Empirical evidence took another blow to the face last week, just as the bruise from the last one is starting to show.
On Monday, the federal government announced that the National Research Council would no longer fund research into "pure science," and instead will only focus on research with immediate applications for industry.
But today's pure science is tomorrow's life-changing technology. Facing critical questions from the British minister of finance on the value of his research into electricity and magnetism in 1850, a physicist replied, "Sir, one day you will tax this."
On Wednesday, Statistics Canada released the results of its National Household Survey - the first since the Conservatives abolished the mandatory long-form census.
Instead of having a 94 per cent-plus response rate, it was closer to 69 per cent.
That makes the data more skewed and less reliable to the point of being arguably useless - and we really need every bit of solid information we can get when making policy. Do we really want to be 25 per cent less sure when deciding how to spend millions of dollars?
Funding scientific research should be for the benefit of humanity, not just industry.
And we ignore or obscure the reliable evidence around us at our own peril.
This Dark Ages approach to knowing and understanding the world around us is going to leave a lasting stain. Even if a future government reverses these absurd decisions, we are still falling behind on precious time and data.
