Stephen Downes

From the report: "Attendees at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science heard from reporters that the Canadian federal government is controlling interviews with government scientists, by scripting answers for them or denying them access to journalists. The session was reported widely by international media." Here's the session recording.

"On Saturday, the story was reported by BBC World Service, and by the end of the day, it had become the most-visited story on BBC’s news website. In an opinion piece that followed his coverage, Pallab Ghosh, science correspondent for the BBC, said, 'It is more than a little embarrassing for the Canadian government to be accused of ‘muzzling’ its own scientists when it is hosting one of the world's largest scientific conferences in Vancouver.'"