Canadian Bureacracy Can't Answer Simple Question: What's This Study With NASA? 164
Saint Aardvark writes "It seemed like a pretty simple question about a pretty cool topic: an Ottawa newspaper wanted to ask Canada's National Research Council about a joint study with NASA on tracking falling snow in Canada. Conventional radar can see where it's falling, but not the amount — so NASA, in collaboration with the NRC, Environment Canada and a few universities, arranged flights through falling snow to analyse readings with different instruments. But when they contacted the NRC to get the Canadian angle, "it took a small army of staffers— 11 of them by our count — to decide how to answer, and dozens of emails back and forth to circulate the Citizen's request, discuss its motivation, develop their response, and "massage" its text." No interview was given: "I am not convinced we need an interview. A few lines are fine. Please let me see them first," says one civil servant in the NRC emails obtained by the newspaper under the Access to Information act. By the time the NRC finally sorted out a boring, technical response, the newspaper had already called up a NASA scientist and got all the info they asked for; it took about 15 minutes."
Harper gov't has politicized the environment. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Security (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not surprised that a request...was met with a bureaucratic response.
FTFY
What about talking directly to the scientists? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, right. Not allowed [nature.com] unless approved [slashdot.org] by the control freaks [www.cbc.ca] we have at the top of the political system at the moment.
I think it's time for ordinary Canadian citizens (and anyone else in the world that wants to help) to start firing off enough requests to Canadian government scientific institutions that we can eventually overwhelm the pinheads in charge of "messaging" and they let us speak with the people doing the work. We used to be able to do that easily, but it has been getting worse and worse over the years. It has achieved truly ridiculous levels of obfuscation with the current government. Scientists should be allowed to speak their minds on scientific matters of public concern. It's good research being paid for with OUR tax dollars. Stop trying to hide it from us for the sake of "controlling the message". If you want to save money, fire the expensive idiots in charge of the "messaging". Scientists are quite capable of delivering a useful message if you let them do their jobs.
If you ever wonder why scientific budgets in Canada continue to decline in terms of money available for research and scientific staff, but the "upper management" and "PR people" staff get bigger and bigger to manage the smaller pool of scientists, this is the answer. These people have nothing to do all day but spin the story to align with the politics of the day.
Re:Scientists like to be precise (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Harper has destroyed our government.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The American propaganda system is the best in the world.
Re:Harper has destroyed our government.. (Score:5, Insightful)
US-style 'controlling the message'.
Quoth TFS:
the newspaper had already called up a NASA scientist and got all the info they asked for; it took about 15 minutes.
Maybe it's not as "US-style" as you think it is.
Re:Harper has destroyed our government.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the US government is the only global entity that tries to control a party line? Lol
Other governments do the same, but the genius of the US system of "controlling the message" is that people living in the free world will openly defend it.
The lesson that politicians learned of Vietnam wasn't "war is bad", it was "never let a reporter tell the truth about war". Embedded journalists FTW.
Re:As a Canadian (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, finally someone gets it.
I've tried to explain this to people before and they start to get really mad. They say "But everyone needs a job", well no, not everyone needs a job. If all that you do is pointless busywork, thats not really a job, and wouldn't those people be better off enjoying themselves instead?
I've always thought that the whole point of technological progress is eventually everything would be automated and noone would *have* to work, and people could pursue their passions as work.
Also, what is going to happen when the size of the "service economy" is reduced due to technology and automation? This is starting to happen already, and you only have to look at the manufacturing industry to see what happens when it becomes cheap to automate something.
Where are all of these people going to work? I've spoken with scientists and students, and most of them think that everyone will just be augmented so all of these people offset by a dying service industry (why do we need this again?) will become capable of doing scientific work in the future. Yeah ok... Or maybe we could just reduce everyone's hours?
Oh well, nice to see that at least one other person gets it though.
Re:Bureacracy sucks but (Score:5, Insightful)
You've solved the dilemma right there. It took NASA *scientists* 15 minutes to do it where it took 51 *bureaucrats*. That is the definition of bureaucracy, the obfuscation of information. Seems they are doing their jobs perfectly.
Re:Scientists like to be precise (Score:4, Insightful)
Can't wait until he is turfed out.
Have you ever noticed that when a new government takes power, it very rarely reverses the stupid policies and shameful legislation perpetrated by the previous one? Politicians beat their breasts and flap their gums endlessly about their predecessors' mistakes, but once in power they seldom rectify them. So yes, it'll be a great day when Harper is given the bum's rush he so richly deserves; but we'll still be stuck with all the regressive, secretive, power-mongering, privacy-raping, freedom-destroying, corporation-fellating dictatorial BS legislation that dear Stephen is so busily ramming down our throats.
Re:Harper gov't has politicized the environment. (Score:2, Insightful)
He has evidenced over the past number of years a strong anti science agenda. He has fired scientists for talking to the press and IIRC even for publishing papers his government doesn't like. He has barred scientists from the National Research Council climate research from attending a number of conferences including United Nations climate conferences. This would be equivalent to barring experts from NOAA or NASA weather experts from attending. He even managed to find a way to bar other members of the government, including opposition parties from attending. When they were caught out in some lie, his minister of the environment had the gall to tell the opposition parties that if they wanted to make a certain point, they should have attended the conference they were barred from going to.
Lets just post allegations without names and dates so no one can check the story What scientists were fired? What exact conference were scientists barred from? Hod did he "bar other members of the government" from attending and who were these other members? What lie were they caught in?
Actually barring opposition parties from being seen as speaking for the government is quite common. Would any party in power want to give the opposition an international platform?
If you want to make allegations then please be specific or it comes off as blatant bashing.
Re:Bureacracy sucks but (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bureacracy sucks but (Score:5, Insightful)
Ordinarily there's little point in replying to an AC, but someone condescended to give you a mod point, so what the hell.
The idea that filtering news stories through political filters is to protect Canadians from bad information and those self centered, socialist scientists is, in a word, crap.
The Harper government has made it very clear - explicitly, actually, in government directives - that scientists who receive federal funding are not to the talk to the media without approval. This has been widely reported. They have cracked down hardest on environmental scientists (can't admit that companies are causing damage in the oil sands, shipping dangerous asbestos products, or damaging fisheries) and statisticians (you don't need data when you already know what policies you want to implement.) I'm sure you can think of other countries that have required their scientists to seek government approval before speaking.
It's a travesty, and one that any self respecting scientist sees for what it is - political manipulation to serve a cause that is neither left nor right wing, but corporatist and self-serving. Of course, you would realize this if you if you were actually a scientist.