
When asked whether Reverend Millikan had told him that Mr Griffith “was acting like a cult leader”, Professor Flannery said while his memory was poor, “I believe words to that effect would have been uttered”.
Professor Flannery agreed that such an allegation would have had an “unconscious effect” on him noting that, “my trust that investigative journalism was at the heart of the process would have reassured me or given some validity to the process”.
However, he added “I am afraid to say that my faith in the idea that investigative journalism is very close to the heart of the employees at Four Corners has not been borne out”.
He also agreed he was relying upon Four Corners to present to the public a “fair and balanced report” of Mr Griffith’s work when he participated in the broadcast.
This preceded an exchange between he and Mr Smark about the emergence of Dr Alfred Wegener’s now famous theory of continental drift that was met with indifference and derision by the scientific community when introduced in the 1920s.
Professor Flannery acknowledged how Dr Wegener drew from beyond his particular disciplines to develop a synthesis that suggested a new way of looking at how the world works, a “paradigm shift” in science.
The professor went on to outline the differences between the holistic and reductionist approaches in science, discussing how his use of a holistic approach could be seen in his 2005 book The Weather Makers and the significance of what he called the “top down approach”.
“[This holistic] group of scientists are interested in broader questions, multidisciplinary questions, such as evolutionary history or climate. And for that group the reductionist’s approach doesn’t have the power, I think, to produce profitable and useful hypotheses in understanding,” he said.
“[You] look across the data as a whole rather than try to burrow into any one piece of it in any detail. You look across the data to try and comprehend the nature of these very complex systems…the reductionist approach is limited when it comes to comprehending very complex systems.”
“The human brain has been argued to be the most complex single piece of matter in the known universe,” he concluded.
Following Professor Flannery, the Court heard evidence from the FHA’s CEO Sam Belfield for the balance of the day.
The case continues tomorrow in the NSW Supreme Court.
