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Canadian Scientists Protest Political Sandbagging of Evidence-Based Policy
New submitter sandbagger writes "Stephen Harper and the Canadian government have made headlines several times for stifling opinions that dissent with their own. This also applies to respected, peer-reviewed science. Canadian scientists have chafed at being gagged and having evidence take a back seat when forming policy, so they're grabbing their slide rules and marching in protest. 'Hundreds of participants gathered in 17 cities for rallies on Monday. In Toronto some donned lab coats while in Vancouver protesters were seen wearing gags adorned with the Conservative Party logo – a reference to the alleged muzzling of federal scientists by political overseers. ... Dr. Gibbs and colleagues said they hoped the rallies would alert the public to scientists’ concerns that the federal government has shifted funding markedly toward commercially driven research at the expense of public-interest science. ... Dr. Gibbs said her group would consult with the Canadian research community and look to other countries in trying to craft recommended policies for science in government. In recent years explicit scientific integrity rules have been adopted by many U.S. federal departments and agencies, after accusations of censorship and politicization of science during the administration of former president George W. Bush. 'Canadian scientists are where American scientists were maybe a decade ago,' said Michael Halpern, a Washington, D.C.-based program manager with the Union of Concerned Scientists. 'They're trying to figure out how to protect themselves from a government that’s increasingly focused on message control over a more open discussion of the facts.'"
Not really. What's happening is exactly what happened in Australia, the UK and the USA. That is the Murdoch empire has been blasting the populace with carefully orchestrated propaganda designed to shift the political spectrum "right" and get poor people to vote against their own interests.
It will never cease to amaze me how pathetically effective this type of targeted propaganda is at actively getting people to do things that are not in their own interest.
The Canadian shift has taken the longest to occur, part of that is because it took Murdoch longer to penetrate and take over enough of the Canadian media because Canada still has ownership rules (at least until the propaganda machine gets those revoked as an affront to capitalism like they did in the US). Inevitably the Canadian people will fall to the far right just like everyone else under the sway of the Murdoch propaganda machine.
It oughtn't be surprising: those least informed are most easily persuaded. If you went and told an englishman circa 1600 about science killing millions (a la hiroshima), but left out the part about it saving millions more (medicine, etc), they would be persuaded because they'd be presented with only part of the truth.
Hate to break the bad news to you, but people who vote to have their own rights taken away in the name of "security" probably didn't deserve to be making their own choices in the first place.
Incidentally, if you actually, sincerely believe that the current ball of shit that is world politics is entirely due to Rupert Murdoch, you're either mentally ill or trolling. The man is a speck, a drop in the ocean compared to some of the money moving in defense contract circles. Murdoch is just a rich fuck who's making himself richer parroting what the people with REAL power are saying, ingratiating himself to the royalty. Rupert Murdoch isn't sitting in some little control room somewhere surrounded by intelligence agents plotting to take away your freedom, that's just paranoia talking. The politicians you elected are the ones doing that plotting. Even if he were, again, not important enough to make a difference. He's a media mogul, nothing more. I'm sure if the Democrats threw more money at him he'd dance just as well for the opposite side. The know nothings that Americans elect are the problem, not their media whores.
The one plotting to take away your freedom is your president, worry about that and forget Murdoch, you might actually accomplish something. Unless the extent of your activism involves schizophrenic rants about Rupert Murdoch being some sort of conservative Voodoo shaman?
Please, nobody is better at ignoring hard evidence than the left. Bad as all politicians are, right wing ones are still a lot less scaring than our new overlords from the left.
I'm really perplexed by this, and I think the world is going to continue to get suckier and suckier the longer it goes on. At some point, we all will have to accept that Nature has it's own way of self-assembling as well as self-regulating, and that it is far superior to what man is capable of. Science has a place in politics, but politics has no place in science.
"Success" itself differs when viewed from a political standpoint vs. a scientific standpoint. Science is for everyone, it's universal. Politics are for politicians. Scientists are regular people that want to understand how the universe works. Politicians are regular people that want to manage how the universe works. One of them are a sensible people, the other are a silly people.
Until the sensible people have more ability to express their understanding, then our species is stuck, only evolving to the point of failing to manage ourselves in a sensible manner.
Why is it so hard to just accept Mother Nature as God, and let it rule...?
Really?
The right wing ones tell us that spending money to fix underlying social problems isn't as effective as prisons so we have huge expenditures on prisons and huge social problems. Yet in countries which spend money on fixing the social problems they have fewer people in prison.
Right wing politicians tell us that as long as a company is making profit it must be good, even if the banks are taking us to the cleaners.
Right wing politicians try to tell us what we can do with our bodies (eg abortion) because God told them so, and so therefore they must be right.
Right wing politicians have classified pot as a narcotic and make all sorts of claims about how dangerous and addictive it is without any evidence whatsoever other than their fervent belief in that.
Right wing governments will tell you abandoning safety and environmental regulations will actually make us safer and have a cleaner environment as if some magic will happen.
Right wing politicians tell us that tax cuts for the rich will somehow magically improve the rest of our lives when in fact there's no evidence for that.
Right wing governments will tell you all sorts of crap, specifically because it's in line with what they believe, but seldom because it's something they can prove.
Sorry, but you're an idiot if you believe that right wing politicians don't ignore evidence. The lies a right wing government tells you are just a different set of lies than what a left wing government tells you.
Which is why policy based on actual evidence is a much better choice.
Show me the proof, not what your ideology (left or right) has told you must be Immutable Truth.
If there's no evidence to support your claims, and the things you said were supposed to fix things aren't working -- then clearly what they've been claiming isn't based in facts or reality. Merely ideology and what they want the world to behave like.
Which is exactly what we see these days.
yes everyone let's ignore Murdoch and focus on the REAL threat, anyone who isn't a republican!
Their research is there to support the Canadian people that pay their salaries. It should be used for the people, not against them.
Obama and the left gave banks most of their goodies a few years ago. Clinton deregulated the banks. Funny how you forget all of that.
Since fucking WHEN is Obama and Clinton left wing?????
You woldnt know a left leaning politcian if it bit you on the ass
Does that mean science takes a back seat to industry profit, just like in the U.S.? You know, stuff like letting food and drug manufacturers "self regulate" or exempting fracking from environmental laws.
Yes but that's not good either, we need a dedicated Science minister, not an appendix to industry.
If you are referring to Obama and the democrats as being on the left side of the political spectrum then you are grossly mistaken. The democrats are more like center-right...it's just that you don't see it like that in your duality "democracy". Being non-American and an outside observer, this is very evident.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
The only people shrugging are the worthless executives who take credit for Atlas's hard work.
I'm a leftist. I'm upper middle class, and I believe that my taxes ought to be higher so as to help people who need it. I also believe your taxes should be higher in order to help people who need it. The world isn't so simple that we can just lump all poor people into one label (that is, "lazy") and say that they, as a group, deserve to starve and die. That is immoral. It is far more immoral than raising the income tax on the wealthy by a few percent.
I'm a leftist. I am aware of the fact that corporate profits are up while wages are down. I don't believe that people should live off of the government; I just wonder where all those jobs are now that the "job creators" are doing so well.
I'm a leftist. I am aware of the fact that the reason abortion was made legal in the first place was because people did it anyway, and many many people died from it. I also think it's funny as hell that you're this big conservative yet you expect young people to take care of your selfish ass in your old age. Save up some money like a good fucking responsible self-sufficient capitalist and pay those immigrants to take care of you, dipshit.
I'm a leftist. I'm no expert on climate change, but I know that people who study the climate for a living are more reliable sources on climate change than people who really really want climate change not to be true. That said, like every other leftist, I hope we are wrong about climate change, because if we're right about it, we're all fucked. Also, unlike with climate change, there's a lot of actual scientific debate on the merits of pot.
I'm a leftist. My car gets 45 miles to the gallon, and I'm in favor of pushing for stronger efficiency and emissions standards rather than stopping them. Every leftist in the world could shiver in the dark, but that wouldn't solve our emissions problem. Change needs to happen on a global scale, or we're fucked.
I'm a leftist, and I don't even know where the fuck to go with this one. We gave the rich their money? Are you fucking high? We want to tax it all back? Are you really, really fucking high? Fuck, I'd settle for having the investor class taxed at the same rate I am rather than at 15 percent.
I'm a leftist, and I understand that science starts out wrong about a lot of things, but when their observations don't fit their hypotheses, they refine their conclusions to fit the data rather than dogmatically repeating the same claims over and over again in the face of overwhelming evidence the way conservative economists do. You don't like science?
"The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science." - Carl Sagan
Exactly. Less eloquently worded: Calling Democrats left shows a serious lack of historical and international perspective.
First, economics is not a real science, it is social science, and, in its prediction craft, often similar to astrology.
Second, as you could see at the example of West Germany, social market economy was far better than fundamentalist capitalism to improve the lives of common people.
And above all, saying that there never was such thing as collective, is sheer idiocy because human society evolved in small collectives, not as a bunch of individuals. All this "special snowflake" individuality is a very recent invention and seems to breed arrogant arseholes first and foremost.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
He is destroying Canada for the sake of his Jewish masters. Mass immigration is genocide, plain and simple. Whatever is good for the Jews, is all that matters to these worthless parasites. Who prints all the money out of thin air? Why, it's the JEWS. And thus, the corrupt politicians do whatever the Jews tell them, including genociding their own people by FORCING them to accept millions of non-white INVADERS into their country. What's not to like?
Quick, better mod me down, can't have a factual discussion on Slashdot can we?
WHOO UP THERE!! I mod you up for being FUNNIER THAN HELL! Sounds like you are wearing a pointed white hat while you watch fox news. Either that or you live somewhere in the BUSH with all sorts of toys like ak 47s and the like. If you actually believe the crap you just wrote then I suggest you had better get a vasectomy because any off spring you might conceive deserve better.
But this is a discussion about how a government that essentially controls Canadian research is deliberately trying to edit the results of their research. This is the very same government who has let individuals take huge amounts of the economy off shore and has privatized many things in the name of free enterprise. The same said government has to a great extent devalued labour to such an extent with policies like allowing the wholesale export of natural resources at fire sale prices instead of investing in industry through materials science. The very method that made our country great and a world leader in things like the forest industry.
Funny but it has gotten so bad that the individuals that have essentially raped the economy of this great country have created a counties of their own. Much the same as the Mafia did with Cuba in the 1950's. It is a group of offshore islands called the Cayman Islands where many companies and individuals have to only have a small office to deposit obscenely huge amounts of cash in the banks. In fact in these off shore tax havens in the Caribbean have the largest gold reserves in the world held in the name of the individuals who have raped Canada and elsewhere. This has been going on unabated since the founders of the offshore tax havens, the friends of ex-prime minister Brian the First established Canadian Banks off shore in their little tax haven fiefdoms. My suggestion is that Canada should invade Belize and the Cayman Islands the same way Regan invaded a little island once upon a time. It might even bring Canada and the US out of the recession!
Hate to break the bad news to you, but people who vote to have their own rights taken away in the name of "security" probably didn't deserve to be making their own choices in the first place.
Incidentally, if you actually, sincerely believe that the current ball of shit that is world politics is entirely due to Rupert Murdoch, you're either mentally ill or trolling. The man is a speck, a drop in the ocean compared to some of the money moving in defense contract circles. Murdoch is just a rich fuck who's making himself richer parroting what the people with REAL power are saying, ingratiating himself to the royalty. Rupert Murdoch isn't sitting in some little control room somewhere surrounded by intelligence agents plotting to take away your freedom, that's just paranoia talking. The politicians you elected are the ones doing that plotting. Even if he were, again, not important enough to make a difference. He's a media mogul, nothing more. I'm sure if the Democrats threw more money at him he'd dance just as well for the opposite side. The know nothings that Americans elect are the problem, not their media whores.
The one plotting to take away your freedom is your president, worry about that and forget Murdoch, you might actually accomplish something. Unless the extent of your activism involves schizophrenic rants about Rupert Murdoch being some sort of conservative Voodoo shaman?
While I agree that the state of world politics is not due solely to Rupert Murdoch, I disagree that he is merely a speck. He controls quite a bit of media around the world. I hope we can all understand by now that when you can control what news and viewpoints people hear you can control what and how they think. Of course there are other news outlets, but in the US those are owned and controlled by a handful of corporations (five, I think). The operators of these corporations share certain interests and so will not allow much talk about certain subjects or viewpoints.
Murdoch is more than a speck; he is a master propagandist that has a heavy hand in how many people see the world. It's hard to overstate that kind of power. He serves a valuable purpose as a member of the Elite.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)