Most government departments ‘fail to adequately support open communication between their researchers and the public,’ says a new report from the non-profit group Evidence for Democracy.
Photo Credit: Mason Trinca/Yakima Herald-Republic/Associated Press

Scientists cannot freely speak to the media: study

Most Canadian government scientists cannot openly speak to the media, according to an analysis of communications policies of various departments. The work was done by Evidence for Democracy, a non-profit group advocating for the transparent use of science and Simon Fraser University.

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Communications policies were not available publicly

“There’s been a lot of accusations in recent years that government scientists have been muzzled…” said Katie Gibbs, head of Evidence for Democracy. “And a recent survey of government scientists actually found that 90 per cent of them said that they could not speak freely about their research. So we decided it would be useful to have a systematic assessment of the media policies that govern these scientists.”

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“Democracy requires that we have an informed public that has all of the information and facts that they need to make up their mind on important issues,” says Katie Gibbs of Evidence for Democracy. © Nadia Collins

Researchers mostly had to use Canada’s Access to Information law in order to get information about the media polices from the various departments. “Even just getting the policies was very challenging and most of them were not available publicly on line,” said Gibbs.

Departments averaged a C- on openness

Once the communications policies were obtained, they were assessed on whether scientists were allowed to speak to the media, how many levels of approval they needed first, and whether they had to stick to approved talking points. The analysis also looked how much protection scientists had against political interference and what protection was offered to whistleblowers.

All departments received a C grade or lower except for the Department of National Defence. At the bottom of the list were Industry Canada, which oversees science and technology, and Natural Resources which both got an F grade. “So overall the media policies were really quite poor at facilitating open communication,” said Gibbs.

‘Democracy requires…an informed public’

A similar study was done a few years ago in the United States and subsequently things improved, noted Gibbs. She hopes the same will happen in Canada.

“This research is really paid for by taxpayers…so why shouldn’t we have access to it,” she said. “For me, it’s a question of our democracy. Democracy requires that we have an informed public that has all of the information and facts that they need to make up their mind on important issues. And I don’t see how we can have that unless our government scientists and researchers can really communicate openly with the public and the media.”

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