As it happens, the research of scientists employed by the NRC
is not a matter of public record. In reality, even research into events that happened 13,000 years ago cannot be made public without going through the Harper government's information censors:
http://www.vancouversun.com/technol...s principle public service/3521456/story.html
"Muzzling scientists offends principle of public service
Vancouver SunSeptember 14, 2010
Governments that depend on public support for their legitimacy and survival wisely recognize that all information is political.
In Canada, our provincial and federal governments spend millions of dollars monitoring the media and trying to influence the coverage they get. Within limits, this is a legitimate use of tax dollars, since governments must communicate with the public.
But when governments try to manage the coverage they get by withholding information that is legitimately in the public realm because that information will be harmful to their partisan political interests, they are no longer acting on behalf of their constituents. This is particularly true with respect to advances in the body of scientific knowledge. Governments employ scientists in a number of fields, conducting research that is used to formulate public policy.
To be useful, that research has to be conducted without respect to whether the outcome will support or undermine policies supported by the government.
Earlier this year, an internal analysis conducted by Environment Canada and obtained by Postmedia News concluded that restrictions imposed in 2007 on scientists by the Conservative government were effectively taking government scientists out of the national debate on climate change.
In March of this year, a communications manager informed scientists at Natural Resources Canada that they must get pre-approval from the minister's office before speaking with journalists.
Postmedia science reporter Margaret Munro discovered that the policy is being applied with bizarre results. A Victoria-based NRC scientist was not able to comment on a study he jointly published with other researchers in April in the prestigious journal Nature without first providing a reporter's questions and his proposed responses to the minister's office.
The contentious subject? The article was about the impact of a colossal flood in Canada 13,000 years ago.
By the time the Canadian researcher got clearance from the minister's office, reporters had long since talked to the British researchers involved in the study and had moved on to other things.
Let's be clear. Governments have a legitimate interest in trying to maintain a consistent message on government policies.
But they perform a disservice if they try to make their job easier by censoring information that may question the underpinning of those policies.
Scientists in the employ of the government are bound by the same limitations of other civil servants when it comes to criticizing their employer. That does not mean, however, that their research findings should be similarly circumspect. Whether their findings support or undermine government policies, they should be considered part of the public record, fully available to the taxpayers that financed their work.
That includes the ability of scientists to speak to the public, directly or through reporters, about their work.
This does not give them license, however, to draw policy implications that are not implicitly inherent in their research. Where there are political conclusions to be drawn, scientists in the employ of the government should leave them to the politicians.
As we have seen with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, when scientists are tempted to leap to political conclusions, the credibility of their science suffers.
That said, it is crucial that the research by government scientists continues to be published in a timely fashion and that scientists be encouraged to explain to the public what they see as the importance of their work.
If their findings appear to challenge government policy, the response in the public interest would be for the government to reconsider the policy in question, not to gag the messenger."
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