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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."
Unions are a viral problem. Way too much control over politics.
Remove "union" backing from this and I'll start listening, until then, their on my "ignore list".
Go figure that you're a giant pussy.
It's question of how those 'facts' are gathered and what the goals are.
Science itself is valueless. It cannot be used to set policy.
In the case of the mandatory long form census, do I think it is worth threatening my fellow citizen with jail time and fines for not filling in a form on how many hours of unpaid housework they did?
Absolutely not. Yet apparently many 'scientists' think they should.
Apparently it is 'scientific' that government use force against its citizens to collect data for scientists to use. It would not be mandatory otherwise.
The fact that they see this whole process as 'scientific' and cannot be questioned is really quite absurd.
Now maybe that is your value system, and you really think that is what government should be doing. Great and all... that's what the democratic process is all about. It's called politics.
Yet, the fact that people try and defend that value judgment as science is a problem.
Great maybe you can statistically improve the life span of Canadians. Congrats. That's a value judgement. Increasing life span.
How do you balance that with other value judgments of freedom, personal choice, democracy... ?
This aspect of the modern scientific movement is more like a religion and we need separation of church and state.
If all these scientists were doing was writing reports and facts, wonderful. But they're not.
They like to make grande pronouncements that include demanding the government enact this and that legislation.
It really is like religion. No one should mind a religious group spreading their beliefs
The problems come when they get power and start legislating their beliefs.
'Evidence' based policy making is not exactly objective and scientific. Everything has values... as before you measure something, you must decide what to measure.
Take a philosophy class and read about utilitarianism.
That's what these scientists are basically trying. Yet again, it all comes back to what you choose to measure, which is a value and moral judgment... which has nothing to do with science.
Scientists have long crossed the line of just being object truth seekers and are well into politics and political movements.
Science does not purify politics.
Politics infects science.
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.
So take a view on gravity. And jump off a cliff.
You certainly HAVE been a busy boy today, haven't you.
Your reading comprehension is not at fault so I apologise for that. What is at fault is your head. You are tilling a row of pseudoscience, YOU are the one using "post normal" post-hoc justification.
Because you don't like the truth.
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.