The news headlines across Canada are filling with stories of
the current federal government’s jettisoning of science programmes. It is correctly an assault on federal government
science consistent with the modus
operandi of this government, e.g., their attacks on the environmental laws, environmental NGOs, and international aid programmes
to name a few. The attacks appear to begin
as a goal derived from a decision on a perceived black or white issue followed
by the “put your head in the sand and don’t stop the attack until the goal is
achieved” assault. Never deviate from
the plan; our decision is correct, we are elected (regardless of electoral
flaws or dubious manipulations) and therefore the chosen ones; it matters not
what new information we are given; and in the language the current government
probably best understands, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
Not all of this behaviour is bad. It is good to think about and discuss issues
and try to find solutions including changing how we have done things in the
past. But it is a very serious problem with
guaranteed consequences when we change things we don’t understand. Most of us can attest that
in a fit of frustration with a non-functional mechanical or electrical device,
we have fought to open it up, dismantle it, and then reassemble it only to
learn the expensive lesson that we pooched it forever.
This is what is happening with our “device” we call the federal
government. The device has some
problems, the decision makers have decided to fix it, they have looked at a
piece called federal science, they don’t understand how it works, fits, or
functions, and so they are discarding it as non-essential. And as we will learn in the near future, as
we always do, there was a reason that piece was in the device. It may need to be fixed, but the device can’t
work without it.
To understand why federal science programmes are a part of a
functional government device, we need to first understand how science works. Science is the study of the world around us, or
in simple terms our environment. Art and
other disciplines also study our world, but science is further defined by a
process of advancement of knowledge we call a standardized method: observe the
world around us and collect data, hypothesize about meaning and predict results
of hypotheses, test predictions to confirm or reject hypotheses, and generate
new questions and quests for data (the hypothetico-deductive method if you care
to look it up). Scientists are wrapped
up in some or all of these activities within the realm of the world they study,
i.e., the disciplines of science. Science
is also divided into questions that have immediate relevance to us often called
“applied” sciences such as engineering and human medicine, and questions that
are important for advancing understanding, but not necessarily of immediate
need that are sometimes referred to as “pure” science, e.g., identifying all
the species of the oceans. These terms
are not accurate descriptors, but I’ll keep them for this anecdote. Pure science proceeds slowly and is driven by
financial grants mostly from governments for scholarly activities such as
writing journal articles about studies and experiments. It typically happens at universities. Much of applied science is driven by markets
for products or services and therefore it can respond quickly and with
significantly more funding than pure science.
It occurs in both universities and the private sector.
Applied science also includes questions not driven by market
forces but rather society needs, e.g., how much exposure of a chemical is safe
for humans or how much industrial/human/agricultural effluent can we safely
discharge to natural environments. It also
includes the undertaking of long-term monitoring of environmental conditions necessary
for detecting change in natural systems, i.e., diagnosing when they become sick. These are clearly very important questions
for humans and their environment, but such science has little immediate market
potential. In fact, it can be mundane
and lack innovation because it is driven by public policy and not novel inquiry
and it sometimes requires 20+ years to gather enough data to test predictions. Unfortunately, there is minimal private
funding for this type of science. It is
unattractive to academic scientists at universities because the financial support
models for their research depend on innovation, novel ideas, and regular
publication of results. This realm of
applied science is as critical for us as any other science and therefore societies
all over the world provide direct support via government research scientists
and their teams. This is why you should
care about federal science. It is one of
the ways in which our society directly protects itself and prepares for living
in the future. And if you don’t believe
such science is a fundamentally, economic issue, then think about the cost of
cleaning up the environment after the Exxon Valdez oil spill (>$5B) or the Deepwater
Horizon oil spill (>$37B directly and an estimated >$20B lost to local
economies).
Had the inner politicos of the current government asked why
federal science programmes were required, they would have learned the essential
function of this piece of the “device”, and thus why federal science can’t be
jettisoned without consequences for our society. The current government may have understood
and accepted the risk of not controlling this science, but such behaviour is
akin to running into the Canadian Boreal forest at midnight without a light and
hoping that you won’t hit a tree. You
can say that someone else will shine a light into the forest, what the
government says when it suggests the necessary science will be done at
universities and in the private sector, but there is no guarantee that someone
will build the appropriate light or shine it where you need it when you need it. There is a better chance of missing trees if
support for the light building and appropriate light-shining are being supplied,
i.e., you planned and provided funding programmes (not the case now in
Canada). Even so, there is still no way
to guarantee you will get the lighting you need when you need it to ensure your
safety. That is why we do this kind of
science within government; to guarantee we are safe and protected in the
future.
There is still time to stop the current assault on federal
science before it incurs what is certainly a costly future for us. Alas, the assault is unlikely to stop because
the current government has blinkered itself and covered its ears to logic even
when the truth affects their oft-stated bottom-line, i.e., the economy. It is not wrong to make changes in how we do
federal science including cost cutting; however, jettisoning something because
you don’t understand it or don’t want to understand it is a fool’s folly. Moreover, scrambling the communication spin
of such political follies and then forcing the delivery on bureaucrats who know
better but are forced by politics into this unpleasant position, and Ministers
and party staff who are similarly intelligent enough to understand this folly
is, in addition to being disingenuous to those of us who voted for these
politicians, rather 'Grinchy'.
“The Grinch had been caught by this little
Who daughter
Who'd got out of bed for a cup of cold
water.
She stared at the Grinch and said,
"Santy Claus, why,
"Why are you taking our Christmas tree?
WHY?"
But, you know, that old Grinch was so smart
and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up
quick!
"Why, my sweet little tot," the
fake Santy Claus lied,
"There's a light on this tree that
won't light on one side.
"So I'm taking it home to my workshop,
my dear.
"I'll fix it up there. Then I'll bring
it back here."
Seuss, Dr. 1957. How the Grinch Stole Christmas! New York: Random House.
