C’mon Timkins, tell us how it’s done! (Unbiased teaching and research that is) I and thousands of university teachers and researchers await your response with anticipation.
I for one am tired of telling my students how immoral and fundamentalist John Howard Kim Beazley and Fred Nile are. I need a fresh unbiased and non-Leftist approach to telling them the same thing, but in a completely unbiased way. I’m sure Eva Cox wants to know as well. Pray tell Timkins

Rainier
I don’t see why the Rev Fred Nile has to be mentioned. This may be getting off the topic, but in Australia we now have a problem with “personality politics”. This is often newsworthy (Eg John Howard vs Peter Costello), but we should be working towards a society that is run by the people, and not by individuals. Personality politics often confusses the issues.

The area of abortion has become very politicised and confused. Abortion should be treated as a health problem, where relevant data is first collected and then decisions made accordingly. However abortion has become very politicised and relevant data is now so confused and conflicting, it becomes very difficult to make informed and accurate decisions. The best data I have seen on abortion is in the NZ report in the link I previously provided, (http://www.stats.govt.nz/analytical-reports/dem-trends-03/dem-trends-2003-part-7-induced-abortions.htmbut) but I have not seen such data collated in Australia.

I also think the public is losing much confidence in Social Science, as it does seem to be a science that is too biased, too politicised, (particularly with gender politics), and Social Science can hardly reach consensus regards any issue. That can’t be blamed on the public, but if there is a Social Scientist who is operating within the Australian Public Service, they should be mindful at all times of the APS Code of Conduct and Set of Values.

John Fleming needs to note that not releasing the data collection instrument and details of funding is in breach of the code of researcher ethics endorsed by the NHMRC and AVCC, available on the former's website. This states clearly that once results are published, even on an incomplete basis, the standards for access to and availability of data, sources of funding and questions asked need to be publicly available. If I had access to the questions, I could assess the validity of the interpretation of the answers given. I am not quibbling with the answers but without the questions I do not know what options of responses the respondents had. Were they given precoded responses? Were the questions open ended and post coded? What was the wording used in question and answer? Without these pieces of information, I cannot assess the legitimacy or otherwise of the reporting. So such partial release is poor research practice that breaches public academic standards. This is not 'commercial in confidence' but attitude opinion polling!

timkins, please learn to read properly, you have an astounding capacity to misread material. My mention of Fred Nile was not mockery, but designed to illustrate the same point I am making. If I were to do a survey and release the marterial, I would expect those with different views to mine to look at what I had done. Were Fred to scrutinise a survey of mine, I would do him the courtesy of giving letting him have access to my methodology so he could satisfy himself whether the data was appropriately collected, even if we might disagree on its interpretation. This is what I expected from John Fleming in the current case and was refused. It is not a discourtesy to mention Fred, nor biased teaching, just an objective example of how open research should be handled.

eva

I agree with Eva in that releasing the questions is probably the correct thing to do. However I think that Eva’s knickers wouldn’t be anywhere near as twisted if the results were more in line with her way of thinking.

You can’t really pull one question (or what you think one of the questions could be) out of a survey and judge the whole upon it. A question such as “Do you think women should have the right to choose abortion?” is a soft question and is pretty much useless on its own. I for one think that abortion should be an option for women, but I disagree vehemently with late-term abortions. All the questions need to be known before the worth of the survey can be debated.

At least Eva admits that - like all of us - she is biased. She also tells us that she does her best to not let that bias cloud her professionalism, and that is all anyone can ask of any of us. Bravo to her.

Rainier – as a university teacher isn’t your job to teach students how to work these things out for themselves? No one is much interested in your personal preferences or prejudices, no matter how fashionable or clever you think they may be.

BOZZIE asked "as a university teacher isn’t your job to teach students how to work these things out for themselves? No one is much interested in your personal preferences or prejudices, no matter how fashionable or clever you think they may be.

Since you've asked me a question I'll answer it.
Actually students are very interested in my standpoint. What I teach lends itself to having a position so my teaching style must be postional but not dogmatic or aggressive as I'd soon loose their interest. I've taught students from all political persuasions and they appreciate my openess to debate and critical inquiry.
Yes my job is to make them think and come up with their own perspectives and standpoints. Gee, with some extra effort,I reckon I could even teach you a thing or two!

Thanks to Eva for her article. Similar points were made in one I published in The Age Education section last Monday 16 May regarding the questionable practice of refusing to release research questions.

However, I did add in an additional point which goes to the question of the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute's claim to be an "independent, non-sectarian, autonomous institution" (see http://www.bioethics.org.au/#aboutus).

Eva speculates on the lack of independence of SCBI based on her awareness of Reverend Fleming well-known anti-choice views. However, journalist Kate Mannix in Online Catholic published last week did some more digging and came up with the information that the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute is an initiative of Southern Cross Care (SA) Inc. Mannix says that while the institute asserts that it is an independent organisation, "the contributor list is a who's who of conservative Catholic thinkers".

Further, Southern Cross Care is itself, according to Mannix, "a product of the Knights of the Southern Cross", who describe themselves as "an Order of Catholic men committed to promoting the Christian way of life throughout Australia"