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Complaint filed at UvA against ISW lecturer for remarks about corona vaccines
A new complaint has been added to the file surrounding the remarks and views of Laurens Buijs, lecturer in interdisciplinary social science (ISS). A Groningen ecologist has filed an official complaint against him for allegedly spreading conspiracy theories about corona vaccines. Meanwhile, the Stolker Commission has taken up the case.
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Groningen ecologist and ornithologist Klaas van Dijk has filed a formal complaint with the Committee on Scientific Integrity (CSI) as well as with the UvA administration against ISS-lecturer Laurens Buijs for making what he considers inaccurate scientific claims about vaccines which Buijs allegedly spread via social media.
The plaintiff informed Folia of the contents of the complaint and also reported them on Twitter. It is difficult to say how serious the complaint is: the retired Van Dijk is not affiliated with a scientific institution, and the question is also whether and to what extent an ecologist is sufficiently knowledgeable to file such a complaint. On Twitter, at least, some people doubt that he is. In addition to being praised, he is also being scorned. He has been called “a biology troll” and someone “with a spoof account”.
Pseudoscience
In his complaint, consisting of 34 points, Van Dijk refers to immunologist and vaccine expert Marc Veldhoen, among others, who wrote that Buijs’ views expressed about vaccinations in his blog on Twitter are “typical pseudoscience”. According to Veldhoen, Buijs’ views reflect “a clear absence of knowledge of vaccines, immune systems, and even basic biology”. In any case, Van Dijk's complaint against Buijs has been formally filed. The CSI will now first see if the complaint meets the requirements and is admissible. If so, the Commission will probably pass judgment on it at some point. A UvA spokesperson says that a complaint to the CSI is “always confidential” and therefore no further announcements will be made.
Stolker Commission
When asked whether the Stolker-Commission will also take up Van Dijk’s complaint, the UvA spokesperson was also unable to answer because of confidentiality issues. Stolker et al. have meanwhile started investigating whether there is a “woke” culture at the Faculty of Social & Behavioral Sciences. How the Buijs-case turns out also depends, of course, on the Commission’s findings. Chairman Carel Stolker at least has a certain reputation when it comes to reconciliation between an academic and his university. For example, in 2009, when he was still dean of Leiden’s Law School, he resolved the long-standing issue surrounding criminology and penology professor Wouter Buikhuisen.
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The Buikhuisen Affair
In the 1970s, the now 89-year-old criminologist Buikhuisen wanted to conduct research at Leiden University into the causes of criminal behavior. Unlike what was customary at the time, he wanted to focus not on environmental factors but on biological ones, the age-old debate between nature vs. nurture. Buikhuisen was simply not convinced by the popular view at the time, even among scientists, that criminal behavior was caused by capitalist structures and authoritarian forms of government. He wanted to investigate whether criminal behavior was hereditary.
Columnist Piet Grijs, the pseudonym of Hugo Brandt Corstius, and a large segment of the Dutch scientific community found the idea completely abhorrent. For weeks, scathing columns about Buikhuisen appeared in the weekly Vrij Nederland, accusing him of extreme right-wing behavior. Piet Grijs’ columns were eventually collected under the Dutch title Buikhuisen, dom én bad. Meanwhile, the professor had become completely discredited at Leiden University - especially at the Faculty of Law - and been deemed persona non grata, a situation that lasted until 2009.
Stain
In June of that year, Stolker took a plane to Spain, where Buikhuisen had fled after all the misery, ending up in the antiques trade, among other things. After a frank conversation with the former professor, the matter was settled. Stolker informed the university weekly Mare that “the stain that rested on the relationship between the faculty and Buikhuisen is now gone. At least for us, it is no longer ‘the Buikhuisen affair’, but ‘Wouter Buikhuisen’.” A year later, as a 76-year-old former professor, Buikhuisen was allowed to guest lecture on his favorite subject at Leiden University. The mainstream current affairs program Nova, the forerunner of Nieuwsuur, reported on it.
Whether it works out so well for Buijs remains to be seen. Buijs’ academic status is not comparable to Buikhuisen’s. Unlike the criminologist, Buijs did not receive a doctorate. His doctoral research “into inter- and intra-ethnic solidarity in several neighborhoods of large cities”, which he began in 2010 under the supervision of Jan-Willem Duijvendak and Paul de Beer, was cut short in 2013 “due to a prolonged illness” of Buijs, who, he says, is now conducting research as an outside doctoral student. And in addition, of course, as a lecturer in the ISS-program.
YouTube
His formal teaching position has since taken a turn for the worse. After his article appeared on the Folia website on January 18, a storm of criticism (and acclaim) ensued. Buijs initially called in sick and was unable to give the planned lecture series “Philosophy of Transnational Research” By the time he recovered, the lecture had been taken over by someone else, although Buijs interpreted this as “the UvA took away my teaching”. He has since started teaching on social media. This week he gave his own (free) lecture outside the UvA via YouTube. The title: “The crisis of science”.
