Do the 'death of evidence' warnings of Canadian scientists alarm you?

Some scientists say the federal government's policies have dealt such a blow to research that the Grim Reaper is an appropriate mascot for their "Death of Evidence" rally. (deathofevidence.ca)

Concerned scientists are hauling a likeness of the Grim Reaper to Parliament Hill to warn Canadians that they are witnessing the "death of evidence."

"Scientists are generally not agitators, but this continuous set of decisions has got very many scientists hot under the collar," says Scott Findlay, a rally organizer and University of Ottawa ecology professor.

Some of the decisions that have distressed typically dispassionate scientists include:

• Scrapping the mandatory long-form census, which the journal Nature argued will lower the quality and raise the cost of information.
• Ending funding for the Polar Environmental Atmospheric Research Laboratory in Eureka, Nunavut, which has been tracking ozone depletion, air quality and climate change in the High Arctic since 2005.
• Cutting the departmental budgets of Environment Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Library and Archives Canada, the National Research Council Canada, Statistics Canada and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. · Closing the Experimental Lakes Area, a world-renowned research facility in northwestern Ontario.
  
• Deciding not to renew the national science adviser.
• Limiting access to federal government scientists, which some have called "muzzling" and which has drawn international attention
• Ending the National Roundtable on the Environment. Findlay says many in the scientific community suspect the federal government is deliberately thwarting their ability to gather evidence and bring facts forward during public debate.
  

For many, the sweeping changes contained in the Bill C-38 - on everything from the Fisheries Act to environmental assessments - pushed them to their breaking point.

"It definitely seems to us these cuts are not just part of fighting the deficit, that there is a systematic attack on science and the preferential cutting of programs that may produce results not in line with the Conservative agenda," says Katie Gibbs, a PhD student at the University of Ottawa and one of the organizers of the rally.

For its part, the government has stood firmly behind its cost-cutting decisions, pointing to the need to reduce the deficit. It also argues that the changes it is making will boost efficiency and notes that it is making what it says is a $1.1 billion "investment" in research, development and innovation over the next five years.

The government says it has an excellent track record for basic research, but that Canada has lagged behind peer nations on applied research and commercialization. It says it's moving to correct that, but not at the expense of basic research.

Do the "death of evidence" warnings of Canadian scientists alarm you? Why or why not?

Are you satisfied with the government's response to the concerns of researchers? Are you convinced that the federal government is deliberately thwarting science?


(This survey is not scientific. Results are based on readers' replies.)