What's Driving Chaotic Dismantling of Canada's Science Libraries?

[Mona]

'Losing libraries not a neutral act': scientist Hutchings

The Freshwater Institute library held collections dating back 100 years, on the quality and state of freshwater systems in central Canada, the Great Lakes and the Arctic.

Acclaimed Dalhousie University biologist Jeff Hutchings, who recently chaired the Royal Society of Canada's Expert Panel on the future of marine biodiversity, calls the closures scientifically disastrous and an assault on civil society.

"It is always unnerving from a research and scientist perspective to watch a government undermine basic research...

...

'It must be about ideology': Hutchings

Hutchings said none of the closures has anything to do with saving money, due to the small cost of maintaining the collections. He, like many scientists, concludes that Harper's political convictions are driving the unprecedented consolidation.

"It must be about ideology. Nothing else fits," said Hutchings. "What that ideology is, is not clear. Does it reflect that part of the Harper government that doesn't think government should be involved in the very things that affect our lives? Or is it that the role of government is not to collect books or fund science? Or is it the idea that a good government is stripped down government? "

Hutchings saw the library closures fitting a larger pattern of "fear and insecurity" within the Harper government, "about how to deal with science and knowledge."

That pattern includes the gutting of the Fisheries Act, the muzzling of scientists, the abandonment of climate change research and the dismantling of countless research programs, including the world famous Experimental Lakes Area. All these examples indicate that the Harper government strongly regards environmental science as a threat to unfettered resource exploitation.

"There is a group of people who don't know how to deal with science and evidence. They see it as a problem and the best way to deal with it is to cut it off at the knees and make it ineffective," explained Hutchings...

http://m.thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/23/Canadian-Science-Libraries/

[JaneyVee]

1. Canadian science is woo.

[Vashta Nerada]

2. Sounds like what's happening here in the US:

That pattern includes the gutting of the Fisheries Act, the muzzling of scientists, the abandonment of climate change research and the dismantling of countless research programs, including the world famous Experimental Lakes Area. All these examples indicate that the Harper government strongly regards environmental science as a threat to unfettered resource exploitation.

[El_Johns]

4. +1

[awoke_in_2003]

3. Anti-intellectualism...

is spreading north. Is religion resurging there, too?