By Jon Roe
As the University of Calgary has shown with acidic responses to the Maclean’s university rankings, reputation is important to them. Showing up low in those rankings hurts that reputation, so they pull out and protest the process used to determine them as they did last year. This naturally extends to when an organization misappropriates the university’s logo and name as the Friends of Science Society did in the past. The university protested and demanded the logo and name be removed from the offending materials.
The Friends of Science is a Calgary-based organization built on the premise of promoting the other side of the Kyoto debate that runs against what is being said by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; the side that doesn’t believe human activity is causing climate change any more than nature doubts the science behind the IPCC report–a small, but vocal minority.
The Friends launched a video, Climate Catastrophe Cancelled, in Apr. 2005 displaying these views and brought along Dr. Barry Cooper, a professor from the U of C’s political science department, to the Ottawa press conference. The original copy of the video and the original press release included the U of C’s crest up front, in the case of the video, and the U of C’s name listed first, then the Friends’, in the case of the press release. In the original release, Cooper spoke as if he represented the university detailing why the U of C got involved.
From what Friends vice-president Eric Loughead told the Gauntlet, Cooper had received clearance from U of C’s legal department for the use of the logo and the name in this context. U of C’s vice-president external relations Roman Cooney denied this and said the Friends never had any approval whatsoever from the U of C. After he found out about it, he immediately asked them to remove the logo and change the press-release. Confusing, to say the least. At the centre of this is Cooper, but because of his refusal to talk to the Gauntlet, we can’t verify the truth in this case.
This is just one example of many of the strange interactions between the U of C and the Friends. They have no formal relationship, both sides say, and both will say the only connection they have to each other is through Cooper. Cooper started the Science Education Fund at the U of C, which was registered at the Calgary Foundation in Oct. 2005 and which supplied the Friends with their funding for their video among other projects. Cooper had a hand in coming up with the idea for a radio campaign to help promote the video, also funded by the Science Education Fund.
The fund and its anonymous donors is another issue in itself and while it ultimately doesn’t matter who donates to it for the university, what concerns the university is where that money goes. If the money flows through the university and funds research or educational materials, that’s fine. If the money goes to a third-party election ad campaign, there’s a serious problem.
The aforementioned ad campaign promoting the video curiously landed during a federal election and also curiously targeted Ontario markets containing electoral ridings the federal Liberals held slim leads in–some of which the federal Conservatives went on to win for minority government in 2006. Though the Friends deny this was intentional and it was more of a happy coincidence, whether or not these were third-party elections ads is still up in the air. Elections Canada rules on third-party advertising during elections states: “[any ad] that promotes or opposes a registered party or the election of a candidate, including one that takes a position on an issue with which a registered party or candidate is associated” is considered third-party election advertising and must be registered with the chief electoral officer. The ads themselves don’t promote the Conservatives, but they certainly took a position on Kyoto, a protocol the federal Liberals had signed on to. Kevin Grandia, manager of the DeSmog blog, a blog that looks into the credentials and funding of groups that take positions similar to the Friends’ on climate change, recently filed a complaint with Elections Canada about the Friends.
The scope of the U of C’s audit is unknown, but the Science Education Fund’s role in funding the ad campaign is within it and was one of the U of C’s concerns, according to Cooney. When the audit is complete, the university said it will make a statement. Because the U of C is a public institution, there needs to be more than a statement made. The full audit needs to be released and publicly available and there needs to be action and accountability for any university members involved. Cooper forged the connection between the U of C and the Friends’ in the first place and Cooper needs to be accountable for that.
Any connection the U of C has with the Friends needs to be terminated. The Friends are not a research organization. They don’t do peer-reviewed or published research. They pay for people with questionable credentials to be flown around the country and give talks about subjects they aren’t qualified to speak on and they discretely take money from oil companies to fund their anti-Kyoto, anti-global warming campaign. The university needs to sever the ties to the Friends by dissolving the Science Education Fund to avoid any more public relations messes in the future.
The university’s credibility has already been damaged because of the Friends’ unauthorized use of the U of C’s logo and name and, as Richard Littlemore–a writer with the DeSmog blog who has been following the Friends–puts it: “the reputation of every academic in the organization rests on the standard that is practiced by the least-best in their midst.” If Cooper is found culpable in this audit, the university needs to punish him accordingly.