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Political Interference within Public Service: Now vs. Then.
White Paper:
"Examples of Manipulating Evidence to Fit Political/Industry Interests. Case study: PHAC ‘Cases Following Vaccination’ Reports", Data Evidence for Discussion on GitHub, November 2022.
Open Canada Death Tracker Web App (developed by Dmitry Gorodnichy in 2021):
on Open Canada GitHub portal
on Shiny Apps portal
Source code on GitHub
PHAC "Cases Following Vaccination" data log (googlesheet)
Political Interference: Now vs. Then
Political Interference: Now vs. Then
Political (aka Corporate) interference in the work of public servant professionals involved in food and drug regulation is not new and is well documented in Dr. Shiv Chopra’s 2009 book "Corrupt to the Core". Dr. Chopra, who lost his job defending his professional recommendation against approving bovine growth hormones for Canadian milk, highlighted these problems years ago. Despite changes in government, the situation has not significantly improved. In fact, it has worsened, particularly during the pandemic, as many professionals, myself included, have witnessed firsthand.
What has changed since Dr. Chopra’s account is the industry's increased ability to control public opinion, including within the governments and professional unions. This is achieved through industry-funded main stream media, gaslighting (discrediting) subject matter experts, and AI-powered censorship tools that are used by global news platforms and search engines (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.).
The example below serves to illustrate this point. It was brought to my attention by my colleagues during the data science Lunch and Learn course that I was teaching on GCCollab in the Fall 2021 just when the Vaccination Mandates have been imposed on all Government employees under that premise that there is clear evidence that COVID-vaccines stop transmission and significantly reduce the risk of deaths and complications from COVID-19.
As seen below, PHAC-published data never showed "clear evidence" that COVID-vaccines stop transmission or significantly reduce the risk of deaths and complications from COVID-19, however it was published in such a way as to create the perception that they do. The data skewing techniques was used to fit the "evidence" to the desired political narrative. The professionals who observed such professional Integrity breach could not report it, because of Fear of Reprisal.
To learn more about this problem and the actions to address it, see Data Skewing by PHAC and ATIP to PHAC.
See also :
Additional Data Evidence: Where is the highest Fear of Reprisal according to Public Service Employee Survey
Electoral Platform: Fearless Advice: Harper Era vs. Trudeau Era
Additional References (Books):
Dr. Shiv Chopra, "Corrupt to the Core: Memoirs of a Health Canada Whistleblower" , 2009 - Available on Amazon. You can also borrom it from PIPSC library.
Regina Watteel (Ph.D. Statistics) ,"Fisman Fraud: The Rise of Canadian Hate Science." 2023. Available on Amazon You can also borrow it from me. Highlights of the book: www.fismansfraud.ca
Evidence of Politically Motivated Data-Skewing by PHAC: “Cases Following Vaccination” Reports Were Adjusted to Support a Political Narrative of Vaccine Effectiveness, When the Actual Unskewed Data Showed the Opposite
Evidence of Politically Motivated Data-Skewing by PHAC: “Cases Following Vaccination” Reports Were Adjusted to Support a Political Narrative of Vaccine Effectiveness, When the Actual Unskewed Data Showed the Opposite
The figure below shows screenshots from two PHAC “Cases following vaccination” reports published 3.5 months apart:
one published on 2022-07-01 (https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/archive/2022-07-01/index.html#a9, Updated: July 4, 2022, 8 am EST), and
another published on 2022-10-21 (https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/archive/2022-10-21/cases-following-vaccination.html, Data extracted on October 14, 2022
These reports compare the numbers of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among Canadians with different numbers of vaccine doses: unvaccinated, those who completed the primary series, those with one additional dose, and those with two additional doses — as observed at the time of publication.
However, instead of publishing the data as observed for a specific week, PHAC published it by adding counts of cases that occurred before doses were administered, which artificially inflated the number of cases among the unvaccinated. Doing this create the impression (illusion) that unvaccinated (or people with less numbers of doses) had considerably more COVID-19 cases - including COVID-19 deaths - compared to vaccinated (or people with larger numbers of doses), which was not the case.
When the data are shown without the artificially inflated number of cases among the unvaccinated - as shown in figure below, they show that in reality there were more COVID-19 deaths among the four-dose vaccinated than among the unvaccinated, even though the size of the unvaccinated population was larger than the size of the four-dose population during the considered time frame. This evidence was hidden from public and still is, as much other evidence that went against the official political narratives.
Such skewing of data can only be explained by the efforts of the PHAC to provide the evidence for a predefined political narrative that COVID-19 vaccines were effective - regardless of whether the actual evidence supported that claim or not.
Such manufacturing of evidence to fit the desired narrative represents a serious breach of scientific integrity, comparable in severity to falsifying measurement tests in civil engineering or altering results in control-group medical trials.
The fact that such a manipulation of data occurred — and remains unaddressed publicly — demonstrates two critical points:
Those who developed this reporting methodology knew that the data did not support the claimed vaccine effectiveness, which is why they had to employ special data manipulation techniques to skew them towards the desired narrative
The voices of public servants and Canadians who witnessed such serious breach of scientific integrity, were silenced via discipline mechanisms or of fear such
This is why one of the key pillar of my electoral platform is the protection of scientific integrity and the elimination of political interference within the public service.
Conclusion
Conclusion
One of the most controversial policies implemented by the Government of Canada in recent years was the Mandatory Vaccination Policy. Canadians were led to believe that this policy was based on evidence. However, the reality—as shown here and witnessed by many professionals who must remain anonymous due to fear of reprisal—was quite the opposite: "the evidence was based on the policy."
This misuse of public service professionals' work to support specific political narratives is tragic for all Canadians. Many assume that government policies are grounded in scientific evidence, when, in fact, the opposite has often been true—particularly in recent years—where evidence has been manufactured to justify existing government policies.
Union members who have witnessed such breaches of professional integrity cannot speak out for fear of reprisal. It is time for the union to advocate on their behalf. We need to introduce an "immunity against political interference" provision in the collective agreements of all professionals involved in regulating health, food, and environmental products and policies. This change is crucial to ensure that they can continue to provide fearless professional advice, which is essential for the health and well-being of all Canadians!
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