Efforts in Canada and U.S. to protect scientific integrity from political interference could be derailed by new federal governments

Political interference in science continues in Canada and the U.S. but efforts to protect scientific integrity could be derailed by new federal governments in both countries, policy activists told a cross-border webinar by Evidence for Democracy and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

In Canada, Chief Science Advisor Mona Nemer and her office take a lead role in the  federal government’s Model Policy on Scientific Integrity – created in 2018 – and monitor its implementation by federal departments.

However, a previous Conservative government under Stephen Harper phased out a similar national science advisor position in 2008. There are concerns a government led by Pierre Poilievre, who has vowed to scrap many of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government policies, could end the chief science advisor position.

“If we were to lose our chief science advisor in a new election, I think that would be pretty detrimental [to efforts to protect scientific integrity],” said Sarah Laframboise (photo at right), executive director of Evidence for Democracy, a nonprofit organization which advocates for evidence-based policymaking in government.

In the U.S., the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and other groups are working to get Congress to pass a Scientific Integrity Act – introduced in July last year – before the U.S. presidential election in November.

“We need Congress to enact this type of bill so that we don’t have these back and forth changes [when government changes], so that we get these protections from every federal administration,” said Anita Desikan (photo at left), senior analyst at the UCS’s Center for Science and Democracy.

While the U.S. federal government’s scientific integrity has improved markedly under President Joe Biden’s administration, she said, “there’s obviously a real risk if we have a second Trump administration continuing the same things they did [to violate scientific integrity] during the prior Trump administration.”

Desikan said a study by USC’s Center for Science and Democracy shows that from the Eisenhower-led government in the early 1950s to Trump’s presidency from 2017 to 2021, all U.S. administrations have politically interfered in science – some more than others.

Types of attacks on publicly funded science, scientists and scientific integrity include:

anti-science rules/regulations/orders; scientific studies halted, edited or suppressed; censorship of scientists; disbanded or skewed scientific committees; and other types of political interference.

USC data show 98 attacks on science during the George W. Bush administration, 19 during Barack Obama’s tenure, 207 in the Trump years, and two so far under Biden.

During Trump’s time, the top three types of attacks were: 61 involving anti-science rules/regulations/orders; 53 where studies were  halted, edited or suppressed; and 43 where scientists were censored.

Laframboise said in Canada, the issue of scientific integrity within government came to a head in what became known as the Harper government’s “War on Science.”

The Conservative government restricted many scientists from speaking about their work to media, from going to conferences, and from speaking to the general public more broadly.

A survey by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) labour union at the time found 90 percent of federal scientists said they didn’t feel they could speak freely to the media about their work.

Between 2008 and 2013, the Harper government cut $596 million from science and technology budgets at federal science-based departments, according to PIPSC data. More than 2,140 fulltime positions were eliminated in the federal science workforce.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, elected in 2015, ran on a platform that prioritized science and “evidence-based decision-making,” and the new government changed the landscape for publicly funded science and scientists, Laframboise said.

Examples of political interference in science in Canada

Laframboise and Desikan cited specific examples of political interference in science in both countries.

In Canada, in 2014 during the Harper government,  Environment Canada researcher Dr. Max Bothwell found changes in the way freshwater algae was blooming at different times of year, which he concluded were potentially linked to climate change.

Dene Moore, then a Canadian Press reporter, requested an interview with Bothwell. The simple interview request ballooned into a convoluted process that involved 100 emails to and from 16 public servants and, ultimately, the PMO’s office, to get approval for the interview.

The approval was never granted and Moore eventually walked away from the story.

In a more recent example, in July 2019, Jonathan Wilkinson, then-minister of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, decided not to list the Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead fish populations under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) – even though scientists had documented a significant decline in both fish populations.

Laframboise said a Freedom of Information (FOA) request showed there was a “deliberate alteration of [scientific] reports” that went through a variety of revisions within Fisheries and Oceans, that ultimately led to the steelhead populations not being listed under SARA.

The FOA-obtained information highlighted the impact to the area’s fisheries industry if the two fish populations were listed under SARA.

Laframboise said it’s hard even now to decipher how work within Fisheries and Oceans’ offices “are actually functioning and operating without being influenced by industry, because a lot of the work they do is funded by industry.”

Another example occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), a federal government-run monitoring and analysis unit that serves as an early warning system for Canada and the World Health Organization (WHO).

GPHIN identified a new and unknown pneumonia-like disease from China from media scanning as early as December 30, 2019, well before the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic in March 2020.

GPHIN reported its finding to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). But a culture shift at PHAC had meant there was a larger focus on domestic threats, making this international threat a non-priority, Laframboise said. “Given the structuring, GPHIN wasn’t able to share any of this [early-warning data] publicly.”

Later into the pandemic, then-Health Minster Patty Hajdu ordered an independent review of the pandemic alert system after scientists claimed warnings were ignored.

Ultimately, Laframboise said, it became clear that scientists in GPHIN were doing extremely important work but it wasn’t being recognized by government’s chain of command, and the scientists working in GPHIN didn’t feel empowered to translate what they were finding into actionable items.

“The results of the review showed there were significant concerns surrounding the mandate, governance and the flow of information that GPHIN does, and [the review] suggested some reworking of the unit, which is ongoing,” Laframboise said.

U.S. examples of political interference in science

The examples of political interference in science in the U.S. cited by Desikan are chilling, given their impact on people’s health and reputations.

During the George W. Bush administration and the 2011 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in public statements assured the people of New York that their air was safe to breathe.

Subsequent documents showed that The White House pressed the EPA to “add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones” in EPA media releases, Desikan said.

Yet there were about 2,000 tons of asbestos and hundreds of tons of concrete, pulverized building materials and other substances in the dust that blanketed Lower Manhattan following the attack, Desikan said. “We know that emergency responders were getting cancers and other types of health effects as a result of this exposure.”

In 2003, a report by the U.S. Office of the Inspector General concluded that the EPA lacked the scientific information to make its reassuring claims.

In another example, in 2013 during the Obama administration, officials at the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) ordered the removal of three of the U.S.’s top wolf experts from an independent science review panel examining a FWS plan to delist the Gray Wolf as an endangered species.

The three scientists had earlier signed a letter to the Department of the Interior expressing concerns about the FWS’s plan, so were removed from the review panel “based on what seems to be retribution reasons,” Desikan said.

In another example in November 2017, during the Trump administration, David Smith, who holds a Master of Science in Resource Interpretation and was the superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park, posted a series of 15 tweets related to climate change on government twitter websites.

The tweets were non-contentious and essentially contained basic scientific information about climate change, Desikan said.

Yet Ryan Zinke, the then-secretary of the Department of the Interior, flew Smith at taxpayers’ expense from California to Washington, D.C. to reprimand him in person for posting the tweets. Zinke issued a direct order to stop any more tweets about climate change.

However, the tweets didn’t violate department policy and no formal action was taken against Smith.

Zinke’s opening of some federal lands for oil, gas and mineral exploration and extraction raised ethical questions and were investigated by the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General, who referred the investigation to the Department of Justice. In December 2018, Trump announced that Zinke would leave his position.

The Inspector General’s report found that Zinke had repeatedly violated ethical rules and then lied to investigators.

Political interference in science in Canada continues

What about the present day? Interference that Canadian environmental researchers experience in their work is prevalent and ongoing, according to two studies by researchers at Dalhousie University, published in the journal FACETS. Evidence for Democracy was a partner on the research project.

Manjulika E. Robertson, a research associate in the university’s Westwood Lab, was lead researcher of one of the studies, which surveyed 741 environmental researchers from across Canada in any sector. She found that 92 percent of researchers have experienced some form of interference in their work.

The second study, led by graduate student Samantha M. Chu as part of her undergraduate honour’s research, focused on the relationship between social identity (gender, disability status, 2SLGBTQI+ status, and race) and reported experiences of interference.

Chu’s study found that researchers from marginalized groups are bearing the brunt of this interference. Approximately half (46 percent) of environmental researchers reported having been restricted from speaking to the media.

Early career researchers and marginalized researchers – particularly women, respondents with a disability, and minority racialized groups – experienced greater interference than established career researchers or researchers from majority identity groups.

“In recent years, we’ve seen a lot of reports of scientific interference emerging across different jurisdictions in Canada,” Laframboise said.

Even though Canada has a Model Policy on Scientific Integrity, there are still gaps in how federal departments are implementing the policy, according to the latest update from the chief science advisor’s office.

Eighteen departments have yet to implement measures to support education, training and/or professional development devoted to the roles of science and research in developing evidence to support evidence-informed decision-making.

Twenty-one departments have yet to implement a monitoring plan that provides information on the extent to which their scientific integrity policy has achieved its objectives.

Laframboise said Canada needs regular studies and tracking of interference in science. Scientific integrity needs to be strengthened within the federal government, to reduce interference in science more broadly, she added.

Also, the country needs to improve science communication via media training, she said. This includes providing guidance on how to appropriately navigate media policies – including within federal departments – to empower researchers to directly share their results with the public and combat the spread of misinformation.

Canada also needs to ensure research is held to rigorous standards, is ethically designed and carried out, and is empirically based, Laframboise said.

The chief science advisors representing Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S., after face-to-face meetings in Ottawa in June, said in a statement released this month that they affirmed their commitment “to providing evidence-based advice and to improving coordination across the science and research systems within and between our countries.”

“As science and technology leaders, we know it is critical that high-quality research, undertaken with integrity, produces evidence that decision-makers can rely on. We need to manage the risks of technologies so that we can seize their many benefits. In doing this work, we can build trust and empathy and promote understanding across cultural, social, and geographical boundaries.”

The science advisors said at the heart of their collective endeavor is a commitment to extending the benefits of science and technology to all. “By prioritizing openness, diversity, and inclusion in research and innovation, we can unlock new solutions to complex challenges and empower individuals and communities to thrive in an increasingly interconnected world.”

Laframboise noted that unlike in the U.S. the issue of scientific integrity isn’t on the political radar in Canada, partly because after the Harper government there were some “really quick wins” in 2015 to 2017 with the Liberal government. However, Canadians have gotten somewhat complacent about the issue, she added.

But the public needs to care about and participate in the scientific integrity conversation, including during federal elections, Laframboise said.. “It impacts on every citizen. This is something they should care about and vote on.”

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