The Tories' War On Data

[Smallc]

The word environment never should have been in the section related to the navigable waters protection act. It's probably where people got the strange idea that it was meant for environmental protection.

[eyeball]

Interesting...it looks like the reluctance to invest in and require access to public information / data may be a Canadian trait and value. A quick wiki peak reveals a lot of barriers and infighting long before Harper's Tories came to power. It has been crippled and underfunded for a very long time. So this is just political infighting for election points.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_in_Canada#History

I definitely regard this as an issue between the governed and government given a lifetime of experience at the hands of fisheries and fish habitat managers parsing, ignoring and outright fudging science at the behest of right and left federal and provincial political masters for decades.

What's troubling me is how much easy acceptance if not support for even more official ignorance and less information there is - it's a very weird sort of sycophancy that transcends 'normal' partisanship.

[bush_cheney2004]

Nobody can delete data like Harper:

OK....but where does the data go ? Aren't there basic public and private archival processes in place to preserve such data ? Does "Harper" control every library and university ?

[bush_cheney2004]

I definitely regard this as an issue between the governed and government given a lifetime of experience at the hands of fisheries and fish habitat managers parsing, ignoring and outright fudging science at the behest of right and left federal and provincial political masters for decades.

OK...maybe the underlying barriers stem from the basic way that Canada is confederated.....Ottawa, provinces, and territories without any basic standards.

[Evening Star]

I am saying that your assertion that academic freedom exists is false. In any field conformity to the dominate view is enforced by the peer review system. That said, the Conservative position on the census is strange and if you want to say their actions make it much harder to do some types of analyses then I would agree.

Yes, but it goes further than this.

I recognise the flaws with the peer review system but I do think it's better, and more tolerant of diversity, than the alternatives I can imagine (direct state control, commercial marketplace mechanisms). I would also have an easier time believing that your view on this is not politically driven if you didn't refer to 'left-wing academics' as the problem. Do the social mechanisms you describe also apply to e.g. Friedmanites in the field of economics and Straussians in political philosophy?

[TimG]

I recognise the flaws with the peer review system but I do think it's better, and more tolerant of diversity, than the alternatives I can imagine (direct state control, commercial marketplace mechanisms).

It really depends on the field and there is a real need to separate reasonable dissenting views from quackery. The only way I can see to change this is to place a value on dissenting views that is equal to the value placed on academic freedom. As it stands today there is a strong tendency to label any dissenting view as quackery even when an honest assessment of the position does not support that characterization.

Do the social mechanisms you describe also apply to e.g. Friedmanites in the field of economics and Straussians in political philosophy?

Aren't these simply subsets of a larger field. Economics has many schools:

http://www.pragcap.com/a-cheat-sheet-for-understanding-the-different-schools-of-economics/

And the fact that the people within a school dogmatically protect their views is mitigated by the fact that other schools of economics exist and allow alternate views to get funded and published. The tribal nature of academics is only a problem in fields when only one school of thought exists and I am only aware of left wing examples but I would not be surprised to find some fields where the dominate school is right wing. I will adjust my framing of the problem if you have any examples.

Edited September 20, 2015 by TimG

[scribblet]

They didn’t destroy books and burn documents indiscriminately because there's some '

war on data' that’s just part of the disinformation going around… you really shouldn't believe everything the unions tell you.
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/08/26/anti-harper-war-on-science-story-borders-on-hoax

As for the Manitoba Library: The library has been closed and the collection has been relocated. In preparation for the closure, the librarians of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) identified the unique materials in this library and arranged for their transfer to the consolidated DFO library in Sidney BC. The remaining materials are duplicates or fall outside the subject disciplines pertinent to the department’s mandate.

Edited September 20, 2015 by scribblet

[On Guard for Thee]

They didn’t destroy books and burn documents indiscriminately because there's some '

war on data' that’s just part of the disinformation going around… you really shouldn't believe everything the unions tell you.

http://www.torontosun.com/2015/08/26/anti-harper-war-on-science-story-borders-on-hoax

As for the Manitoba Library: The library has been closed and the collection has been relocated. In preparation for the closure, the librarians of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) identified the unique materials in this library and arranged for their transfer to the consolidated DFO library in Sidney BC. The remaining materials are duplicates or fall outside the subject disciplines pertinent to the department’s mandate.

He's canned ~ 2000 government scientists, that should tell you something. And then there's this:

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/vanishing-canada-why-were-all-losers-in-ottawas-war-on-data/

We will have a lot of rebuilding to do post Oct 19th.

[Smallc]

He's canned ~ 2000 government scientists, that should tell you something.

Pretty sure a lot of people in government have lost their jobs over the last few years.

[On Guard for Thee]

Pretty sure a lot of people in government have lost their jobs over the last few years.

I wonder why he picks on scientists so heavy.

[eyeball]

OK...maybe the underlying barriers stem from the basic way that Canada is confederated.....Ottawa, provinces, and territories without any basic standards.

I don't know, mostly gross incompetence, venal self-interest and good old fashioned cronyism is my guess - and if Canada was confederated under similar circumstances then yeah there's barriers alright.

[bush_cheney2004]

I don't know, mostly gross incompetence, venal self-interest and good old fashioned cronyism is my guess - and if Canada was confederated under similar circumstances then yeah there's barriers alright.

Based on my understanding of the Gun Registry fiasco from an information technology project perspective, and the resulting politics before, during and after its demise, there does seem to be an extra level of mistrust and/or incompetence. Big Data thrives in the private sector at many levels, spurred on by database, tools, and storage vendors. Sometimes we would just laugh at the antiquated government data warehouse methods and governance practices.

[scribblet]

I don't know, mostly gross incompetence, venal self-interest and good old fashioned cronyism is my guess - and if Canada was confederated under similar circumstances then yeah there's barriers alright.

"venal self interest" really, that's more than a stretch of the imagination.

[cybercoma]

This is just another timely slag (coincidental of course) at the Conservative government.

This timely issue has been criticized by social researchers and policy analysts for years. There's nothing "timely" about it.

[cybercoma]

Canada will not spend the kind of money it takes to create, maintain, and provide access to such data, regardless of ruling party.

And that's the cold hard truth, but we have even less information than that now with the cuts made under the Harper Government™.

[cybercoma]

OK....but where does the data go ? Aren't there basic public and private archival processes in place to preserve such data ? Does "Harper" control every library and university ?

Not when they're destroying the archives and libraries.

It's hard not to think of these things when reading stories of the closure of seven of the eleven Department of Fisheries and Oceans libraries across Canada. Local media outlets have reported dumpsters full of books.[/size]

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/desmog-canada/destruction-of-dfo-libraries_b_4569748.html

Fish and water scientists turned into scavengers this week, descending on a soon-to-be-closed federal library to salvage hundreds of books, journals and rare reports that are about to be tossed.[/size]

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/scientists-go-fishing-for-old-documents-234554691.html

Federal Fisheries and Oceans Minister Gail Shea has told Parliament that her department discarded up to 84,000 items from seven libraries across the country, spending nearly $23,000 in what it has described as a “culling” process.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada is one of more than a dozen federal departments shutting down libraries and converting documents into digital formats. Government officials have said the goal was to reduce public spending while improving access to reference materials.

But in a document tabled Monday, Shea said her department wasn’t tracking all the details of its efforts to save electronic copies of materials prior to their disposal.

http://o.canada.com/news/harper-government-spends-23000-to-cull-materials-from-seven-libraries

Make no mistake about it. There's an archival process. The Harper Government™ doesn't give a crap about processes and procedures though.

Edited September 21, 2015 by cybercoma

[ToadBrother]

It really depends on the field and there is a real need to separate reasonable dissenting views from quackery. The only way I can see to change this is to place a value on dissenting views that is equal to the value placed on academic freedom. As it stands today there is a strong tendency to label any dissenting view as quackery even when an honest assessment of the position does not support that characterization.

This really is garbage. There are plenty of fields with considerable amounts of dissent, where dissenters aren't simply labeled quacks. Physics, linguistics and cosmology all have some considerable divergence on some key points, and yet even those publishing articles that challenge some mainstream view aren't just thrown out the door at peer review.

It absolutely fascinates me how the opponents of AGW are literally throwing science under a bus in an attempt to destroy a single theory.

[Argus]

He's just saying that other governments do it, too.

What I'm saying is that Harper is doing pretty much what the previous governments did, and nobody cared about it then. Furthermore, I expect the next government presuming it to be non-Conservative to act in a similar fashion and I expect none of you so appalled at what Harper is doing and what a terrible threat to freedom, democracy and the happiness of children he is will give a damn.

[Argus]

I wonder why he picks on scientists so heavy.

Neither you, nor anyone else, has presented any credible evidence that this is the case.

Edited September 21, 2015 by Argus

[ToadBrother]

What I'm saying is that Harper is doing pretty much what the previous governments did, and nobody cared about it then. Furthermore, I expect the next government presuming it to be non-Conservative to act in a similar fashion and I expect none of you so appalled at what Harper is doing and what a terrible threat to freedom, democracy and the happiness of children he is will give a damn.

Which other government killed the long form census?

[Argus]

Which other government killed the long form census?

Ah yes, the mandatory long form, the heart and soul of the nation...

I guarantee you if Chretien had done it you would have shrugged and not cared, thats if the media even bothered to cover it as more than a three inch column on page six.

[TimG]

This really is garbage. There are plenty of fields with considerable amounts of dissent

What exactly do you think the words "It really depends on the field " mean? I think most people would understand that it means that some fields don't have the same problems.

In another post I was extremely explicit: "The main exceptions are fields where it is possible to conduct controlled experiments that can potentially disprove a hypothesis."

It absolutely fascinates me how the opponents of AGW are literally throwing science under a bus in an attempt to destroy a single theory.

You are mixing up cause and effect. I had no reason to doubt the science until I looked into it. Once I looked at I realized the field is a cesspool of dubious statistical analyses driven by the need to publish and show obeisance to the AGW cause. I have also read of similar problems with other fields like medical research. Which is why the first thing I look for are hypothesis that can falsified in the real world. Without that connection to the real world it is simply too easy for opinion to get treated as fact.

Lastly, my opinion of the science is independent of my opinion on policy issues. Climate science, as a field, could clean up its act but I still would feel that adaptation as required is the preferable policy choice with mitigation when and only when CO2 free alternatives are comparable in cost to the CO2 emitting versions. This was my opinion in the 1990s when I accepted the IPCC reports and gospel and it is my opinion today.

Edited September 21, 2015 by TimG

[On Guard for Thee]

Neither you, nor anyone else, has presented any credible evidence that this is the case.

Not my fault if you chose not to read links posted previously.

[Argus]

Not my fault if you chose not to read links posted previously.

None of the links contain any evidence. So x number of scientists were laid off? So? How many were laid off when Chretien was downsizing?

Plus, if you're cutting the budget, what do you cut first, people's unemployment, pensions, health care, or some guy studying penguin droppings and the database where he's recorded the information from ten years back?

The whole meme that Harper hates academics and science is preposterous idiocy born of a paranoid ideological belief that conservatives are not merely people who disagree, but are morally deficient BECAUSE they disagree. It is self-aggrandizing nonsense that's designed to feed the fragile ego of the Left and reinforce their belief in their smug sense of moral superiority.

[ToadBrother]

Ah yes, the mandatory long form, the heart and soul of the nation...

I guarantee you if Chretien had done it you would have shrugged and not cared, thats if the media even bothered to cover it as more than a three inch column on page six.

I'm not a Liberal lackey, so your accusation is completely off the mark.