Un-muzzle the scientists? Not so fast. – Macleans.ca

Andrew Leach in Macleans on government science and un-muzzling, and trying to find the fine balance between a more open approach and respecting the public servant role and policy process.

His arguments are valid in the macro-sense, but that the Government’s overly zealous focus on controlling the message has tipped the scale too much the wrong way. But a thoughtful contribution to the debate:

For me, the key questions are whether government researchers should, themselves, be able to speak out when they feel a government policy does not align with the evidence and, if so, why we would only restrict that to a particular class of government researchers? To speak out publicly against government policy is, by the current definition, fundamentally at odds with the role of a public servant in our democracy. Public servants are expected to provide impartial advice to the policy development process and loyal implementation of government policies once decisions are taken. They are not supposed to critique that policy publicly when it doesn’t align with their interpretation of the evidence or their beliefs with respect to how that evidence should be weighed. Allowing public servants to be openly critical of government decisions – whether based on scientific evidence or any other criteria – turns the relationship between the bureaucracy and their democratically elected masters on its head, undermining the trust essential to an effective working relationship.

Should we have more open government science? Perhaps. I think the better question is to what degree government-supported research should take place in arms-length agencies (the U.S. model for agencies like NASA and the Energy Information Administration come to mind) or outsourced to universities via government granting agencies as opposed to being housed in policy departments. Research housed outside of government departments would allow elected and bureaucratic offices to determine which questions are being asked by researchers or which subject areas are being explored without having influence over the answers or controlling the message. It would also mean that researchers were not privy to the policy discussions of the day and would not necessarily be involved when their research is used to support a decision. There are also options within the public service: perhaps Statistics Canada could broaden its role to collect and publish more environmental statistics such as the sea ice coverage, which was the subject of so much consternation this week, perhaps absorbing some of the functions now performed within Environment Canada. In the same way in which no one would ask a Statistics Canada official what government should do to combat youth unemployment or to raise median incomes when those data are published, no one would ask whether the extent of sea ice coverage should influence our climate change policy choices. When you’re asking officials from the department with jurisdiction over both our domestic climate change policies and our intervention in international climate change negotiations about sea ice coverage, the implications are very different. The questions to the scientist might even be policy-neutral, but I expect most of the resulting articles would not be.

If you want to take the muzzle off government researchers, that’s fine if you want it for the right reasons. I’m all in favour of increasing the quality of information available both to our decision-makers and to the general public. However, we must do it without skewing the policy process. The only way to make sure that’s true if you want open access to researchers is to disconnect those undertaking primary and policy-relevant research from that process and from those departments. Whether that’s best done through arms-length institutions, through universities, or through agencies such as Statistics Canada is a topic for debate. Of course, there are some topics of current government research not suited to open inquiry, for a variety of reasons. Maybe you’re willing to sacrifice some of those topics for access to information? You might also find that some of our government’s best researchers prefer their seat at the policy table to the front pages of the newspaper. Maybe that’s a sacrifice you’re willing to make? Unfortunately, I doubt you’ll be able to rely on anyone in a lab coat to tell you with certainty which is best for the country.

Un-muzzle the scientists? Not so fast. – Macleans.ca.