In light of the recent gag orders on US scientists...

By: vivian on sexta-feira, janeiro 27, 2017

climateadaptation:

never-seen-a-nevergreen:

Story time:

I’m a scientist and while I was in undergrad I had an 8 month work term in a laboratory and one time my mom came to pick me up to go home for holidays or whatever and I took her around the lab to see what I was doing and to let her meet my supervisor, who we both love to this day.  

The next year I was in a different lab working on a project for my degree and again, mom was coming up and I wanted to show her the lab.  I asked my new supervisor for permission because well, its a lab, there are lab and sciency things happening and mom wanted to see the multi-million dollar electron microscopes I was using.  You try to restrict people that don’t know what they are doing  from the environment because there are many dangers, chemicals, machines, expensive equipment etc plus it’s just polite.  I made sure to tell him she wouldn’t touch anything

Well he said something to me that I always think about and that I think is relevant.  He said (or or less):

“I’m paid by tax payers, this research is mostly tax payer funded.  Of course you can bring you mom in because she pays taxes and should know what she pays for.”  For him it wasn’t even a question of if I was allowed to, it was silly, it was of course she can come and see the lab!

Now that does not mean just anyone can or should be able to walk in and take a look around.  It’s a dangerous environment if you don’t know what you are doing and obviously I was there to ensure she didn’t touch anything.  

But the message stuck with me during all my research, which has been mostly tax payer funded (government funding for stipend and grants and PI’s paid from government funded unis, etc).

The tax payers pay for (a lot of) scientific research.  They should be allowed to know what is going on and (figuratively) see into the work spaces they are paying for.  That supervisor also said that the more the tax payers understand about research the more they will want to fund it and the better society will be.  

When someone is trying to block the results or data that the tax payers pay for, that is not good.  It’s blocking transparently into what the government is doing with your money.  The money you pay in taxes.  It also makes it easy for them to defund important research because if the ‘common people’ aka tax payers can’t see where that money is going they won’t support it which in turn allows the government to feel it can get away with reducing funding to researchers. 

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Tagging some people in the hopes they could boost this, because I feel it is an important message:

@nanofishology, @entoderek, @thebrainscoop, @ehmeegee, @squidscientistas, @wilwheaton

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