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Scientists Fight Back In Canada
Trufagus writes "The current Canadian government is widely regarded as 'anti-science,' and this year they have stepped up their efforts to undermine scientists and control their contact with the media. But now the federal scientists are fighting back and have just launched their own website. Gary Corbett, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, said, 'If science isn't supported then you're going to find that decisions are going to be made more at the political level,' on Monday as the union launched their website."
And your argument conveniently fails (yet again) to produce any credible reason as to why scientists would fabricate results.
From the grandparent post:
Your point also completely disregards the growing philosophy of post-normal science [wikipedia.org], where scientists can "produce" evidence to support a viewpoint they consider to be politically expedient, even if the evidence does not necessarily incontrovertibly entail the conclusions.
There you go. A credible reason.
Is the answer to every social or political problem either right or wrong? Can you think of any scientific conclusions that were acted upon but turned out to have been wrong but that as a side-effect caused the deaths of millions of people?
Whilst respecting all scientists, you will listen to the scientist who's work agrees with your pre-conceived beliefs and ignore the one who's work contradicts them. Where science is black or white, there isn't a problem. Where science is grey (particularly where it intersects with social policy), there is. This is true regardless of whether or not the scientist works in a University (and therefore is more likely to be a leftie or green), or if he works in industry.
Exactly, this has nothing to do about science and everything about political posturing. The public service unions are nothing more than extensions of the Federal NDP and regularly pull stunts like this in an attempt to whip up support for their party.
"This is not some ivory-tower statistical exercise, it's providing the necessary ingredients to make a useful decision by politicians elected by us to make those decisions. The alternative is, of course, to not base decisions on useful or detailed information."
Umm, the elected government doesn't want to use this data.
The elected government does not want to use statistical data to run the lives of people under threat of coercion for not providing it.
It is in fact the ivory-tower of unelected public sector bureaucrats and scientists who want this data.
Yes.
Damn them for threatening people for wanting little pieces of data.
If they were any good at what they do, they would get by with voluntary data.
It's not perfect... but if I look at history, I'd rather have a government with incomplete data, than one with too much power.