Canada's Muzzled Scientists Can Speak Freely Again
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
The Harper government didn't muzzle scientists because it had an inate hatred of scientists; it muzzled scientists because it was afraid of what they would say and the potential for lost votes. Canada's new government doesn't have that fear, so they have no reason to muzzle government scientists -- but that doesn't say anything about their principles. A commitment to openness is only tested when there is something you want to avoid having said.
(Incidentally, I think the "muzzled scientists" issue is somewhat overblown. Nobody complains about legal-advice privilege creating "muzzled lawyers", and exactly the same rationale applies to government scientists: If governments avoid consulting scientists because they're worried about the contents of their consultations becoming public, we're all worse off for it. This isn't to say that I think government scientists should be completely muzzled, mind you; but I think there's a reasonable middle ground between "completely open" and "completely muzzled" which nonetheless allows for governments to seek confidential advice from the scientists they employ.)
The attorney-client privilege belongs to the client. The purpose of all the traditional privileges is to allow the client/patient/parishioner to divulge a secret while seeking professional advice without having to worry that it will be published or used against them.
In the case of science, the secret the government wants to keep is not anything the government had to be encouraged to give the scientists. It's the result of the scientists' research.
And allowing politicians to choose which scientific research is published is catastrophic. It invalidates everything published by government scientists because the political filter biases the published results -- intentionally. It would be better that the research not be done at all than that it be published only if it aligns with the political goals of elected officials.
Indeed. There are already enough problems with publication bias -- adding further bias is not helpful.
It's rather more narrow than that. University professors were never muzzled, even if all of their research funding came via federal granting agencies.
The muzzling of scientists was limited to government scientists, i.e., those belonging to the federal civil service -- the ones whose jobs exist precisely for the purpose of giving advice to the government.
I'd say their jobs are giving advice to the public. Moreover the Harper party made it difficult for federal civil service scientists to communicate with journalists (aka the fourth estate of government) and the Greens, NDP, Liberals i.e. any other part of the government not in power. The Harper party overreach has no justification in a democratic society and you shouldn't be making excuses for them.
You seem to be getting government and parliament confused here.
Not even that. Canada currently has 338 MPs, 184 of whom are members of the Liberal Party; but only 31 of them -- the Prime Minister and 30 other Ministers -- are part of the government.
That is only the executive branch of the government.
That's sort of an odd way to frame it--it makes it sound like these people are only hired to interpret scientific literature for their superiors, or to conduct standard lab tests. On the contrary, many of these scientists conduct basic scientific research. There's no "advisory" value to that work--it is not intended for immediate policy decisions, but rather for the long-term advancement of scientific knowledge.
Basic scientific research is a collective effort, and the only possible outcome you could expect when preventing scientists from sharing their research with the greater scientific community is the prevention of scientific progress. Assuming rational actors, I cannot fathom another motive.
There was no such prevention.
Of course, there's plenty of time for Trudeau to get this wrong as well; he has his electoral blind spots as well.
The government is limited in its powers by Parliament and the judiciary -- the government cannot enact new laws or appropriate funds without Parliamentary approval -- but the government is nonetheless controlled by a small number of people.
Now that scientists have been publicly told that they can speak freely, what's to stop them? If you suggest that the new government will somehow be muzzling them from the shadows, and you can explain the mechanism of how this might happen, I am all ears.
In both countries we are seeing the policies only change marginally but a strong signal being sent about the respect and commitment to science.
It says that they don't feel like their policies and votes are threatened by the truth. That sounds like a "principle" to me.
Climate change denial came from the top down Harper was pro oil and in denial anything could change the climate.
Now maybe we can have a Canadian government not a "Harper government".
I'm Canadian. I have scientist friends. I can say this was not overblown. Funding was cut. Programs that were decades old were shut down. Data that contradicted the government was buried.
Edit: "It’s the first time in nearly a decade I’ve been able to speak with a Canadian government scientist directly, on the telephone, without spending days or weeks clearing the request through a media officer and submitting a list of questions for editing and approval."
I realize the ramifications were probably bad, but I'm surprised at least one or two didn't ignore or actively disobey their government overlords... Or did they and I just didn't hear about it?
Including this "rock snot" scientist: http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-ed...
The only scientific issue that has such a strong political element is climate change. And given that the new government in Canada is left wing and pro environment I can't imagine their being much (if any) dissension. This was the primary reason the scientists were muzzled after all. All the other scientific issues from the lay person/media perspective simply aren't that interesting.
For example, evolution. Not the relatively uncontroversial evolution from (common ancestor) -> {humans, apes}, but evolution within humans after this point. See, e.g. James Watson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Watson#Provocative_comme...
Or economics. Consider this incident in the US: http://thehill.com/policy/finance/255726-dem-economists-atta...
The only real attacks on science that get coverage are the ones attacking environmentalism or pre-human evolution. But science does (or at least should) influence politics in a lot more places.
Economic policy is hotly debated in both economic science and government. Same to immigration policy. Even statistics has it's controversial bits. Anthropologists also periodically produce some controversial nuggets. Also, let's not forget that many scientists won't hesitate to give their opinion on whatever is asked of them!
Also, their lab can be anywhere, doesn't matter. science is about the scientific process, not labcoats and microscopes.
Science is a methodology, not a location.
As an American, the idea of muzzling a scientist is strange. I had thought Canada was more free than this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_Canada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Canada#Criticism...
Not outside of the military except in the case of classified documents or the identities of covert agents. It's not even illegal for non-government employees to publish classified documents, as far as I know.
> Not outside of the military except in the case of classified documents or the identities of covert agents
I'm pretty sure that's wrong. I clearly remember the Bush administration restricting government scientists (and other employees) from talking to the media, requiring all communications to be approved by political appointees in their departments.
The scientists do have freedom of speech like other Americans, if that's what you mean, but that freedom doesn't protect your job; you can be fired for what you say, just not imprisoned or forced not to say it. It also doesn't protect you if you disclose your employers secrets that are protected by NDAs and similar agreements. For example (and speaking very generally), if a former Apple employee revealed details of some secret Apple tech protected by NDA, I'm almost certain the employee could be sued for damages.
And then there's the Hatch Act (1939), which prevents most federal employees from engaging in activity that could be seen as political.
It isn't about law, it's (bad) policy and politics. And to think that similar circumstances aren't occurring in America is naive.
By and large, though, it seemed like Harper's government didn't seem to really want input from the public service unless it agreed with whatever policy decisions had already been made. If you think this is just about the environment, you'd be very wrong, too; I live in Ottawa and know people in Health Canada, in Transport Canada, in Statistics Canada - I don't know anyone who wasn't complaining to me about how the advice they were giving was being ignored in one way or another.
In much the same way, certain scientists employed directly by political agencies were held to some nondisclosure rules. I'm not sure I know why this is a story - is there some moral principle that all scientists should disclose everything and you can't hire them for confidential work?
Looks more like you're wearing an accountant or auditor hat than a scientist hat on this one.
>is there some moral principle that all scientists should disclose everything and you can't hire them for confidential work?
Yes. The search for scientific truth shouldn't be a narrative for the people who pay for it.
>I was a scientific adviser to $LAWYER, and my job was strictly to help him, his client, and only them understand things better.
And when it comes down to it, the client and their representatives (you, $LAWYER, etc) have or will have certain obligations to truth under the law; you might be muzzled but it's more of a reassignment of responsibility to somebody else.
So I guess you criticize every corporation who hires scientists to work on proprietary products? Elon Musk is such a fiend!
Look, a much better way to accomplish this is robust intellectual freedom. Rather than expecting every individual scientist to be able to say anything they want, regardless of employer, create a system where any scientist who hasn't chosen to be muzzled can state controversial ideas and expect them to be received with only intellectual criticism. You need far more than just legal protection, you also need a culture where dissenters are tolerated and not socially shunned.
You also need a culture where replication and debunking are given equal respect to finding novel results. The unfortunate fact is that if someone publishes a new result, that gets vastly less prestige than if they replicate (or fail to) an existing study, or spot statistical flaws in someone else's work.
Those are engineers, not scientists. Even at that, the whole purpose of the patent system is to publicize developments while protecting those who create it for a short time.
For my part I don't see much of one. In all cases one attempts to learn true facts about the world via careful analysis of data and experiment - the label is just for potential employers.
>So I guess you criticize every corporation who hires scientists to work on proprietary products? Elon Musk is such a fiend!
Then it's not science. If the scientific community does not participate it's maybe development. There is nothing wrong with it.
But there is something wrong if the public sectors stop doing science and get's castrated to be a thinktank for the current administration.
I don't believe the parent comment is arguing on behalf of "merchants of doubt". He or she is suggesting that it should be possible to enter into a contract with a scientist in which the scientist agrees to investigate a scientific truth without disclosing it publicly in exchange for money. Whether you have herpes is a "scientific truth" a scientist might discover, but it's your prerogative whether that fact is publicly disclosed.
I was clarifying that the OP did not appear to be defending the sale of "credentialed" opinions on political issues. The intent behind the "muzzling" matters. There are situations where a contracting party has a legitimate interest in enlisting a scientist to investigate a truth while maintaining confidentiality. Harper's suppression of scientific evidence was not one of these, but my comment addressed the notion that there are no such circumstances.
It's like the equivalent if the gvnt (instead of oil companies) studying climate change, and then hiding the results. except that the government is SUPPOSED to be morally engaged beholden to the best interests of society at large.
I think the argument is that released scientific knowledge is generally in the public's interest, and since the research is in fact funded by the public, government scientists should be allowed to release whatever they want. The government is a public institution, so some feel that "confidential government research" should be restricted to very limited things.
That said, I do agree that it is all a bit overblown.
I use this term to contrast to, e.g., university researchers receiving an NSF (or Canadian equivalent) grant and (in name, at least) given political independence.
No wonder you find Harper's policies unobjectionable.
You were employed by a private party. The muzzled scientists were employed by the citizens of Canada.
To make your example comparable, you would have been employed by an attorney on behalf of the attorney's client, and then the information you found would have been withheld from the client who was paying for it. I'm not saying that doesn't happen, but it would be a breach of ethics on the part of the attorney to do so. Just as, in this case, it was a breach of ethics for the Canadian government to force scientists to withhold information from the people of Canada.
I don't see any way to draw a strong distinction between what I did during my physics days and what I do today. Different math, sure - PDEs vs statistics. But then again the math changes when you go from quantum physics to statistical mechanics also.