Nine years of censorship

Personally when I read about this kind of censorship it reminds me that these types of people - those craving power, and willing to go to great lengths to achieve it as an ends unto itself, with apparently little regard for the notion of serving the general public - also want access to every citizen&#x27;s communications, whereabouts, and under the auspices of security, safety...peace...<p>Well, in a world where information wants to be free - good information and exposes, and even bad information like debunked anti-vaccine hoopla - those who seek to control it should be viewed suspiciously. In the case of the Harper government actions, suspicion can easily be revised to &quot;clear agenda and manipulation to those ends&quot; which, you know, sounds a lot worse on paper. What a horrible way to treat scientists, really, just a terribly pig-headed and shamlessly pandering approach by the Harper government to please who they felt needed pleasing.

At one point, a brawny ‘minder’ had actually accompanied her to a public hearing to make sure that she didn’t break the rules This kind of thing should NEVER be allowed to happen. The scientists are paid from public funds. That information is our right. This should upset anyone reading it.

I find it sad that from the title alone &quot;Nine years of censorship&quot;, I was able to say to myself &quot;oh, that&#x27;s my country they are talking about! Canada!&quot;

how does something like this happen in a &quot;free&quot; western country like Canada? And why isn&#x27;t there more outrage about it? This is appalling to say the least. I knew I didn&#x27;t like Harper but I didn&#x27;t realize he was so totalitarian.

Maybe one day Springer, the publisher who owns Nature, will also stop suppressing scientific research.

I had friends who supported the muzzling. &quot;They are just trying to spark propaganda and brainwash our society&quot; was what one in particular said.<p>I just dropped the subject from there on out :|

This was a government worker&#x27;s union issue that got absurdly bent out of proportion.<p>The government demanded that government <i>employees</i> get approval for any direct communications with media, etc. This all began when a researcher seriously impacted the salmon industry by releasing extremely preliminary results (that turned out to be wrong), making a name for herself and setting up a PR circuit. The media loves apocalyptic outcomes (&quot;So would you say this means that we&#x27;re all going to die?&quot;), so of course it made headlines with the most dire of predictions.<p>This was not an independent researcher. This was not the private sector. This was someone directly employed by the government. It&#x27;s like a Microsoft employee wrote about vulnerabilities in Windows on their private blog, offering to sell solutions.<p>So the government put a process in place not unlike much of the Western world, doing nothing to control the science (papers were published, research was released, etc. The scientific world understands that preliminary results are preliminary), but having everything to do with the message relayed to the media. Of course this was met with a conspiratorial narrative that continues to this day: That they were hiding dire greenhouse gas&#x2F;global warming information, for instance.<p>But the shackles have come off. Where are all of these dramatic scientific findings that were suppressed?<p>...crickets...<p>The single example constantly floated is about a guy who got called by a reporter about a paper he released about ~~slime mold~~ rock snot (the exampled floated in literally hundreds of articles about the muzzling of scientists). This government scientist was outraged that he couldn&#x27;t get approval within 24 hours, and the reporter lost interest. Apparently rock snot is a real timely issue in media circles.<p>There was a <i>lot</i> wrong with the prior government. An enormous amount. By this particular story is about some freelancing employees who don&#x27;t want anyone telling them what to do.

well, the same thing happens when people would like to discuss alternative theories to the causes of climate change. The BBC, for instance, outright bans anyone that talks about it (and so do many other forums), which is outright censorship.<p>We should be fighting for the freedom to discuss any topic, not just a select few that matches up with the current narrative.

Those who live by the sword, die by the sword. In this case, the sword is State power.<p>Researchers are perfectly happy for the might of the State to underpin coercive taxation, because it directly funds their jobs. But they complain loudly enough when a fraction of that might is used to constrain their freedom of expression.<p>I think the move to un-muzzle State scientists is a good thing. But I have little sympathy for their complaints, either, given the way they&#x27;re funded.

Hopefully some day US scientists will be granted the same freedom to discuss their research.