Can Scientists Speak? | Evidence for Democracy.
Pursuant to my recent re-blogging of news articles on the manipulation and suppression of science by the Harper government in Canada, a recent analysis by the non-profit organisation Evidence for Democracy (ah, another target for conservative wrath, and no doubt for auditing by Canada Revenue, which seems to have been dragged or browbeaten into doing the government’s dirty work for it) provides some interesting reading, on the control exercised over government scientists.
Here, the differences between our representative democracy and Canada’s parliamentary system make a difference.- in favor of the US. Most US scientists work in the academic and private sectors.
Shutting up academics is like herding cats. Witness the very public, but failed, attack initiated by the attorney general of Virginia to intimidate climatologist Michael E. Mann (now at Penn State), “inventor” of the global warming hockey-stick graph.
The domestic focus of the attacks by the rightwingnuts goes on, but indirectly: attempts to restrict federal grants to disliked research topics, legislative failures to address concerns research raises, etc.
I guess this is one important differences between systems, as you say. What we’ve seen in Canada’s parliamentary system (and in others) has been an increasing concentration of power in the Prime Minister’s office, and a hollowing out of parliament’s ability to hold the executive to account. Ministers (apart, perhaps, from the major Ministries, Finance especially) become courtiers, and MPs turn into voting cattle.
On the other hand, the US system of checks and balances can lead, as we have seen, not only to gridlock but a state of endless, hate-filled paralysis.
Not to mention the hollowing out of government by big money.