Scientists, by and large, are not the most political of people. Sure, they can be remarkably outspoken — blunt, even — about issues in their particular areas of specialization, and anyone who has ever worked in the rarified air of a major academic institution knows that the rabid small-p politics of a chemistry or biology department can be a sight to behold.
But public activism? No. Most scientists seem to be more comfortable speaking softly and carrying a big evidentiary stick. They like to let their research do the talking. Try to get a scientist to give you a nice pithy quote about what their work means for a television or radio story, and you’re likely to end up with a lumpy sentence full of conditional clauses.
Want to know what they really think? Read the whole research paper — and while you’re at it, the work of a dozen other scientists in the same field, so you’ll grasp the context of the work in full.
But what do you do if a federal government doesn’t seem to care about evidence or facts anymore?
Well, perhaps then, even if you are a softspoken scientist, you have little choice but to take to the streets.
And that seems to be the point we’ve reached in this country.
Remember when the federal government brought in tough-on-crime legislation and was told that statistics showed that crime rates were already at historically low levels?
“I don’t know if the statistics demonstrate that crime is down,” Public Safety Minister Vic Toews famously said. “I’m focused on danger.”
That could be described as a clear explanation of the Tory rationale for things as diverse as shutting down the long-form census or getting rid of Canada’s Experimental Lakes research station, cutbacks to the country’s pre-eminent glacier research station in the Yukon, and the cuts to basic science funding through the National Research Council.
The message? “Don’t tell me what the facts are — tell me what I want to hear.”
Opposition to that attitude brought out as many as 1,000 people — primarily scientists — to a march on Parliament Hill on Tuesday. It was as unlikely and awkward a protest as you’re likely to see — but at the same time, it was an interesting bellwether.
The federal Conservative government seems to be hellbent on reshaping this country in its own image. Science is part of that equation, it seems, only as a means to an end. If the government wants more development in the oil patch, it seems to think it’s reasonable to chop away at environmental oversight and fisheries research. If it wants to help business, it seems to think the best route is to focus government spending on funding innovation instead of basic science — in other words, providing the research and development that companies used to pay for out of their own pockets, meaning the taxpayer simply antes up for a different kind of corporate welfare.
One thing the Tories might not have thought about before poking the science anthill with the typical Tory blunt stick: these are smart people with long memories, smart people who spend their lives training the next generation of thinkers and doers in this country.
Focus on the danger in that little equation.
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David Suzuki is a severely biased shill whose celebrity and ego has led him into a career of "the end justifies the means" rants. Calling him a scientist is a scathing indictment of science.