The New York Times

September 21, 2013Silencing ScientistsBy VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Over the last few years, the government of Canada — led by Stephen Harper — has made it harder and harder for publicly financed scientists to communicate with the public and with other scientists.

It began badly enough in 2008 when scientists working for Environment Canada, the federal agency, were told to refer all queries to departmental communications officers. Now the government is doing all it can to monitor and restrict the flow of scientific information, especially concerning research into climate change, fisheries and anything to do with the Alberta tar sands — source of the diluted bitumen that would flow through the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. Journalists find themselves unable to reach government scientists; the scientists themselves have organized public protests.

There was trouble of this kind here in the George W. Bush years, when scientists were asked to toe the party line on climate policy and endangered species. But nothing came close to what is being done in Canada.

Science is the gathering of hypotheses and the endless testing of them. It involves checking and double-checking, self-criticism and a willingness to overturn even fundamental assumptions if they prove to be wrong. But none of this can happen without open communication among scientists. This is more than an attack on academic freedom. It is an attempt to guarantee public ignorance.

It is also designed to make sure that nothing gets in the way of the northern resource rush — the feverish effort to mine the

earth and the ocean with little regard for environmental consequences. The Harper policy seems designed to make sure that the tar sands project proceeds quietly, with no surprises, no bad news, no alarms from government scientists. To all the other kinds of pollution the tar sands will yield, we must now add another: the degradation of vital streams of research and information.

Power is invisible and continuous in its control over the “self” of individuals Norm is placed by power in a binary system as normal/abnormal: (bell curved)Maintained by:• Hierarchical surveillance

e.g.: normal/abnormal in race or ethnicity• Normative judgment

e.g., IQ tests as Intelligence indicators

The genealogy of power/ knowledge reveals the way the body is regulated through power that explicitly disciplines bodies

• Governmentality • Biopower

“The genealogy of knowledge consists of two separate bodies of knowledge: 1. The dissenting opinions and theories that did not become the

established and widely recognized2. The local beliefs and understandings (think of what nurses know

about medicine that does not achieve power and general recognition).

The genealogy is concerned with bringing these two knowledges, and their struggles to pass themselves on to others, out into the light of the day” (Shawver, Lois (2006).

Source:http://www.degenevieve.com/files/Dictionary-Michel%20Foucault.pdf Foucault dictionary”.

F’s Governmentality :

• The way governments produce the citizen who must obey/follow governments' policies

• The organized practices (mentalities, rationalities, and techniques) through which subjects are governed

• The techniques and strategies of regulation the society behave and act to make it governable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW3yyTCfm6Q

US - Occupy student debt 2011 (6 min)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyOvenCbr8c 5 min 2012 upload governmentality of control over media

Theories on ‘power’:

• Economic power (Karl Marx & Marxist)• Corporate monopoly• Media conglomerates

• Disciplinary power (Michel Foucault)• Normalizing social behaviour by monitoring and

regulating it.• Certainty of control• Society unconsciously and unquestioningly

accepts the capillaries of power and its disciplinary control

Corporate power: Applying Foucault’s concepts to the article by Winter (2002), Media Monopoly

1.State power vs. Corporate concentration of power

2.State vs. corporate Surveillance and reinforcement of obedience

3.State vs. Corporate Punishment (of firing from jobs)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2trT8t2-Hl8 Canada’s media monopoly 10min -2010

:

Theories on ‘power’:

• Economic power (Karl Marx & Marxist)• Corporate monopoly• Media conglomerates

• Disciplinary power (Michel Foucault)• Normalizing social behaviour by monitoring and

regulating it.• Certainty of control• Society unconsciously and unquestioningly

accepts the capillaries of power and its disciplinary control

Disciplined bodies in, e.g., prisons, military, corporate world and schools. Modern Times (Chaplin US 1936), …Gattaca (Niccol US 1997), • Spatial division of individuals• Control of their activities, • Organization of individuals into groups• Coordination of these different groups • Seattle schools punishment 1.5 min• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjjzpsVjo94

• Race and punishment• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjjzpsVjo94 (8min)

• Philippine univ -Shaming 30 sechttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1uf5T2QAYI

Disciplinary power

• Cultural values determine how society exercises control over its people.

• Who defines what is ‘normal’?• What impact does ‘non-normal’

label have on those who are so designated?

• Who are those who get to control the ‘non-normal’ people?

• Why and how the designators control the designated?

Disciplinary power (cont’d)The answers to these questions change over time as power arrangements in society shift. e.g:Historical periods in ‘knowledge’ construction and dissemination: 1. Priests controlled knowledge & dissemination2. State and private Endowments set up universities & curricula.3. Professionals as experts accredit & regulate ‘what’ is knowledge4. Information technologies create and disseminate so called ‘knowledge’5. Corporate funding impacts, regulates and interferes with the autonomy of the university (a repository of knowledge).

Lack of ethics in business: Enron & fabricated accounting

Experts & Expertise: (THE TYRANNY OF LIGHT, The temptations and the paradoxes of the information society, Haridimos Tsoukas(1997) Futures, Vol. 29, No. 9, pp. X27-843, 1997)

Tsoukas: (apply Foucault’s Power/Knowledge)•‘Know How’ of those participating in the events reported, is transformed into the ‘Know That’ •Information reductionism•Knowledge is viewed as a manual •Information is defined by the chosen representations – they exist independently of human agents•“A world that is seen as consisting of sums of information, makes social engineering a very tempting way of thinking and acting”. •Foucault dubbed the kind of action associated with social engineering ‘governmentaIity’ ”

Tsoukas: •Popular public assumption is: “if those in charge ‘know’ what is going on, they can manage a social system better. ‘To know’ in this context means having information on the variation of certain indicators that are thought to capture the essence of the phenomenon at hand”. •Giddens’ ‘expert systems’ - the significant growth of specialized, codified, abstract knowledge.•Social engineering presupposes that a real phenomenon can be reduced (Reductionism) to be measurable, standardizable and auditable

Dr. Nancy Oliviery Case:Issues: 1. Ethics; 2. Academic Freedom

Several critical studies find that clinical trials funded by the pharmaceutical industry are more likely to report a positive outcomehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trial-sans-error-how-pharma-funded-research-cherry-picks-positive-results/

2000-2006: 63% were funded by industry, 14% by government sources, and 23% by non-profits• Industry-funded trials reported positive outcomes

in 85.4 % of publications, compared with 50 % for government-funded trials & 71.9% by non-profits’ funded

Dr. Nancy Olivieri

• University of Toronto clinician, Dr. Nancy Olivieri’s research at the Hospital for Sick Children

• She believed that a new drug treatment posed dangers to some patients.

• The hospital and the university failed to support her against Apotex, co-sponsor of the research

• Apotex objected to her publishing her findings• It was found that the hospital and university

officials and representatives of Apotex subjected her to workplace and other harassment

16www.mrfa.net/files/CAUT%20Academic%20Freedom%20Fund.ppt

Nancy Oliviery’s attempts to fight back unethical corp power: Care of the self: The name of the ethical principleThat leads people to cultivate themselves, that is to work to improve themselves… learning to shape one’s own inner character (Foucault, Care of the Self, p.67)

http://fairwhistleblower.ca/olivieri-honoured

From the CAUT website

• Apotex Inc.: A Corporation Above the Courts? (Jan 2009)• Apotex Inc. v. Olivieri: An Attack on Academic Freedom Dec

2008)• The Olivieri Case: Context and Significance (Dec 2005)• The Olivieri Case: Context and Reflections (Ecclectica, Dec 2005)• Review of Miriam Shuchman, The Drug Trial. Nancy Olivieri and

the Science Scandal that Rocked the Hospital for Sick Children by David Healy (Oct 2005)

• Supplement to the Report to the Committee of Inquiry (Jan 2002)• College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario Vindicates Olivieri

(Jan 2002)• Summary of the Report (Oct 2001)• The Olivieri Report (Oct 2001) 19

www.mrfa.net/files/CAUT%20Academic%20Freedom%20Fund.ppt

What is Dr. Oliveriti doing now?

She is still at the University of Toronto and has become a respected defender of academic freedom.

http://www.uhnresearch.ca/researchers/profile.php?lookup=4539

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxIaQXSWs6E

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Dr. Mary Bryson in UBC

• Responsible for developing a new online course• E-mail from the administrator overseeing the program

asking her to sign a contract transferring rights to "course materials" to the university.

• The contract required: She sign away the rights to the course materials and the university could use them without attributing authorship

• The univ could revise and modify or alter them or use them in a different context, without the author's consent.

• The Bryson arbitration decision is a landmark in the struggle to insure that faculty, not administrators, determine the content of courses.

21www.mrfa.net/files/CAUT%20Academic%20Freedom%20Fund.ppt

University of Ottawa custody and control

• The University asked all faculty to turn over every document in their possession, wherever they were stored, related to a Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) request received by the university

• The University was prepared to search faculty members’ e-mail accounts

• The Association grieved and it went to arbitration - CAUT legal counsel, represented the Association

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www.mrfa.net/files/CAUT%20Academic%20Freedom%20Fund.ppt

University of Ottawa custody and control

• The Faculty Association won and the arbitrator included their proposed framework for documents that the University has in its custody and control in the award

• Includes documents related to administrative duties, university committee documents, and final exams

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Criteria established by the Privacy Commissioner, ONT

1. records or portions of records in the possession of an APUO member that relate to personal matters or activities that are wholly unrelated to the university’s mandate, are not in the university’s custody or control; 2. records relating to teaching or research are likely to be impacted by academic freedom, and would only be in the university’s custody and/or control if they would be accessible to it by custom or practice, taking academic freedom into account; 3. administrative records are prima facie in the university’s custody and control, but would not be if they are unavailable to the university by custom or practice, taking academic freedom into account.

FINAL ORDER PO-3009-F Appeal PA07-119 University of Ottawa November 7, 2011