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University Is Dead | Jerm Warfare · UK Column Radio

0:30
Speaker 1: My name is Jim. This is gim Warfare, the Battle
0:33
Speaker 1: of Ideas. David Klatso, thank you for joining me again
0:38
Speaker 1: in the trenches.
0:39
Speaker 2: That's my pleasure, and hello to all your viewers and listeners, David.
0:46
Speaker 1: Universities. Let me start off by saying, I am a
0:50
Speaker 1: vasity drop out. Is that a good thing or a
0:54
Speaker 1: bad thing?
0:54
Speaker 2: Probably did you a lot of good?
0:58
Speaker 1: Why?
1:00
Speaker 2: Well, because of a number of reasons. Firstly, one's got
1:04
Speaker 2: to look at the at the basic function of a university.
1:08
Speaker 2: What is the function of a university. The function is
1:11
Speaker 2: to enable the students to become educated to the highest
1:15
Speaker 2: levels in the cutting edge of education, so that if you,
1:24
Speaker 2: if you in the in the years gone by, there
1:27
Speaker 2: were two levels in this country. There were the technicons
1:31
Speaker 2: and there were the universities. And the universities themselves claimed
1:38
Speaker 2: a sort of intellectual superiority by virtue of the fact
1:43
Speaker 2: that they were busy doing research. There was very little
1:46
Speaker 2: research done at the technicons. It was mainly training exercises,
1:51
Speaker 2: whereas a university. The theory goes that the university was
1:56
Speaker 2: in fact do in cutting edge research, and that cutting
1:59
Speaker 2: edge research could trickle down so that the students would
2:02
Speaker 2: get the benefit of it and be up to speed
2:08
Speaker 2: by the time they left. Well, that's great in theory,
2:12
Speaker 2: but the truth of the matter is that even in
2:14
Speaker 2: my day, which is now sixty fifty years ago, the
2:19
Speaker 2: professors who lectured to us, with very few exceptions, lectured
2:23
Speaker 2: from notes which they had prepared thirty years before, and
2:28
Speaker 2: in some instances they lectured from standard textbooks, and they
2:33
Speaker 2: lectured from in a very boring way in which they
2:41
Speaker 2: simply gave you material to regurgitate. There was very little
2:44
Speaker 2: true education. And as I say, Felix Seber, who lectured
2:49
Speaker 2: chemistry to us, lectured from notes which must have been
2:53
Speaker 2: prepared when photocopying was in its infancy. So that is
2:59
Speaker 2: the immediate counter to the theory that they're lecturing cutting
3:03
Speaker 2: edge stuff to you. Even in my honors here, which
3:07
Speaker 2: is closer to the cutting edge stuff than undergraduate level,
3:12
Speaker 2: I'm afraid that that was not a lot better. There
3:16
Speaker 2: were some that were, And even in my PhD level
3:20
Speaker 2: when I was there, I got very little from my
3:24
Speaker 2: supervis In fact, nothing I got from my supervis That
3:27
Speaker 2: PhD was done as a solo project with the help
3:31
Speaker 2: of a very fine iminologist in the tell called Jared Foss.
3:37
Speaker 1: Hang on, David, let us want of clarify something. So
3:40
Speaker 1: you and I are both South African, but you live
3:42
Speaker 1: in the UK. Are you referring to South African universities
3:46
Speaker 1: or also in the UK.
3:47
Speaker 2: No, you'll find as we go down the line, you'll
3:50
Speaker 2: see that this is a trend that is going growing everywhere,
3:54
Speaker 2: and it is a trend which is a problematic. Now
3:58
Speaker 2: let's let's turn to the issue of research and research papers.
4:02
Speaker 2: The lifeblood of universities is research papers because they get
4:06
Speaker 2: a subsidy from the government for every research paper that
4:10
Speaker 2: is published, and so the pressure is on everybody who
4:13
Speaker 2: lectures at a university to publish. And when I first
4:18
Speaker 2: got to visus a lecturer, I was I'd been there
4:23
Speaker 2: but a year. The lecturing load was high. Preparation for
4:27
Speaker 2: lectures on an incoming basis was considerable. But at the
4:33
Speaker 2: end of the first year I got a message from
4:35
Speaker 2: the dean, a fellow called Peter Tyson, to say that
4:38
Speaker 2: he noticed that I hadn't published anything that year. So
4:43
Speaker 2: I said, well, yeah, that's the way it is. I mean,
4:46
Speaker 2: I'm busy preparing, I don't have funds, and you know,
4:50
Speaker 2: there were no easily available funds at the time. So
4:57
Speaker 2: I lettered at that and a year later I got
5:00
Speaker 2: the same message. And when that happened in the third year,
5:04
Speaker 2: I said to Tyson that I found this intolerable and
5:10
Speaker 2: I left the university. And that's one of the reasons
5:13
Speaker 2: that I left the university. And the whole point about
5:18
Speaker 2: that is that the pressure is such on university academics
5:22
Speaker 2: to produce papers that there is no doubt in my
5:26
Speaker 2: mind that some of them will cheat in that progress,
5:30
Speaker 2: in that process, and that cheating is very dangerous because
5:34
Speaker 2: it sullies the waters of academic research, and in doing so,
5:40
Speaker 2: it makes it worse for everybody else. And I watched
5:42
Speaker 2: my colleagues at university published material which I would never
5:46
Speaker 2: consider publishing, but it counted to give them academic tenure.
5:52
Speaker 2: And that's where the whole thing goes wrong. Now. I
5:56
Speaker 2: made this comment a few years ago when I was
6:00
Speaker 2: ill advisedly invited to attend an academic meeting of the
6:06
Speaker 2: University of Cape Town's ethics committee. And at the end
6:10
Speaker 2: of the committee, I said, you people all speak very
6:13
Speaker 2: highly about your ethical standards, but how many of you
6:16
Speaker 2: have not cheated a little bit in order to get
6:19
Speaker 2: a paper out either by dividing the paper up into
6:23
Speaker 2: several units that you get three or four units, is
6:25
Speaker 2: called the least publishable unit, as opposed to publishing one
6:29
Speaker 2: decent paper. And it generated amongst this crowd of self
6:36
Speaker 2: righteous academics such anger. I was very pleased to get
6:39
Speaker 2: out of there without being tired and feathered. Now let's
6:43
Speaker 2: look at that and see whether I was in any
6:45
Speaker 2: way ahead of my time. In a not that distant past,
6:51
Speaker 2: a man called John iron Edes published some work on
6:57
Speaker 2: papers and the repeatability of ademic papers. And he published
7:03
Speaker 2: work that and and also in one of the business
7:07
Speaker 2: magazines there was work published on the same topic.
7:12
Speaker 1: Sorry, John John John was at Stanford, if I remember correctly.
7:16
Speaker 2: I can't remember where he was. It's but he was
7:19
Speaker 2: at he was, he's a well known man at one
7:21
Speaker 2: of the major universities in the States. But one of
7:26
Speaker 2: the one of the main business magazines, and I think
7:29
Speaker 2: it might have been Business Day or one of those magazines,
7:33
Speaker 2: published an article about where it all goes wrong? And
7:37
Speaker 2: what had happened was the following that venture capitalists had
7:40
Speaker 2: decided that there was money to be made in this
7:43
Speaker 2: cutting edge research, so they went to some of the
7:46
Speaker 2: top journals in the world and they took the papers
7:50
Speaker 2: that looked most likely to be a venture capital worthy
7:54
Speaker 2: sort of thing, and they tried to repeat them, and
7:59
Speaker 2: they found that they could repeat less than half of
8:04
Speaker 2: the papers that were published in top journs. And I'm
8:06
Speaker 2: not talking about the rats and the mice of the journals.
8:09
Speaker 2: I'm talking about New England Journal of Medicine, which is
8:12
Speaker 2: a top journal, the British Medical Journal, and journals of
8:17
Speaker 2: that caliber equally well. The editors of two of the
8:24
Speaker 2: major journals came out publicly and said that it gave
8:28
Speaker 2: them no pleasure, but that most of the stuff they've
8:31
Speaker 2: been publishing for the last two decades was not worth
8:34
Speaker 2: the papers was written on. Now, let's see why that is,
8:38
Speaker 2: and there are a whole lot of reasons why that
8:40
Speaker 2: should be the case. The first is that journals published
8:46
Speaker 2: material which pleases their advertisers. So if a journal publishes
8:53
Speaker 2: something which is at odds with one of their major
8:56
Speaker 2: advertising clients, the client will phone them and say, do
9:01
Speaker 2: that again, and there's trouble, we will withdraw. We will
9:04
Speaker 2: withdraw our advertising. So the journal editors are in the
9:09
Speaker 2: space of making money. They have to answer to their shareholders,
9:14
Speaker 2: and if they publish without fear or favor the stuff
9:17
Speaker 2: that should be published, they will they will lose money,
9:21
Speaker 2: and they'll be out of a job. So that's the
9:23
Speaker 2: first major exercise which inhibits a journalist, at least a
9:29
Speaker 2: journal article, from being viewed as anything other than highly suspect.
9:36
Speaker 2: The second thing if you look at the journal articles,
9:39
Speaker 2: is that they are mostly peer reviewed, and for the
9:43
Speaker 2: same reason, the editor will send it to people who
9:49
Speaker 2: are likely to give a good review, because they don't
9:53
Speaker 2: need these articles chucked out, and they will send it
9:57
Speaker 2: they need to publish, and they'll send it somebody who
10:00
Speaker 2: agrees with the narrative. And I found that myself. I
10:04
Speaker 2: was at one stage the favorite child of seven o
10:07
Speaker 2: two radio, and they used to send me books once
10:11
Speaker 2: a month for me to review. And one of the
10:13
Speaker 2: books by Kathy Ruisch was so in my view, appalling
10:17
Speaker 2: that I gave it a very negative view a review.
10:20
Speaker 2: I never got another book from them. They didn't want
10:23
Speaker 2: my honest opinion. They wanted me to buff the book
10:26
Speaker 2: where it was possible and otherwise be quiet about it.
10:30
Speaker 2: And that's not in my style. Now. The same is
10:33
Speaker 2: true with people who send it to reviewers in the
10:38
Speaker 2: world out there with journals. Now that's very serious because
10:44
Speaker 2: not only is it an indictment on the universities who
10:49
Speaker 2: are producing the so called cutting edge, which raises them
10:53
Speaker 2: above the mayor hoypolloy of the crowds below, and that
11:00
Speaker 2: comes within certain arrogance, but it's problematic in that it
11:05
Speaker 2: if the literature is infiltrated by this sort of rubbish,
11:10
Speaker 2: you have a big problem in that you no longer
11:13
Speaker 2: know what is right and what is wrong in the literature,
11:17
Speaker 2: and you can't follow a line of research and the
11:22
Speaker 2: research papers with any great confidence. And one of the
11:26
Speaker 2: things that is not done is that if you're starting
11:30
Speaker 2: on a research project, you should and Finement, the great
11:34
Speaker 2: physicist Finement Richard Fineman made it clear that you should
11:39
Speaker 2: repeat the experiments on which you're basing your research. Now,
11:43
Speaker 2: nobody does that, and there's a good reason why people
11:46
Speaker 2: don't do that, and the reason is because research costs money, time, equipment, chemicals,
11:53
Speaker 2: These things are expensive. So people are prepared to accept
11:58
Speaker 2: the results that go before and not repeat them to
12:00
Speaker 2: see that they're not building a castle on foundations of sand.
12:06
Speaker 2: That never gets done. Nobody ever repeats things because there's
12:09
Speaker 2: no cudos in it. And as I say, the pressure
12:14
Speaker 2: to publish is such that it will push people into
12:18
Speaker 2: doing less honest work, and that less honored. The lack
12:23
Speaker 2: of honesty is noticed well, particularly in subjects like, for instance, medicine.
12:31
Speaker 2: Medicine is particularly badly represented in this in this whole business,
12:35
Speaker 2: and there's a good reason for that. Because this is.
12:38
Speaker 1: Before you continue, sorry, just before you continue, I just
12:43
Speaker 1: want to add to what you're saying there about peer review.
12:46
Speaker 1: I interviewed a gentleman by the name of Peter Bogosian,
12:51
Speaker 1: professor work. Yeah, so you know about the grievance studies
12:55
Speaker 1: and how he the embarrassed the entire peer of view process.
12:59
Speaker 2: Bagosian together at pluck Rows and one other fellow's name
13:02
Speaker 2: I can't remember, James Lindsay. Yeah, that's why Lindsay goes
13:06
Speaker 2: in on pluc rowse. They've written some very interesting articles,
13:09
Speaker 2: but that goes back to another thing that they wrote.
13:13
Speaker 2: They are looking mainly at the fringe, fringe area of research,
13:19
Speaker 2: not the mainstream physics and things like that. They're looking
13:22
Speaker 2: at the social sciences more. But there was a so
13:25
Speaker 2: called so cal hoax, s Oka l and the Circle
13:30
Speaker 2: Hope was one where so Cal wrote an article for
13:33
Speaker 2: one of the leading journals in the field of postmodernism,
13:37
Speaker 2: and they accepted it with open arms because here was
13:40
Speaker 2: a man in the physics department agreeing with them and
13:44
Speaker 2: saying what rubbish physics was. And I mean they came
13:47
Speaker 2: up with the most unbelievable notions in this paper, things
13:53
Speaker 2: like the speed of light is sexist and things of
13:58
Speaker 2: that nature, and why should we rely on pie pie
14:03
Speaker 2: the ratio of the of the circumference of the radius
14:06
Speaker 2: of a circle, Why should we That's that is so
14:08
Speaker 2: sexist and so nonsense. We must, we must get away
14:12
Speaker 2: from the oppression. Anyway, they wrote this paper and it
14:16
Speaker 2: was full of things. And what they did was they
14:19
Speaker 2: put in comments that were very much akin to the
14:22
Speaker 2: comments of the editors of the journal to which they'd
14:25
Speaker 2: sent it. And these fellows took it in with open arms.
14:29
Speaker 2: And on the day it was published, Circle came up
14:32
Speaker 2: and said, this shows me that you fellas really don't
14:35
Speaker 2: know what you're talking about, because all of this is rubbish,
14:38
Speaker 2: it's all made up. It's you've not reviewed it properly,
14:42
Speaker 2: and your comments about it are nonsensical. So that created
14:46
Speaker 2: a stern. They were very angry about about that sort
14:50
Speaker 2: of thing. And and Bagossian and others have done the
14:54
Speaker 2: same thing again. They've they've prepared a series of papers
14:58
Speaker 2: are think twelve papers of which they got about five
15:01
Speaker 2: or sick published, which were so which was so so
15:04
Speaker 2: ridiculous in their scope, their findings and the nonsense they
15:09
Speaker 2: put out.
15:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of them was about dogs in a park
15:14
Speaker 1: doing a toxic masculinity.
15:17
Speaker 2: Correct toxic. It's all about that sort of thing. Okay.
15:20
Speaker 2: Now there are many journals in and many many, many
15:24
Speaker 2: many subjects at university. It's growing now to the extent
15:28
Speaker 2: where the universities have got subjects like a critical race
15:33
Speaker 2: theory and critical law theory and what have you. Now,
15:36
Speaker 2: all this critical theory stuff is just so much nonsense
15:40
Speaker 2: in my view. The fact is that there are you
15:43
Speaker 2: can't you can't rewrite the history in terms of the
15:46
Speaker 2: critical theory, and Bagaussian by the way, Placros and Bogossian
15:52
Speaker 2: and that that little group have written a book called
15:57
Speaker 2: Cynical Theory which cuts the whole notion of critical theory.
16:02
Speaker 2: It's a book well worth reading. Now, the net result
16:07
Speaker 2: of all of that is that universities have always academics
16:10
Speaker 2: have always been left leaning, but by and large in
16:14
Speaker 2: the sciences that left leaning orientation played very little role.
16:22
Speaker 2: But in the arts and the other faculties, politics and
16:25
Speaker 2: what have you, it played a very significant role. But
16:28
Speaker 2: when I was forced to do politics as an arts course,
16:32
Speaker 2: advits in Alf Stadler lectured politics to me many years ago.
16:38
Speaker 2: And what he did was he gave us the various
16:43
Speaker 2: different types of political structure and the pros and the cons.
16:47
Speaker 2: But he never imposed a worldview on us. We didn't
16:51
Speaker 2: know what his view was. We could write anything we
16:54
Speaker 2: like and it was acceptable. Those things have changed at universities,
16:58
Speaker 2: and universities have coome hot. It's a political correctness now,
17:03
Speaker 2: and people are frightened to say what they need to
17:06
Speaker 2: say at a university for fear of being radicalized out
17:12
Speaker 2: and forced to in many cases, forced to resign if
17:16
Speaker 2: it is if it is not suitable for the mob.
17:20
Speaker 2: And the universities to some extent have been ruled by
17:23
Speaker 2: the mob. I mean, you only have to cast your
17:24
Speaker 2: mind back a couple of years to the University of
17:28
Speaker 2: Cape Town and Vitz where mob rule took over and
17:31
Speaker 2: academics were assaulted, prevented from reaching their their rooms, prevented
17:38
Speaker 2: from lecturing. Fecal material was thrown over, lecture theaters and
17:44
Speaker 2: students were assaulted, and academics were assaulted. I remember that
17:50
Speaker 2: the dean, the dean, the dean of science that at
17:54
Speaker 2: VITZ was assaulted by the crowd.
17:55
Speaker 1: Mervyn share was this, what does what does the the
18:00
Speaker 1: dean's name of Cape Town University that was a max
18:03
Speaker 1: Price I think.
18:03
Speaker 2: Max price, yeah, max price, Max Price was assaulted and
18:09
Speaker 2: they did, you know, and and Zoomer left a very
18:13
Speaker 2: toxic legacy in promising free education for students. Now, of
18:18
Speaker 2: course that is just impractical. And not only that, the
18:23
Speaker 2: number of students going to university has exponentially increased to
18:29
Speaker 2: the extent where most of the people there today should
18:32
Speaker 2: not be there. And the country suffers from the fact
18:37
Speaker 2: that there are less people being trained in artisan type
18:40
Speaker 2: work combing electricity, the kind of stuff which used to
18:45
Speaker 2: go down very well at the technics. Those people are
18:48
Speaker 2: all demanding high degrees, and there's a culture of expectation,
18:53
Speaker 2: and that is that once you enter a university, they
18:56
Speaker 2: expect to get a degree, come what may, and that
19:01
Speaker 2: is a disastrous thing. And Jordan Peterson has made it
19:04
Speaker 2: very clear, and I agree with them that equality of
19:07
Speaker 2: opportunity is a very fine thing. Anybody should have given
19:10
Speaker 2: a chance. You could open your universities to anybody in
19:14
Speaker 2: first year, and once you reach a certain level at
19:18
Speaker 2: first year, if you reach that level, you proceed into
19:22
Speaker 2: the next year, so you have a pre academic year.
19:25
Speaker 1: They do seem to be losing relevance.
19:27
Speaker 2: Well correct, And not only are they losing relevance, but
19:31
Speaker 2: people are learning things outside the academic environment which are
19:35
Speaker 2: far more useful and which are very much more lucrative.
19:41
Speaker 2: Doing a science degree is not a proposition anymore. Doing
19:44
Speaker 2: medicine is still a proposition for reasons which I will
19:47
Speaker 2: come to in a minute. And doing laws still a proposition,
19:50
Speaker 2: and those are vastly oversubscribed with a result of diminishing standards.
19:58
Speaker 2: And the net result of all of that is that
20:00
Speaker 2: the universities are bogged down in this business of making
20:06
Speaker 2: certain that everybody who enters gets a degree. And if
20:09
Speaker 2: you fail like a student, if you fail more than
20:11
Speaker 2: one or two students, the dean is done on you
20:13
Speaker 2: like a ton of bricks, wanting to know why, and
20:16
Speaker 2: special attempts are made to pass these students now, and
20:21
Speaker 2: they're given more than one opportunity. Now everybody is allowed
20:25
Speaker 2: to fail, at least once it happens. There are various
20:30
Speaker 2: circumstances which can conspire to make it difficult for you
20:34
Speaker 2: to pass a given year, which are not your fault.
20:37
Speaker 2: But if you keep failing, if you're taking six, seven,
20:41
Speaker 2: eight years to do a three or four year course,
20:44
Speaker 2: that's a very bad thing. Because a university is there
20:48
Speaker 2: to teach you. The most important thing of all is
20:51
Speaker 2: teach you how to learn. And if you can't accumulate
20:57
Speaker 2: and work with facts that are given to you on
21:00
Speaker 2: a platter, with the luxury of being a student and
21:06
Speaker 2: no screaming babies and no screaming wives, and no screaming
21:10
Speaker 2: bank managers, and if you can't do it in the
21:13
Speaker 2: a lot of times, you're not going to do it
21:16
Speaker 2: when you've got wives, babies, bank managers, over drafts in
21:20
Speaker 2: a later stage, it's not going to happen. So that
21:23
Speaker 2: you tend to come out of a university with the
21:26
Speaker 2: information that you've got whatever that is, in a fairly
21:30
Speaker 2: solidified form which never progresses.
21:35
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know of Sir Ken Robertson,
21:39
Speaker 1: a teacher or former teacher in the UK who was
21:42
Speaker 1: knighted for providing huge amounts of value to education over
21:49
Speaker 1: the last few decades, and he gave a wonderful ted
21:52
Speaker 1: talk a number of years ago in which he said, Look,
21:55
Speaker 1: the entire education system, from schooling to university is complete,
22:00
Speaker 1: outdated and it needs to be revisited. Firstly, why do
22:03
Speaker 1: you spend twelve years in school and why that is
22:07
Speaker 1: really is to prepare you for another three to six
22:10
Speaker 1: years at university, which also doesn't prepare you for anything
22:13
Speaker 1: because you need to stall go further than that. Correct,
22:16
Speaker 1: So it begs, it begs the question the entire thing
22:20
Speaker 1: is the entire thing now becoming just a waste of time?
22:23
Speaker 2: Well, that is true, and I mean people people like
22:27
Speaker 2: Mark Twain have made quite interesting comments that my real
22:30
Speaker 2: education started after forgot everything that I learned at school,
22:35
Speaker 2: and that is to a certain extent true. You really
22:38
Speaker 2: only start learning when you deal with the subject in
22:40
Speaker 2: its entirety, and there's no point in trying to pretend
22:45
Speaker 2: that it's any way other than that. And as I say,
22:47
Speaker 2: if I go back to fits, I can list the
22:50
Speaker 2: lecturers who are any good whatsoever in my years, it's
22:54
Speaker 2: on the fingers of a mutilated hand, and often it's
22:59
Speaker 2: Medical school is particularly bad that way, because medical school
23:03
Speaker 2: works on a strict hierarchy. It's almost a military system
23:05
Speaker 2: at medical school. I was in the department of surgery
23:09
Speaker 2: at the medical school they're doing my PhD. And the
23:13
Speaker 2: head of departments a guy called Professor Duplic. It was
23:18
Speaker 2: known to his students and everybody else who could care
23:21
Speaker 2: to think about it as God. And it was widely
23:24
Speaker 2: spoken that God took to Duplicy, not the other way around.
23:29
Speaker 2: And Doup was a formidable man, and I must say,
23:32
Speaker 2: in fairness to do he went out of his way
23:34
Speaker 2: to make my life a lot easier. But people in
23:37
Speaker 2: the medical profession who trained under him followed his dictims
23:41
Speaker 2: or they were out. And Duke should have got a
23:44
Speaker 2: Nobel prize, and he didn't. And I'll tell you why
23:48
Speaker 2: he didn't. And that it encompasses and encapsulates the entire
23:52
Speaker 2: problem of the university. Do believe that bile flowing back
23:56
Speaker 2: into the stomach from the small intest on course gastric
23:59
Speaker 2: ulco and the net result was that Doup would do
24:03
Speaker 2: an operation all the surgeons were trended in operation where
24:07
Speaker 2: they would virtually eviscerate you. They would cut out part
24:10
Speaker 2: of your stomach. They would then attach the remaining rump
24:14
Speaker 2: of the stomach to the bowel because the bell wasn't
24:18
Speaker 2: functioning properly. They would cut the vagus nerve which enabled
24:21
Speaker 2: the velvet at the bottom to open, and they would
24:24
Speaker 2: create They created two or three generations of gastric cripples,
24:30
Speaker 2: and Dip would hear nothing else. If you'd suggested that
24:33
Speaker 2: Dopp might be wrong in the department, it would be
24:36
Speaker 2: your last day in the department. You would have gone
24:39
Speaker 2: from being a surgeon to a floor scrubber. The net
24:43
Speaker 2: result of all of that was that a couple of
24:45
Speaker 2: a couple of Australians looked at the bottom of the
24:49
Speaker 2: ulcer pits and Dup used to look at this. He
24:51
Speaker 2: had a vast slide cabinet wearst to look at all
24:53
Speaker 2: these ulcer pits to the exciss from these were patients.
24:57
Speaker 2: These characters in Australia looked at and they found as
24:59
Speaker 2: quigly thing at the bottom. And they asked themselves the
25:02
Speaker 2: next question, what is that squidly thing? And to cut
25:06
Speaker 2: a long story short, they were the discoverers of a
25:08
Speaker 2: bacterium called helico back to pylorum and far from having
25:13
Speaker 2: half your guts cut out to treat a disease, which
25:17
Speaker 2: made the condition far worse. Apart from that, today, if
25:21
Speaker 2: you've got a gastric ulcer and that properly diagnosed, you
25:25
Speaker 2: can treat it by using a handful of antibiotics and
25:29
Speaker 2: an acid inhibitat and will.
25:32
Speaker 1: Just changing your diet, sorry, or changing your diet.
25:36
Speaker 2: Not so much changing your diet, but changing your diet
25:38
Speaker 2: does help, and changing your lifestyle helps. But they won
25:44
Speaker 2: a Nobel Prize for it, and that was had Doup
25:47
Speaker 2: looked in the bottom of the pit and asked the
25:48
Speaker 2: question instead of being enamored with his own infallibility, he
25:53
Speaker 2: would have won the Nobel Prize. And it's a great
25:55
Speaker 2: pity because Doup was in many ways he was the
25:57
Speaker 2: finest administrator I've ever come across. But that's the story anyway. Now,
26:04
Speaker 2: the other thing that we've got to look at is
26:06
Speaker 2: the following, and that is the effect of outside influences
26:09
Speaker 2: on research, particularly medical research. If you think that the
26:16
Speaker 2: drugs that you are taking are for your benefit, you
26:19
Speaker 2: are sorely mistaken, many many, many of them are for
26:24
Speaker 2: the benefit of the drug company and nobody else. And
26:27
Speaker 2: once you put on these drugs, it's a life sentence.
26:31
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking particularly about a drug like statns. There's
26:35
Speaker 2: growing in the growing information that statins do nothing, that
26:42
Speaker 2: it's cholesterol is not the problem in heart disease.
26:45
Speaker 1: I am quite good friends with Tim Loaks, who's been
26:47
Speaker 1: on my podcast a number of times, and I think
26:49
Speaker 1: you do know Tim. Also I do know.
26:51
Speaker 2: Tim, and I'm going to talk about Tim just now.
26:55
Speaker 2: Tim is quite adamant about Tim and I are on
26:57
Speaker 2: the same page about statins, and the whole point about
27:01
Speaker 2: it is that statins are there for the benefit of
27:05
Speaker 2: the drug company. It is probably the most valuable drug
27:08
Speaker 2: ever ever made, that an antidepressants. And the point about
27:13
Speaker 2: statins is that statins have been around for about thirty
27:17
Speaker 2: years and if they were that effective, we should see
27:22
Speaker 2: a rapid drop off in cardiovascular disease, which we do
27:26
Speaker 2: not see. But we are seeing in medicine today arise
27:32
Speaker 2: in the mental degenerative diseases Alzheimer's and diseases of that nature.
27:40
Speaker 2: Those are on the way up. And one of the
27:43
Speaker 2: reasons I believe is that statins interfere with cholesterol metabolism,
27:48
Speaker 2: and the cholesterol is vital. Your brain is twenty five
27:50
Speaker 2: percent cholesterol, Your nerve tissue is mostly cholesterol, large amount
27:55
Speaker 2: of cholesterol. The sex hormones are mainly cholesterol derived. Some
28:00
Speaker 2: of the vital components in your biochemical path rays inside
28:04
Speaker 2: the body derived from the same precursors as cholesterol. So
28:10
Speaker 2: if you think your Porsche is going to run better
28:13
Speaker 2: by as an analogy, by the way, if you think
28:17
Speaker 2: your Porsche is going to run better and the noise
28:19
Speaker 2: in the gearbox is going to be improved by chucking
28:22
Speaker 2: a handful of sand into the gearbox, I think you
28:25
Speaker 2: ought to revisit that and think again. And simply blocking
28:29
Speaker 2: cholesterol synthesis is very bad. But the journals will not
28:33
Speaker 2: back off it. They simply will not back off that
28:36
Speaker 2: for the simple reason that there's money to be made.
28:39
Speaker 2: The drug companies will not back off it. There's money
28:42
Speaker 2: to be made.
28:42
Speaker 1: Going back to twenty twenty, I was engaged in a
28:46
Speaker 1: number of emails with various doctors and scientists around the
28:51
Speaker 1: country around the whole COVID thing because at that stage,
28:54
Speaker 1: like all of us who are trying to figure out
28:55
Speaker 1: what was going on, and I in front of me.
28:59
Speaker 1: I've actually got the email still from a certain professor
29:02
Speaker 1: at VI's Medical School in Jannsberg. Now I don't want
29:05
Speaker 1: to mention his name in case he listens to this
29:07
Speaker 1: and he gets a bit upset.
29:09
Speaker 2: But what he's a professor of.
29:13
Speaker 1: Well he was at the medical faculty.
29:16
Speaker 2: Okay, I think I know you talked about was the
29:18
Speaker 2: professor of virology. Yes, okay, I know exactly it.
29:23
Speaker 1: Is, and I was involved in a series of emails
29:26
Speaker 1: with him. He was he was actually one of the
29:28
Speaker 1: advisors to the president at the time. Suffice to say,
29:31
Speaker 1: most of my income comes from the n I h U,
29:36
Speaker 1: S A I, d UNI Aid Gates Foundation and the
29:39
Speaker 1: South African m R C.
29:41
Speaker 2: Okay, now I know exactly who that is. I don't
29:44
Speaker 2: have a great deal of time fame here. I crossed
29:47
Speaker 2: swords in the past. But be that as it may. Now,
29:52
Speaker 2: the whole problem about that is that everybody you see
29:56
Speaker 2: you follow a narrative that is set down for you.
29:58
Speaker 2: You're not trained to say at a university, or very
30:01
Speaker 2: few people are. And that's a very bad thing. And
30:05
Speaker 2: because another thing that has happened as universities have become
30:09
Speaker 2: safe spaces. You dare not, you dare not say something
30:13
Speaker 2: which is out of line with the current postmodern narrative
30:17
Speaker 2: because it's a safe space and you might trigger somebody
30:19
Speaker 2: into feeling awful. Means a history lecturer is mentioning the
30:23
Speaker 2: word slaves, and some kid got up screaming and shouting
30:26
Speaker 2: and she was triggered, had to be taken off and
30:28
Speaker 2: treated for whatever you treat people like that for. And
30:35
Speaker 2: this is ridiculous. A university is by definition not a
30:38
Speaker 2: safe space. It should not be a place where any
30:41
Speaker 2: ideology is taught. You can teach about an ideology, but
30:47
Speaker 2: you can't teach ideological work. And that has been proven
30:51
Speaker 2: to be the case over as long as I can remember.
30:55
Speaker 2: I mean, the Catholic Church stepped in and prevented Galileo
30:59
Speaker 2: from from his observations, and it's taken them, it's taken
31:03
Speaker 2: them and turned them in the late sixties to admit
31:06
Speaker 2: that Galileo was right. Now, how's that for a slowness
31:10
Speaker 2: in coming to the party.
31:12
Speaker 1: Within our own last century, doctors on on the recommendation
31:18
Speaker 1: of the medical industry recommended smoking for a few decades, yes.
31:24
Speaker 2: Okay, and and even worse than that, ansel Keys was
31:29
Speaker 2: was tosked by the the the the powers that be
31:33
Speaker 2: in the in the grain industry to demonize eating meat
31:37
Speaker 2: and butter and eggs, and they they they went onto
31:43
Speaker 2: grain based products, which has caused a number of things,
31:45
Speaker 2: number number of things, namely, the obesity has skyrocketed in
31:50
Speaker 2: the United States. Uh and here as well, the whole
31:55
Speaker 2: food pyramid that we used to be taught when ice
31:57
Speaker 2: and standard six in standard five, that's been turned on
32:01
Speaker 2: its head. You no longer are urged to eat meat
32:04
Speaker 2: and cheese and vegetables at least and eggs, which are
32:10
Speaker 2: very good for you, and a kito diet, and Tim
32:13
Speaker 2: Noaks will tell you a qito diet is the finest
32:16
Speaker 2: way to avoid the generation of the arteries. And of course,
32:21
Speaker 2: of course Tim Noakes was demonized and vilified by his
32:25
Speaker 2: colleagues at the medical school, but he was hauled up
32:28
Speaker 2: for a protracted period before the Medical and Dental Council,
32:32
Speaker 2: and they never ever, ever disclosed the fact that some
32:38
Speaker 2: of their sponsors were people in the sugar industry. And
32:42
Speaker 2: Tim is of course very anti sugar, and he's quite right.
32:45
Speaker 2: Sugar is probably a very bad thing for your for
32:49
Speaker 2: your arteries. But certainly eggs you can you can eat.
32:52
Speaker 2: You can go on one hundred percent egg diet and
32:54
Speaker 2: it won't change your cholesterol. Now, that is contrary to
32:58
Speaker 2: the teaching of doctors over the last forty years. And
33:03
Speaker 2: this whole business of statins and the use of statins
33:07
Speaker 2: is a crazy thing and people need to look at it.
33:11
Speaker 2: The other thing about it is that if you are
33:13
Speaker 2: running a drug company and you persuade a professor to
33:19
Speaker 2: write a paper showing a leading professor to write a
33:23
Speaker 2: paper showing that cholesterol levels of thirty percent low than
33:31
Speaker 2: there ar at the moment is the good thing in
33:32
Speaker 2: the place to go as a result of sub spurious statistics,
33:37
Speaker 2: then of course you are in the pound seat, because
33:41
Speaker 2: that's no longer medicine, that's marketing, because you'll suddenly produce
33:46
Speaker 2: another couple of million patients who are put on statns.
33:50
Speaker 2: The same is true. The same is true of antidepressants.
33:56
Speaker 2: I mean, sarah tonin is supposed to be a lack
33:59
Speaker 2: of seratonin is supposed to be the cause of depression,
34:03
Speaker 2: and the drugs given. One of the most prescribed drugs
34:06
Speaker 2: in the world are antidepressants, which are serotonin uptake inhibitors
34:12
Speaker 2: and those nobody to my knowledge, And I'd be grateful
34:15
Speaker 2: if somebody would phone in and put me right if
34:18
Speaker 2: I'm wrong. Nobody has shown a correlation between low serotonin levels,
34:24
Speaker 2: which is a neurotransmitter, low serotonin levels and depression. So
34:29
Speaker 2: we're using a drug to treat depression for a mechanism
34:33
Speaker 2: which has not been shown to be correct. And it
34:37
Speaker 2: goes back, as I say, I mean, you must remember,
34:40
Speaker 2: this goes back into the as far back as possible.
34:44
Speaker 2: And the people who were paid to punt cigarette smoking,
34:50
Speaker 2: we're all from big med medical institutions. The people who
34:53
Speaker 2: were paid to punt the use of grains, we're all
34:59
Speaker 2: from big medical institutions. And these people are no better
35:03
Speaker 2: than prostitutes. In fact, now I think so considerably better
35:08
Speaker 2: than they are. Sir Richard Dole, who was the researcher
35:11
Speaker 2: who showed the correlation between smoking and lung cancer, was
35:18
Speaker 2: doing this fifty years ago, sixty years ago. And in
35:22
Speaker 2: the twenties, of course, smoking was the big thing. Everybody smoked.
35:26
Speaker 2: My parents smoked, and it killed both of them eventually.
35:31
Speaker 2: And the net result of all of that was that
35:33
Speaker 2: the link between smoking and lung cancer and smoking and
35:35
Speaker 2: heart disease is beyond any shadow of a doubt. Smoking
35:40
Speaker 2: not great for you. And part of the reason why
35:42
Speaker 2: you seem to be only aware of it more now
35:46
Speaker 2: is that people are living longer, and cancer disease is
35:49
Speaker 2: a disease. As you grow older, the incidence of cancer peaks.
35:54
Speaker 2: There are two big peaks. They're childhood peaks and those
35:57
Speaker 2: are the childhood cancers, and then the other SoLIT tissue
36:00
Speaker 2: tumors peak in later life. So we're seeing more elderly
36:04
Speaker 2: people who are dying of cancer. But but again again,
36:08
Speaker 2: the the use of the use of of of of
36:14
Speaker 2: chemotherapy to treat cancer, it's crazy stuff. It's crazy stuff.
36:19
Speaker 2: It works on a very few tumors, but solitissue tumors,
36:22
Speaker 2: it doesn't do a lot of good for Uh. You
36:26
Speaker 2: will die of your tumor if it's spread beyond the
36:28
Speaker 2: initial phase where it can be excised and cut out.
36:33
Speaker 2: And that's another thing. I mean, Uh, people follow trends.
36:38
Speaker 2: When I was at university, if you had a small
36:40
Speaker 2: tumb of your breast, the surgeons would cut off the breast,
36:43
Speaker 2: cut off all the musculature underneath it, almost down to
36:47
Speaker 2: the to the to the bone and and take out
36:51
Speaker 2: everything that could in the in the in your armpets.
36:53
Speaker 2: And that's why you saw these these women walking around
36:56
Speaker 2: with massive armpets size of a thigh because as the
37:01
Speaker 2: lymphatic float back to the heart was from, the arm
37:04
Speaker 2: was impeded. And when when when the new the French
37:11
Speaker 2: amongst others, found that a simple removal of the tumor,
37:14
Speaker 2: if it was an early stage tumor, and a whiff
37:18
Speaker 2: of radiation would give that would give results far better
37:21
Speaker 2: than those radical Halsted mastectomies. Either the professor in our
37:26
Speaker 2: department got up and stormed out in a huff, in
37:30
Speaker 2: a rage. He wouldn't believe it. And and he had
37:34
Speaker 2: this childish rage where he stormed out and he wouldn't
37:37
Speaker 2: wouldn't believe it. And that's been shown to be true
37:40
Speaker 2: now now the same with with Tim. Tim was pilloried
37:43
Speaker 2: by his colleagues because he didn't tow the party line,
37:47
Speaker 2: and that, I'm afraid is a danger. And you can't
37:51
Speaker 2: let drug com you can't let external influences influence your
37:56
Speaker 2: scientific research. And we've known that forever and a day,
38:00
Speaker 2: I mean, Galileo knew that he could the Catholic Church
38:03
Speaker 2: tried to stop him. It didn't work. More recently, more recently,
38:09
Speaker 2: in the in the twenties, there was a man called
38:12
Speaker 2: Trefrom Larcina Lisenko who thought he could get better yields
38:17
Speaker 2: from from wheat grain, and that suited the Marxist narrative,
38:22
Speaker 2: so he was made in charge of all all agricultural
38:26
Speaker 2: research in in Russia under the guy. If you disagreed
38:30
Speaker 2: with with the Lisenka, it was the quickest way you
38:33
Speaker 2: could get into an into a gulag. So the net
38:37
Speaker 2: result of all of that was that they produced They
38:41
Speaker 2: produced years of of of of of famine in Russia
38:45
Speaker 2: until Stalin died and Lisenka was deposed from his position,
38:49
Speaker 2: which is a very powerful position.
38:51
Speaker 1: Is it by design or emergence or is it a combination.
38:56
Speaker 2: It's a combination of people not being taught to think
39:00
Speaker 2: and not being encouraged to think, and people. We are
39:04
Speaker 2: pack animals, and if you don't join the pack, you
39:09
Speaker 2: are pillar. Read. There's nothing nothing more dangerous than speaking
39:14
Speaker 2: truth to powerful men who believe different.
39:18
Speaker 1: No, but why does the pack go in the direction
39:21
Speaker 1: that seems to be wrong?
39:22
Speaker 2: Almost every time, Follow the money, Follow the money, follow
39:29
Speaker 2: the money with statins, follow the money with the antidepressants,
39:32
Speaker 2: follow the money with the issue with the corn, corn
39:37
Speaker 2: starch and cornflour and corn products in America. Now, I
39:42
Speaker 2: won't eat a chop unless it's got a nice thick
39:44
Speaker 2: piece of fat on the one edge it's and the
39:47
Speaker 2: same with a piece of faty, a fatty piece of
39:50
Speaker 2: beef with marble fat in it is most delicious.
39:55
Speaker 1: You'll have companies like Coca Cola that will then fund
40:00
Speaker 1: research into the dangers of sugar.
40:04
Speaker 2: Well yeah, yes, and no. I mean Coca Cola have
40:10
Speaker 2: recently been forced to go into the diet coke world
40:14
Speaker 2: by the research which showed that the sugar I mean
40:16
Speaker 2: you were drinking pure sugar when you drank coke in
40:19
Speaker 2: the in the past, and they were forced to go
40:22
Speaker 2: into the diet diet beverage world. So that so that yes,
40:26
Speaker 2: but but they've got they've just they've just diverged the
40:31
Speaker 2: interest from the original I.
40:33
Speaker 1: Mean that's it's still big money.
40:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a big money okay. And and and
40:38
Speaker 2: they get you to whether whether you drink a coke
40:41
Speaker 2: or a diet coke, it's the same to Coca Cola
40:45
Speaker 2: that our mind the other, the other great great man
40:50
Speaker 2: who who were pillar read by the academic institution was
40:55
Speaker 2: Alfred Wegener Alfred Regan. Does that name ring a bell
40:59
Speaker 2: with you? Alfred Reagan? I looked at the map of
41:03
Speaker 2: the world, and he said, well, look, if you look
41:04
Speaker 2: at America, it fits neatly into the armpit of Africa.
41:08
Speaker 2: And he put forward the notion of continental drift. And
41:12
Speaker 2: he was pillaried, absolutely pillaried by the great panjandrums of
41:17
Speaker 2: the academic world. We told him he was a fool,
41:20
Speaker 2: and what have you. Well today it's a major subject
41:22
Speaker 2: in in in geology plate tectonics, which is and what
41:27
Speaker 2: causes all the tsunamis and the earthquakes, and goodness does
41:30
Speaker 2: what movement of plates over each other in particularly around
41:34
Speaker 2: the Pacific rim. So you know, one's got to be
41:38
Speaker 2: very careful of imbuing the academic institutions with more value
41:43
Speaker 2: than they deserve. And Bagossian and Pluckrose and others have
41:48
Speaker 2: and and and people of that nature as well as
41:54
Speaker 2: so cal have shown that many of the subjects which
41:57
Speaker 2: are in universities now are of little or no value
42:01
Speaker 2: to the world at large. But that is not to
42:04
Speaker 2: say that some of the subjects which are being dropped
42:06
Speaker 2: out for financial reasons aren't of value. And I'll give
42:10
Speaker 2: you another Classic Classics and English have been dropped are
42:14
Speaker 2: being dropped from many university. WITS has dropped them. WIT's
42:18
Speaker 2: drop Classic in Latin, okay, And that is a great pity.
42:21
Speaker 2: It's it's it's it's damaging its role as an academic institute,
42:26
Speaker 2: an intellectual institution.
42:28
Speaker 1: Yeah. Just for clarity, it's for those who don't know.
42:31
Speaker 2: Is the university major it's the main the main universities
42:37
Speaker 2: in Johannesburg. There're two. There's there's the Afrikaans University. It
42:41
Speaker 2: used to be I think it's now called the University.
42:44
Speaker 2: It used to call Random Africa r AU, Random Fricance University,
42:47
Speaker 2: but it's called something that's University of Jannetburg. I think
42:49
Speaker 2: it's called now. And there were the Vivoris One University,
42:53
Speaker 2: which was the the Random Afrikaans was not there in
42:56
Speaker 2: the day that I was at university. There was only
43:00
Speaker 2: at Varasan University and University of Pretoria and of course
43:03
Speaker 2: the University of Potschaft. But they all had different ideological
43:07
Speaker 2: aspects of them and and they all they all have
43:11
Speaker 2: the same issue in the kind of people that they
43:14
Speaker 2: put out.
43:15
Speaker 1: David, you said earlier that most universities everywhere, I suppose
43:21
Speaker 1: when you say everywhere, we're talking about the West, right,
43:23
Speaker 1: talking about most.
43:25
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about about Eastern universities, right, so
43:29
Speaker 2: Western universities.
43:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're saying most have been quote unquote left leaning.
43:35
Speaker 2: Why, I don't know entirely. I think I don't know.
43:39
Speaker 2: I've got to I've got to try and understand why
43:42
Speaker 2: that is. But they have been left leaning generally. The
43:46
Speaker 2: only university in South Africa that I can think of,
43:48
Speaker 2: university that I can think of the word right leaning,
43:50
Speaker 2: were University Pretoria and Stellar Bushit Wednesday still and Bush
43:55
Speaker 2: of Courses resurrected itself and it's probably one of the
43:58
Speaker 2: better universities ath Africa at the moment. But but the
44:03
Speaker 2: university overseas always been left leaning and and even even now,
44:08
Speaker 2: I mean, if you look at this the scandal that's
44:10
Speaker 2: going on at the moment over a professor at Cambridge
44:14
Speaker 2: who's lied about his qualifications, about his achievements, about good
44:19
Speaker 2: I mean, he ran he ran a marathon when he
44:21
Speaker 2: was one legged and half dead, and god knows what
44:25
Speaker 2: else I mean, there's a whole state of information coming
44:29
Speaker 2: out about that, and there's this this this this business
44:34
Speaker 2: of well I like to call d I E. Diversity
44:38
Speaker 2: inclusion and and what's the epot I forget the epart equity, diversion,
44:47
Speaker 2: equity and inclusion you are. It's it you choose from
44:52
Speaker 2: the widest possible pool that you can. You don't put
44:57
Speaker 2: ideological limits on what the pool all size is that
45:01
Speaker 2: you call from, because because your your way of getting
45:05
Speaker 2: the most excellent of everybody is to get everybody to
45:09
Speaker 2: compete on the same level, not say, oh shame, you're
45:11
Speaker 2: a woman, you're going to get special treatment. And also,
45:14
Speaker 2: by the way, the same the same with letting students
45:17
Speaker 2: into UCT. You don't say, oh shame, we're going to
45:21
Speaker 2: let you in because you disadvantage. We will do our
45:24
Speaker 2: best to improve that disadvantageousness that you've suffered, and we
45:29
Speaker 2: will do their best to remedy that before you get
45:32
Speaker 2: to university. But once you get into the university, you
45:36
Speaker 2: play by the same rules. And it's the same and
45:38
Speaker 2: I fucking use an analogy. You're not going to strengthen
45:41
Speaker 2: the Springbook rugby team by carrying the disadvantage people across
45:46
Speaker 2: the field. Okay, that's not gonna work. They've got to
45:49
Speaker 2: run across the field the same as everybody else. And
45:53
Speaker 2: that's the way you make a great team. Choose from
45:55
Speaker 2: the best that you can. Go down to the township
45:59
Speaker 2: levels and improve the levels of availability there and do
46:03
Speaker 2: what you can to make sure that the pool that
46:06
Speaker 2: you're able to choose from is the best possible pool.
46:09
Speaker 2: But not on ideological grounds. You never choose anything on
46:13
Speaker 2: ideological grounds.
46:15
Speaker 1: You might remember that the University of Cape Town's medical
46:19
Speaker 1: school entrance requirements were different according to your ethnicity, totally.
46:28
Speaker 2: So.
46:28
Speaker 1: In other words, if you if you're black and you
46:31
Speaker 1: wanted to study to become a doctor, you only needed
46:34
Speaker 1: I think something like sixty or seventy percent in metric
46:38
Speaker 1: and if you're white you needed something like over eighty
46:40
Speaker 1: five or ninety percent.
46:42
Speaker 2: Correct, That is still the case as far as I know.
46:44
Speaker 2: I don't think that's changed, And if somebody would like
46:47
Speaker 2: to correct me, I'm open to correction, But I don't
46:50
Speaker 2: think it's changed. But certainly that is the case. There
46:53
Speaker 2: were ideological and other influences which determine who should get
46:59
Speaker 2: in or not. As I say, that would be solved
47:02
Speaker 2: if you if you have a vast pool of these
47:04
Speaker 2: kids doing a pre a pre university course, and then
47:08
Speaker 2: you select the best that are available irrespective from that
47:13
Speaker 2: university course. And and again the problem with that is
47:17
Speaker 2: that there are there are some black schools that are
47:20
Speaker 2: being that are being marginalized because of poor, poor, poor
47:25
Speaker 2: government policies. But there are some of those schools that
47:28
Speaker 2: are producing the most phenomenal students. And it's possible to
47:32
Speaker 2: do that, and that's where you want to start. You
47:34
Speaker 2: want to start. University is not there to to to
47:37
Speaker 2: to work on the failings of the primary education department.
47:42
Speaker 2: It's not there to do that. It's there to produce
47:44
Speaker 2: excellence and it's not doing that. Let's have a look
47:47
Speaker 2: at u ct U. CET is indulged in an anti
47:50
Speaker 2: Israel campaign, which is which is phenomenal. And the net
47:55
Speaker 2: result of that is that some of their donuts have
47:57
Speaker 2: taken tens of thousands of millions of ran away from
48:00
Speaker 2: the university. Now, who who thinks that that's going to
48:05
Speaker 2: benefit the students. It's not going to benefit that. It
48:08
Speaker 2: means that there's less money for research, less money for
48:11
Speaker 2: top topping up academic structure and by the way, at
48:16
Speaker 2: UCT up until a while ago, I ad it from
48:19
Speaker 2: a reliable inside source that black academics were paid and
48:24
Speaker 2: over and above what a white academic with the same graduation,
48:27
Speaker 2: same qualification, same experience would get. That's wrong, that's wrong.
48:32
Speaker 2: It's a different kind of a putjact. You should not
48:36
Speaker 2: be doing things according to skin color. You should be
48:39
Speaker 2: And I was listening to France Prenier saying that the
48:45
Speaker 2: number of graduates has increased. I would like somebody to
48:49
Speaker 2: ask France preneer and maybe I would like to ask
48:51
Speaker 2: him whether the standard has increased. The number that you're
48:55
Speaker 2: putting out is one metric, but what about the standard
48:59
Speaker 2: of something you're putting out. I mean, it doesn't help
49:01
Speaker 2: you to put out a student who has not done
49:05
Speaker 2: any anatomy. And, by the way, that's something else which
49:07
Speaker 2: had been largely dropped from the medical curriculum in my years.
49:12
Speaker 2: When medical school was going hot helpful weather in the
49:17
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties, the students needed one thousand contact hours
49:22
Speaker 2: of anatomy. One thousand contact hours. It's been dropped down
49:26
Speaker 2: to about one hundred and fifty.
49:28
Speaker 1: I've just looked up UCT's medical admission policy and it says,
49:32
Speaker 1: if you are a white South African student aiming for
49:36
Speaker 1: medicine at UCT, you need to score roughly sixty points
49:40
Speaker 1: higher on the same scale than a black student to
49:44
Speaker 1: get the same seat.
49:46
Speaker 2: Not a good idea that you see, the problem with
49:50
Speaker 2: that is that there's no longer equality of opportunity. It's
49:55
Speaker 2: bolstering the opportunity of a disadvantageous group, which you could
49:58
Speaker 2: do by a more honest method. I mean, what is
50:02
Speaker 2: undoubtedly too, is that their opportunities are incredibly worse, far
50:09
Speaker 2: worse than a kid who's gone to Bishops or Rodine
50:13
Speaker 2: or any one of those schools or Saint Andrew's. Those
50:17
Speaker 2: schools have got an advantage over the kid in the
50:19
Speaker 2: township school. So I would say, let those kids in
50:23
Speaker 2: the township school in have staff available to coach them
50:27
Speaker 2: and help them, but don't push them into the mainstream
50:31
Speaker 2: course and then push them through. And and quite often
50:36
Speaker 2: that's happening in a strange way. I mean, I know
50:38
Speaker 2: for a fact, in the math department a while ago
50:41
Speaker 2: that you've got marks towards your end of year exam
50:44
Speaker 2: by merely attending the the the tutorials. So if you
50:51
Speaker 2: attended you got marks. Now that used not to be
50:54
Speaker 2: the case. You had. You wouldn't get a due performance
50:58
Speaker 2: if you didn't attend them, but you didn't get marks
51:01
Speaker 2: if you did attend them. So you know, it's crazy,
51:08
Speaker 2: crazy stuff.
51:09
Speaker 1: So what's the moral of the story then, David, I.
51:12
Speaker 2: Think the moral of the story is that we've got
51:14
Speaker 2: to go back to what really counts. And in the
51:19
Speaker 2: same line and continuing the vein that I that I
51:23
Speaker 2: went into with the Helderberg which we spoke about last week,
51:27
Speaker 2: the ultimate thing is to find the truth. It doesn't
51:30
Speaker 2: help you to produce a set of graduates who don't
51:33
Speaker 2: understand the truth and who don't understand that they've got
51:36
Speaker 2: to continue learning because you're learning starts when you leave
51:40
Speaker 2: the university. You can take that as a basis, and
51:43
Speaker 2: fifty percent or more of what you learn at university
51:45
Speaker 2: by the time you get out is wrong. So how
51:48
Speaker 2: are you going to remedy that by inculcating a culture
51:51
Speaker 2: of learning into these students? And that is not done.
51:54
Speaker 2: It's regurgitation, and it is quite the wrong kind of
51:58
Speaker 2: way to train tertiary level students in getting to the road.
52:05
Speaker 2: And by the way, you don't help the student while
52:08
Speaker 2: easing out the bumps in the road, because they're going
52:13
Speaker 2: to get out of university and find that the bumps
52:15
Speaker 2: in the road are still there. So you've got to
52:18
Speaker 2: You've got to educate the people at university in a
52:22
Speaker 2: way that enables them to counter the vicissitudes of life.
52:27
Speaker 2: And that is not being done.
52:29
Speaker 1: Something else that I've thought a lot about is over specialization.
52:34
Speaker 1: And if that also leads to the dumbing down of
52:36
Speaker 1: the system.
52:37
Speaker 2: It does. It does in no doubt. I mean I
52:41
Speaker 2: vividly remember a professor of mine called Jack Allen. Now
52:47
Speaker 2: Jack Allen was one of the few professors. He was
52:49
Speaker 2: one of those on the fingers of that mutilated hand.
52:53
Speaker 2: And there are two stories about Jack Allen. One one
52:57
Speaker 2: is that he was working doing his PhD when I
53:00
Speaker 2: was there on the little bones in the inner ear,
53:04
Speaker 2: and he wanted to work out the surface area of
53:06
Speaker 2: this irregular shaped bone. And he went down to the
53:10
Speaker 2: math department and he've got hold of some high for
53:13
Speaker 2: Luton fell at the math upon and the umpteen math
53:16
Speaker 2: profess is now my year. There used to be Arthur Blexley.
53:21
Speaker 2: But now there you've got one of numbers one to ten.
53:25
Speaker 2: And then one from numbers fifteen to twenty four, and
53:29
Speaker 2: that they've just diversified and spread anyway, went DOWNE found
53:32
Speaker 2: one of these characters and asked him how to do it,
53:35
Speaker 2: and the guy said, yeah, no, there's a way, but
53:36
Speaker 2: I can't remember how it's done. Now. If he'd gone
53:39
Speaker 2: to Arthur Blexley, Blexley would have sat him down and said,
53:42
Speaker 2: here we are, here's a simple way of doing it,
53:44
Speaker 2: and he would have done it in two shakes of
53:46
Speaker 2: a duck's tail. That doesn't happen anymore. The second thing
53:50
Speaker 2: that I learned from Jack Allen, which has followed me
53:53
Speaker 2: for my entire career. We were all sitting around on
53:56
Speaker 2: a Friday evening. We used to sit around and have
53:58
Speaker 2: a glass of beer and a couple of packets of
54:00
Speaker 2: chips in the laboratory, and Jack Allen came in that evening.
54:04
Speaker 2: He was professor of anatomy at that stage. He came
54:07
Speaker 2: in that evening and he said to me, He said
54:10
Speaker 2: to us, guys, I can't stop for a drink. I'm
54:12
Speaker 2: operating on little girl's foot later this evening. She's got
54:16
Speaker 2: a shod of glass in her foots and I'm just
54:18
Speaker 2: going up to the lab to refresh my anatomy of
54:21
Speaker 2: the foot before I operate. Now, that impressed me, and
54:25
Speaker 2: I do that every time I tackle any project. I
54:29
Speaker 2: always go back to basics and look for the basic
54:32
Speaker 2: information that I can find on it. I never work
54:35
Speaker 2: on the thing in my experience. In my experience, I
54:40
Speaker 2: say X, Y, and Z, because your experience can be
54:43
Speaker 2: quite wrong. And if you go back to basics, and
54:47
Speaker 2: if you say, you can't say, in my experience, this
54:50
Speaker 2: gun will produce that mark on the body. You take
54:53
Speaker 2: that gun, you take the ammunition, you find a suitable
54:57
Speaker 2: representative target. And I used to peak skin, and you
55:01
Speaker 2: use that peak skin to show the court what it
55:04
Speaker 2: is that you're saying. And you don't make a decision.
55:07
Speaker 2: That's ultimate issue. You let the court make a decision.
55:10
Speaker 2: You can let the court look at the blackening and
55:12
Speaker 2: the marks that are made by the weapon. So from
55:17
Speaker 2: from that point of view, that lesson was one of
55:20
Speaker 2: the finest lessons over learnt. It was from Jack Allen.
55:23
Speaker 1: Well, we are coming into the last few minutes and
55:27
Speaker 1: you mentioned guns, a topic I enjoy. So I'll just
55:30
Speaker 1: quickly show you this is what I shot that I
55:35
Speaker 1: know if you can see it there wait I can yes, Okay,
55:41
Speaker 1: what a beast.
55:43
Speaker 2: Jem. You're a wealthy man. That's about seventy five bucks
55:46
Speaker 2: a shot.
55:49
Speaker 1: I was sponsored the shot, and I think I shot
55:54
Speaker 1: at about I think somewhere between five hundred meters and
55:58
Speaker 1: a kilometer. That is an incredible gun.
56:01
Speaker 2: MG. Yeah, you don't want to go shooting spring book
56:04
Speaker 2: with that because you'll end up with Springbok mince.
56:08
Speaker 1: You won't even end up with the mints. There will
56:09
Speaker 1: be nothing.
56:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
56:10
Speaker 1: No, I mean that that thing is designed to take
56:13
Speaker 1: down vehicles.
56:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yes or no, but it's certainly designed for it.
56:18
Speaker 2: You know. It's it's a weapon that is used in
56:20
Speaker 2: area of warfare to a large extent. Although during the war,
56:23
Speaker 2: by the way, there's put fine an a hurricane mainly
56:25
Speaker 2: you before they went on to twenty milimeters cannons, they
56:29
Speaker 2: used three or three cartridges.
56:31
Speaker 1: Such a big caliber, and it had very little recoil.
56:34
Speaker 1: That's the coffee cup. Yeah, the coffee cup on the
56:37
Speaker 1: table next to me, however, disappeared. It got blown off
56:41
Speaker 1: the table.
56:41
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I used to have a three A three
56:44
Speaker 2: seventy five h h magnum when I was in souther.
56:47
Speaker 1: Ooh, that's pretty big.
56:49
Speaker 2: It was. It was the biggest, the smallest caliber that
56:52
Speaker 2: you could reliably tackle dangerous game with.
56:56
Speaker 1: And I didn't know you can take down a giraffe
56:58
Speaker 1: with that.
56:58
Speaker 2: I think you can take down a can take down
57:00
Speaker 2: a buffalo with that. I wouldn't advise.
57:02
Speaker 1: Even an elephant. Even an elephant.
57:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, more animals, more big game have been shot
57:07
Speaker 2: with A three or three than any other caliber put
57:10
Speaker 2: together in South Africa. But it's not a good idea
57:14
Speaker 2: if it's coming towards you at at a rate of knots.
57:18
Speaker 2: You want something a little more substantial.
57:20
Speaker 1: Well, actually, just quickly before we go. You don't really
57:23
Speaker 1: want to shoot wildcat, No, they will most likely kill you.
57:27
Speaker 2: No. In fact, if anybody goes hunting wildcats up on
57:31
Speaker 2: the side of the wildcat.
57:34
Speaker 1: It's incredibly dangerous.
57:38
Speaker 2: Somebody gets goured by a buffalo and I'm thrilled for
57:43
Speaker 2: the buffalo.
57:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there are some animals you just shouldn't shoot.
57:48
Speaker 2: And leopards. Leopards you should not be shooting it for
57:51
Speaker 2: leopard kill. Somebody bully for you leopard.
57:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, But by the way, if you do try and
57:55
Speaker 1: hunt a leopard or a lion, they most likely will
57:58
Speaker 1: kill you good. They attack, they attack.
58:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no, I don't know much about the law
58:04
Speaker 2: of hunting. But if a small animal like a springbok
58:09
Speaker 2: or a blessed bok or something of that nature, if
58:12
Speaker 2: you're going to turn it into biltong and you do that,
58:14
Speaker 2: I've got no problem with that. I don't like the
58:18
Speaker 2: hypocrites who have a steak sandwich from the butcher and
58:21
Speaker 2: turn up their noses at a piece of biltong from
58:24
Speaker 2: a spring book.
58:25
Speaker 1: By the way, you in the UK, biltong is South
58:29
Speaker 1: African and you just cannot match biltong.
58:32
Speaker 2: No, you can buy it here. You can buy your
58:35
Speaker 2: The number of South Africans who are making and but
58:37
Speaker 2: wors the South African start popping up all over the place.
58:42
Speaker 2: But the but of wors here is not the same
58:44
Speaker 2: as the boraballs to get back home. A bury role
58:46
Speaker 2: here is not the same as a bury roll there.
58:49
Speaker 1: I'm going to go have some biltong now, just quickly
58:53
Speaker 1: before we go. Your contact details, David.
58:56
Speaker 2: The easiest place to get me is on my email,
58:58
Speaker 2: which is David Klatz k l A t z O
59:02
Speaker 2: w or in one word forty eight numerical at gmail
59:07
Speaker 2: dot com. David Klatso forty eight at gmail dot com.
59:12
Speaker 2: That'll get me. They are not