MPs condemn science skeptic van der Blas: ‘It’s poison’ | Policy
Boswijk: Making mistakes is inherent in science
Van der Plaas insisted: She believes the Cabinet can’t make major decisions, such as buying farmers, as long as it’s not entirely clear “that nitrogen is rising off that cow and deposited on that plant” and what the consequences are.
She advises farmers to ask the court this question if they are being expropriated on the grounds of nature restoration. “I predict to you: it will be a long legal agonizing for the government.”
Boswick called it a “con” to pretend that you first have to know something that is “1000 percent sure” before you start something. “Yes, mistakes are made. It’s inherent in science. But I’m glad we didn’t wait for medical science to find out everything, because then we wouldn’t be 25 years old.”
‘You have populism and flat populism’
GroenLinks Leader Jesse Claver also joined the discussion. “You have absolute populism and populism. I’ve been listening to the latter for 45 minutes.”
He called into question science with “guide words” such as “What’s behind it?” dangerous. “It’s poison,” he told van der Blas. “Soon there will be police houses in front of the scholars or they will not be able to go to a festival. Then the House of Representatives will be very small again and we will all be very sorry.”
Van der Blaas was again dissatisfied with being “indirectly responsible” for possible future threats to scientists. I think these are serious accusations.”
2:10Hundreds of scientists expressed their concerns in a letter sent to them
Since the court pulled nitrogen policy off the table in 2019, there has been a lot of criticism of how nitrogen emissions and precipitation are measured. The previous government had a committee headed by Hordik to investigate the matter. Conclusion: Metrics are ‘enough for good’, but there are points for improvement.
According to Hordecke, these points of improvement were taken out of context by MPs. “We know a lot about nitrogen,” he recently told NU.nl. “Of course it could always be more subtle, but that wouldn’t change the pattern we see now physically.” Other experts also say the measurements are correct.
Hundreds of scholars recently expressed concerns in a letter sent to them about suspicion of scholars in parliamentary debates. They asked for a “stronger stance” against politicians who violate their parliamentary immunity to “raise baseless accusations and allegations against scholars”.
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