The long hot summer has been a little longer and a lot hotter for officials at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They have spent the latter part of June and July fending off accusations of bureaucratic and political meddling into research conducted by their own researchers and scientists.
The issue, widely reported in the Ottawa Citizen and the Globe and Mail, began after three leading biologists published an article in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. In the article "Is Scientific Inquiry Incompatible With Government Information Control?" the researchers explained that fisheries research has become so compromised by political manipulation that an independent fish science research organization should be created. They also recommend that all fish science research should be made available to the public at the same time it is presented to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).
The authors cited two examples of DFO's attempts to tamper with or ignore scientific material that did not fall in line with the wishes of politicians or bureaucrats.
William A. Rowat, the Deputy Minister of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, retaliated by writing a scathing letter to National Research Council President Arthur Carty, accusing the publishers (the NRC publishes the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences) and authors of writing "tabloid journalism of the sort one would not expect to encounter in a scientific journal."
"Fortunately the three individuals are at Dalhousie, UBC and Memorial universities and cannot be silenced by bureaucratic decree," Dr. William Bruneau, CAUT President, wrote in a letter to the Globe and Mail. "This incident shows how important it is to ensure that the funding remains intact for independent research in the universities, and why professors need guarantees of academic freedom in their contracts so that powerful interests cannot silence them."
Since the appearance of Rowat's letter, many members of the scientific community have rallied behind the authors and DFO scientists. Numerous letters to the editor in the Citizen and continued journalistic digging have revealed that concerns over scientific objectivity and freedom of expression have existed for some time now at DFO.
Ransom Myers, a distinguished scientist who left DFO three months ago to take on the position of Killam Chair of Ocean Studies at Dalhousie, complained to the Citizen that the DFO regularly "suppresses papers whose conclusions it doesn't like, and prevents its scientists from speaking openly, as university scientists are free to do."
Myers' allegations are supported by the discovery of a 1993 internal DFO document which clearly states that staff scientists at DFO were upset over "intellectual dishonesty and politics" in the department, in addition to restrictions on speaking openly about their research.
Myers now faces a lawsuit initiated by two senior DFO bureaucrats, Dr. Scott Parsons, Assistant Deputy Minister for Science and Dr. William Doubleday, Director General Fisheries and Oceans Science, for the comments that he made to the Citizen. "CAUT believes that scientific disagreements should be debated, not silenced by the threat of lawsuits," said Dr. Bruneau.
On July 3, 36 prominent scientists from across Canada reacted by writing a letter to NRC President Carty calling for an end to the political and bureaucratic suppression of the fisheries scientists. The letter also rebutted Rowat's previous letter to Carty. "As scientists reliant on the objectivity and fairness of publications such as the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, we wish to take strong exception to the views expressed by W.A. Rowat in a letter sent to you...." Fourteen of the 36 scientists spoke to the Citizen and their comments dominated the front and fourth pages of the newspaper.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has now invited the authors of the article which appeared in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences to debate the role of science in fisheries management in St. John's Newfoundland on September 5. Also, three responses to the article will appear in the next issue of the journal.
That the Ottawa Citizen might not be entirely disinterested became obvious in a subsequent editorial where it argued that experts were deluded if they thought state power should be used to regulate or to promote good works such as research and development.
However, Dr. William Schrank, an economist at Memorial University with a long involvement with the economics of the fishery believes that the DFO battle may be more complicated than its depiction in the media.
"It's popular these days to lay blame on the government but science has been wrong in the past," Schrank says. He is referring to a 1987 independent report by Dr. Lee Alverson which said that the Atlantic cod stock assessment conducted by DFO scientists was greatly miscalculated. Schrank also points out that in the past DFO has looked outside the department to independent inquiries for public insight and discussion on the issue of stock depletion.
Nevertheless, when the issue hit the newspapers, DFO officials did distribute an internal memorandum directing their scientists to refrain from discussing the matter with the media.
Matthew Kerby is a graduate student at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University.
William A Rowat was moved from his position as deputy minister and appointed senior adviser to the privy council office on August 25.