Senator Carr's Clanger Continues to Reverberate as Julian Cribb's Analysis Attests. (January 9, 2007)

In an extended opinion piece Julian Cribb, adjunct professor of science communication at the University of Technology, Sydney and the editor of sciencealert.com.au, reviews the effect so far of the edict issued by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research that all media releases related to the Government's "key messages" had to be cleared by the department, possibly even the minister, Kim Carr and if deemed appropriate the Prime Minister, Mr Rudd.

This apparent ministerial ruling was delivered by phone by unnamed staffer(s), later, on demand by CSIRO, repeated in writing and then, after media scrutiny "the head of the department explaining the gag was a perfectly usual measure, while his minister expostulated that the instruction was 'badly worded and ill-informed' and did his best to disown it".

Professor Cribb suggests the machinations could be the basis of a G&S operetta, but it might just as easily have aroused the satirical wit of Jonathan Swift. In any case Senator Carr's department certainly got the wind up the publicly funded science sector. Professor Cribb writes: "[A] string of authoritative science figures took it seriously enough to slam the injunction on the Australian Science Media Centre's website. South Australian chief scientist Max Brennan said the Government had no right to muzzle the CSIRO or the CRCs. Environmental scientist Ian Lowe described it as 'very depressing news for those of us who campaigned ... against the suppression of science by the Howard government'. Science communicator Rob Morrison said any attempt to control scientific messages politically would be a dreadfully retrograde step, while his peer Niall Byrne said it would be 'bad for science and bad for Australia'."

It's not revealed whether or not the Prime Minister was asked to comment, but if he did, it must have been sotto voce.

Julian Cribb sums up the matter cogently: "There is no doubt the Rudd Government wishes to be careful about how it controls its key messages... The issue is whether this extends to censoring scientific opinion, either by gagging it or, worse, by politicising it. Greenhouse, education and science policy are three issues affected by the proposed injunction, and this suggests the Government wants no public scientific debate or dissidence on these... The danger is that when next our scientists discover something we urgently need to know as a society, politicians will prevent them from informing us. This sort of nonsense has more in common with Lysenkoism under Stalin, in which political theory arbitrated scientific findings."

It's now close on to two weeks since this matter became public, it's past time that Mr Rudd clarified his government's policy on how it perceives publicly funded researches should communicate with those who are their ultimate employers.