DENYING THE DATA

Reports that RCMP in Vancouver tried to discredit Insite, the city's
supervised-injection site, by commissioning a study that undermines
it, is the latest evidence of a trend that is alarming scientists and
should worry the rest of us, too.

Last week, 85 Canadian scientists, including those who contributed to
the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, called on Canadian political leaders to end the creeping
"mistreatment" of science.

In Canada, scientists have accused the Harper government of
"blatantly" suppressing and distorting science for political reasons.
They cite both the "muzzling" of Environment Canada scientists from
talking about climate change and the misrepresentation of reports on
Insite.

Drug policy is perhaps the most obvious area in which politicians try
to deny or muddy the data. Dozens of peer-reviewed research studies
point to the public health benefits of safe injection sites, but
because safe injection sites supposedly symbolize (albeit wrongly) a
"soft-on-crime" philosophy, politicians try to pretend that the data
don't exist.

As for climate change, no one should have been surprised when
scientists in a number of countries complained that government
officials were giving them grief. If political leaders had allowed
scientists at NASA and other places to speak out freely about the
reality of climate change, these political leaders would then have
been expected to do something about it. And that would have been
inconvenient.

Now it's true that scientists have been known to harbour political
agendas of their own, but peer-reviewed research is supposed to screen
those out. What's left are the empirical facts, and it's an ugly thing
when non-scientists step in and politicize them.