The act of questioning the quality of his colleague’s work has turned into a fight for intellectual freedom in Australia’s apex legal institution, the High Court. Marine geophysicist Peter Ridd’s legal battle for freedom of speech is nearing its end after his appeal was heard in the High Court on June 23. Former Professor Ridd, who is an expert on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), was fired from James Cook University in 2018 after questioning the reliability and quality assurance systems of fellow scientists researching the reef, calling their work untrustworthy. “What they should’ve done is come back and say: ‘Well, no Peter, you’re wrong for all these reasons.’ But instead, what happened was they squealed to the Vice-Chancellor because they didn’t like what I was saying,” Ridd told The Epoch Times in an interview. The university then fired him, claiming his comments were discourteous, disrespectful, and damaging to the …