If you care about any of the following:
#Fairness and #Integrity
#Honesty in #HigherEd
#Liverpool and #Wellbeing
Can you please RT?
👇

It pains me to have to tweet the following about the University where I have spent 18 largely happy years. I am still an honorary professor there and I want it to remain an honour.
What is happening at the University of Liverpool is not normal and it threatens not just the 47 academics who are threatened with the sack. What is at stake is even bigger. I explain why below. Please RT to ask management to reconsider.
Both teaching and research missions of universities require high integrity and respect for truth, in fact, more than respect, yearning for truth. The current campaign to sack the 47 is based on Trumpian lies ; Trumpian because of their dimension and their cruelty.
The 1st lie is that the sack of the 47 is to improve health in Liverpool. There is zero evidence that it wld do that & large amount of evidence that it would do the opposite by threatening research infrastructures & projects, including some funded by local biomedical charities.
That first lie is particularly pernicious and cruel because the implication is that those opposing the sack don’t share that very noble aim ; in fact, it casts the colleagues defending their jobs and livelihoods as selfish.
The 2nd lie is that those job cuts are the natural consequence of a project of consultation involving the community at large : the EPVC now says “Changes [i.e the sack of 47 academics] are coming as part of a plan known as "Project SHAPE." https://t.co/lSv3cHvL0B
That project wld be best renamed as “Project DECEPTION”. The same EPVC, in response to concerns abt job cuts in 2018:

“I can’t say it enough, this [Project Shape]” is not driven by budget.”

“This is not about shedding jobs, colleagues or staff”
and in 2019:

"This has never ever been about the money”
The third lie is about those principles which, according to the EPVC in 2019, underpin project SHAPE, “equality, transparency, honesty, equality [sic], trust”.
The truth is that it is hard to imagine a more unfair, opaque, dishonest and dispiriting process than the one currently happening. Colleagues who were recommended for promotions just months ago receive completely unexpected threats of dismissal with zero warning.
In many instances it is clear that their own line managers had no idea that this was coming to them.
Please join me in respectfully asking the University of Liverpool to reconsider.
@RebeccaMJourno @LiamThorpECHO @tommartincrone @CllrKennedy @Liverpoolshell @LouiseEllman @tomcardwell1
EPVC at faculty forums in 2018 and 2019

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global health policy in 2020 has centered around NPI's (non-pharmaceutical interventions) like distancing, masks, school closures

these have been sold as a way to stop infection as though this were science.

this was never true and that fact was known and knowable.

let's look.


above is the plot of social restriction and NPI vs total death per million. there is 0 R2. this means that the variables play no role in explaining one another.

we can see this same relationship between NPI and all cause deaths.

this is devastating to the case for NPI.


clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but a total lack of correlation IS proof that there was no material causality.

barring massive and implausible coincidence, it's essentially impossible to cause something and not correlate to it, especially 51 times.

this would seem to pose some very serious questions for those claiming that lockdowns work, those basing policy upon them, and those claiming this is the side of science.

there is no science here nor any data. this is the febrile imaginings of discredited modelers.

this has been clear and obvious from all over the world since the beginning and had been proven so clearly by may that it's hard to imagine anyone who is actually conversant with the data still believing in these responses.

everyone got the same R
Two things can be true at once:
1. There is an issue with hostility some academics have faced on some issues
2. Another academic who himself uses threats of legal action to bully colleagues into silence is not a good faith champion of the free speech cause


I have kept quiet about Matthew's recent outpourings on here but as my estwhile co-author has now seen fit to portray me as an enabler of oppression I think I have a right to reply. So I will.

I consider Matthew to be a colleague and a friend, and we had a longstanding agreement not to engage in disputes on twitter. I disagree with much in the article @UOzkirimli wrote on his research in @openDemocracy but I strongly support his right to express such critical views

I therefore find it outrageous that Matthew saw fit to bully @openDemocracy with legal threats, seeking it seems to stifle criticism of his own work. Such behaviour is simply wrong, and completely inconsistent with an academic commitment to free speech.

I am not embroiling myself in the various other cases Matt lists because, unlike him, I think attention to the detail matters and I don't have time to research each of these cases in detail.
@Suman68082748 @thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 Lets stop the criticism guys. The lad is good. Losses happen. Losses to unranked players happen too. As do wins vs top 10ers. Let's accept both. Remember Sumit and the likes of him are the best we have. See the bigger picture please.

@thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 When the Europeans or South Americans were getting quality practice and tourneys week in week out at reasonable costs, our kids were playing on dung courts or learning outdated serve and volley on grass. Appreciate the fact that the last 10 years have been a hell lot better than

@thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 the 10 before that. Real change can't come in a day or even in 10 years. So let's grit our teeth and bide our time till we have an organic self sustaining system in place.

@siyer30 @SportaSmile @Cric_Writer @RomilShukla @amanthejourno

@thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 @siyer30 @SportaSmile @Cric_Writer @RomilShukla @amanthejourno Tennis is my favourite sport in the universe. Has always been. Will always be. I was in love with Steffi and Pete a lot before I fell for Sachin. And while I would love every toddler in my family to play sports professionally, I won't encourage them to pursue my favourite sport.

@thetwinkwolff @x_karran_x @Sunil9130 @siyer30 @SportaSmile @Cric_Writer @RomilShukla @amanthejourno It will be career suicide. In other sports, I can actually plan for my ward to be the next Lin Dan or the next Tiger Woods or the next Schumacher even from a base in India. With tennis, in 2020 I can't do that realistically. Just doesn't adds up. Even for total freaks of nature.

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