Not only does Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper muzzle government scientists, but now in a strange new twist he has begun taking the limelight for their discoveries.
One of the ships from the 1845 Franklin Expedition was found. The Franklin Expedition was sent to find a Northwest Passage from Europe to the western Americas or even Asia, through northern North America. This passage was never found until the modern era. Expeditions were foiled by ice and the other problems of the Arctic.
The scientists probably worked on this discovery for years. Stephen Harper traipsed on the scene very recently and suddenly he’s pronouncing a success. It now looks like Stephen Harper is promoting science when in reality he is a bigger driver of slowing science down.
Muzzling scientists and keeping them silent ruins transparency. Transparency is important so scientists can avoid unnecessary duplication and extreme specialists can keep tabs on their field from all over the world.
You may agree with keeping some science top secret and thus not transparent. This may be a wise thing to do but it surely slows science down. Suddenly all countries must have a team unnecessarily duplicating every other countries’ teams. Science and technology advance more quickly when everything is shared.
So might I suggest a new internet and world presence. It would be called Science Leaks. Maybe this organization would be best represented by an Ecuadorian, maybe someone named Jillian A. Sanchez. Sanchez would do best to have expertise in computers, politics and of course science. We pick a female because one is less likely to have real or imagined sex crimes against her.
Government scientists of any country would be encouraged to leak the science they feel should be part of the world conversation. This definitely includes Harper’s Canadian scientists working in the climate change field. Science would progress faster because of the sharing.
And if Sanchez were to be trapped in say the Icelandic embassy in Australia, she could simply point to military secrets that were also leaked to the site but withheld to maintain world stability. How zealous would America, Britain and Sweden be in prosecuting Sanchez if say all stealth technologies might be made freely available to the world? Science Leaks might have more teeth.
