Nine years of censorship
This was a government worker&#x27;s union issue that got absurdly bent out of proportion.<p>The government demanded that government <i>employees</i> get approval for any direct communications with media, etc. This all began when a researcher seriously impacted the salmon industry by releasing extremely preliminary results (that turned out to be wrong), making a name for herself and setting up a PR circuit. The media loves apocalyptic outcomes (&quot;So would you say this means that we&#x27;re all going to die?&quot;), so of course it made headlines with the most dire of predictions.<p>This was not an independent researcher. This was not the private sector. This was someone directly employed by the government. It&#x27;s like a Microsoft employee wrote about vulnerabilities in Windows on their private blog, offering to sell solutions.<p>So the government put a process in place not unlike much of the Western world, doing nothing to control the science (papers were published, research was released, etc. The scientific world understands that preliminary results are preliminary), but having everything to do with the message relayed to the media. Of course this was met with a conspiratorial narrative that continues to this day: That they were hiding dire greenhouse gas&#x2F;global warming information, for instance.<p>But the shackles have come off. Where are all of these dramatic scientific findings that were suppressed?<p>...crickets...<p>The single example constantly floated is about a guy who got called by a reporter about a paper he released about ~~slime mold~~ rock snot (the exampled floated in literally hundreds of articles about the muzzling of scientists). This government scientist was outraged that he couldn&#x27;t get approval within 24 hours, and the reporter lost interest. Apparently rock snot is a real timely issue in media circles.<p>There was a <i>lot</i> wrong with the prior government. An enormous amount. By this particular story is about some freelancing employees who don&#x27;t want anyone telling them what to do.