Australian ecologists and ecology scientists are reporting increasing levels of interference, intimidation, and straight-out misrepresentation of their views by forces outside of science. Their press releases are being altered to fit policy positions, and sometimes even academic papers and conference papers are constrained by management, or fear or losing funding. Fear of being misrepresented in the media – and the flow-on effects for their work – is also high.

With pressure mounting, timelines contracting and the question of whether there is enough money in the lab budget to pay for research expenses or wages for another year, inevitably, there is slippage. From garden-variety photoshopping of images to copying and pasting numbers, there are a multitude of ways to manipulate data in service of providing evidence in support of a hypothesis. It can be digital or it can be manual. It can be carried out under the cover of darkness or in plain sight. It can involve one or many, anywhere in the chain of command of a lab.

Despite its impressive scope, and obvious personal investment, Griffiths’ much-praised book fails to uns­ettle. It re-affirms the role of science and knowledge, provoking the question of a standing unsettlement between colonial settlers and the original inhabitants of the Australian continent.

The internet was divided recently when a short audio clip repeating a two-syllable word caused an outpouring of confusion. ‘Do you hear Yanny or Laurel?’ everyone asked. Within hours it became team Yanny versus team Laurel, both groups lambasting one another over Twitter and Facebook. I hear Laurel. I am a thirty-year-old deaf woman.

My father is from southern Louisiana and my mother is from Invercargill (on the southern tip of Aotearoa New Zealand’s South Island). I have never met another person with this combination of cultural groups in their immediate background and I think it unlikely I ever will. I had a DNA test done because I thought it would be interesting and my mother said she’d pay for it as a Christmas present.

The thing that angers me most about homeopathy is not that the principle behind it makes no sense, but that many purveyors of homeopathy believe (or pretend) that homeopathy is based on science. There are homeopathic institutes worldwide with fancy buildings and slick websites claiming to do 'high-quality scientific research'.

Now, more than ever, technological and ecological impacts of ‘human activity’ cannot be explained ‘outside’ the mode of private ownership and control of money capital, means of production and accumulation priorities of capitalist economy. While most Anthropocene advocates structurally connect the post-Holocene transition with the Industrial Revolution we ignore the political economy driving this accelerated transformation at our collective peril.

I have stage IV colorectal cancer. In the coverage and discussions, our voices are unheard, our lived experience silenced from a discussion that impacts our lives in a way that journalists and think-piece writers and even doctors cannot understand. I struggle sometimes when I hear stories of people with cancer that most likely would be cured if only they followed the treatment regime suggested by their doctors who make the decision to follow a CAM remedy.