Slashdot Mirror
UK Government 'Muzzling' Scientists
taikedz writes "Fiona Fox, chief executive of the Science Media Center, has claimed that leading scientists independently advising the UK government are being actively prevented from speaking to the public and media, especially in times of crisis when scientific evidence is necessary for a fully open and educated public debate, such as the current badger culling policy, and the past volcanic eruptions and ash fallout and their effects. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whom many of these scientists are advising, denies any such practices."
We don't need no stinkin badger's
Without detailed information about the massive volcanic activity in Scotland, you may very well end up dead.. or even worse.. you may very well end up WELSH!
Don't even get me started about those killer badgers either!
Any time you see "Don't embarrass the minister", read: This is why freedom of speech is enshrined.
"The dictator fears the laugh more than the assassin's bullet.". -- Robert A. Heinlein
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The article refers to muzzling in Canada (which is happening), whereas the summary refers to muzzling in the UK. The article implies that UK public-service scientists are being pressured, but it's not as explicit as here in Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt would be another example of the UK government not wanting to hear from scientists.
This is what happens when you put professional spinmeisters in charge of professional workers: Dysfunction.
Imagine putting a PR team in charge of the Doctors dealing with an epidemic. A doctor would like to announce quarantine measure, or tell people the full risks, or advise those who are sick, etc. If you had a PR man in charge, the whole epidemic would be treated as a mild flu, no-one would be informed, contagion would spread rapidly and thousands would die. "No matter", says the PR man, "We can spin that too.". But this misses the point.
If you allow spin and the press office to dictate the running of an organisation, then the organisation effectively will not run at all. No professional can work properly with an unrelated lay person getting in his way 24/7.
It's time to call PR men what they really are: Political Officers.
May the Maths Be with you!
Scientists have different opinions on stuff of national importance. The default policy of any organization ever that wants to stay intact is "you're not allowed to talk to the media without clearing it with us first." One of the biggest issues with letting individual academics speak their mind is that what comes out of their mouth is personal opinion that has not been peer reviewed for accuracy or relevance. Any restriction on their expression is likely done to avoid giving these opinions the veneer of authority.
I guess they're advocating mob rule? Logic and reason aren't allowed to enter into it?
Which, by default, makes that an official confirmation.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
... and preventively has forbidden the scientists to talk about it for good measure. Who can doubt their sincerity!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You might wonder if he's had any arrest warrant issued? No, he's a free man.
Yet they've banned Snowden from the UK:
http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/355134/secret-leaker-snowden-banned-from-planes-to-uk
Perhaps it would be politically bad if he arrived at heathrow and we were all there, waving banners and screaming his name LIKE HE'S A BRAVE HERO THAT WOKE US UP TO WHAT THE US MILITARY was doing to the constitution.
UK does what a few isolated politicians in the USA want. They're increasingly pointing the finger of blame at each other, the military men are trying to hold the line with "Americans will die" scare stories, and the UK Home Office, fears the US military more than the voters.
Ah, a 'No shit Sherlock.' moment. Jisc - a UK funder -has been handing out gagging orders alongside recent funding letters, I shit you not. Media contact is to go through the little gnomes in their press office. They do this for the prosaic reason that if anybody was going to be on telly they would prefer it to be themselves, so fuck free speech, objectivity and suchlike hippie values.
(Captcha: Imagine)
The article fails to mention the treatment given to David Nutt by the last Labour government in 2009. At the time, he worked on the Advisory Council on the Misuse Of Drugs, which was meant to be independent of government. Based on their findings, Nutt pushed for the classification of illegal drugs based on actual harm, rather than arbitrarily as it still is now. The ACMD also published about the relative harmlessness of ecstasy and cannabis.
For this heinous crime he was sacked by the then Home Secretary, who said "he was asked to go because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy."
Not long later, Cannabis was back to being a class B drug after only a few years at class C.
It seems that all governments are anti-scientific when the science contradicts their ridiculous ideologies, especially when it comes to drug policy.
An an aside, I remember the Prime Minister at the time, Gordon Brown, went on a morning talk show and said, with a straight face, that some strains of cannabis killed people.
The other other other white meat.
Not just for breakfast anymore.
I know this to be true because a UK scientist told me so.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I've grown wary of anything Fox says...
Well, now we know where Stephen Harper got it from...
Of course, when they came for the badgers, you kept quiet because you were not a badger.
Did you know that innoculation would be cheaper than culling badgers? Mostly because the vector infecting cattle isn't badgers, it's unsanitary farming. But fixing that costs the farmers whilst culling badgers gives them something to shoot at now they're not allowed to shoot pikeys.
The sky is blue.
There you go, a twofer for you.
Seriously, this trend towards scientists is appalling.
And I've read the US government wants more direct CONGRESSIONAL oversight of research grants -in other words, look forward to more topical/pseudoscience research funding at the expense of science that NEEDS to be done that there's no profit in.
We condemn this practice in the most vigorous way.
Sincerely,
The Roman Catholic Church
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Nice to see the slashbots sucking up the RCP line.
The Science Media Centre's stated role is to get science into the public domain through the media when controversial topics hit the headlines.
Tee hee.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I never knew that there was a badger crisis in the UK. I mean, here people have been worried about hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, and the occasional terrorist attack, but WILL SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE BADGERS?
Blair made Britain a police-state, and his people run Britain today while Blair is off creating the circumstances for war and genocide in places like Gaza, Libya, Syria, and soon Iran.
In Britain, you are either on Team Blair, or an 'enemy of the State'. Enemies of the state do not do well in the UK.
Police States muzzles scientists just as they muzzle anyone who may wish to share the 'wrong' opinion. Police-states also obsess about hierarchies of control- where each person cannot do anything without the explicit permission of the authority directly above him/her. We call this strategy 'compartmentalisation' and it is designed to dis-enfranchise the individual. Much of the outrage aimed at Snowden, for instance, over his reminders of the extent of NSA spy programs, is 'justified' by shills stating he had no 'RIGHT' to act without explicit permission of his immediate superior. The shills tell you that conscience, morality, and the lawful need to inform citizens of the crimes of their masters, are not even factors to be considered.
If you Yanks want to know where you are going, you really want to look at Blair's programs in the UK. Blair's 'academy school' program is probably the single scariest population control program in the History of Humanity, but even the British sheep who are disturbed by most aspects of the academy program still cannot see the wood for the trees. They object to the infinite number of petty ways their children are abused at schools following Blair's regime, but never ask themselves WHY it is so important to Blair that he has an iron-grip on the training/manipulation of so many of the next generation.
No scientist in the UK expects to have a career if they publicly oppose any of Blair's current projects or political positions. These are the positions they MUST support.
- the 'guilt trip' strategy of Human-caused 'global warming'
- providing any 'pleasure' food in UK schools is 'child abuse'
- depleted uranium is never responsible for birth-defects or other issues.
- low levels of radiation have ZERO effect on the Human body
- wind power is a viable way of providing electricity in the UK and so is solar.
- subjecting young people to petty rules, uniforms, group-think, and other mechanisms designed to cause people to mindlessly conform is a GOOD thing.
- excellence in education is something only Asian nations like China need
- ALL new vaccines, regardless of the provably criminal activities of the companies that produce them, must be inflicted on the whole population. The existence of the vaccine is all the 'scientific' evidence needed to justify it.
- illegal experimentation on children in third-world countries by the above mentioned vaccine developing companies must be ignored.
- poor people are criminal scum to be controlled in the most ruthless ways possible.
- powerful people are 'god's chosen'
- war is good for the planet, and those that cause new wars are to be given the utmost respect.
- mankind (obviously not the elite) is a plague on the planet, and anything that helps reduce the population is to be welcomed.
- the police-state is the optimal form of governance.
- elimination of all food safety standards in farming is a good thing. BSE/CJD and massive amounts of contaminated horse-meat sold as beef show that British food safety policies are the best on the planet.
- genetically engineered food and crops are essential for mankind, precisely because of the risks they represent.
The list goes on and on and on, but you get the idea. What did it mean to be a scientist in Stalin's Russia or Hitler's Germany? To those that were happy keeping their head down, and working in areas that the regime deemed useful, they probably felt they were in scientist 'heaven'. Even the most reasonable regimes tend to dislike those who speak out against their agendas. In the UK, if you do this, you are committing 'suicide' and sometimes that is a literal truth as well.
Blair prefers to use few high-profile examples of what happens
with a proven history of biting children. Quite annoying, that bunch.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Soon, we'll be in the world from V for Vendetta, where everyone is silenced and sent pre-approved packages of their news broadcasts and all TV is completely tasteful or you get your face smashed in by the spooks.
The British minister of Environment does not believe in global warming. I heard him say on the radio recently that the artic melted millions of years in the past so it basically does not matter if it does so again in the future(?). They seem to be very anti-science - it interfers with their belief sytem (bought and paid for by big business I suspect).
J.
Hang on a minute, I just noticed - it wasn't posted AC! And I posted the comment without reading properly...
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Hmm. Keywords are: "Department of Environment" and "Volcanic Ash".
Looks to me as though the climate alarmists have had a hand in this muzzling of scientists.
Even trying to get a grant for genuine research without stating an expected alarmist outcome is nearly impossible.
Watch the alarmists mod this down to -infinity.