[apalmblad]

I remember speaking to my partner's cousin about this, a phd working in Ottawa for the federal government. No love lost between her and our previous federal government, so I figured I'd hear a great rant.

However, she figured it was turned into an issue by the media, and roughly supported the ban; her opinion - adjusted for brevity - being that scientists without media training shouldn't necessarily have carte blanche to speak to press.

[snowwrestler]

Media training is a specific thing that thousands of people go through every year--business leaders, nonprofit leaders, lawyers, activists, etc. Usually, following the training, those people then go talk directly to reporters.

If the Canadian rule had been shaped like that, probably no one would have objected much. Media training costs a bit of money and takes a day or two, usually--no big deal. But that's not what the rule was.

[osweiller]

There is another post in this thread arguing that I'm speaking "partisan propaganda" (another a "mouthpiece of evil". How very theatrical) for my position. Which is a bit incredible given that I despised the Harper government, and personally lean to being a libertarian.

But at the same time I've considered the actual facts, coupled with the reality that mainstream media, when generalizing science, tends to do a really, really horrible job. The notion that the government wants to ensure the message is clear and coherent -- especially when it's given the weight of the government behind it -- given a free range of employees with their own quirks and communications issues, seems entirely rational.

[__jal]

Scientists paid by tax money need to be co-conspirators in formulating political messages by either self-censoring or being censored?

What other categories of people working for the government should lose their speech rights (I do realize this is Canada)? If a tax collector disagrees with $politician_of_the_month about tax policy, does that count? What about a park ranger on tax policy? Can a trash collector talk to the press about anything without asking Daddy Censor first?

In a different direction,

> The notion that the government wants to ensure the message is clear and coherent [...] seems entirely rational.

Sure, to someone whose goal is presenting a "governmental viewpoint". Which is going to inherently be a political message. In democratic places, we assume an electorate capable of deciding between competing explanations of reality. And given the weight of decisions about things like climate change, don't we want to hear from more, rather than fewer experts? Especially ones paid for by the electorate's taxes?

Just my opinion, but I don't care what the government party line is. Politicizing science is wrong, and governments that attempt to manipulate our knowledge of the world is wrong. I mean both of those in the moral sense. In the practical sense, arguing with reality is not a long term strategy, and is bad for both governments and parties. (There's a certain party to Canada's south that seems to be learning that lesson as I type this.)

I would think that someone leaning libertarian would think something similar.

[MikeTLive]

you have a very strange format to your communication. many times you stick the tail end of one sentence into parenthesis, only to close them after entering another sentence.

where did you learn this? It is quite intriguing ( and a unique thing. But really not ) for people who notice such things.

[chris_wot]

It's a weird argument anyway. He is arguing that the mainstream media do a terrible job of reporting science and this occurs when a scientist is allowed to freely speak to the media about their own work - ergo only a media officer should be able to give information to the media.

Bizarre.

[tekromancr]

I don't agree with your stance, but I don't think that it should be downvoted so heavily.

[soundwave106]

What I'd like is for you to provide some links that support your position.

Right now I'm literally seeing nothing via Googling that supports your idea that the science consultation was merely a response to a rogue salmon researcher and other hype PR and the like.

In addition to the Nature article, on the other hand, plenty of other articles tend to support the position that most of the "muzzling" was political, in key industries that were either afoul of political ideology, or ran contrary to business policy, or both. Here's the first page of Googling on the Harper science issue.

http://www.academicmatters.ca/2013/05/harpers-attack-on-scie... http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/when-science-goes-silent/ http://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/11/09/news/harper%E2%80... https://news.vice.com/article/canadian-scientists-say-the-go... https://newrepublic.com/article/119153/canadas-stephen-harpe... http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-16861468

That's a large amount of links that are saying this.

I will note that only a few specific examples of suppression came up repeatedly, so there could be some "political inflation" going on. But showing up with zero counterpoint links isn't doing anyone any favors. At this point, I'd have to think the other side is more correct.

Instinctively I personally think that it is naive to think that "government ensuring the message is clear and coherent" will actually produce better results than a free independent press generalizing science. Bias is natural, but a free and independent press often consists of many biases, not just one, with less power to manipulate public opinion in most cases. (In other words, so what if some mainstream media reports science wrong? After all, some might report it right. Either is a much better situation than science not being reported at all.)