Khrono
08.02.2017
Care. We have seen research and the scientific approachdeclared unwanted by senior politicians. So what do we do now, asks Vice-Rector at HiOA, Morten Irgens.
The word of the year in 2016, according to Oxford Dictionaries, was post-truth, which they defined as the situation when objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personalbelief.
Les merIn Germany, the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache selected the essentially same word, postfaktisch, while the Cambridge Dictionary chose paranoid, and Dictionary.com went for xenophobia.
My favorite word of 2016, however, wasMerriam-Webster's selection of surreal (narrowly winning over fascism). According to the US dictionary, it was looked up significantly more frequently than previousyears.
A month into 2017, and the world seems even more marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream. This is ofdeep importance forouruniversities, society's proud defenders and proponents of reason.
Wehave watched as even the pretense of fact and reason has disappeared from parts of the publicdebate. We have seen research and the scientifi
