[Thor]

Originally Posted by rayne008

Can someone elaborate where this "government attack on science" comes from? I see a couple articles from May 2013, but am not sure if that is what everyone is talking about.

This excellent blog from science blogs covers it nicely:

http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/...al-indictment/

The list is LONG and depressing...

Update 2013.05.27. Over thirty new items added to the list. Thanks to everyone who made suggestions either in the comments or via email.

Additionally, two quick points.

First, as to why this extended series of posts is named the way it is. I am mindful that this blog is hosted on a US-based site so my main aim is to make “The Canadian War on Science” both catchy and mostly meaningful to a broad audience. In that spirit, something like “The Canadian Conservative Government’s War on …” at least initially seemed to me to be too wordy. It’s also fairly common parlance to refer to the government of a foreign country, no matter the internal situation, just by that country’s name. When I say that “France is doing this” or “Japan is doing that,” I of course mean the French or Japanese governments. It’s a kind of shorthand, if you will, that makes more sense on a non-Canadian site where I’m talking about Canada. So, I’m sort of accepting that while this usage will be somewhat annoying to Canadians, it’s both a useful shorthand and the precedent I’ve set for myself.

Second, on scope. I’ve mostly stuck to the natural sciences, environment and some public health topics here rather than looking more broadly at how the Conservative government treats the humanities, social sciences, memory and heritage institutions and just generally any sort of evidence-based policy- or decision-making. That’s purely for reasons of focus and time. It was quite time-consuming to compile this list initially so I was quite aware of just getting it finished. I’ve also received a huge number of suggestions both in the comments and by email and checking and adding those has also been a significant task. While I have in the past blogged about the challenges at, say, Library and Archives Canada, I decided that that would be out of focus for the purposes of this list. I would definitely encourage anyone out there to tackle creating a broader or a differently focused one. I have put this list under a CC0 licences so please feel free to take what I’ve done as a starting point.

Update 2013.10.06. Fifty-two new items added to the list, as detailed here. If I’ve missed anything or there are any errors or if I’ve duplicated some items, please let me know.

Update 2014.10.24. Update with 140 new items, as detailed here. Please let me know if there are any errors or omissions.