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Canadian Bureacracy Can't Answer Simple Question: What's This Study With NASA?
Saint Aardvark writes "It seemed like a pretty simple question about a pretty cool topic: an Ottawa newspaper wanted to ask Canada's National Research Council about a joint study with NASA on tracking falling snow in Canada. Conventional radar can see where it's falling, but not the amount — so NASA, in collaboration with the NRC, Environment Canada and a few universities, arranged flights through falling snow to analyse readings with different instruments. But when they contacted the NRC to get the Canadian angle, "it took a small army of staffers— 11 of them by our count — to decide how to answer, and dozens of emails back and forth to circulate the Citizen's request, discuss its motivation, develop their response, and "massage" its text." No interview was given: "I am not convinced we need an interview. A few lines are fine. Please let me see them first," says one civil servant in the NRC emails obtained by the newspaper under the Access to Information act. By the time the NRC finally sorted out a boring, technical response, the newspaper had already called up a NASA scientist and got all the info they asked for; it took about 15 minutes."
The Prime Ministers office is obsessed with US-style 'controlling the message'. No public statement may be made by anyone employed by the government without approval of a political officer. This has even recently been extended to the RCMP, and has affected publicly funded science for a long time. No information from our government is free of political meddling and spin designed to further the agenda of the Conservative party - which cares about only one thing: Being re-elected forever.
Sadly this seems to work and they are resisting scandals that would normally fall a government (eg giving false information to the public is typically certain death for a government in Canada). These people don't respect our democracy or the need for free information from the government, they don't deserve to run our country, but we are stuck with them for the foreseeable future, and it is unlikely any future government will dismantle all this information control infrastructure. :(
There is no mystery here. The Harper government has been suppressing any discussion of environment and climate topics that even come anywhere near to talking about climate change. Scientists and agencies are legitimately afraid for their funding and their jobs.
The Prime Ministers office is obsessed with US-style 'controlling the message'. No public statement may be made by anyone employed by the government without approval of a political officer. This has even recently been extended to the RCMP, and has affected publicly funded science for a long time. No information from our government is free of political meddling and spin designed to further the agenda of the Conservative party - which cares about only one thing: Being re-elected forever.
Sadly this seems to work and they are resisting scandals that would normally fall a government (eg giving false information to the public is typically certain death for a government in Canada). These people don't respect our democracy or the need for free information from the government, they don't deserve to run our country, but we are stuck with them for the foreseeable future, and it is unlikely any future government will dismantle all this information control infrastructure. :(
Practice snowjob.
I'm not surprised that a request...was met with a bureaucratic response.
FTFY
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
and a "Tech" worker who knows that many such jobs are subsidized, I'm pretty sure the smoke screen is to prevent people from seeing how little actual value is generated per dollar amount. This is fine, our Western social model says everyone must "work", so we put on shows for each other and call it "work". The alternative? Start BENEFITING from all this technology, energy and "productivity" we keep hearing about and reduce working hours, reduce the number of people who actually need or want to work. But this is heresy.
"Is there someone else up there we can talk to?"
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Oh, right. Not allowed unless approved by the control freaks we have at the top of the political system at the moment.
I think it's time for ordinary Canadian citizens (and anyone else in the world that wants to help) to start firing off enough requests to Canadian government scientific institutions that we can eventually overwhelm the pinheads in charge of "messaging" and they let us speak with the people doing the work. We used to be able to do that easily, but it has been getting worse and worse over the years. It has achieved truly ridiculous levels of obfuscation with the current government. Scientists should be allowed to speak their minds on scientific matters of public concern. It's good research being paid for with OUR tax dollars. Stop trying to hide it from us for the sake of "controlling the message". If you want to save money, fire the expensive idiots in charge of the "messaging". Scientists are quite capable of delivering a useful message if you let them do their jobs.
If you ever wonder why scientific budgets in Canada continue to decline in terms of money available for research and scientific staff, but the "upper management" and "PR people" staff get bigger and bigger to manage the smaller pool of scientists, this is the answer. These people have nothing to do all day but spin the story to align with the politics of the day.
If the 11 staffers were scientists discussing science that would be one thing.
The article talks about how managers, a media analyst, and other senior officials spent considerable time "massaging" the message back and forth. Eventually they give a few lines about the number of flights, the number of instruments, and the number of government partners, but not a single word about snow.
It probably has something to do with Canada's international affairs restrictions on the press and the sense of heightened security after it was discovered (immediately post 9-11) how easily terrorists could attack America through Canada's huger borders and therefore more lax security.
That hardly makes it "security theatre". I think it's sort of fancy and maybe looks unnecessary in this context, but why ask for conessions where security is concerned? It's not like they strip-searched the press or had them trailed for asking questions. They appear to have been following the protocols of some pre-arranged agreement between the two national governments concerning international affairs between agencies, with a mind toward protecting America from evil people who would seek to take advantage of Canada's breathtaking liberalism and wide country.
I mean, the way I see it, the behaviour of the withholding organization was perhaps overdrawn and maybe on purpose but not without its rewards to America. Maybe something else happened where some people would have liked to have been allowed to be free-er with the press and couldn't because of some restriction and they decided to be obtusely contrite through adhering strictly to the protocols. So saying, that's what people do when they get tired of something, and the best way to keep them from feeling too tired is to pay them more. I'd have to say that if Canadians aren't getting some small but respectable amount of kickback or income for being a vanguard of the national security of the USA, then maybe they should.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Canadian government bureaucracies are a nightmare. About seven years ago I was working on a project where we needed access to some government data under similar circumstances. It ended up being a lot quicker going through the US State Department to request the data from the US Army Corps of Engineers than it was to get it from the Canadian government.
For all of you bashing Harper and his politicized government, non-profits and the rest of Canada, all I have to say is we got it right. Eleven or twelve people are working for the government rather than collecting Employment Insurance. Just think how many unemployed could be working in the states if Agencies such as NASA, used the same amount of manpower to answer questions like these. I am sure that would solve the economic slowdown we have been having.
Unfortunately, if TFA is to be believed, the waffling was on the part of 'communications' flacks, not actual scientists. To be sure, scientists are unlikely to be enthusiastic about being misquoted(though, if they've done anything high profile before, probably view it as inevitable, no matter How Slowly And Loudly They Explain Their Work With Small Words...); but it isn't even clear that the email chain manages to involve any scientists, let alone giving them the final word on their research.
If they don't know what you're doing, they don't know what you're doing wrong.
-Sir Humphrey
You wonder why their government might panic at anything that even remotely hints as being climate-related? 100 billion reasons.
Please help metamoderate.
It's SNOW. Fricking SNOW research. How in hockey sticks is that "top secret research"? And given that the "foreign government organization" was a partner in the research, how on Earth could that possibly pose a problem?
I don't care how evil or how wonderful you think our present government is. Your argument doesn't make a speck of sense.
The only part that does make sense is the general expectation of a bureaucratic response from a request to our government, and while that's always been an issue, it has reached truly epic proportions when it comes to requests related to science under the current government. It's so far beyond normal bureaucratic expectations that people around the world have started to notice that something is quite different.
Oh, and here I thought it was security protocol. It's funny how highly-desperate marketing-greedy behaviour can somehow resemble high-defensive national-security behaviour, and yet how I feel inclined to pay for one service and not the other!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
As a Canadian I can say that this is expected response from any government agency in Canada. You will never get a straight answer. Ever. And Harper is not to blame, sadly it's just cultural. People wonder why labor efficiency in Canada is low compared to the US and Europe -- it's because nobody can ever get an answer when they have some obstacle to resolve. You always get returned a few times because you filled out something "wrong", or it's another department responsible for what you want (which then sends you back), etc. The only thing surprising is that a Canadian newspaper from Ottawa finds this whole thing surprising -- they should be expecting it.
The current Harper government has been in the news quite a bit lately for muzzling scientists. The Harper government seems obsessed with controlling information coming from any government agency.
Can't wait until he is turfed out.
Anarchists never rule
I presume the NASA scientist was reprimanded for giving a straight answer without going through the press office?
Sounds like the bureaucracy did it's job perfectly.
That's not surprising at all.
Remember Palin dissing 'fruit fly' research. It's stupid, right? Or some other candidate laughing about volcano research (right before the Eyjafjallajokull eruption).
It's no wonder that scientists don't wish to give extra ammunition to this crowd by poorly worded answers.
"Fricking SNOW" research is getting hot for the USA. They want a new ring of sensors and unmanned systems way up north.
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/darpa-wants-ultimate-technology-sensor-network-monitor-vast-arctic
Assured Arctic Awareness
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=6d24d0650fc1d4fa7c62a83bd41dff20&tab=core&_cview=0
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
As a science journalist who has been in this situation a few times, I would ask you, how do you think you would get a more accurate story:
(1) By letting the journalist speak to the scientist, who can explain the research to the journalist,
or
(2) by refusing to communicate with the journalist, and letting the journalist figure it out himself, from an abstract or technical paper?
Let's assume that the reporter is dumb and doesn't understand the science. Choice (2) will give you an even less accurate story. You want to spread ignorance? Don't explain things to journalists. Don't let the public know what you're doing.
But actually, the Canadians have pretty good science journalists and editors.
When I write a complicated story, and it's important to get every fact right, I tell the source, "Let me read my notes back to you to make sure I'm getting you right."
If you're a scientist, and you're worried about being quoted accurately, I would suggest that you say, "Could you read your notes back to me to make sure you're quoting me right?"
That's not the same as reviewing the story for approval. The reporter has a right to write whatever he wants. You have a right to make sure that when he quotes you, he gets your quotes right. A competent PR guy would know how to do that.
A competent PR guy would look at the reporter's other stories, if he had any doubt, and see whether he gets his facts right. But the Ottawa Citizen is a real newspaper, so they should know what they're doing.
But this incident goes beyond worrying about errors. They're terrified that somehow, something might possibly go wrong, despite past experience, and that fear weighs more heavily than the interest in doing their job and informing and educating the public about what their government is doing with their tax money.
You've solved the dilemma right there. It took NASA *scientists* 15 minutes to do it where it took 51 *bureaucrats*. That is the definition of bureaucracy, the obfuscation of information. Seems they are doing their jobs perfectly.
Funny you brought out Somalia - and yes, in a sense, when comparing to the United States of America, Canada does look like Somalia
I was not aware Somalia offers tax-payer-funded healthcare to its citizens. Warlords and pirates were the extent of my understanding of that despotic country.
You've solved the dilemma right there. It took NASA *scientists* 15 minutes to do it where it took 51 *bureaucrats*. That is the definition of bureaucracy, the obfuscation of information. Seems they are doing their jobs perfectly.
Also notice how the numbers from both sources form a perfect palidrome: 15 51 (1551) and 51 15 (5115)... those geniuses at the National Research Council (NRC) knew that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) would only require 15 minutes but the mathematician at NRC has a palidrome fetish so he/she delayed until 51 people had handled the request in part or in whole. Oh, 1551 + 5115 equal 6666 which compared to 666 is the mark of the Super Beast not just the Beast. And 6666 itself is a palidrome...my goodness the good little bureaucrats at NRC are truly astounding in their revelations.
You forgot to kick someone in the chest.
Can't wait until he is turfed out.
Have you ever noticed that when a new government takes power, it very rarely reverses the stupid policies and shameful legislation perpetrated by the previous one? Politicians beat their breasts and flap their gums endlessly about their predecessors' mistakes, but once in power they seldom rectify them. So yes, it'll be a great day when Harper is given the bum's rush he so richly deserves; but we'll still be stuck with all the regressive, secretive, power-mongering, privacy-raping, freedom-destroying, corporation-fellating dictatorial BS legislation that dear Stephen is so busily ramming down our throats.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Without knowing the chain they went through with NASA, it isn't really fair to compare the two experiences.
Let's ignore the fact that the journalist decided to call the NRC at the very last minute for a bit of extra information, and look at what happened in the communication internally at the NRC.
The NRC media arm was called, and unless the person at NRC in charge of that initial contact happens to know EXACTLY who to ask, there will invariably a flurry of back and forth communication internally, just as you see in the article.
When you look through the emails (btw, I hate it when you are given a data dump like that - it's close to impossible to figure out where one email ends and another begins), you find that the original call is on March 1st at 09:30
At 11:39 Manya Chadwick has an answer to the journalist, that needs to be signed off on.
That's after 2 hours and 9 minutes. Over email. In my book that's a fantastic turn-around time. Keep in mind that it is extremely unlikely that the involved parties are ignoring everything else on their plate.
Then at 14:03, Jonathan Ward has signed off on the text. That's 2 hours 24 minutes later. Again, for email, that's a fantastic turn-around time.
And at 15:10 Tom Spears is sent his initial answer. That's 6 hours, 12 minutes.
At 16:38 Tom Spears is given an extra update to the lines, pointing out that the NRC forgot to credit their partner CSA.
At 09:47 on March 2nd Tom Spears writes back: "Thanks, but when NRC won't speak to me I can't guarantee to write the story the way you want it.". (Seriously? Less than an hour after he gets his answer, they send a tiny update because THEY MADE A MISTAKE, and he decides to be snarky like that?)
The reporter didn't even bother to write back with a follow-up question or anything after he received the answer (only a "RECEIVED" message at 15:42). He didn't bother to ask if he could call someone or get a quick callback for anything.
---
Let's go back to the question asked (technically no question is asked):
Now - since he's talking to Media Relations, he's obviously not going to be directly transferred to someone with intimate knowledge. That's just extremely unlikely to happen, unless (as I mentioned before) the person at NRC in charge of that initial contact happens to know EXACTLY who to ask.
The inquiry, as it's written, is more along the lines of "I'd just like to get a feel for NRC's involvement in the project" (a question that is answered in the mail he received) than "Why do you want to study snow?", as the journalist says the hoped-for interview would have asked.
My question is - what hoped-for interview? The initial inquiry was for information on NRC's involvement.
Now - considering that he received the initial answer at 15:10, there would have been PLENTY of time for him to spend five minutes to compose an email along the lines of:
But no. Aparently it is not in a journalist's scope of work to ask followup questions. Or at least not Mr. Tom Spears's type of journalism. I mean - imagine the extra work it would take him to add those extra 243 characters to his email. I mean - that's almost two entire Twitter messages! The horror.
---
So - what about the NASA thing?
Note that "We phoned a NASA scie
Someone should add this to the summary.
It's worse than that.
The current government in Canada has threatened any scientist that talks to the media with censure. If they say anything that's "outside message", they lose their funding.
Too many links to list, here's a google search.
The message is "there are no environmental concerns in Canada."
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Lol. Do you read the papers? Most reporters today aren't in the business of making sure they get the right quote. They're in the business of waiting for a mistake (or an isolated sentence or phrase that could be construed as one) - and, if they get one, putting it as a headline and milking it for all it's worth. The current Republican primary has turned on stupid phrases; the Alberta election coverage (I live in Alberta) has orbited around them as well. It hasn't given many journalists pause as to whether those quotes represent what those candidates think or feel - they've scored their points and made their splash.
If you can't imagine a journalist salivating about the prospect of reporting "government boondoggle spends x million dollars finding out it's snowing", then you just aren't paying attention. This isn't partisan, this isn't a bureaucratic problem, it's a problem with the perverse relationship that journalists now have with the public. They have tremendous pressure to be permanently adversarial to everyone - many seem to believe that's somehow what journalism is about - and it means that people are loath to be candid or off-the-cuff with any media.
These bureaucrats spending some time to avoid a trumped-up scandal probably saves the government a lot of time and money.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
My wife and I are scientists, we have dealt with publication and dissemination issues here, including some on sensitive environmental and health issues. Having said that, your statement is pure neckbeard FUD. The 'censoring' going on here in Canada isn't stopping pure science from happening at all. It is simply meant to stop FUD spreading BS from social 'scientists' who are looking for funding. The problem is that everyone looking for funding has gotten on the "think of the children/environment/elderly" emotional circlejerk bandwagon. Honestly, as a physicist, I am angry as hell about people getting the public riled up about WIFI causing cancer, etc. I can truly appreciate why many 'scientists' aren't supposed to use the media to drum up support. Let them publish some real findings in a peer reviewed paper, then they can do what they like.
I know this will be labeled as a troll. But honestly, fuck off with your socialist propaganda bullshit.
Right, now you just need to learn how to spell palindrome...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Dammit, I was gonna joke about how that was only 85 billion American reasons, but right now the Canadian dollar is at almost perfect parity with the US dollar.
Damn you, reality.
The "n" was promoted last week, to Senior Vice Manager of Golf.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Let them publish some real findings in a peer reviewed paper, then they can do what they like.
No, they can't. Read the links provided. One of them is for a Canadian scientist whose work was published in Nature (not some bullshit 'social-science' journal). Reporters were interested. Some of her findings were politically uncomfortable for the ruling party. The government muzzled her totally for over half a year. Left so long, the story cooled down, and the reporters were no longer interested.
I know this will be labeled as a troll. But honestly, fuck off with your socialist propaganda bullshit.
Well SOMEONE is trapped in the right-wing authoritarian mindset...
Ordinarily there's little point in replying to an AC, but someone condescended to give you a mod point, so what the hell.
The idea that filtering news stories through political filters is to protect Canadians from bad information and those self centered, socialist scientists is, in a word, crap.
The Harper government has made it very clear - explicitly, actually, in government directives - that scientists who receive federal funding are not to the talk to the media without approval. This has been widely reported. They have cracked down hardest on environmental scientists (can't admit that companies are causing damage in the oil sands, shipping dangerous asbestos products, or damaging fisheries) and statisticians (you don't need data when you already know what policies you want to implement.) I'm sure you can think of other countries that have required their scientists to seek government approval before speaking.
It's a travesty, and one that any self respecting scientist sees for what it is - political manipulation to serve a cause that is neither left nor right wing, but corporatist and self-serving. Of course, you would realize this if you if you were actually a scientist.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
There is the thing and there is the management of the thing.
When the thing itself is the management of the thing then an unstoppable cycle is created. It will eventually consume the human race.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
My wife is an environmental scientist, she has dealt with the exact policies you have described, particularly with regards to (publicly funded) cancer data, some of it relating to the oil and gas industries in Alberta. I can fully appreciate the fact that the government wants to get the facts on what is happening before some 'scientist' with an agenda gets ahold of some 'scientific' correlation, and turns it into a causation; causing public panic.
You speak as if the oil sands and asbestos are closed cases. This tells me who is the real scientist here. If you have assumed the conclusion, you might as well just excuse yourself from rational discussion. Rationally, this sort of axiomatic discussion should be removed from public discourse, at least until both sides can fully explore the issue (through peer review). Their is nothing corporatist or self serving about it, in fact, those with the agenda seek to use publicly funded data to further their own forlorn conclusions. Conclusions based upon nothing more than political dogma.
Actually, is was kicked out of "palindrome" to avoid being mistaken for "Palin syndrome"
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
It must be a great comfort to you that the media doesn't do anything as abhorrent as publicizing or furthering any sort of libertarian agenda.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Asbestos IS pretty much a closed case.. no???
Oilsands... well..
I lost faith in environmental concerns of the government when it was revealed that all of the monitoring of the rivers were using old equipment designed to monitor chemicals used in the PULP AND PAPER industry.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/12/07/f-weston-oilsands.html
I grew up in Alberta and am here now. We used to hear stories from our engineers coming back from the states in shock at the disregard for the environment.
A friend of friend owns an environmental testing company. The image of him making "sweeping under the carpet" motions is burned into my brain. His business is NOT to catch environmental issues... he's paid by the oil companies to show compliance.
The oil companies rebelled at the idea of paying the royalties they had already agreed to pay. They do the accounting on which the royalties are based and when the Alberta government reviewed the royalties they stomped around and corrupted the government in order to get their way. They've since thrown their weight behind the new "Wildrose Party" which is promising everything voters want... but of course will give the oil industry priority. They might get elected on Monday.
I have yet to see any gourmet/microbrew from Canada. Surely you're not referring to some LaBatt's or Molson- type "product", are you?
Not all of us are gagging down Budweiser.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
That's not oil, its high-pressure asphalt, "liquified" with added solvent, but the pipeline is designed for lower pressure oil, and they want to run it alongside the fastest-flowing river in British Columbia, since the Kalamazoo was too sluggish to promote a truly world-class catastrophe. Canada is aiming to take their rightful place in the headlines.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Having worked with Canadian government scientists for some time, the truth is that any delays in response to the press are simply because people are trying too hard to get it perfect. Most are terrified of making a mistake for fear of being pilloried by the media, and that fear is justified. If replies take too long, the 'bureaucrats' are running interference. Make an honest mistake or oversight, the 'bureaucrats' are lying/covering up. It's depressing.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I'm a scientist who works for NRC. I'm not allowed to talk about my research to the media without permission and if the permission does come, it's never on time. I can't even give a scientific presentation without "managers" needing to read over it first. The media now knows this and is starting to look elsewhere for their scientific content.
The worst part about this whole story in the original post is that the communications department at NRC is funded (in part) by the research money that researchers bring in (government overhead is a big chunk of a research budget), yet clearly this is not serving the researchers well.
Thanks, yes, I'm serious. The distribution is weak, probably have to go over the border to try them. Thanks.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
Omg, I totally agree with you. A Canadian friend forwarded me some of the "fact sheets" about the whole WiFi issue that almost felt like you were dealing with the writings of an LSD junkie. It seems that superstition is taking a lot of people for a ride, at least in small towns in the British Columbia area.
Good to see good scientists speaking out against that crap.
It's not a right-wing mindset. The guy does have a point. There is some weird stuff going on right now where people were trying to ban WiFi in schools because of health concerns. The same people were still happy to use cellphones it seems. There is a bunch of goofs pushing agendas over there without real scientific evidence and the problem is that sometimes they are making a lot of people believe in that crap. Kind of like that "aliens kidnapped me" mindset and a lot of people actually believing it.
Lol. Do you read the papers? Most reporters today aren't in the business of making sure they get the right quote. They're in the business of waiting for a mistake (or an isolated sentence or phrase that could be construed as one) - and, if they get one, putting it as a headline and milking it for all it's worth.
This is a fantasy of people who don't read the newspapers and have a vague idea that the newspapers are publishing things they disagree with. The only people who do that are the advocacy sites like Breitbart's, and the right-wing tabloids like Murdoch's. When I ask people like you for examples, they can't come up with them. If you read the actual story in the Ottawa Citizen, http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/NASA+latest+destination+southern+Ontario+hamlet/6237144/story.html you'd see that it was accurate.
Among the European publications, I read the New Scientist, Nature, and The Guardian, and whatever other newspapers appear in Google News. Their science reporting is usually (to use their phrase), spot on. (I also deal with PR people from European agencies.)
If you don't know the difference between the publications and reporters that report accurately on science, and those that don't, then you're not doing your job. In this snow radar story, if the PR department was terrified that the reporter would get the story wrong, they could have searched for his stories in the Ottawa Citizen and seen that he usually did a good job. But they should have known that before he called. It's their job to follow the news coverage.
Journalists are more likely to mis-quote (or ignore) an official answer if you hand them boilerplate generalities that have passed through 11 (!) layers of review and don't say anything meaningful, like the NRC statement. Then the reporters have to ignore your useless statement and figure the story out on their own, for better or worse. You've lost your opportunity to have any input. As the Ottawa Citizen says, as a result of the NRC's stonewalling, the story didn't mention the contribution of the NRC, which is what they were trying to do in the first place.
I know this is Slashdot, but just look at the final Ottawa Citizen story. http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/NASA+latest+destination+southern+Ontario+hamlet/6237144/story.html It actually did explain why the research was important: Ordinary radar can't tell the difference between wet snow and dry snow. They were testing new radar that could. It told the whole story from the perspective of NASA, not NRC. What else could the reporter do?
So you're wrong on the facts. The reporter did get the story right.
If you refuse to speak to reporters, you never get your story out, you lose control of the story, you let your critics tell the story for you, and you don't have a chance to correct errors if there are any. If the story's important enough, I'll go around you and write the story my own way. What purpose does the PR department serve?
The whole thing about microbreweries is that they are micro. Local consumption is all they need. If you haven't met the brewmaster, it may not meet the criterion. Certainly if they can afford advertising and "distribution" they're too big.
Try the real stuff.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
So Canadian scientists should publish to journals, and the media should ask non-Canadian scientists for analysis. I'd like to see Harper try to muzzle foreign scientists.
My webcomic
I don't think it has necessarily anything to do with the Conservatives. It started long before. In my own area of the government (not federal), every question is regarded as a potential landmine. Managers are fundamentally taught - above all else - don't take risks and don't make mistakes. This attitude largely comes out of a tradition of unionism in the government ranks - either job protection for lower level workers or grievance avoidance for managers. As a result we manage our government on minutia - literally making headings over whether such-and-such consultant expensed a muffin. So when a potentially damaging question comes in formally, the first reaction is defensive.
Sadly, we as Canadians have largely created out own bad government. Canadians deserve the mediocrity they have created.
They've since thrown their weight behind the new "Wildrose Party" which is promising everything voters want... but of course will give the oil industry priority. They might get elected on Monday.
If they do, I'll be horrified. The leader's damn scary and I don't know how voters can't see that. I particularly like the part where she's gonna start punishing cities when the mayors disagree with her. As much as I hate Mandel, I don't like the idea of a provincial politician who figures they can run the cities better than the guy who was voted to do it.
And her party's not much better. Who do you like more, the anti-gay anti-secular-schooling pastor, or the guy who thinks he's better than his opponents because he's white?
As I pointed out in my original post - what NASA experience?
The article has NO information on how he ended up talking to a NASA scientist, and I made a very reasonable argument that he called the scientist directly, whereas with the NRC he called their media arm.
They take their time in making decisions. And Canada has a lot of moose.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
They forgot to carry the negative 4.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
In my limited experience, I can get some pretty adequate brews as much as say 700 miles away from the source. I don't really subscribe to the theory that big is bad, its all about recipe and freshness. I've been drinking Stone's Sublimely Self-Righteous lately, as I can get it it fresher than Sierra's Bigfoot here the backwater of Least Contra Costa County (Bigfoot season is over for 2012, but it stays drinkable for quite a while, just not as good as those first weeks in February.) I can get Stone up in Ashland, OR, and that's almost 800 miles from San Diego.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
How exactly can you say that they are going to design the pipeline adequately, when they won't acknowledge that they fucked up the last one.
Oh, BTW, I think I'm entitled to a little hypocrisy since they're running the fucking thing through my yard. There's no good reason to fuck the Skeena Watershed, there's less stunt-engineering involved in going down the Fraser to the existing seaports on the coast. That's if you want to finish off the job we started with the bold, new atmospheric Carbon levels. YMMV.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
OK, got it. If a newspaper does something bad, it's not really a newspaper - it's an advocacy site or a right-wing tabloid.
So these PR people can feel free to answer quickly to newspapers, they just have to be careful about tabloids, magazines, periodicals, rogue reporters, and temporary lapses in judgement that are not indicative of a paper's overall quality.
Or, they could assume the worst of all media, just as so many journalists are trained to assume anyone they interview are lying liars telling lies.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I am not making the No True Scotsman fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_scotsman_fallacy
If you understand science, and you've been reading newspapers and magazines, it will be clear which newspapers and reporters can report science accurately and which can't. Most of the major newspapers, like the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, etc. do a pretty good job most of the time. I know which reporters at the NYT I can trust and which reporters fuck up sometimes. (When they do fuck up, it's usually because they trust a scientist who is exaggerating the importance of his research. The ones who fuck up are the ones who don't check their facts with another scientist who might disagree.) That's my data, and if you disagree I'd like to see specific examples of stories that you think they get wrong.
There's nothing wrong with tabloids per se. The New York Daily News has very good science reporting. The National Enquirer, surprisingly, had very accurate medical coverage.
I do see a lot of bullshit in the Huffington Post, mostly columns written by self-proclaimed experts. That's what you get for free. I also see a lot of bullshit in the Wall Street Journal, but at least they keep it on the editorial page.
In my reporting I check out a lot of facts. Some of them hold up, and some of them turn out to be lies. I remember for next time who told me the truth and who told me the lies.
You mean the original post, written by me? Yes, I seem to have forgotten that I found that phone number in less than five minutes. Thank you for reminding me.
I assume Canada doesn't want to even try refining tar into gasoline (the list of by products must be long and toxic), so they send it across the entirety of the continental US to Houston for refining. Why Houston? So the final product can be more easily exported to the global market. My fellow idiot USians think this pipline will result in lower gasoline prices*, but it will only result in the inevitible massive oil spills and ground water contamination.
* - It is beyond high time to take down all the two-foot tall numbers screaming out the current price of gasoline (but no other commodity?), given that even a 15-year old sedan gets about 25 mpg. Shouting the price of gasoline (artificially low w.r.t. the rest of the world) literally from the rooftops keeps it as a political football for moronic voters to help them vote against their own interests. 'Oh! The price of gas went up ten cents! I can't afford another $2.50 to completely fill up my 25 gallon tank!!'
or the guy who thinks he's better than his opponents because he's white?
To be fair to this guy, the question he was asked was something along the lines of, "In such a multicultural riding, do you think you are at a disadvantage as a Caucasian?" Then again, he thinks Sikh and Muslim are in the same category as Caucasian.
I don't see this as surprising.
Civil Servants answer to political masters. If those political masters do not want or are cautious about the information in question, of course it is going to take a long time to get the requested answers. If the political masters do not care, or it is perceived as not an issue (or contentious), then it will take 15 minutes (depending on complexity of the question of course).
Presumably the political masters answer to the people.
So really they have no one to blame but themselves. (fresh out of sympathy, sorry)