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One of the foundational aspects of science is sharing. Along with a rigorous peer review process studies and findings are published so that wider scientific community can test, assess and prove the quality of research findings. Steven Harper is not really a big fan of science, or other disciplines that base their results in reality (please see Stockwell Day’s imaginary offenders, for which we need to build more prisons). The CBC takes a run at the issue:
“Recent access-to-information documents obtained by PostMedia News reveal that all media inquiries to scientists
Canadian Science: Safe Sane and Censored!
working for Natural Resources Canada must now pass through a Byzantine thicket of “subject matter experts” and the minister’s director of communications — “no exceptions.”
As one bureaucrat warned in an internal email: “What may appear to be a simple request for facts may actually relate to policy or high-profile issues.”
The email simply puts in print what journalists covering the Harper government deal with on a daily basis.”
Thank you Mr. Harper I would tick off the boxes on the promises of an open, transparent, accountable government but I seem to have lost my pen. Or perhaps Mr.Harper has constructed a closed,tightly buttoned, top-down regime that seeks to control all messages put out by the government, to make sure the correct spin is in place. From the Montreal Gazette
“University of Alberta ecologist David Schindler states: “Muzzling under the Harper government is the worst it’s ever been.”
The Vancouver Sun quoted University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver: “The concept of free speech is non-existent at Environment Canada.” Weaver is close to the epicentre. As one who regularly co-authors studies with EC colleagues, he understands the impacts on federal scientists. He calls it “Orwellian,” and says that as a result, “morale is at an all-time low.”
Yep, protecting our rights to free speech, always priority with Harper and his reality challenged band of anti-intellectual populists. Another example:
“NRCan scientist Scott Dallimore co-authored the study, published in the journal Nature on April 1, about a colossal flood that swept across northern Canada 13,000 years ago, when massive ice dams gave way at the end of the last ice age.
The study was considered so newsworthy that two British universities issued releases to alert the international media. It was, however, deemed so sensitive in Ottawa that Dallimore, who works at NRCan’s laboratories outside Victoria, was told he had to wait for clearance from the minister’s office.
Dallimore tried to tell the department’s communications managers the flood study was anything but politically sensitive. “This is a blue sky science paper,” he said, noting: “There are no anticipated links to minerals, energy or anthropogenic climate change.”
But the bureaucrats in Ottawa insisted. “We will have to get the minister’s office approval before going ahead with this interview,” Patti Robson, the department’s media relations manager, wrote after a reporter from Postmedia News approached Dallimore.”
I guess we will just have to be happy with ‘Conservative Approved’ Science.
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