Brian Martin (social scientist)

Brian Martin (born 1947) is a social scientist in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, at the University of Wollongong (UOW) in NSW, Australia. He was appointed a professor at the university in 2007, and in 2017 was appointed emeritus professor. His work is in the fields of peace research, scientific controversies, science and technology studies, sociology, political science, media studies, law, journalism, freedom of speech, education and corrupted institutions, Martin was president of Whistleblowers Australia from 1996 to 1999 and remains their International Director. He has been criticized by medical professionals and public health advocates for promoting the disproven oral polio vaccine AIDS hypothesis and supporting vaccine hesitancy in the context of his work. and testified at the Australian Federal Senate's Inquiry into Academic Freedom. The crustacean Polycheles martini was named after him.

Biography

Martin was born in the United States in 1947 and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He earned a BA in physics at Rice University in Texas in 1969, and, seeking to avoid conscription into the Vietnam War, emigrated to Australia, where he earned a PhD in physics at the University of Sydney in 1976.

Research and academia

Martin's original academic field was theoretical physics, and he worked in both stratospheric modelling and numerical methods during his career. He has published extensively about the social dynamics and politicisation of controversial scientific topics. His topics of inquiry have included the globalization of polarised science such as the origin of HIV/AIDS. Martin's work on in this area has provided what Delborne describes as a "key foundation for conceptualizing scientific dissent". he has written about the unauthorised use of research produced by students and junior researchers by senior academics; and he has been outspoken against sexual relationships between staff and students. He also reports that any bias within universities could simply be due to students strategically working in-line with the biases of their teachers.

Controversies

Academic freedom

Martin was subjected to an attempted academic gag when he published material about the forced retirement of a University of Adelaide academic. His university instructed him to remove the content from his website after Adelaide University threatened to sue. Martin's published material in question is now found on other websites.

In April 2001, Martin published an article in defence of Edward J. Steele, a sacked academic at UOW in the national newspaper The Australian. In a response published in the same paper, the Vice-Chancellor of Murdoch University Steven Schwartz accused Martin of a position supporting the concept of a "laissez-faire attitude towards academic freedom (in which all sides are presented impartially)" saying his "approach to academic freedom is neither logical nor practical" as this approach "forces universities to abandon their most cherished values: scholarship, wisdom and truth".

Vaccines

Martin has offered support for the discredited proposal that oral polio vaccine caused AIDS. The hypothesis first came to notice in Rolling Stone magazine by way of journalist Curtis and AIDS activist Elswood in 1992, and was later further promoted by the journalist/writer Hooper and Martin, with Hooper crediting Martin for giving the OPV-AIDS link hypothesis "further publicity and credibility". Martin disputes the claim that he has been a supporter of the hypothesis, instead saying that he has "never argued in favour of the OPV theory", but has instead stated "that it was and remains worthy of consideration yet in many ways has been unfairly dismissed". A 2016 article in The Australian described Martin's 2010 paper as claiming "that medical researchers had colluded to silence the theory that the AIDS virus was caused by contaminated polio vaccines in 1950s Africa."

In 2014, Martin published a paper characterising criticism of Andrew Wakefield's discredited claims about vaccines and autism as "suppression of vaccination dissent". In 2016, an Agence Science-Presse piece accused Martin of defending "the idea of a vaccine-autism link." However, Martin disputes this, saying: "I have never defended this idea." The Australian reported that "Martin is a former paid member of the anti-vaccine Australian Vaccination Network", and that Martin states that he is also a member of the American Skeptics Society. The Australian has criticised him as not recognising academic rigour over academic freedom, and surgeon John Cunningham called on the university to have the thesis "reviewed by people whom have knowledge of vaccinations".

In 2016, the Australian Skeptics criticised Martin's supervision of Wilyman by presenting Martin, Wilyman and the Social Sciences Department of the University of Wollongong the satirical Bent Spoon Award for awarding "a PhD thesis riddled with errors, misstatements, poor and unsupported 'evidence' and conspiratorial thinking".

Publications

Books

Truth tactics (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2021)
Official channels (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2020)
Jørgen Johansen and Brian Martin. Social defence (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2019)
Vaccination panic in Australia (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2018)
The deceptive activist (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2017).
Ruling tactics: methods of promoting everyday nationalism, how they serve rulers and how to oppose them (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2017).
Nonviolence Unbound (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2015).
The Controversy Manual (Sparsnäs, Sweden: Irene Publishing, 2014).
Nonviolence versus capitalism, (London: War Resisters' International, 2001).
Suppression Stories, (Wollongong: Fund for Intellectual Dissent, 1997).
Social Defence, Social Change, (London: Freedom Press, 1993).
Scientific Knowledge in Controversy: The Social Dynamics of the Fluoridation Debate, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1986)
Uprooting war, (London: Freedom Press, 1984).
The Bias of Science (Society for Social Responsibility in Science, 1979)

Journal articles in the physical sciences

His most cited papers are: