Freedom, said the British writer George Orwell, is – such as, he suggested, that two plus two makes four. Empirical facts can be especially unwelcome to political establishments that want to provide their own .
During his first week in office, President Trump launched orders to gag scientists in federal agencies, and raised the possibility that political officials may now need to clear empirical findings before they can be published. Canadian scientists, who endured a decade of repression under an ideologically similar government, could usefully advise their American colleagues.
The Trump crackdown became apparent last week, when the new administration hit the Environmental Protection Agency with a freeze on all contracts and grants. According to Trump staffers, all , and the release of new work put on hold pending possible . Agency staff have also been barred from updating its social media accounts or talking to the press without clearance from the top.
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The EPA isn’t the only target. The Department of the Interior’s Twitter accounts were shut down after its National Park Service . The Department of Health and Human Services was ordered not to communicate with external officials – including members of Congress – and cancelled a major meeting on health and climate, apparently to avoid trouble. Similar caution may have led the Department of Agriculture to remind staff to get clearance before talking to the press, and its research division was briefly told not to issue public statements.
“Researchers in Canada reported being leaned on to alter politically sensitive conclusions”
This pattern of gagging and censoring scientists will have a familiar ring in Canada. Between 2006 and 2015, the conservative government of Stephen Harper , and cut climate, Arctic and air pollution research.
In the course of this, dubbed the , and researchers reported being leaned on to alter politically sensitive conclusions. Federally employed scientists were banned from speaking in public or to the press without permission – which was often denied or delayed. Government chaperones sat in on press interviews. Some scientists learned not to speak up at all; climate stories nearly vanished from the press.
“The lesson from the Canadian war on science for US scientists is: speak out now, organise, stand in solidarity, be an activist, and resist,” says Michael Oman-Reagan of Memorial University in St John’s, Canada.
Some are already doing that. After warnings from Canadian data archivists, US scientists have started . A is in the works. An action group is trying to get .
But political action moves slowly, and scientists face more immediate battles. The first job might simply be to resist self-censored silence and, as Orwell also said, keep restating the empirically obvious – because “the quickest way of ending a war is to lose it”.
