Canadian war on science
jdupuis | April 23, 2017Many thanks to the organizers of this past weekend's March on Science here in Toronto. They invited me to be part of the amazing roster of speakers for the event. I was honoured to take part and offer some of the lessons I've learned in the course of my various listing projects over the last number of years, especially the epic chronology of the Harper years.
There's a nice video summary here and a CTV News report where I'm interviewed here. A couple of additional media stories are here and here and here.
My fellow presenters were Master of Ceremonies Rupinder Brar and speakers Dawn Martin-…
jdupuis | January 25, 2017Sarah Boon's post yesterday, The War on Science: Can the US Learn From Canada?, is an excellent answer to a very popular topic on Twitter yesterday. With the Trump government seemingly determined to roll back decades of environmental protections and at the same time make sure no body in government talks about it, everyone wants to know what advice the Canadian science community might have for our cousins to the south.
Read Sarah's post to for an excellent first answer to that question.
In the four days since Trump’s inauguration, however, it has become increasingly clear that Trump is…
jdupuis | November 17, 2016Just a quick post to get a recent set of presentation slides up here on the blog.
Earlier this week a colleague in the Science and Technologies Studies program here at York hosted me in her fourth year undergraduate seminar class. Rather than my accustomed and normal role of librarian (I happen to be the STS liaison librarian at the moment), I was invited to appear as seminar subject. In other words, she wanted me to talk about my long history of science policy advocacy and activism and a little about how I feel about the current Canadian government.
Which I sort of did, I guess. I also…
jdupuis | January 28, 2016We have a Steacie Library Hackfest coming up and our there this year is Making a Difference with Data. And what better area to make a difference in than the environment and climate change?
I am far from an expert on this topic, so suggestions for additions (and deletions if I've added anything inappropriate) are welcome. In particular, deeper and more complete data sources for Canada would be nice to have. I would also very much like to improve coverage beyond the North American focus with a wider variety of targeted regional and national data sources.
This set of lists is not meant to be…
jdupuis | November 4, 2015As I've extensively chronicled, Canadian government science had some pretty rough years under the government of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
But Canada has a new government, a new prime minister in Justin Trudeau and a new cabinet. Kirsty Duncan, an actual scientist who worked on the IPPC, has been appointed Science Minister. Come to think of it, we have a Science Minister.
The roster of ministers in other science and technology-related portfolios is also very strong. Navdeep Singh Bains at Innovation, Science and Economic Development. Lawrence MacAulay at Agriculture and Agri-Food.…
jdupuis | October 23, 2015As you can all imagine, I'm quite pleased to see the backside of the Harper government on their way out the door. Of course, the Liberals have promised a lot but only time will tell how serious they are about fixing the science-related stuff that they've promised to fix. I'll definitely be watching that and keeping track here on the blog somehow somewhere.
That being said, I was quite gratified that my various pro-science advocacy efforts in general and my war on science chronology post in particular were quite popular and widely used during the election campaign.
Obviously all the things…
jdupuis | September 30, 2015Though not explicitly tied to our current federal election campaign, the début this week of the Science Integrity Project and the publishing of their Statement of Principles for Sound Decision Making in Canada just as the campaign heats up is surely not coincidental.
In any case, election or not, this is a wonderful initiative and I support it wholeheartedly. There's lots of background on their website about the process for coming up with the principles, an FAQ and a few examples of how the principles work in practice.
From their website:
Welcome to the Science Integrity Project. Our project…
jdupuis | August 21, 2015Katie Gibbs and Alana Westwood of Evidence for Democracy wrote a terrific piece in The Toronto Star a little while ago, We need a national debate on science: A question about science policy has never been asked at a federal leaders’ debate. Now more than ever that has to change.
Given the clear importance of science in our lives, why has a question about science policy never — not once — been asked in a federal leaders’ debate?
*snip*
Perhaps it’s time for another first: a debate about the state and future of Canadian science. Once a world-leader in scientific research, recent decisions have…
jdupuis | August 3, 2015It has begun.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called an election for October 19, 2015, kicking off a marathon 11 week election campaign. The longest campaign since the 1870s, believe it or not.
My patient readers may have noticed that over the last few years I've posted quite a bit about how science has fared under the current government. Readers will have gathered that I'm not too pleased about that state of affairs. This election signals an opportunity to (hopefully) change direction; if it's not completely possible to undo all the damage that Harper has done, we can at least…
jdupuis | July 17, 2015In the Late Harper period of Canadian politics it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between satire and legitimate news stories.
Here's a couple of examples of satire followed by one that's even scarier and more disturbing because it's an actual news story. We live in interesting times. Fortunately there's a election coming up...
Honestly, few of the serious critiques of the Harper government's war on science, evidence and civil society ring as true as these two satirical takes. This is definitely in the Stewart/Colbert mode of so funny it hurts.
Government of Canada pledges…
jdupuis | April 30, 2015This roundup includes reviews of a bunch of recent and not-so-recent reading about Canadian politics, in particular the Harper government and how it controls information. Some of the books are pretty directly related to science policy and some, not so much. These are all worth reading, some kind of overlap while others present fairly unique approaches. All were useful to me in my long term interest and work around Canadian science policy and in understanding the current Canadian Conservative government's anti-science attitudes. All are solid additions to the growing body of work on the…
jdupuis | March 9, 2015We live in a k-cup culture. Focused on the near term but willfully blind to the longer term implications of our daily decisions.
Just before the holidays I was watching the CBC TV show Power and Politics and they were discussing a bunch of "Top 5s" in an end-of year story. You know the type, the Top 5 this's and that's from the previous year, 2014, as well as a couple looking ahead to 2015. With a federal election scheduled in 2015, were the top 5 election issues that Canada that Canadians should keep on their radar in the coming year?
Economy/Jobs
Leadership/Ethics
Energy/Climate Change…
jdupuis | February 3, 2015As I mentioned last week, I did a presentation at the recent Ontario Library Association Super Conference using my work on Canadian science policy as a case study in altmetrics.
Here's the session description:
802F Altmetrics in Action: Documenting Cuts to Federal Government Science: An Altmetrics Case Study
The gold standard for measuring scholarly impact is journal article citations. In the online environment we can expand both the conception of scholarly output and how we measure their impact. Blog posts, downloads, page views, comments on blogs, Twitter or Reddit or Stumpleupon mentions…
jdupuis | February 3, 2015The default mode, politically-speaking, for most scientists seems to be professionally neutral. In other words, most scientists would tend to see their personal political beliefs as more or less completely separate from their work as scientists. Even for politically sensitive topics like climate change, the tendency is to focus on the the best available evidence rather than commenting more directly on the potential policy implications of that evidence. Only by maintaining that politcal neutrality with scientists will be able to maintain their surface veneer of objectivity. If you're too…
jdupuis | January 27, 2015On May 20th, 2013 I published my most popular post ever. It was The Canadian War on Science: A long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment. In it, I chronicled at some considerable length the various anti-science measures by the current Canadian Conservative government. The chronological aspect was particularly interesting as you could see the ramping up since the 2011 election where the Conservatives won a majority government after two consecutive minority Conservative governments. The post is my most popular by an of magnitude, with around 10 times more page views that the…
jdupuis | January 7, 2015Think of this as a combination 2014 recap and 2015 resolutions post. Neither of which I really planned to do after doing recaps for the last couple of years. Two years ago, 2013, was very clearly a year I was more obsessed than usual with advocacy around the current Canadian government's treatment of science and information. The year before that, 2012, was a year I was very clearly more obsessed than usual with open access advocacy.
This past year, 2014, was both a relatively light blogging year and a year when my twin obsessions from 2012 and 2013 seemed about tied. So I more or less decided…
jdupuis | December 15, 2014For those that don't know, Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and one of only two Greens in the Canadian Parliament -- and the only one elected as a Green. As such, you would expect that she would be a strong advocate for democracy and the environment, willing to stand up to the current Conservative government of Stephen Harper and tell it like it is.
In her latest book, Who We Are: Reflections on My Life and Canada, she does just that in an entertaining and inspiring amalgamation of memoir and manifesto.
This is an amazing book, sarcastic and hopeful but still witty and…
jdupuis | October 31, 2014This past Tuesday I gave a talk as part of the York University Department of Science & Technology Studies' STS Seminar Series. Not surprisingly, my talk was centred on the work I've done as a chronicler of Canadian science policy issues. The title and abstract of my talk are:
Evidence vs. Ideology: The Canadian Conservative Government's War on Science
Canada has entered an era of decision-based evidence-making, where scientific and other evidence takes a back seat to an ideology of political partisanship in the service of economic development and “prosperity.” Where once we could hope…
jdupuis | October 24, 2014It has been a year since I last updated my chronological listing of the Harper Conservative government's war on science. The newly updated master list is here, where you can also read more about this project in general. The previous update from October 2013 is here. Some preliminary metrics about the impact of that original post in the wider world are here.
This update contains 140 new incidents, mostly from between the last update and now. They have been integrated into the master list.
Some notes.
Many of the incidents I list are programs or locations that have sustained significant…
jdupuis | September 26, 2014
Science Advice: Cultivating the necessary functions in Canada
A rough guide to science advice
Principles and politics of scientific advice
What do policymakers want from academics?
Tips for Academics Who Want to Engage Policymakers
Top 20 things scientists need to know about policy-making
Top 20 things politicians need to know about science
12 things policy-makers and scientists should know about the public
Science in an Age of Scrutiny: How Scientists Can Respond to Criticism and Personal Attacks
The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate…