In a 2004 New York Times Magazine article, journalist Ron Suskind recounts a conversation he had with an aide to former U.S. President George Bush:
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who believe 'solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works any more,' he continued. 'We're an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality.'"
That seems like an odd thing to hear from someone on the right of the political spectrum - the aide was later identified as Karl Rove, chief architect of Bush's electoral victories - given that it sounds a lot like the left-wing postmodernism the right has always attacked.
Indeed, Rove's suggestion that reality is not discovered but created - and in curiously Marxist fashion, created by those with power - is precisely what postmodernists have been preaching for decades. And it means that all methods for discovering truth - science, for example - must be doomed to failure, since there's no such truth to be had.
Although originally a philosophy of the far left, and one that made the left virulently anti-science, it has in recent years been embraced by the American right, as is evidenced by the quote from Rove. It is also arguably responsible for much of the anti-science policy that has emanated from the Republican party in recent years.
Now just as such sentiments have crossed party lines, it appears they've also crossed the border and, like many other elements of Bush administration policy, been absorbed wholesale by the Conservative Party of Canada. The Conservatives have been accused of being anti-science since they came to power in 2006, but things really heated up this week, thanks to an outré piece of performance art entitled The Death of Evidence.
On Wednesday, much to the puzzlement of tourists and Ottawa residents alike, scientists marched on the streets of the capital as part of a mock funeral procession, complete with death, and a coffin, ostensibly holding evidence - the idea being, of course, that the Conservatives have killed science.
Yet the spectators weren't the only ones who were puzzled. Some participants and journalists also seemed confused, as they suggested that the government's failure to piggyback all policy on the latest science amounts to incontrovertible evidence of the Conservatives' anti-science agenda. However, such complaints merely display lack of under-standing of how policy works, much as scientists frequently lament that politicians don't understand how science works. Policy-makers are influenced by many different values in their work, including economic, moral, political and epistemic values, and often must strike compromises among competing values in designing policy.
This is true of all governments, and hence not following to the letter what the latest studies suggest does not constitute evidence of a war of science. No, to arrive at that conclusion, we need clear evidence of a systematic program of hiding, distorting and eliminating the, as Karl Rove might say, "judicious study of discernible reality." And when it comes to the federal Conservatives, that evidence is not hard to find.
For example, from virtually the moment the Conservatives took power, scientists in the employ of the government have not been permitted to speak freely to journalists, at least not without the con-sent of media relations officers. This approach, which has much in common with the way cults operate, effectively limits the dissemination, to the public, of the fruits of scientific endeavours. So too does the elimination of the National Science Advisor position, which the Conservatives axed in 2008.
In fact, government control over information, scientific and otherwise, has become so intense that Canada's freedom-of-information ranking has now fallen to 51st out of 89 countries scored by the Halifax-based Centre for Law and Democracy. That places us below such bastions of freedom as Angola, Colombia and Niger.
Yet as totalitarian governments have always learned, evidence has a way of getting out. And when uncomfortable evidence rears its head, the Conservatives have been right there, ready to twist it off. Consider for example, the 2008 Health Canada report on chrysotile asbestos.
After trying, and ultimately failing, to hide the report, Industry Minister Christian Paradis falsely claimed that panel members disagreed about the safe use of chrysotile - a move that prompted the panel's chair to speak out about the "gross misuse and misinterpretation" of the report.
Similarly, after 130 physicians and scientists accused former Health Minister Tony Clement of misrepresenting and suppressing the scientific findings on Vancouver's supervised injection site, Clement proceeded to, well, misrepresent and suppress the findings.
Indeed, Clement convened his own hand-picked panel of experts to assess the site's value, and after the expert panel's report was submitted, two members of the panel lamented that Clement misrepresented their findings. And if that weren't enough, Clement then tried to pass off a poorly writ-ten opinion piece about the site as the equivalent of two dozen published studies - a clear indication of the value Clement places on science.
Now as you can see, this practice of hiding and distorting science takes a lot of energy and effort. A much easier route is to simply ensure that the evidence is never found - that the science is never conducted. And this seems the preferred strategy of the federal Conservatives, particularly, though not only, when it comes to the environment.
Consider two recent decisions: First, the Conservatives announced on May 12 that Canada's Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) will be closed next year. This facility, which has been operating in Northwestern Ontario since 1968, includes 58 lakes and their catchments.
The ELA therefore offers an opportunity for whole-ecosystem research - far better than conducting research in a laboratory - and has contributed to our understanding and managing of algal blooms, acid rain, mercury pollution and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, among other things.
Second, in February, the Conservatives announced the closure of the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), a high arctic station that monitors the polar atmosphere and provides opportunities for, among other things, testing climate models. So much for the Conservatives' interest in studying the environment. But the decision that most clearly displays the Conservatives' lack of interest in engaging in the judicious study of discernible reality has to be the elimination of the long form census. This single decision will make it difficult or impossible to study thousands of aspects of our natural and human environments, from the economy to health care to municipal design.
Indeed, the Conservatives' systematic program of hiding, distorting and eliminating the evidence makes it difficult for anyone to study reality. And as long as people can't study it - as long as they can't detail how the environment is affected by various activities, or how government policies affect people's health - the Conservatives are free to create whatever reality they prefer, while we are doomed to live in it.
Original Article
Source: vancouver sun
Author: Peter McKnight
"The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who believe 'solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works any more,' he continued. 'We're an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality.'"
That seems like an odd thing to hear from someone on the right of the political spectrum - the aide was later identified as Karl Rove, chief architect of Bush's electoral victories - given that it sounds a lot like the left-wing postmodernism the right has always attacked.
Indeed, Rove's suggestion that reality is not discovered but created - and in curiously Marxist fashion, created by those with power - is precisely what postmodernists have been preaching for decades. And it means that all methods for discovering truth - science, for example - must be doomed to failure, since there's no such truth to be had.
Although originally a philosophy of the far left, and one that made the left virulently anti-science, it has in recent years been embraced by the American right, as is evidenced by the quote from Rove. It is also arguably responsible for much of the anti-science policy that has emanated from the Republican party in recent years.
Now just as such sentiments have crossed party lines, it appears they've also crossed the border and, like many other elements of Bush administration policy, been absorbed wholesale by the Conservative Party of Canada. The Conservatives have been accused of being anti-science since they came to power in 2006, but things really heated up this week, thanks to an outré piece of performance art entitled The Death of Evidence.
On Wednesday, much to the puzzlement of tourists and Ottawa residents alike, scientists marched on the streets of the capital as part of a mock funeral procession, complete with death, and a coffin, ostensibly holding evidence - the idea being, of course, that the Conservatives have killed science.
Yet the spectators weren't the only ones who were puzzled. Some participants and journalists also seemed confused, as they suggested that the government's failure to piggyback all policy on the latest science amounts to incontrovertible evidence of the Conservatives' anti-science agenda. However, such complaints merely display lack of under-standing of how policy works, much as scientists frequently lament that politicians don't understand how science works. Policy-makers are influenced by many different values in their work, including economic, moral, political and epistemic values, and often must strike compromises among competing values in designing policy.
This is true of all governments, and hence not following to the letter what the latest studies suggest does not constitute evidence of a war of science. No, to arrive at that conclusion, we need clear evidence of a systematic program of hiding, distorting and eliminating the, as Karl Rove might say, "judicious study of discernible reality." And when it comes to the federal Conservatives, that evidence is not hard to find.
For example, from virtually the moment the Conservatives took power, scientists in the employ of the government have not been permitted to speak freely to journalists, at least not without the con-sent of media relations officers. This approach, which has much in common with the way cults operate, effectively limits the dissemination, to the public, of the fruits of scientific endeavours. So too does the elimination of the National Science Advisor position, which the Conservatives axed in 2008.
In fact, government control over information, scientific and otherwise, has become so intense that Canada's freedom-of-information ranking has now fallen to 51st out of 89 countries scored by the Halifax-based Centre for Law and Democracy. That places us below such bastions of freedom as Angola, Colombia and Niger.
Yet as totalitarian governments have always learned, evidence has a way of getting out. And when uncomfortable evidence rears its head, the Conservatives have been right there, ready to twist it off. Consider for example, the 2008 Health Canada report on chrysotile asbestos.
After trying, and ultimately failing, to hide the report, Industry Minister Christian Paradis falsely claimed that panel members disagreed about the safe use of chrysotile - a move that prompted the panel's chair to speak out about the "gross misuse and misinterpretation" of the report.
Similarly, after 130 physicians and scientists accused former Health Minister Tony Clement of misrepresenting and suppressing the scientific findings on Vancouver's supervised injection site, Clement proceeded to, well, misrepresent and suppress the findings.
Indeed, Clement convened his own hand-picked panel of experts to assess the site's value, and after the expert panel's report was submitted, two members of the panel lamented that Clement misrepresented their findings. And if that weren't enough, Clement then tried to pass off a poorly writ-ten opinion piece about the site as the equivalent of two dozen published studies - a clear indication of the value Clement places on science.
Now as you can see, this practice of hiding and distorting science takes a lot of energy and effort. A much easier route is to simply ensure that the evidence is never found - that the science is never conducted. And this seems the preferred strategy of the federal Conservatives, particularly, though not only, when it comes to the environment.
Consider two recent decisions: First, the Conservatives announced on May 12 that Canada's Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) will be closed next year. This facility, which has been operating in Northwestern Ontario since 1968, includes 58 lakes and their catchments.
The ELA therefore offers an opportunity for whole-ecosystem research - far better than conducting research in a laboratory - and has contributed to our understanding and managing of algal blooms, acid rain, mercury pollution and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, among other things.
Second, in February, the Conservatives announced the closure of the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), a high arctic station that monitors the polar atmosphere and provides opportunities for, among other things, testing climate models. So much for the Conservatives' interest in studying the environment. But the decision that most clearly displays the Conservatives' lack of interest in engaging in the judicious study of discernible reality has to be the elimination of the long form census. This single decision will make it difficult or impossible to study thousands of aspects of our natural and human environments, from the economy to health care to municipal design.
Indeed, the Conservatives' systematic program of hiding, distorting and eliminating the evidence makes it difficult for anyone to study reality. And as long as people can't study it - as long as they can't detail how the environment is affected by various activities, or how government policies affect people's health - the Conservatives are free to create whatever reality they prefer, while we are doomed to live in it.
Original Article
Source: vancouver sun
Author: Peter McKnight
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