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UK scientists muzzled by government

Sean

Senior Member
Messages
7,378
http://www.theguardian.com/science/...tists-over-chilling-effect-of-new-media-rules

The revised code was introduced with immediate effect two days before the spring budget, and has been circulated to Britain’s research funding councils and government research laboratories. Among the government-funded centres affected by the changes are the Met Office, the Department for Transport’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch, and the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control.

Under the new code, scientists and engineers employed at government expense must get ministerial approval before they can talk to the media about any of their research, whether it involves GM crops, flu vaccines, the impact of pesticides on bees, or the famously obscure Higgs boson.

And who said the British have lost their sense of irony and farce?
Fiona Fox, head of the Science Media Centre, who also signed the letter, said the revised code would have a “chilling effect” on government scientists who are often already cautious to speak to the media.
 

Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
I am told by sources close to Downing Street that this is all because the Prime Minister has become very worried about the weather forecast. People are spending much too much time listening to the forecast and not making enough money on dodgy share deals that they can ask his dad's advice about stashing away in tax havens.

So he has had the clever idea of saying that the met office has to get ministerial approval for sending out 'sunny spells and scattered showers' to the BBC and ITV. With luck the minister will be holidaying in Barbados, having heard about the showers and so the forecst will be delayed for five days.

It is this sort of inspired action by our conservative government that has got us out of the hole that Labour left us in and almost nearly not quite reduced the deficit by 1% of what they said they would. So make sure those of you who can, vote for Dave in May. Otherwise you may be voting for May in about five years time!
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
A concerted organized massive civil disobedience campaign on this issue might well force this issue and make everyone see the farce this is. However this would take time to organize, and probably wont happen soon as other options would be tried first, and even then scientists are not used to getting involved in politics.
 

SOC

Senior Member
Messages
7,849
Under the new code, scientists and engineers employed at government expense must get ministerial approval before they can talk to the media about any of their research, whether it involves GM crops, flu vaccines, the impact of pesticides on bees, or the famously obscure Higgs boson.
OMG! We sure don't want people running off their mouths and being indiscreet about... Higgs bosons! :eek: :rolleyes:

Honestly, this new code is seriously scary. Government approval is necessary before you talk to the media about your research of any sort? What is this, Animal Farm? WTH is going on over there? If I were a researcher in the UK, I'd be looking for a post in another country. When the government starts controlling what scientists can say, basic science takes a trip down the outhouse hole. Science has to at least try to be about honest investigation, not what is politically expedient.

This reminds me of the (probably fictitious, but who knows)* story about some US state that legislated pi to be 3.2 instead of the infinite irrational number it is in fact. Apparently some people think scientific (including mathematical) truth can be legislated.

*Nope, not fictitious. An arrogant physician in Indiana decided he knew a better way to calculate pi, decided to copywrite it, and offered to let the state government use his method if the state adopted his "mathematical truth" as state law. A bill was drafted and proposed to that effect.
Although Goodwin’s “proof” was anything but, he was pretty cocky about its infallibility. He didn’t just publish his faulty method in journals; he copyrighted it. Goodwin figured everyone would be lining up to use his revolutionary new trick, and his plan was to collect royalties from businesses and mathematicians who sought to exploit his method.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/30214/new-math-time-indiana-tried-change-pi-32

Fortunately, the bill in question was never passed into law.
 

worldbackwards

Senior Member
Messages
2,051
This is part of a trend in the UK. Not so long since, a lobbying bill was published which did nothing about third party lobbying for multi-nationals but incidentally managed to crack down on charities, trade unions, think tanks and just about everyone who might possibly be opposed to the government's slash and burn agenda, hampering them from speaking out in the run up to an election, or doing much else in fact.

There have also been attempts to get rid of legal challenges to the government, in order to stop 'vexatious' attempts to disrupt public policy (stop me if you've heard this one before...)
 
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jimells

Senior Member
Messages
2,009
Location
northern Maine
Our Dear Leaders must be seriously worried about the pitchforks. Most institutions are remarkably efficient when it comes to weeding out potential troublemakers, so there's little need for ham-fisted government censors. This applies to academic and media institutions and pretty much everywhere else.

Noam Chomsky tells a very interesting story about academic censorship in his book "Understanding Power". In 1984 a graduate student named Norman Finkelstein became interested in a best-selling book titled "From Time Immemorial" by Joan Peters:

The Fate of an Honest Intellectual said:
[It is a] scholarly-looking book with lots of footnotes, which purported to show that the Palestinians were all recent immigrants [i.e. to the Jewish-settled areas of the former Palestine, during the British mandate years of 1920 to 1948]. And it was very popular ... the Washington Post, the New York Times, everybody was just raving about it. Here was this book which proved that there were really no Palestinians!

... Norman Finkelstein, started reading through the book.. and it turned out that the whole thing was a hoax, it was completely faked: probably it had been put together by some intelligence agency or something like that. Well, Finkelstein wrote up a short paper of just preliminary findings ... and he sent it around to ... people who were interested in the topic, ... saying: "Here's what I've found in this book, do you think it's worth pursuing?"

Well, he got back one answer, from me. I told him, yeah, I think it's an interesting topic, but I warned him, if you follow this, you're going to get in trouble—because you're going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they're going to destroy you.

And Finkelstein's career was destroyed for many years. The rest of the story about how Chomsky help wreck the book's reputation is very interesting. Folks that want to understand how power really works will want to read it at his website.