The governments of Britain, Canada and Australia are trying to stamp out scientific dissent.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 1st Ooctober 2013
It’s as clear and chilling a statement of intent as you’re likely to
read. Scientists should be “the voice of reason, rather than dissent, in
the public arena.”(1) Vladimir Putin? Kim Jong-un? No, Professor Ian
Boyd, chief scientific adviser at the UK’s department for environment.
Boyd’s doctrine is a neat distillation of government policy in
Britain, Canada and Australia. These governments have suppressed or
misrepresented inconvenient findings on climate change, pollution,
pesticides, fisheries and wildlife. They have shut down programmes which
produce unwelcome findings and sought to muzzle scientists. This is a
modern version of Soviet Lysenkoism: crushing academic dissent on behalf
of bad science and corporate power(2).
Writing in an online journal, Boyd argued that if scientists speak
freely, they create conflict between themselves and policy-makers,
leading to a “chronically deep-seated mistrust of scientists that can
undermine the delicate foundation upon which science builds
relevance”(3). This, in turn, “could set back the cause of science in
government”. So they should avoid “suggesting that policies are either
right or wrong”. If they must speak out, they should do so through
“embedded advisers (such as myself), and by being the voice of reason,
rather than dissent, in the public arena.”
Shut up, speak through me, don’t dissent, or your behaviour will
ensure that science becomes irrelevant. Note that the conflicts between
science and policy are caused by scientists, rather than by politicians
ignoring or abusing the evidence. Or by chief scientific advisers.
In an online question and answer session hosted by his department,
Professor Boyd maintained that 50% of tuberculosis infections among
cattle herds are caused by badgers(4). He repeated the claim in an
official document called “Science to inform TB Policy”(5). But as the
analyst Jamie McMillan points out, the figure has been sexed up from
inadequate data(6). Like the 45-minute claim in the Iraq debate, it is
“spurious, simple to take on board, and crucial in convincing
Parliament.”
The badger cull as a whole defies the findings of the £49m study the
previous government commissioned. It has been thoroughly dissected by
the leading scientists in the field, which might explain why Boyd is so
keen to shut them up(7,8). It’s one of many ways in which his department
has binned the evidence in setting its policies.
On Sunday, Boyd’s boss, Owen Paterson, told the Conservative party
conference not to worry about global warming. “I think we should just
accept that the climate has been changing for centuries.”(9) A few weeks
ago on Any Questions, he managed to repeat ten discredited claims about
climate change in one short contribution(10).
His department repeatedly misrepresents science to appease industrial
lobbyists. It claimed that its field trials of neonicotinoid pesticides
on bees showed that “effects on bees do not occur under normal
circumstances”(11). Hopelessly contaminated, the study was in fact
worthless, which is why it was not submitted to a peer-reviewed
journal(12).
Similar distortions surround the department’s refusal to establish
meaningful marine reserves(13), its attempt to cull buzzards on behalf
of pheasant shoots(14,15) and its determination to allow farmers to
start dredging streams again, turning them into featureless gutters(16).
There’s one consolation: Ian Boyd, in his efforts to establish a
tinpot dictatorship, has not yet achieved the control enjoyed by his
counterparts in Canada. There, scientists with government grants working
on any issue that could affect industrial interests – tar sands,
climate change, mining, sewage, salmon farms, water trading – are
forbidden to speak freely to the public(17,18,19). They are shadowed by
government minders and, when they must present their findings, given
scripts to memorise and recite(20). Dozens of turbulent research
programmes and institutes have either been cut to the bone or closed
altogether(21).
In Australia, the new government has chosen not to appoint a science
minister(22). Tony Abbott, who once described manmade climate change as
“absolute crap”(23), has already shut down the government’s Climate
Commission and Climate Change Authority(24). But at least Australians
are fighting back: the Climate Commission has been reconvened as an NGO,
funded by donations(25). Here, we allowed the government to shut down
the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the Sustainable
Development Commission with scarcely a groan of protest(26).
Cameron’s government claimed that the tiny savings it made were
required to reduce the deficit. Yet somehow it manages to fund a lavish
range of planet-wrecking programmes. The latest is the “Centre for
Doctoral Training in Oil and Gas” just launched by the Natural
Environment Research Council(27). Its aim is “to support the oil and gas
sector” by providing “focused training” in fracking, in exploiting tar
deposits and in searching for oil in polar regions. In other words, it
is subsidising fossil fuel companies while promoting climate change. How
many people believe this is a good use of public money?
To be reasonable, when a government is manipulating and
misrepresenting scientific findings, is to dissent. To be reasonable,
when it is helping to destroy human life and the natural world, is to
dissent. As Julien Benda argued in La Trahison des Clercs, democracy and
civilisation depend on intellectuals resisting conformity and
power(28).
A world in which scientists speak only through their minders and in
which dissent is considered the antithesis of reason is a world shorn of
meaningful democratic choices. You can judge a government by its
treatment of inconvenient facts and the people who expose them. This one
does not emerge well.
Source (with the footnotes)
