Alan Finkel, Australia’s Chief Scientist, is blind to the rampant censorship that’s been going on for 30 years:
Australia’s chief scientist has slammed Donald Trump’s attempt to censor environmental data, saying the US president’s behaviour was comparable to the manipulation of science by the Soviet Union.
Speaking at a scientific roundtable in Canberra on Monday, Alan Finkel warned science was “literally under attack” in the United States and urged his colleagues to keep giving “frank and fearless” advice despite the political opposition.
“The Trump administration has mandated that scientific data published by the United States Environmental Protection Agency from last week going forward has to undergo review by political appointees before that data can be published on the EPA website or elsewhere,” he said.
Governments have been attacking science for decades
The real Soviet style censorship works by cutting funding to inconvenient research, giving awards and grants to namecalling activists, and funding incompetent psychologists who pump out sympathetic press releases that smear researchers who find the “wrong” result. It works by supporting a demonising culture that means honest scientists face exile, insults, threats to be sacked, evicted, blackballed, terminated, punished, vilified and bullied, not to mention government funded fun aimed at blowing up your kids (as a joke), as well as entertainment about killing people like you, and in some cases, talk of a RICO investigation.
The role of Chief Scientist is obviously not to inform and challenge the PM, but to be the yes-man face for PR purposes.