The war on science PDF
Preview The war on science
The War on Science WarScienceInteriorFinal.indd 1 2013-08-15 12:41 PM chriS Turner Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper’s Canada WarScienceInteriorFinal.indd 2 2013-08-15 12:41 PM The W a r on Vancouver/Berkeley WarScienceInteriorFinal.indd 3 2013-08-15 12:41 PM For the Turner4YYC campaign team Copyright © 2013 by Chris Turner All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777. Greystone Books Ltd. www.greystonebooks.com Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada isbn 978-1-77100-431-2 (pbk.) isbn 978-1-77100-432-9 (epub) Editing by Nancy Flight Copy editing by Lesley Cameron Cover and text design by Jessica Sullivan We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. conTenTS 1 : 1 March of the Lab coats The View from the Street and the Lab Spring–Summer 2012 2 : 17 Landscape at Twilight The View from Parliament Hill Spring–Summer 2012 3 : 47 From Dawn to Dusk The Scientific Tradition in Canadian Government 1603–2011 4 : 81 The age of Wilful Blindness Science in the Harper Majority Years May 2011–Present 5 : 119 Lost in the Dark The View from the Museum Spring 2013 Selected Chronology of Canadian Science 135 Source Notes 143 Acknowledgements 161 Index 164 WarScienceInteriorFinal.indd 5 2013-08-15 12:41 PM WarScienceInteriorFinal.indd 6 2013-08-15 12:41 PM 1 March oF The LaB coaTS The View from the Street and the Lab spring–summer 2012 T he protest march that snaked through the streets of Ottawa on the morning of July 10, 2012, was, in some respects, a standard affair. The marchers carried placards and chanted slogans, a roster of speakers made high-minded speeches, the police redirected traffic and kept a watchful eye. Under a bright blue sky, the protesters marched from the Ottawa Convention Centre past the Chateau Laurier to Parliament Hill, drawing the curious interest of the odd tourist or passerby, but mostly tromping down the streets of the capital with order, purpose and calm. The only obvious signs that this was a protest unique in the history of Canadian public life were the crisp white clini- cal lab coats on dozens of the protesters and the geeky twist they gave to a familiar chant. “What do we want?” “Science!” 1 WarScienceInteriorFinal.indd 1 2013-08-15 12:41 PM 2 the war on science “When do we want it?” “After peer review!” A young woman carrying a scythe and wearing the black hooded robe of the Grim Reaper led the procession, fol- lowed by a clutch of pallbearers bearing a prop coffin aloft. The march had been billed “The Death of Evidence.” It had been organized and was largely peopled by scientists—field researchers, lab rats, graduate students—and it was, as far as anyone marching was aware, the first time their ranks had ever assembled to stage a protest on Parliament Hill. Scientists are by professional tradition and often by gen- eral disposition a cautious, reserved lot. They place the highest virtue on reasoned argument and cloistered study, proceed- ing from the core belief that scientific evidence, objectively gathered and impartially analyzed, must always trump opin- ion and argument and shouted slogan in the establishment of what is true and reasonable and which courses of action best serve the public interest. They conduct their public discourse as much as possible in the meticulous, technical language native to peer-reviewed scientific journals. That the scientists in Ottawa had taken their conversation to the streets, ampli- fied it, reduced it to the crude exigencies of a placard’s slo- gan—this all spoke to a catastrophic decline in the harmony of their usual dialogue with Canadian government. In Canadian public life, there had for generations been a sort of implicit understanding between scientists and poli- ticians, between those who gathered and analyzed the data and those who used the resulting studies and white papers and policy briefs and committee testimonials to enact legis- lation. It went roughly like this: federal law and public pol- icy would always have recourse to the best available evidence. Any number of political persuasions and points of view could WarScienceInteriorFinal.indd 2 2013-08-15 12:41 PM March of the Labs Coats 3 be represented in the public discourse—rabid socialists and staunch libertarians, rapacious capitalists and bleeding-heart liberals, Tories and Grits, Dippers and Greens—but scientific evidence existed outside this cacophonous arena of compet- ing opinions. The parameters of the entire debate were estab- lished by observable, verifiable, peer-reviewable reality, not by political expediency or strategic advantage. Even if this evi- dence-based social contract was not always honoured in full, it had never been unilaterally negated. Politicians might elide inconvenient facts or omit problematic details in the name of short-term gain, but they weren’t permitted to dismiss the sci- entific method itself as irrelevant to the formulation of policy. At some point you had to acknowledge the basic facts of the situation. Didn’t you? Since Stephen Harper’s Conservatives had first formed a government in 2006, the pact between evidence and policy had eroded and crumbled and then finally given way at some fundamental level—the one that sent scientists marching in their lab coats on Parliament Hill. The process had been slow and sporadic at first—esoteric programs cut here and there, experts and their studies forced into the custody of media handlers, their conclusions massaged to corroborate talking points dictated by the Prime Minister’s Office. The campaign intensified in fits and starts through the minority years, with rumblings about discounted evidence and silenced scientists accompanying the elimination of the Office of National Sci- ence Adviser, the cancellation of the long-form census, and the tabling of a sweeping crime bill that went against decades of research. In the first year of Harper’s majority, though, the scien- tific community’s concerns turned quickly to outrage. Seem- ingly every other day through the spring of 2012, news broke WarScienceInteriorFinal.indd 3 2013-08-15 12:41 PM
The list of books you might like
