The shredding of evidence: some holiday reading

Journalist Chris Turner’s new book, “The War on Science: Muzzled Scientists and Wilful Blindness in Stephen Harper's Canada” details, exactly as promised in the title, the devastation of scientific research and evidence-based policy in this country under the leadership of Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party. The title borrows a phrase originating in the Chris Mooney’s 1996 book  “The Republican War on Science”, which described a similarly ideological agenda in the United States under George W. Bush, and which has been adapted to contemporary Canada by David Suzuki as well as less prominent critics of the Canadian Conservatives. Now, when the pro-Harper National Post publishes a book review (by Jessica Warner, a frequent reviewer and a scholar of history and philosophy of science and technology) that describes its subject as “a tremendously important book” that you owe it to your country to read, one almost wants to be suspicious (though its Financial Post carries an opinion piece by Philip Cross titled “What war on Science?”). But The War on Science is a precise account of four ways in which the Conservative government has abused their authority and our trust, as Warner puts it. Environmental and scientific portfolios have been entrusted to anti-science, climate change-skeptic, and simply evidence-based policy-illiterate ministers. Funding has been cut to regulatory groups that are guided by evidence. Environmental groups are being shut out of de...
Source: Open Medicine Blog - - Category: Medical Publishers Authors: Source Type: blogs