My first impression is that I don't blame them. No other employer would let you run around, speaking with the authority of their office, saying things that they haven't confirmed or approved. Findings should be reviewed, consensus reached, before they release a statement as being one from their department. We don't need waters right now muddied by inconsistent media declarations from the government scientists.
Science is science - it answers to tests and proof - not popularity, and certainly not politics.
If I am a reporter and I am doing a story on the impact of fish farms on wild stocks, and the fish farms are donating to the party in power, who do you think I am going to get a straight answer from? The unfettered scientists, who only threaten their positions if they make a claim unsupported by facts, or the "spin controlled" scientists, who are told to never mention sea lice if they want to keep their job?
If my research uncovers no mention of sea lice, how accurate will my story be? How well informed will my readers (the electorate) be?
This is the danger of muzzling scientists.
Pangloss
.....(it) is designed to control the department's media message and ensure there are no "surprises" for Environment Minister John Baird and senior management when they open the newspaper or turn on the television, according to documents......
......."It's insulting," says one senior staff member, who asked not to be named. She says researchers can no longer even discuss or confirm science facts without approval from the "highest level."
Until now, Environment Canada has been one of the most open and accessible departments in the federal government, which the executive committee says is a problem that needs to be remedied.
It says all media queries must now be routed through the federal government, where "media relations will work with individual staff to decide how to best handle the call; this could include: Asking the program expert to respond with approved lines; having media relations respond; referring the call to the minister's office; referring the call to another department," the presentation says.
BS DB. Employees of corporations work for the shareholders but the common shareholder has no expectation that they can interview any employee about anything at anytime. The shareholder goes through the PR department or whatever channel is authorized. This is just silly to expect anyone be authorized to stand in front of a microphone and represent the organization, public or private.
BS DB. Employees of corporations work for the shareholders but the common shareholder has no expectation that they can interview any employee about anything at anytime. The shareholder goes through the PR department or whatever channel is authorized. This is just silly to expect anyone be authorized to stand in front of a microphone and represent the organization, public or private.
BS DB. Employees of corporations work for the shareholders but the common shareholder has no expectation that they can interview any employee about anything at anytime. The shareholder goes through the PR department or whatever channel is authorized. This is just silly to expect anyone be authorized to stand in front of a microphone and represent the organization, public or private.
Praxius:
Umm, no. Your reasoning is full of fail. Science is not "much like religion" - it is in fact the polar opposite of the religious intellectual process.
But hey, thanks for playing.
Pangloss
Praxius:
To quote you:
as Science has almost an equal amount of limitation set to it as most religions, just differently, all the while science has continually attempted to distance itself from relgion, claiming to be the be all end all method of understanding the universe around us.
Just like religion and how many followed each due to how well each explained life around us at the time of our level of understand, so too will science eventually become too restricted by it's own principles to answer everything we wish to know.
Did you even pay attention during high school science?
Here's a very brief refresher: 1) observe the physical world. 2) create a hypothesis about what happened. 3) design a test of your hypothesis and make predictions about the outcomes. 4) observe the results of your test. 5) refine your hypothesis, changing those things that were falsified by testing. 6) test again.
Repeat 1 - 6 until you get a defensible theory. 7) Publish your results, including your methodology. 8) Others challenge your methodology, results and theory, attempting to falsify it. 9) You and/or others refine or disprove your theory - and on to the future.
In other words, there is a complete lack of dogma. There are theories with greater or lesser degrees of accuracy, and theories that have had greater or lesser testing - but everything is always open to falsification.
Now, to the religious method. There is a conclusion (some form of god exists) and then arguments are made confirming its existence. There is no testing - no attempts to falsify - any of the tenets of that faith. It is immune to reason, and the text of the faith is not subject to challenge, and is not asked to prove its assertions.
Remember, faith is certainty without proof. Religion is the ultimate "appeal to authority" - and do I actually have to remind you that is a logical fallacy of the first order?
Scientific knowledge is provisional, is constantly tested, and is always subject to falsification. If some unknown manages to construct a theory that utterly restates optics in a better way than Newton did, that new theory will replace Newton's. Try that with a pope sometime. Or even a priest.
That is why they are opposites.
But, based on the intelligence of what you have written elsewhere, I find it hardly credible you didn't already know all of this.
Pangloss