The GOP Turned Its Back on Science. So Science Turned Its Backs on the GOP

DERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Here in Hershey, the once-sleepy south-central Pennsylvania town built on chocolate, drivers must now navigate a recently constructed roundabout on the “West End,” an ongoing and massive mixed-use development project. It’s essentially a new suburb, built from scratch, designed to attract and accommodate local population growth. But this controversial project — new roads paved over a beloved field traversed by herds of deer — isn’t fueled by Hershey’s global snacking company, the giant nearby amusement park of the same name, or the hospitality industry. Instead, it’s radiating out of Penn State Health, the hilltop headquarters overlooking the town created by a risk-taking confectioner more than a century ago.

Justice Ginsburg tells Texas to stop ignoring science

Texas cannot disregard the medical community’s standards when it assesses which inmates are intellectually disabled — and therefore which inmates cannot be sentenced to death under the Constitution.

A 5–3 Supreme Court announced this decision in Moore v. Texas, in an opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative with relatively moderate views on the death penalty, crossed-over to vote with the Court’s four liberals.

Science by the Chemical Industry, for the Chemical Industry Must Stop

In the 1980s, Dr. Ranjit Chandra at Memorial University in St. John's, Canada was already well-known for his research in the fields of pediatrics and immunology. As a leader in medical research, he was elected as an officer of the Order of Canada, and served as president of the Nutritional Immunology & Allergy Center in India.

So when his 1989 British Medical Journal (BMJ) study purported to show the benefits of "hypo-allergenic" infant formula in reducing the risk of eczema in infants, no one raised concerns about the doctor's connection to infant formula maker Mead Johnson, which had funded the research.

Next in Harper's War on Science Crosshairs: Health Research

"In the nineteenth century health was transformed by clear, clean water. In the twenty-first century, health will be transformed by clean, clear knowledge." -- Sir Muir Gray

Rooting around in a dumpster looking for treasure is unseemly and demeaning for anyone. Maybe more so when the dumpster diver happens to be a federal agricultural scientist who is trying to save some choice publications from being destroyed after a federal agricultural library in Lethbridge, Alberta is closed down. Seems pathetic, right?

Canada's War on Science Brings Us International Shame

A push to prioritize economic gains over basic research is endangering science and academic freedom in countries around the world, according to a new report published by a leading researchers union, the French National Trade Union of Scientific Researchers (SNCS-FSU).

The group surveyed higher education and research unions in 12 countries including France, Argentina, Canada, Denmark, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Senegal, Serbia, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.

Vanishing Canada: Why we’re all losers in Ottawa’s war on data

When told that his small Prairie town had, in profound ways, fallen off the statistical map of Canada, Walter Streelasky, mayor of Melville, Sask., is incredulous. Streelasky had no idea Melville had been rendered a “statistical ghost town” after the mandatory long-form census was cut in 2010, and fewer than 50 per cent of the one third of Melville’s 4,500 residents who got the voluntary National Household Survey that replaced it in 2011 completed the form. Melville still exists—but as a shadow. We know how many people live there, but nothing about them—where they work, their education levels, whether they’re married, single or divorced, how many are immigrants, how many are unemployed, how many live in poverty. Melville’s numbers, then, aren’t factored into Canadian employment numbers or divorce rates or poverty rates. According to Sask Trends Monitor, the high non-response rate in the province resulted in “no socioeconomic statistics about the populations in about one-half of Saskatchewan communities.” Nationally, we’re missing similar data on 20 per cent of StatsCan’s 4,556 “census subdivisions,” making a fifth of Canada’s recognized communities statistical dead zones.

It's Time for Action on Canada's Muzzled Scientists

What has become of the federal Information Commissioner's investigation into Canada's muzzled federal scientists?

There's evidence that scientists are being silenced, and that the government has been misleading the public and Parliament about it. The damage to the public interest is extensive and ongoing.

Canada’s science performance, down the memory hole

It is distressing when organizations with no partisan role play the sort of games partisans want. The latest example is the advisory board that the Harper government created to tell it how Canada is doing in science.

I have written about the Science, Technology and Innovation Council every two years since it produced its first major report, in May 2009. STIC, as it’s known, is not some fringe group of pinko malcontents trying to stir up trouble and turn the people against their right and proper governing party. It was conceived by the Harper government (in 2007), appointed by the Harper government (in bits ever since), and it consists, in part, of senior officials who work with the Harper government every day. Its current membership include: the presidents of three universities and the Institute for Quantum Computing; the federal deputy ministers of health and industry; and a bunch of CEOs in tech and energy.

Cuts to MD/PhD funding greeted with 'horror' by medical scientists

Canada's medical research community is reacting with shock and disappointment to the cancellation of a 30-year program to train doctors who see patients and work as scientists searching for new treatments.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research is the federal government's major health science research organization. Its MD/PhD program was launched in the 1980s out of concern over the lack of specialists who could move easily between the lab and hospital.

Another federal scientist fired in Harper's ongoing war on science

As a researcher, I have been following with great interest and deep unease the ongoing story of the federal government’s fight to prevent federal scientists from freely sharing the results of their work.

This government has used a culture of fear— achieved by de-funding, and the strategic dismissal of key leaders— as a means to suppress the flow of information from federal scientists. This ‘muzzling’ of researchers has been noticed in Canada and indeed around the world.

Many years ago, my father and I were watching the "Tonight Show" in the Johnny Carson era. A guest that evening was one of my favorite actors, Peter Finch. During the interview, my father, a physician, said plainly, "that man is going to have a heart attack." He noted that Finch was fidgety, was sweating from his brow, and was breathing in a labored way. I didn't think much of his remark until the next day, when on the evening news it was announced that Peter Finch had died that morning. Of a massive heart attack.

Scott Walker Objects to ‘the Search for Truth’

UPDATE (2-3-15) 5:30 PM: Facing sharp criticism for proposing to abandon the University of Wisconsin's public-service mission statement, as outlined in state statutes, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on Wednesday afternoon abruptly dropped the plan. Criticized for attacking The Wisconsin Idea and the state's historic commitment to academic inquiry, the all-but-announced 2016 presidential candidate shifted course less than 24 hours after making his proposal, which came as part of a broader assault on higher education funding. Walker claimed the line-by-line proposal for changing the statutes was a "drafting error." The following article provides background and context regarding the prospective presidential candidate's stumble.

Americans have returned to the question of whether the Republican Party has launched a “war on science”—as 2016 presidential prospects Chris Christie and Rand Paul have abandoned public-health imperatives in order to feed skepticism about whether children should be vaccinated against infectious diseases.

But Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has trumped his fellow 2016 contenders.

Walker is launching a war on the truth.

Literally.

Stephen Harper government confuses science for mere opinion

The current government has repeatedly proclaimed its belief in the importance of scientific evidence.

In March 2013, then-Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver advanced the view that U.S. President Barack Obama is — on the Keystone XL issue, at least — “driven by facts,” adding “and that’s what drives us as well.”

He reiterated this assertion several months later in response to a blistering New York Times editorial that accused the Harper government of muzzling government scientists in an “attempt to guarantee public ignorance.” Americans, said Oliver, are entitled to their opinions but he would find it “refreshing if they confined themselves to the facts and science.”

House Passes Bill That Makes It Harder For Scientists To Advise The EPA

While their Senate colleagues were engaged in a fiery debate over the fate of the Keystone XL pipeline, the House on Tuesday quietly passed a bill that environmentalists say would hamper the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to use the best scientific information when crafting regulations to protect public health and the environment.

The House voted 229-191 to pass H.R. 1422, which would change the rules for appointing members to the Science Advisory Board (SAB), a group that gives scientific advice to the EPA Administrator. Also called the Science Advisory Board Reform Act, the bill would make it easier for scientists with financial ties to corporations to serve on the SAB, prohibit independent scientists from talking about their own research on the board, and make it more difficult for scientists who have applied for grants from the EPA to join the board.

G20: Australians bury heads in sand to mock government climate stance

More than 400 protesters stuck their heads in the sand on Australia’s Bondi Beach on Thursday, mocking the government’s reluctance to put climate change on the agenda of a G20 summit this weekend.

Prime minister Tony Abbott’s perceived failure to address climate change is all the more galling in the wake of an agreement between the United States and China on Wednesday to limit their carbon emissions, they said.

New report documents federal clampdown on scientists' freedom of expression

In February 2012, the scientific journal Nature published an editorial opinion piece, Frozen Out, calling on the Canadian government to reform policies that restrict media access to federal scientists. This followed numerous stories documenting delays and confusion in how different federal departments respond to requests for media interviews on scientific matters.

How has the Harper government reacted? A new report, Can Scientists Speak, finds that federal media policies remain far more restrictive than those in the United States, and gives low to failing grades to nearly all 16 departments that employ scientists.

Foreign scientists call on Stephen Harper to restore science funding, freedom

Hundreds of scientists around the world are asking Prime Minister Stephen Harper to end "burdensome restrictions on scientific communication and collaboration faced by Canadian government scientists."

The call was made in an open letter drafted by the Cambridge, Mass.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that represents U.S. scientists and uses science to advocate for environmental sustainability.

• Read the full letter

How Did We Become a Society Suspicious of Science?

I grew up in the heroic age of American science and engineering. In my lifetime, the space program put men on the moon, the interstate highway system connected the continent, Salk and Sabin conquered polio, and computers went from room-sized behemoths to hand-held wonders. In my youth, America clearly led the world in its ability to conduct large-scale science and engineering projects. True, some of these projects were morally disturbing. The Castle Bravo test of March 1, 1954, a 15-megaton thermonuclear blast at Bikini Atoll, caused radioactive fallout to rain down on unsuspecting victims. Yet the nuclear tests also represented scientific and engineering expertise of the highest order.

Scientists rail against imposed ignorance

A year ago, a handful of Toronto scientists decided they could no longer watch helplessly as the government of Canada systematically stifled information on everything from climate change to drug safety.

They formed a collective called Scientists for the Right to Know.

They compiled a list of all the public agencies that have been eliminated, all the science and knowledge-based programs that have been discarded and all the strictures that have been placed on public officials. They created a website. They urged their academic peers to speak out.

Eye-opening research stopped in its tracks

It took David Hulchanski five years to create the most sophisticated tool to track urban poverty ever devised. The work was painstaking. The result was startling and worrisome.

It took Tony Clement five minutes — if that — to destroy Hulchanski’s mapping device.

“My research has been turned into a historical project,” the pioneering urban planner said disconsolately.