Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Flora Hui, Research Fellow, Centre for Eye Research Australia and Honorary Fellow, Department of Surgery (Ophthalmology), The University of Melbourne
Drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro (known as semaglutide and tirzepatide) have changed the way clinicians manage diabetes and obesity around the world.
Collectively known as GLP-1 agonists, these drugs mimic the hormone GLP-1. This limits both hunger and interest in food, helping users lose weight, and helps control blood sugar levels.
But two new studies published today show that people taking these drugs may have a small increased risk of serious eye conditions and vision loss.
Here’s what you need to know if you’re taking or considering these medications.
What damage can occur?
Non-arteritic anterior ischaemic optic neuropathy, or NAION, is a rare but devastating eye condition that occurs when blood flow to the optic nerve is suddenly reduced or blocked. It’s also called an “eye stroke”.
The exact cause of NAION remains unclear and there are no current treatments available. People with diabetes are at increased risk of developing NAION.
Unlike other eye conditions that develop gradually, NAION causes a sudden, painless loss of vision. Patients typically notice the condition when they wake up and discover they’ve lost vision in one eye.
Vision tends to worsen over a couple of weeks and slowly stabilises. Recovery of vision is variable, but around 70% of people do not experience improvement in their vision.
What has previous research shown?
A previous study from 2024 found participants prescribed semaglutide for diabetes were four times more likely to develop NAION. For those taking it for weight loss, the risk was almost eight times higher.
In June, the European Medicines Agency concluded NAION represented a “very rare” side effect of semaglutide medications: a one in 10,000 chance. In a first for medicines regulators, the agency now requires product labels to include NAION as a documented risk.
However the recent studies suggest the risks may be lower than we first thought.
In addition to NAION, there is also evidence to suggest GLP-1 drugs can worsen diabetic eye disease, also known as diabetic retinopathy. This occurs when high blood sugar levels damage the small blood vessels in the retina, which can lead to vision loss.
It may sound counter-intuitive, but rapid blood sugar reductions can also destabilise the fragile blood vessels in the retina and lead to bleeding.
What do the new studies say?
Two newly published studies investigated people with type 2 diabetes living in the United States over two years. The studies looked at the medical records of 159,000 to 185,000 people.
One study found semaglutide or tirzepatide was associated with a more modest risk of developing NAION than previously thought. Of 159,000 people with type 2 diabetes who were taking these drugs, 35 people (0.04%) developed NAION, compared with 19 patients (0.02%) in the comparison group.
The researchers also found an increased risk of developing “other optic nerve disorders”. However, it’s unclear what kind of optic nerve disorders this includes, as the medical record codes used didn’t specify.
Counter to this, the second study did not find an increased risk of NAION among those taking GLP-1 drugs.
However, the researchers found a small increase in the number of people developing diabetic retinopathy in those prescribed GLP-1 drugs.
But overall, participants on GLP-1 drugs experienced fewer sight-threatening complications related to their diabetic retinopathy and required less invasive eye treatments compared to the group taking other diabetes medications.
Further studies are still needed to understand how GLP-1 drugs can lead to eye complications. A current, five-year clinical trial is studying the long-term effects of semaglutides and diabetic eye disease in 1,500 people, which should tell us more about the ocular risks in the future.
What does this mean for people taking GLP-1 drugs?
NAION is a serious condition. But we need to strike a balance between these (and other) risks and the benefits of GLP-1 medications in diabetes care, obesity treatment, reducing heart attack risks and extending lives.
The key lies in informed decision-making and identifying different levels of risk.
People with multiple NAION risk factors – such as sleep apnoea, high blood pressure and diabetes – should undergo careful consideration with their treating doctor before starting these medications.
“Crowded” optic nerve heads are also a risk factor for NAION. This is an anatomical feature where blood vessels at the optic nerve head are tightly packed together. People with crowded optic nerve heads should also undergo careful consideration before starting GLP-1 medications.
Although NAION can strike without warning, regular comprehensive eye examinations with your optometrist or ophthalmologist still serve important purposes. They can detect other drug-related eye problems, including worsening diabetic retinopathy, and can identify patients with crowded optic nerve heads. It’s also important to tell them if you are taking GLP-1 medications so they can keep a close watch on your eye health.
Emerging research also suggests that improving your heart health might help reduce risks of developing NAION. This includes proper management of high blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol – all conditions that compromise the small blood vessels feeding the optic nerve.
Studies also show patients with heart conditions who better adhere to their medication prescriptions have lower risks of NAION than those who don’t.
Doctors should discuss NAION risks during prescribing decisions and work with eye care providers to monitor regularly for diabetic eye disease. Patients need clear instructions to seek immediate medical attention for sudden vision loss and the need for regular eye examinations.
Aggressive treatment of sleep apnoea and other heart conditions may also help reduce NAION risks. But for now, there remains an ongoing need for more research to understand how GLP-1 medications can affect the eye.
Pete A Williams has received past funding from Novo Nordisk Fonden (Foundation) for glaucoma neuroprotection research and is involved in, but does not directly receive funds from, a Novo Nordisk Fonden-funded clinical trial for glaucoma neuroprotection. Novo Nordisk Fonden has no role in the planning, execution, or data analysis of these studies. Novo Nordisk Fonden owns Novo Holdings A/S, which owns and controls Novo Nordisk A/S, the pharmaceutical company that makes Ozempic and Wegovy.
Flora Hui does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Australia will recognise a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly meeting in September, joining the United Kingdom, Canada and France in taking the historic step.
Recognising a Palestinian state is at one level symbolic – it signals a growing global consensus behind the rights of Palestinians to have their own state. In the short term, it won’t impact the situation on the ground in Gaza.
Practically speaking, the formation of a future Palestinian state consisting of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem is far more difficult to achieve.
The Israeli government has ruled out a two-state solution and reacted with fury to the moves by the four G20 members to recognise Palestine. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the decision “shameful”.
So, what are the political issues that need to be resolved before a Palestinian state becomes a reality? And what is the point of recognition if it doesn’t overcome these seemingly intractable obstacles?
Settlements have exploded
The first problem is what to do about Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the International Court of Justice has declared are illegal.
Palestinians see East Jerusalem as an indispensable part of any future state. They will never countenance a state without it as their capital.
In May, the Israeli government announced it would also build 22 new settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – the largest settler expansion in decades. Defence Minister Israel Katz described this as a “strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel”.
Second is the issue of a future border between a Palestinian state and Israel.
The demarcations of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem are not internationally recognised borders. Rather, they are the ceasefire lines, known as the “Green Line”, from the 1948 War that saw the creation of Israel.
However, in the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel captured and occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula (since returned), and Syria’s Golan Heights. And successive Israeli governments have used the construction of settlements in the occupied territories, alongside expansive infrastructure, to create new “facts on the ground”.
Israel solidifies its hold on this territory by designating it as “state land”, meaning it no longer recognises Palestinian ownership, further inhibiting the possibility of a future Palestinian state.
For example, according to research by Israeli professor Neve Gordon, Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries covered approximately seven square kilometres before 1967. Since then, Israeli settlement construction has expanded its eastern boundaries, so it now now covers about 70 square km.
Israel also uses its Separation Wall or Barrier, which runs for around 700km through the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to further expropriate Palestinian territory.
According to a 2013 book by researchers Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir, the wall is part of the Israeli government’s policy of cleansing Israeli space of any Palestinian presence. It breaks up contiguous Palestinian urban and rural spaces, cutting off some 150 Palestinian communities from their farmland and pastureland.
The barrier is reinforced by other methods of separation, such as checkpoints, earth mounds, roadblocks, trenches, road gates and barriers, and earth walls.
Then there is the complex geography of Israel’s occupation in the West Bank.
Under the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, the West Bank was divided into three areas, labelled Area A, Area B and Area C.
In Area A, which consists of 18% of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority exercises majority control. Area B is under joint Israeli-Palestinian authority. Area C, which comprises 60% of the West Bank, is under full Israeli control.
Administrative control was meant to be gradually transferred to Palestinian control under the Oslo Accords, but this never happened.
Areas A and B are today separated into many small divisions that remain isolated from one another due to Israeli control over Area C. This deliberate ghettoisation creates separate rules, laws and norms in the West Bank that are intended to prevent freedom of movement between the Palestinian zones and inhibit the realisation of a Palestinian state.
Who will govern a future state?
Finally, there are the conditions that Western governments have placed on recognition of a Palestinian state, which rob Palestinians of their agency.
Chief among these is the stipulation that Hamas will not play a role in the governance of a future Palestinian state. This has been backed by the Arab League, which has also called for Hamas to disarm and relinquish power in Gaza.
Fatah and Hamas are currently the only two movements in Palestinian politics capable of forming a government. In a May poll, 32% of respondents in both Gaza and the West Bank said they preferred Hamas, compared with 21% support for Fatah. One-third did not support either or had no opinion.
Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority, is deeply unpopular, with 80% of Palestinians wanting him to resign.
A “reformed” Palestinian Authority is the West’s preferred option to govern a future Palestinian state. But if Western powers deny Palestinians the opportunity to elect a government of their choosing by dictating who can participate, the new government would likely be seen as illegitimate.
This risks repeating the mistakes of Western attempts to install governments of their choosing in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also plays into the hands of Hamas hardliners, who mistrust democracy and see it as a tool to impose puppet governments in Palestine, as well as Israel’s narrative that Palestinians are incapable of governing themselves.
Redressing these issues and the myriad others will take time, money and considerable effort. The question is, how much political capital are the leaders of France, the UK, Canada and Australia (and others) willing to expend to ensure their recognition of Palestine results in an actual state?
What if Israel refuses to dismantle its settlements and Separation Wall, and moves ahead with annexing the West Bank? What are these Western leaders willing or able to do? In the past, they have been unwilling to do more than issue strongly worded statements in the face of Israeli refusals to advance the two-state solution.
Given these doubts around the political will and actual power of Western states to compel Israel to agree to the two-state solution, it begs the question: what and who is recognition for?
Martin Kear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Last month, the American non-profit organisation behind Wikipedia issued draft guidelines for researchers studying how neutral Wikipedia really is. But instead of supporting open inquiry, the guidelines reveal just how unaware the Wikimedia Foundation is of its own influence.
These new rules tell researchers – some based in universities, some at non-profit organisations or elsewhere – not just how to study Wikipedia’s neutrality, but what they should study and how to interpret their results. That’s a worrying move.
As someone who has researched Wikipedia for more than 15 years – and served on the Wikimedia Foundation’s own Advisory Board before that – I’m concerned these guidelines could discourage truly independent research into one of the world’s most powerful repositories of knowledge.
Telling researchers what to do
The new guidelines come at a time when Wikipedia is under pressure.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who was until recently also a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump, has repeatedly accused Wikipedia of being biased against American conservatives. On X (formerly Twitter), he told users to “stop donating to Wokepedia”.
In another case, a conservative think tank in the United States was caught planning to “target” Wikipedia volunteers it claimed were pushing antisemitic content.
Until now, the Wikimedia Foundation has mostly avoided interfering in how people research or write about the platform. It has limited its guidance to issues such as privacy and ethics, and has stayed out of the editorial decisions made by Wikipedia’s global community of volunteers.
But that’s changing.
In March this year, the foundation established a working group to standardise Wikipedia’s famous “neutral point of view” policies across all 342 versions in different languages. And now the foundation has chosen to involve itself directly in research.
Its “guidance” directly instructs researchers on both how to carry out neutrality research and how to interpret it. It also defines what it believes are open and closed research questions for people studying Wikipedia.
In universities, researchers are already guided by rules set by their institutions and fields. So why do the new guidelines matter?
Because the Wikimedia Foundation has lots of control over research on Wikipedia. It decides who it will work with, who gets funding, whose work to promote, and who gets access to internal data. That means it can quietly influence which research gets done – and which doesn’t.
Now the foundation is setting the terms for how neutrality should be studied.
What’s not neutral about the new guidelines
The guidelines fall short in at least three ways.
1. They assume Wikipedia’s definition of neutrality is the only valid one. The rules of English Wikipedia say neutrality can be achieved when an article fairly and proportionally represents all significant viewpoints published by reliable sources.
But researchers such as Nathaniel Tkacz have shown this idea isn’t perfect or universal. There are always different ways to represent a topic. What constitutes a “reliable source”, for example, is often up for debate. So too is what constitutes consensus in those sources.
2. They treat ongoing debates about neutrality as settled. The guidelines say some factors – such as which language Wikipedia is written in, or the type of article – are the main things shaping neutrality. They even claim Wikipedia gets more neutral over time.
But this view of steady improvement doesn’t hold up. Articles can become less neutral, especially when they become the focus of political fights or coordinated attacks. For example, the Gamergate controversy and nationalist editing have both created serious problems with neutrality.
The guidelines also leave out important factors such as politics, culture, and state influence.
3. They restrict where researchers should direct their research. The guidelines say researchers must share results with the Wikipedia community and “communicate in ways that strengthen Wikipedia”. Any criticism should come with suggestions for improvement.
That’s a narrow view of what research should be. In our wikihistories project, for example, we focus on educating the public about bias in the Australian context. We support editors who want to improve the site, but we believe researchers should be free to share their findings with the public, even if they are uncomfortable.
Neutrality is in the spotlight
Most of Wikipedia’s critics aren’t pushing for better neutrality. They just don’t like what Wikipedia says.
The reason Wikipedia has become a target is because it is so powerful. Its content shapes search engines, AI chatbot answers, and educational materials.
The Wikimedia Foundation may see independent and critical research as a threat. But in fact, this research is an important part of keeping Wikipedia honest and effective.
Critical research can show where Wikipedians strive to be neutral but don’t quite succeed. It doesn’t require de-funding Wikipedia or hunting down its editors. It doesn’t mean there aren’t better and worse ways of representing reality.
Nor does it mean we should discard objectivity or neutrality as ideals. Instead, it means understanding that neutrality isn’t automatic or perfect.
Neutrality is something to be worked towards. That work should involve more transparency and self-awareness, not less – and it must leave space for independent voices.
Heather Ford receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She was previously a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board.
However, a common obstacle to addressing bullying is that parents and schools often disagree about whether a particular situation constitutes bullying.
A study in Norwegian schools found that when parents think their child is being bullied, around two-thirds of the time, the school does not agree. There are also cases in which the school says a child is bullying others, but the child’s parents don’t agree.
Why is it so complicated? How can parents approach this situation?
What does ‘bullying’ mean?
When we look at the definition of bullying, it is not surprising disagreements occur. Identifying bullying is not clear-cut.
After a report of bullying, what does the school do?
When a student or parent reports bullying, usually the first thing a school does is talk with students, teachers and parents, and observe interactions between students.
However, there are many challenges in working out whether behaviour is bullying.
First, bullying often occurs when adults are not around and students often don’t tell teachers, so direct observation is not always possible.
Second, even if a teacher is present, social forms of bullying can be very subtle, such as turning away to exclude someone, or using a mocking facial expression, so it can be easily overlooked.
Third, determining whether there is “intent to harm” can be difficult as students accused of bullying may claim (rightly or wrongly) they were “only joking” or not intending to hurt or upset.
Fourth, the issue of power is not easy to determine. If the student is older or physically bigger, or if multiple students are involved in bullying, a power difference may seem apparent. But when power is based on popularity, a power difference may not be clear. There are also cases in which students may deliberately accuse others of bullying to get them into trouble (which may in itself constitute bullying).
Finally, not all aggressive behaviour is bullying. For example, conflict that involves arguments or fights between equals is not bullying, as there is no power imbalance. However, this situation can still be upsetting.
A more difficult situation occurs when the victim of bullying reacts aggressively – such as when they lash out angrily to taunts. The aggressive response of the victim may be more visible to teachers than the bullying that provoked the outburst, and this can make the direction of bullying difficult for schools to ascertain.
What if the school and parents disagree?
A school may not prioritise limited resources to resolve cases they do not see as bullying. This can leave the student languishing and can be very distressing for families.
However, research shows parents’ reports that their child has been bullied predict an increased risk of later child anxiety and depression, regardless of whether school staff concur or were even asked if the child was bullied.
So whether or not the school initially agrees a child is being bullied, it is important to improve the situation.
What can be done?
Sometimes, by taking steps to address the situation, the school can find out if bullying is occurring.
For example, sometimes children are upset by behaviours that may seem innocuous – such as humming, tapping or standing close. If this behaviour is not intended to hurt, we would expect children to reduce this when made aware it is upsetting. However, if the behaviour increases or continues, even with reminders, there would be more reason to believe it is deliberately intended to provoke (and is bullying).
One helpful strategy for parents is to keep a careful record of the child’s experiences – exactly what the child experiences and how it impacts them. This can help establish a pattern of hurtful behaviours over time.
It’s important for parents to maintain a good relationship and ongoing communication with the school (however difficult). As bullying can be a complex and evolving issue, good communication can help ensure issues are promptly managed.
The parent can coach the child to manage the situation – for example, to ask in a friendly and confident way for other students to stop when they are doing things they don’t like. The parent can also help the child plan when they would ask a teacher for help.
By working together, and understanding the problem better over time, schools and families can address behaviour that is hurtful – whether or not there is initial agreement it is “bullying”.
If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800.
Karyn Healy has received funding from QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, the Australian Research Council and Australian government Emerging Priorities Program and is an honorary Principal Research Fellow with The University of Queensland. Karyn is a co-author of the Resilience Triple P parenting program. Resilience Triple P and all Triple P programs are owned by the University of Queensland. The university has licensed Triple P International Pty Ltd to publish and disseminate Triple P programs worldwide. Royalties stemming from published Triple P resources are distributed to the Parenting and Family Support Centre, School of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences and contributory authors. No author has any share or ownership in Triple P International Pty Ltd.
Pollinators play a vital role in fertilising flowers, which grow into seeds and fruits and underpin our agriculture. But climate change can cause a mismatch between plants and their pollinators, affecting where they live and what time of year they’re active. This has happened before.
When Earth went through rapid global warming 56 million years ago, plants from dry tropical areas expanded to new areas – and so did their animal pollinators. Our new study, published in Paleobiology today, shows this major change happened in a remarkably short timespan of just thousands of years.
Can we turn to the past to learn more about how interactions between plants and pollinators changed during climate change? That’s what we set out to learn.
A major warming event 56 million years ago
In the last 150 years, humans have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations by more than 40%. This increase in carbon dioxide has already warmed the planet by more than 1.3°C.
Current greenhouse gas concentrations and global temperature are not only unprecedented in human history but exceed anything known in the last 2.5 million years.
To understand how giant carbon emission events like ours could affect climate and life on Earth, we’ve had to go deeper into our planet’s history.
Fifty-six million years ago there was a major, sudden warming event caused by the release of a gigantic amount of carbon into the atmosphere and ocean. This event is known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.
For about 5,000 years, huge amounts of carbon entered the atmosphere, likely from a combination of volcanic activity and methane release from ocean sediments. This caused Earth’s global temperature to rise by about 6°C and it stayed elevated for more than 100,000 years.
Although the initial carbon release and climate change were perhaps ten times slower than what’s happening today, they had enormous effects on Earth.
Earlier studies have shown plants and animals changed a lot during this time, especially through major shifts in where they lived. We wanted to know if pollination might also have changed during this rapid climate change.
Paleobotanist Scott Wing, palynologist Vera Korasidis and colleagues searching for new pollen samples in Wyoming from 56 million-year-old rocks. Richard Barclay
Hunting for pollen fossils in the badlands
We looked at fossil pollen from the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming – a deep and wide valley in the northern Rocky Mountains in the United States, full of sedimentary rocks deposited 50 to 60 million years ago.
The widespread badlands of the modern Bighorn Basin expose remarkably fossil-rich sediments. These were laid down by ancient rivers eroding the surrounding mountains.
We studied fossil pollen because we wanted to understand changes in pollination. Pollen is invaluable for this because it is abundant, widely dispersed in air and water, and resistant to decay – easily preserved in ancient rocks.
We used three lines of evidence to investigate pollination in the fossil record:
fossil pollen preserved in clumps
how living plants related to the fossils are pollinated today, and
the total variety of pollen shapes.
56 million-year-old fossil pollen clumps collected from Wyoming and photographed on the National Museum of Natural History’s scanning electron microscope. Vera Korasidis
What did we discover?
Our findings show pollination by animals became more common during this interval of elevated temperature and carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, pollination by wind decreased.
The wind-pollinated plants included many related to deciduous broad-leaved trees still common in moist northern hemisphere temperate regions today.
By contrast, the plants pollinated by animals were related to subtropical palms, silk-cotton trees and other plants that typically grow in dry tropical climates.
The decline in wind pollination was likely due to the local extinction of populations of wind-pollinated plants that grew in the Bighorn Basin.
The increase in animal-pollinated plants means that plants from regions with warmer, drier climates had spread poleward and moved into the Bighorn Basin.
Earlier studies have shown these changes in the plants of the Bighorn Basin were related to the climate being hotter and more seasonally dry than before – or after – this interval of rapid climate change.
Pollinating insects and other animals likely moved 56 million years ago along with the plants they pollinated. Their presence in the landscape helped new plant communities establish in the hot, dry climate. It may have provided invaluable resources to animals such as the earliest primates, small marsupials, and other small mammals.
A lesson for our future
What lessons does this ancient climate change event have to offer when we think about our own future?
The large carbon release at the beginning of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum clearly resulted in major global warming. It dramatically altered ecosystems on land and in the sea.
In spite of these dramatic changes, most land species and ecological interactions seem to have survived. This is likely because the event occurred at about one-tenth the rate of current anthropogenic climate change.
The forests that returned to the region after more than 100,000 years of hot, dry climate were very similar to those that existed before. This suggests that in the absence of major extinction, forest ecosystems and their pollinators could reestablish into very similar communities even after a very long period of altered climate.
The key for the future may be keeping rates of environmental change slow enough to avoid extinctions.
Vera Korasidis received funding from the University of Melbourne Elizabeth and Vernon Puzey Fellowship Award.
Scott Wing’s fieldwork was supported by the Roland W. Brown fund of the Department of Paleobiology, and by the MacMillan Fund of the National Museum of Natural History.
Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Australian National University; Vice Chancellor’s Strategic Fellow, Victoria University; Adjunct Professor of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia
For all its claims of being a democracy that adheres to international law and the rules of war, Israel’s global reputation is in tatters.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest plan for a full military takeover of Gaza, along with the expanding starvation crisis in the strip and Israel’s repressive measures in the West Bank, underline the country’s predicament.
Notwithstanding US support, the Jewish state faces a crisis of international credibility, from which it may not be able to recover for a long time.
According to a recent Pew poll, the international view of Israel is now more negative than positive. The majority of those polled in early 2025 in countries such as the Netherlands (78%), Japan (79%), Spain (75%), Australia (74%), Turkey (93%) and Sweden (75%) said they have an unfavourable view of Israel.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Many international law experts, genocide scholars and human rights groups have also accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
In addition, hundreds of retired Israeli security officials have appealed to US President Donald Trump to push Netanyahu to end the war.
Israel’s global partners distancing themselves
With images of starving children in Gaza dominating the news in recent weeks, many of Israel’s friends in the Western alliance have similarly reached the point at which they can no longer tolerate its policy actions.
In a major shift in global opinion, France announced it would recognise Palestinian statehood in September. The United Kingdom and Canada vowed to follow suit. Even Germany has now begun the process for recognition. And Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has indicated his country’s recognition of Palestine was only a matter of time.
Spain and Sweden have called for the suspension of the European Union’s trade agreement with Israel, while the Netherlands has officially labelled Israel a “security threat”, citing attempts to influence Dutch public opinion.
Israel and the US have rejected all these accusations and moves. The momentum against Israel in the international community, however, has left it with the US as its only major global supporter.
Israel’s sovereignty, security and prosperity now ride on the back of America’s continued support. Without US assistance, in particular its billions of dollars worth of arms exports, Israel would have struggled to maintain its devastating Gaza campaign or repressive occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Yet, despite Trump’s deep commitment to Israel, many in the US electorate are seriously questioning the depth of Netanyahu’s influence in Washington and the value of US aid to Israel.
According to a Gallup poll in March, fewer than half of Americans are sympathetic toward Israel.
This discontent has also been voiced by some of Trump’s MAGA ideologues and devotees, such as political strategist Steve Bannon and congressional hardliner Marjorie Taylor Greene. Even Trump publicly questioned Netanyahu on his claim there was no starvation in Gaza.
Israelis have dim view of two-state solution
Many Israelis would like to see the back of Netanyahu and his extremist right-wing ruling cohort, especially given his failure to secure the release of all the hostages from Hamas.
Many want the war to end, too. Recent polling by Israel’s Channel 12 found that 74% of Israelis back a deal to end the war in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas.
However, a majority of Israelis maintain a dim view of a future Palestinian state.
One poll commissioned by a US academic showed 82% of Jewish Israeli respondents backed the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. And a Pew poll in early 2025 showed that just 16% of Jewish Israelis believe peaceful coexistence with a Palestinian state is possible, the lowest percentage since the pollsters began asking the question in 2013.
This indicates that not only the Israeli state, but also its electorate, has moved to the extreme of the political spectrum in relation to acknowledging the right of the Palestinians to an independent state of their own.
Under international pressure, Netanyahu has expediently allowed a little more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza. However, his new plan for a full military takeover of Gaza indicates he is not prepared to change course in the war, as long as US support remains steady.
His government is bent on eliminating Hamas and potentially depopulating and annexing Gaza, followed possibly by the West Bank. Such a move would render the idea of a two-state solution totally defunct.
To stop this happening, Washington needs to align with the rest of the global community. Otherwise, an unrestrained and isolated Israel will only widen the rift between the US and its traditional allies in a highly polarised world.
Amin Saikal does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving forward with his plan to take full control of Gaza, expanding his war efforts amid a deepening starvation crisis in the strip and intensifying international condemnation.
In the plan, Netanyahu’s government also announced it would only end the war once five “principles” were met. These included the demilitarisation of the strip, the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, and the disarmament of the group.
This new phase of the war follows a familiar pattern of poorly devised strategy-making on Netanyahu’s part, without sufficient reasoning or apparent forward planning. Given his new stated goal of taking full control of Gaza City, an end to the war does not feel likely, or imminent.
Here are five questions about whether the plan makes sense.
1. Is it necessary, or wise, militarily?
Significantly, the chief of staff of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, has opposed the decision to expand operations in Gaza. He has warned that any plan to occupy the Gaza Strip would “drag Israel into a black hole”.
For one, Zamir believes expanding the military campaign is not necessary – he says the IDF has “met and even exceeded the operation’s objectives” in Gaza.
Hamas has been substantially degraded as a military force and its senior leadership has been killed. It is no longer an organised force in Gaza – it is now embracing guerrilla-style tactics.
This makes an expanded campaign in an urban environment such as Gaza City risky. Hamas will be able to use its vast tunnel network to mount surprise attacks on Israeli soldiers and place booby-traps in buildings.
Moreover, taking full control of the strip would take months to complete and lead to countless more Palestinian civilian deaths.
Zamir has also warned it could endanger the lives of the remaining living Israeli hostages, which are believed to number around 20.
The freeing of Israeli hostages has only occurred during ceasefires – not as the result of military action. Hamas murdered six hostages in late 2024 when Israeli forces seemed to be getting close. Why wouldn’t it do so again if it was cornered?
2. Does Israel have enough military personnel for such an operation?
Israel has a relatively small army totalling about 169,000. It relies on more than 400,000 reservists, who have completed their military service, to augment the IDF during emergencies.
But taking reservists from their normal jobs for lengthy periods has adverse effects on the economy and harms Israel in the long term.
Netanyahu’s goal of degrading Hamas’ control of Gaza follows a basic strategy of
“clear, hold and build”. First, the IDF clears an area of Hamas fighters, then it holds the area with sufficient military personnel to prevent their return, and finally it builds an environment in which Hamas cannot function, for example, by destroying their tunnels and encouraging the return of civilian governance.
Israel does not have sufficient IDF personnel and reservists to deploy this strategy for the entire strip. It also needs soldiers in the West Bank, where clashes between Jewish settlers and Palestinian residents have become increasingly violent in recent years.
Netanyahu says he doesn’t want to permanently occupy Gaza, yet the far-right members of his cabinet do. They have made clear they want Israeli settlements re-established in Gaza and also to annex most, if not all, of the West Bank.
The mixed messages out of Netanyahu’s government make it very difficult to know what his actual long-term plan is for Gaza, if he even has one.
3. What kind of ‘Arab force’ would eventually come in?
In an interview this week, Netanyahu said he envisions the future security control of the strip would eventually pass to “Arab forces”. But which Arab states would contribute military personnel to such a force?
Arab states have long held the position that they will not solve Israel’s Palestinian problem for it, nor will they agree to any outcome in Gaza or the West Bank that Palestinians oppose. In short, while they oppose Hamas, they refuse to do Israel’s dirty work on its behalf.
A Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, also warned this week that his group would treat any force formed to govern Gaza as an “occupying” force linked to Israel. Any personnel policing Gaza on Israel’s behalf would have targets on their back.
4. What is the plan for Gaza’s civilian population?
In July, Defence Minister Israel Katz announced a plan to force Gaza’s entire population of two million people into a “humanitarian city” in the southern part of the strip. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert likened it to a “concentration camp”.
Little has been said about the plan in recent weeks, but implementing it would no doubt exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the strip even further and draw even more international condemnation of Israel.
Earlier this year, Israel’s security cabinet also approved a plan to facilitate the “voluntary transfer” of Gazans from the strip to third countries. This plan, too, was decried as an attempt to ethnically cleanse the enclave.
Certainly, no states in the Arab League would have any willingness to receive more than two million Palestinian refugees.
5. Is Netanyahu willing to deepen Israel’s isolation?
In a piece for The Conversation on Friday, Middle East expert Amin Saikal pointed out just how much of a hit Israel’s international credibility has taken since the start of the war – even among Americans.
Israelis are becoming aware that travel outside their country could involve risks. Two Israelis were recently detained and questioned in Belgium after attending a music festival and allegedly waving the flag of their army brigade. A human rights group accused the pair of being complicit in war crimes in Gaza.
In addition, the international community has immediately responded to Netanyahu’s decision to expand the war. Germany, in a major step, announced it would halt all arms exports to Israel. The country is the second-largest supplier of arms to the Jewish state.
Netanyahu has responded to international criticism and moves by Israel’s allies to recognise a Palestinian state by accusing them of stoking antisemitism and rewarding Hamas.
However, the Israeli leader seems to be varying his strategy to deal with developments as they occur. He and others in his government probably feel they can continue weathering the international storm over their actions in Gaza until after the war and then work on rehabilitating relationships.
The final and biggest question, however, is: when will be the war be over?
Ian Parmeter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Last month, the Cambodian government launched the largest crackdown to date on the online scam industry that has taken root in the country and operated largely in the open.
On July 16, a directive from Prime Minister Hun Manet acknowledged the growing threat posed by the industry and instructed provincial officials, law enforcement agencies, the courts and the national gambling commission to take action.
As police began raiding scam sites across the country, Telegram channels used by cyber criminals went into a frenzy, warning others of the seriousness of the crackdown.
Some posts claimed the police were setting up roadblocks across the country, detaining people without passports and demanding bribes for their release. Videos also circulated showing mass evacuations from compounds.
The government was soon trumpeting its success. In late July, it announced that raids had been conducted at nearly 140 locations, leading to the arrests of more than 3,000 suspects from at least 19 countries, more than half of them from China and Vietnam.
Significantly, the authorities said very few of these “suspects” had been held against their will. However, we know from our research, previously published in The Conversation, that thousands of people have been trafficked or duped into these compounds and forced to work in conditions akin to modern slavery.
The crackdown was met with praise from China and other countries. Many of these governments have been struggling with the consequences of the scam industry, whether through the trafficking of their citizens to Cambodia or scammers targeting victims in their countries.
However, despite the scale of the operation – and the government’s pledge to “get rid” of scam syndicates in Cambodia – there is widespread scepticism these efforts will be enough to dismantle the industry.
However, Thailand has attributed the conflict to its own crackdown on Cambodian scam operations.
Earlier this year, Thailand cut power and internet service to the border scam hotspot of Poipet City.
Then, in early July, Thailand took the unprecedented step of going after a powerful Cambodian senator and tycoon known to own large properties in Poipet that Thai authorities allege are connected to online scam operations.
Thailand’s criminal court issued an arrest warrant for the senator and raided his properties in Thailand. The authorities also targeted his children and their Thai assets.
In response, a Cambodian official accused Thailand of long being a “central hub for transnational crimes” in Southeast Asia and “shifting blame” for the problem to Cambodia.
A spokesperson for Cambodia’s Senate also said the case against the senator was exaggerated and false, calling it an act of “revenge”. The senator himself did not respond to attempts by Cambodian media to reach him.
Although Thailand has ramped up efforts to tackle the scam industry in recent years, its leaders are likely using the issue to bolster public support at home, while bloodying the noses of Cambodian elites they allege are profiting from the industry.
Large operations continue to operate
Amid this war of words, Cambodian authorities insist the crackdown on the industry will continue.
To Cambodia’s credit, this latest campaign was national in scope, unlike previous crackdowns that were mostly confined to the coastal city of Sihanoukville, a major scamming hub.
Still, familiar patterns quickly began to surface. As in the past, the authorities have focused on small to mid-sized operations, while the largest operators seem to have been left untouched.
In many cases, these major compounds were reportedly tipped off in advance and evacuated. A significant number of scammers have since relocated to large compounds close to the Vietnam border, which seem to be operating without interference.
Indeed, one of us (Ling) joined a rescue team in early August trying to reach a Chinese man who claimed to have been trafficked into a compound hidden deep in the hills of Mondulkiri Province near the border.
The man couldn’t pinpoint his exact location, but through messages with the rescue organisation over several months, the team was able to gradually determine where he was being held – and the scale of the scamming enterprise.
Weeks after the crackdown, Ling joined the team on a field visit to assess the situation. From the hilltops at night, they saw lights flickering across the slopes coming from what appeared to be several buildings surrounded by sparse jungle.
With only one exposed access road to the site, the team couldn’t get close without being detected. But there was no doubt the compound was active and bustling, as were several others in the area that Ling observed on her trip.
The Chinese man was still inside at that time, but since then, there has been no word from him.
What needs to be done
Crackdowns on scam compounds have failed in the past because they don’t address the two fundamental pillars that allow the industry to flourish. One is the powerful local networks that protect scam operators. The other is the sophisticated physical infrastructure of the compounds.
As long as the elites who provide scam operators with cover remain untouched and the compounds remain intact, scammers can quickly get back to work when the pressure subsides.
Periodic crackdowns may shake things up temporarily, but the people being arrested tend to be low-level workers, not those at the top.
Once these campaigns are over, scamming activities simply restart. Operators may go quiet until the storm passes or move to safer locations. Confiscated equipment can be replaced, as can the workers.
The cycle can only be broken by longer-term measures to tackle the structural and systemic issues that prop up the industry in these countries, such as corruption and weak law enforcement.
Given the transnational nature of the industry and complicity of the authorities and elites in host countries, it also requires a more determined effort from global governments, law enforcement, and the finance and tech companies whose products and services are exploited by scam operators.
Independent researcher Mark Bo contributed to this report.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Eight months into Donald Trump’s second presidency of the United States, truth and science are again under attack – with global consequences. USAID, which tackled HIV, TB, malaria and child malnutrition is gone. Funding has been withdrawn from GAVI, a public–private global alliance that helps buy vaccines for the world’s poorest children. Malnourished children are already dying.
Besides these brutal consequences, the scientific machine that delivered America’s scientific and technological dominance is being ruthlessly dismantled. Any research project that mentions diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), climate change or addresses the causes of vaccine hesitancy is a prime target. But even US space science, once the pride of the nation, is facing “an extinction-level event,” according to the US Planetary Society.
Across the spectrum of science, some 4,000 research grants have been cancelled. Unbelievably, bird-flu experts were fired in the middle of an outbreak. That was topped last May by cancelling a US$600M grant to the company Moderna to develop an mRNA vaccine against bird flu.
And this Tuesday, US$500 million was cancelled for 22 more projects developing mRNA vaccines. Bear in mind that under Operation Warp Speed, the first Trump administration funded the development of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine against COVID. Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech both delivered mRNA vaccines in the record time of less than a year, winning mRNA vaccine technology a Nobel Prize in 2023.
It’s not just American science that’s being dismantled.
Threats to Australian science, too
In March, the Trump administration sent a questionnaire to researchers receiving US funding in Australia, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada. The 36 questions included whether their project related to climate, whether it is taking “appropriate measures” to defend against “gender ideology” and whether the organisation receives funding from China.
US funding for collaborative science projects with Australia amounts to AUD$386 million. So, the threat of losing those substantial funds is dire. As the Australian Academy of Science warned last March, if US–Australian collaboration ceases, “it will directly threaten […] strategic capability in areas of national interest such as defence, health, disaster mitigation and response, AI and quantum technology”.
By June, Australian medical research institutes were “suspending projects on malaria, tuberculosis and women’s health”. It’s like “having a bomb thrown into the middle of science”, noted Professor Brendan Crabb, director of the Burnet Institute, a Melbourne-based global health research centre.
The fallout for US medical research is worse. The Trump administration’s proposed funding cut, to the National Institutes of health, the largest funder of medical research in the world, will see its budget slashed by 40% – and over 2,400 projects cancelled. They include research into cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, tuberculosis, HIV prevention, COVID vaccines and long-COVID.
Experts have been summarily fired and replaced by sycophants. And of course, the Department of Health and Human Services is now led by America’s most prominent anti-vaxxer, Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Elite research universities, including Harvard, Columbia, Princeton and Cornell, continue to be prime targets.
“It’s hard to overstate how serious this is […] Today, as we’re witnessing kind of the destruction of the institutions behind American science, it’s hard to believe. It’s hard to believe any administration would do this,” noted Alan Bernstein, director of global public health at Oxford University, in April.
Indeed, how could this be happening?
Erika Nolan, a MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) stalwart and YouTube influencer, provides a candid answer: “Facts no longer matter.” Nolan plies her 200,000 strong audience with idyllic scenes of herding chickens and goats while snuggling her baby in a front pack.
Like Kennedy, Nolan believes America’s big health issues relate to food dyes and seed oils. Hopefully she does not live in a part of the US where measles or whooping cough is raging, and that her chicken flock won’t come down with bird flu.
She says it was COVID, and the pressure to be vaccinated, that “fast-tracked” her. And when asked about the 14 million lives saved in the first year, as reported in peer-reviewed medical journal, the Lancet, her answer is, “Everything can be manipulated.”
What Nolan doesn’t understand is that modern science emerged precisely to deal with the way everything can be manipulated. The very word science comes from scientia, Latin for knowledge. The gist of it is captured by the motto adopted in 1663 by the Royal Society in London: “Nullius in verba.”. That’s Latin for “Take nobody’s word for it.” In other words, experimentation and observation is what counts, not the opinions of influencers.
Nolan might be surprised to find her scepticism over “facts” goes all the way back to Socrates.
Knowledge, power and science
He left no written works, but we hear his voice through the “dialogues” of his student Plato. Ever so gently, Socrates probes the beliefs of his conversation partner, methodically laying bare their logical fallacies. It has come to be known as the Socratic method.
One of the most famous dialogues employs the allegory of a cave to teach Socrates’ primary lesson: knowledge can be based on false beliefs.
The cave is home to a group of prisoners who have been chained up for their entire lives. All they have ever been allowed to see is the cave wall in front of them. Shadows dance across it, representing the reality of the external world. The prisoners have no idea that the images are created by puppets paraded past a blazing fire just behind them.
One prisoner breaks free and climbs out of the cave. Dazed by the sunlight, it takes time for his sensitive eyes to adapt. At first, he is only able to look at shadows, then reflections, then real objects. He dashes back to the cave to enlighten his fellow captives. But his eyes have not readjusted to the dark and he stumbles around.
The prisoners perceive a blinded, deranged man, raving about a parallel world. They want nothing to do with him and become aggressive. This is Plato’s second lesson: the danger of trying to enlighten those wedded to pre-existing beliefs. Poignantly, Socrates would pay with his life for trying to enlighten others.
It would take over 2,000 years to come up with satisfactory responses to some of Socrates’ questions about the nature of knowledge. They appeared in the form of the scientific revolution.
Stars of the scientific revolution
The scientific revolution was ushered in by the exacting astronomical measurements of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, which revealed that Earth and the other planets were in orbit around the sun, rather than the other way round.
Brilliant as these astronomers were, they were just the warm-up acts. The starring role in the scientific revolution goes to Isaac Newton, who honoured his debt to those who came before with the timeless words: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Standing on the shoulders of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, Newton glimpsed the sun-centred universe and pondered a new question: why did the planets orbit the sun?
The French philosopher Descartes had suggested an answer in 1633. He deemed that something like a giant tornado of dust particles raged around the sun, dragging the planets along with them.
Newton was seven years old when Descartes died. By the time Newton was 26, he was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, no doubt for the stunning discoveries he made during the plague years, which he spent in isolation at his mother’s farm in Lincolnshire. “Truth is the offspring of silence and unbroken meditation,” he noted.
His unbroken meditation gave birth to calculus, optics (in the pursuit of which he stuck a blunt needle into his eye), his laws of motion and the beginnings of his theory of gravity. Seeing an apple fall from a tree was famously his Eureka moment. The force that made the apple fall to the earth, he mused, was likely the same as the one binding the planets to the elliptical solar orbits described by Kepler.
Today, most people have no problem with the idea of gravity as a force that pulls the apple to the ground or the earth to the sun. It was a different story in Newton’s time. Descartes’ tornado seemed the more rational explanation.
Seeing an apple fall from a tree was famously Isaac Newton’s Eureka moment for his theory of gravity. Markus Winkler/Pexels
How could the sun reach out across the vastness of space to pull on our planet? This was “barbaric physics”, opined German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Admittedly, Leibniz was peeved with Newton; they had rival claims as the first to develop calculus. But Leibniz was far from being the only one to label Newton’s theory unscientific.
What vindicated Newton’s theory was that it made testable, precise predictions. It specified that the gravitational force between two objects increases with their masses and decreases as they grow further apart.
Newton’s maths proved correct. It accurately predicted how long it would take for the moon to orbit the earth and the coming of Halley’s comet. His formula also predicted that the warped orbit of Uranus was due to the gravitational pull of a ghost planet. A century and a half later, Neptune was found. For 300 years, Newton’s predictions kept hitting the mark. And for most earth-bound situations, they still do.
Newton represents a watershed in the development of science. The peculiar thing about him, and what made him the lead actor of the scientific revolution, was that his theory, unlike those of Aristotle or Descartes, was limited to what could be accounted for by mathematical predictions. He did not attempt to go beyond the data to explain what gravity is or whether it really existed: “I have not as yet been able to deduce from phenomena the reason for these properties of gravity, and I do not feign hypotheses,” he wrote.
Philosophy of science
This notion of science as being light on theory is familiar to me. As a scientist (before I was a science writer, I was a molecular biologist), my contribution to theory was limited to what could be induced from my last successful experiment. In my ten years as a working scientist, I never encountered the philosophy of science. Nor did I encounter it much in my decades writing about the work of other scientists.
But in researching my book Prove It, which would see me roam widely, from theoretical physics to human evolution, and deeply, across the centuries, I knew I would have to reckon with the philosophy of science. I did not relish the task: reading philosophy can be challenging.
Moreover, I was not convinced that there was much philosophy at work in modern science. According to Michael Strevens, a philosopher of science based at New York University, when scientists themselves are placed under the microscope to dissect their philosophical impulses, nothing coherent emerges beyond a compulsion to test, test, test. As physicist Richard Feynman put it, “the philosophy of science is about as useful to science as ornithology is to birds”.
To my surprise, delight and relief, however, once I started investigating, philosophy emerged unbidden, first in the form of the Scottish enlightenment philosopher David Hume, whose ideas provided a natural kick-off point for the chapters that followed.
Like other Enlightenment philosophers, Hume valued individual reasoning over dogma and drew inspiration from the scientific revolution, particularly Newton, whom he described as “the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species”.
Newton inspired Hume, and Hume in turn inspired Albert Einstein to do what Newton could not: develop a theory of gravity.
Einstein’s ‘intellectual habits’
Einstein discovered Hume in 1902 while working as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, in his early twenties. For fun, he and two colleagues formed a reading group to discuss philosophy. They paid particular attention to Hume’s 1739 A Treatise of Human Nature, in which Hume warned about the dangers of induction, the practice of extrapolating from observations to formulate general laws of the universe.
It may have been the method Newton employed, but it was an “intellectual habit” without a solid philosophical foundation, Hume argued. A well-known example concerns the colour of swans. Since Roman times, the whiteness of swans was held by European writers to be a self-evident truth. But in 1697, Dutch sea captain Willem de Vlamingh, while searching for shipwreck survivors on Australia’s west coast, sailed up a river and, lo, beheld black swans! The incident provided the name of Perth’s Swan River and a salutary philosophical lesson.
For Einstein, Hume’s ideas helped him to let go of his “intellectual habits”, a breakthrough that contributed to his theories of Special Relativity and General Relativity. Had he not read Hume, Einstein reflected, “I cannot say that the solution would have come.”
Einstein freed himself from the intellectual habit of induction by using a “deductive” process instead. It relied not on observations but on the mathematical certainty of the constant speed of light. All very well for Einstein – but the vast majority of scientists do not have the luxury of starting from mathematical certainties. While Einstein’s theory of relativity has endured unchanged for more than a century, the same cannot be said of any of the other theories explored in Prove It.
I needed Einstein to introduce me to David Hume, but Karl Popper needed no introduction. He is the most famous philosopher of science of the 20th century. If you’ve come across the idea that scientific theories can’t be proven, only disproven or “falsified”, that’s courtesy of Popper.
Karl Popper: science as search for truth
Popper has a poignant personal story that resonates strongly with my motive for writing a scientific guide for the post-truth era.
Born in 1902 into a cultivated, scholarly home – his mother a pianist, his father a lawyer – Popper’s first decade was lived in Vienna’s golden age. As the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Vienna was the seat of political power, but also a cauldron of European cultural and intellectual ferment.
Modernism exploded: there was the stylised eroticism of Gustav Klimt’s shimmering gold paintings and the raw sexual canvases of Egon Schiele; the absurdist literature of Franz Kafka and the meltingly poetic work of Rainer Maria Rilke; the hauntingly beautiful music of Gustav Mahler and the atonal work of Arnold Schoenberg; the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein; and of course, Sigmund Freud’s revolutionary theories about the life of the unconscious mind.
“In those first fourteen years of the twentieth century, Vienna, more than anywhere else, was the fulminating, bewitching crucible where the modern world was invented,” writes William Boyd.
Popper witnessed its destruction. He was 12 when the first world war broke out and 37 when the second one came around. In between, he flirted with and rejected Marxism, tried his hand at carpentry and teaching, and managed to complete a PhD in the philosophy of psychology. With the rise of Nazism, his Jewish ancestry erased his job prospects. To build a reputation, he wrote a book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Published in 1934, it introduced his theory that the way to distinguish science from non-science is falsification. His ideas struck a chord and won him an offer to teach philosophy at Canterbury University College in Christchurch, New Zealand. He emigrated with his wife in 1937, a year before Austria was annexed by Hitler. In 1946, he moved to the United Kingdom to found the department of philosophy at the London School of Economics.
Popper experienced firsthand what can happen to the most intellectually progressive of civilisations when a populist ideology takes hold. How could a philosopher protect future generations from such an assault on truth? Like the Enlightenment thinkers before him, his answer was the scientific method. “Truth is therefore the aim of science; science is the search for truth,” he wrote.
Testing Einstein
I was delighted to discover that Popper’s theory was inspired by Einstein! As a teenager, Popper heard Einstein expound on his astonishing theory of General Relativity in Vienna in 1919.
Gravity was not a force, Einstein suggested, but a consequence of the way mass causes a curvature in spacetime. A fantastical theory! But in the same breath, Einstein proposed a way to prove his theory wrong. During an eclipse, the moon blocks the sun, and the dark sky makes the stars near the sun suddenly visible. Although the stars themselves are very far away from the sun, their light rays must pass close by it to be seen by people watching the eclipse.
Einstein predicted that the starlight would curve along the spacetime warped by the sun’s huge mass. As a result, the apparent positions of the stars would be shifted by an exact amount predicted by Einstein’s equations.
Bottom line: Einstein’s theory could be falsified, and Einstein offered his critics a way to do it. As Popper put it, “Thus I arrived, by the end of 1919, at the conclusion that the scientific attitude was the critical attitude, which did not look for verifications but for crucial tests; tests which could refute the theory tested, though they could never establish it.”
Science cannot prove theories, because, as Hume pointed out, what’s true today may not be true tomorrow. Just because we observe a phenomenon once doesn’t mean we can assume it will happen again. But science can certainly disprove things.
That’s what distinguishes scientific theories from, say, Freud’s theory of the unconscious or Marx’s theory of historical materialism. Those theories do not offer falsifiable predictions. You might agree or disagree with them, but there is no way to disprove them. Science, by contrast, offers predictions that can be tested and therefore falsified. “I believe I have solved the problem of induction,” Popper declared.
Popper had his detractors. One was his former student Imre Lakatos, who embraced the importance of falsification but argued that in practice, theories are rarely overturned by contradictory data. “Scientists have thick skins,” he wrote. “They do not abandon a theory because facts contradict it. They normally either invent some rescue hypothesis to explain what they then call a mere anomaly and if they cannot explain the anomaly, they ignore it.”
The philosopher most diametrically opposed to Popper was the American, Thomas Kuhn. No doubt you’ve heard the term “paradigm shift”? That’s thanks to Kuhn and his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which sold over a million copies. According to Kuhn, modern scientists, rather than attempting to falsify their theories, do the exact opposite: they design experiments to affirm them.
These disputes notwithstanding, the hunt for the origins of COVID-19 showed me Popper is alive and well in the modern science lab. “Popperian” scientists were among the first to propose that the virus came from a lab. They then tried to see if they could disprove their own theory – and largely succeeded. The weight of evidence points to the virus spilling into the human population from an animal source.
Shared reality and true science
The scientific method doesn’t just apply to science. In his book, The Constitution of Knowledge, Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow in governance at Brookings Institute, notes that the institutions that underpin democracies – academia, law, journalism and government – need to operate based on a shared reality. To do so, they employ the scientific method the gathering and testing of facts.
The Trump administration seems to have declared war on every aspect of the scientific method. It has declared war on fact-checking, triggering a global pile-on. Meta announced in January it would scrap its fact-checking programs. And last month, Google announced it will not renew its fact-checking contract with Australian Associated Press.
The Trump administration has also taken an axe to the workings of the scientific machine. In a breathtaking example of Orwellian “double speak”, on May 23, Trump issued an executive order to restore “gold standard science”.
What this means, explains New York University bioethicist Arthur Caplan, is that “instead of independent expert reviews of research, a Trump functionary can look at any peer-reviewed work and declare it to be in violation of the President’s gold standard”. He concluded that the US “has never had a situation in which political and ideological nonscientists got the last word about what is credible science”.
The history of authoritarian regimes tells us when ideologues take over science, it does not end well. It was the Nazi takeover of German universities that saw the likes of Einstein seek refuge in the US – and turned America into a scientific superpower.
The scientific method, designed to keep human failings in check, is the best guide for navigating the present era. Here are my guiding principles:
Go to the experts. See what is being published in leading journals, find a good plain-language summary and check several sources. Science and Nature both offer excellent free reporting, as does The Conversation and The New York Times.
Expert opinion seeks consensus. Consensus may be tough to obtain among scientists, but it is based on a convergence of evidence from different sources.
Anyone who tries to whip up an emotional response, or who has a predetermined opinion or conflict of interest, is a red flag. Scientific evidence is generally measured. It comes with margins of error and estimates of effectiveness and risk. A scientist who offers opinions outside their field of expertise is also one to whom I would give less weight.
Our health, our agriculture, our environmental safety, our ability to ameliorate and adapt to climate change, to regulate AI and to fight the next pandemic, all rely on the proper functioning of the scientific machine. We must not stand by and see it dismantled.
Elizabeth Finkel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Have you ever sat in a meeting where someone half your age casually mentions “prompting ChatGPT” or “running this through AI”, and felt a familiar knot in your stomach? You’re not alone.
There’s a growing narrative that artificial intelligence (AI) is inherently ageist, that older workers will be disproportionately hit by job displacement and are more reluctant to adopt AI tools.
But such assumptions – especially that youth is a built-in advantage when it comes to AI – might not actually hold.
While ageism in hiring is a real concern, if you have decades of work experience, your skills, knowledge and judgement could be exactly what’s needed to harness AI’s power – without falling into its traps.
What does the research say?
The research on who benefits most from AI at work is surprisingly murky, partly because it’s still early days for systematic studies on AI and work.
Some research suggests lower-skilled workers might have more to gain than high-skilled workers on certain straightforward tasks. The picture becomes much less clear under real-world conditions, especially for complex work that relies heavily on judgement and experience.
This article is part of The Conversation’s series on jobs in the age of AI. Leading experts examine what AI means for workers at different career stages, how AI is reshaping our economy – and what you can do to prepare.
Through our Skills Horizon research project, where we’ve been talking to Australian and global senior leaders across different industries, we’re hearing a more nuanced story.
Many older workers do experience AI as deeply unsettling. As one US-based CEO of a large multinational corporation told us:
AI can be a form of existential challenge, not only to what you’re doing, but how you view yourself.
But leaders are also observing an important and unexpected distinction: experienced workers are often much better at judging the quality of AI outputs. This might become one of the most important skills, given that AI occasionally hallucinates or gets things wrong.
The CEO of a South American creative agency put it bluntly:
Senior colleagues are using multiple AIs. If they don’t have the right solution, they re-prompt, iterate, but the juniors are satisfied with the first answer, they copy, paste and think they’re finished. They don’t yet know what they are looking for, and the danger is that they will not learn what to look for if they keep working that way.
Experience as an AI advantage
Experienced workers have a crucial advantage when it comes to prompting AI: they understand context and usually know how to express it clearly.
While a junior advertising creative might ask an AI to “Write copy for a sustainability campaign”, a seasoned account director knows to specify “Write conversational social media copy for a sustainable fashion brand targeting eco-conscious millennials, emphasising our client’s zero-waste manufacturing process and keeping the tone authentic but not preachy”.
This skill mirrors what experienced professionals do when briefing junior colleagues or freelancers: providing detailed instructions, accounting for audience, objectives, and constraints. It’s a competency developed through years of managing teams and projects.
Younger workers, despite their comfort with technology, may actually be at a disadvantage here. There’s a crucial difference between using technology frequently and using it well.
Many young people may become too accustomed to AI assistance. A survey of US teens this year found 72% had used an AI companion app. Some children and teens are turning to chatbots for everyday decisions.
Without the professional experience to recognise when something doesn’t quite fit, younger workers risk accepting AI responses that feel right – effectively “vibing” their work – rather than developing the analytical skills to evaluate AI usefulness.
So what can you do?
First, everyone benefits from learning more about AI. In our time educating everyone from students to senior leaders and CEOs, we find that misunderstandings about how AI works have little to do with age.
A good place to start is reading up on what AI is and what it can do for you:
If you’re not even sure which AI platform to try, we would recommend testing the most prominent ones, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini.
If you’re an experienced worker feeling threatened by AI, lean into your strengths. Your decades of experience with delegation, context-setting, and critical evaluation are exactly what AI tools need.
Start small. Pick one regular work task and experiment with AI assistance, using your judgement to evaluate and refine outputs. Practice prompting like you’re briefing a junior colleague: be specific about context, constraints, and desired outcomes, and repeat the process as needed.
Most importantly, don’t feel threatened. In a workplace increasingly filled with AI-generated content, your ability to spot what doesn’t quite fit, and to know what questions to ask, has never been more valuable.
Kai Riemer is co-author of the annual “Skills Horizon” research project, which identifies key leadership skills (including in AI), based on interviews with global and Australian leaders and executives across various fields. He also educates leaders in AI fluency through Sydney Executive Plus at the University of Sydney.
Sandra Peter is co-author of the annual “Skills Horizon” research project, which identifies key leadership skills (including in AI), based on interviews with global and Australian leaders and executives across various fields. She also educates leaders in AI fluency through Sydney Executive Plus at the University of Sydney.
