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Published online 28 April 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.410
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Climate scientist fired for talking to media
Sacking follows string of warnings from New Zealand institute.
A prominent New Zealand climate scientist has been fired by a government-funded research institute, allegedly for talking to the media without authorization.
Jim Salinger says that he was given little more than three hours to clear his desk at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in Auckland on 23 April, after being dismissed for giving interviews to local television and radio reporters about issues such as high temperatures, flooding and snowlines.
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The Carbon Tax on Everything and Carbon Credit indulgences are politically precious. Management is about process not product. Dr. Salinger violated process. He is entirely fungible. Content is fabricated to need then emitted by an imprimatured talking head. Remember yellow cake uranium in Iraq - UN speech! - justifying an obscene invasion and cumulative six-figure deaths? No yellow cake, but so what?
Today the image is everything so science is also but it shouldn't get in the way.
Having run into rump neoliberal administrations in New Zealand before, I sympathise with Dr. Salinger. A scientist who cannot speak out is not a scientist, but a technician bound by some kind of corporation. Congratulations to Dr. Salinger for choosing to remain a scientist.
What should concern us even more than the fact that a scientist can be sacked for minor misbehaviour is the question why he was obliged to get permission for interviews in the first place. Censorship is not a hallmark of a democratic and free political system, and it is also not compatible with science and the pursuit of gaining (and spreading) knowledge.
Dr. Salinger has suffered a similar fate to many US scientists during our previous administration. I don't believe that it is a liberal or conservative issue, it is more closely related to a "rules based" tyranny, I mean, management. Once "rules" triumph over intelligent reflection, the stage is set for arbitrary controls, censorship, authoritarianism, dicretionary personnel controls, and ultimately, BAD, BAD, SCIENCE, for policymakers. An agency with obsessive-compulsive disorder is no place for a thoughtful, committed, respected, and productive person to work. The rest of the staff should take notice and leave as well, before they, too, are knobbled and, ultimately, have their words twisted. Lysenkoism appears to be the next logical step. I fear now that the "dark-side" lives on, only across the big pond.
The change of policy comes at a time when NIWA has just entered into significant partnership with the coal industry. The rebranding they speak of is about making themselves useful to business, and ultimately less useful to science and the public interest.
With a "Science" background, but a "Social Science" degree, I shudder with recognition of what is happening here, and its alarming implications for our future. Down the PR / Business / Corporation track we go! The scientists are to stay in the back room while the "expert" PR people and the minders speak and "spin" on behalf of the Organization/Corporation (receiving positions and salaries to enhance their status). What a shame that the fledgling USA chose English rather than German as its official language way back then.
This timing is not too long after New Zealand elected a right wing government, which whilst in opposition was vigorously climate change denying, and squashed us having a carbon tax years ago. Although they now claim to be vaguely going along with it, their actions are still anti. I think you have to look no further than simple government interference. Why have we reverted to a Bush-style when others are at last moving on.
The "censorship/corporate rules" comments deploring the sacking of Jim Salinger are right. Freedom of speech could protect against us corporate control, so corporates restrict it. When employment contracts trump our rights we are harmed. As a high profile example, I hope the employment court (and this media attention) can protect him, so we are all a little safer.