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A geographer by training, Kirsty Duncan contributed to the UN climate-change panel that won a Nobel peace prize. More controversially, she has also vigorously promoted an unproven medical treatment, clashed publicly with some of the world’s top virus experts, and repeatedly warned of a “darker side” to science replete with power politics and resistance to change.

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It was interesting to observe the reaction on Twitter, where even the mildest dubious observation about Trudeau’s new government is met with furious denunciation: the story was a “smear,” because it didn’t say anything nice about Duncan; she was merely pushing for clinical trials, which is how we learn whether treatments work or not; way back in 2011, people had no idea whatsoever whether CCSVI was a thing or not, so thank goodness people like Duncan were around to force the issue and disprove it; and oh yeah, well, former prime minister Stephen Harper’s science minister was a creationist, so there.

Even where it wasn’t just mindless partisanship, it was pretty much nonsense. Mainstream medicine considered CCSVI rank quackery at the time Duncan took up the cause and it has only been further discredited since. Had Duncan been so bullishly offside mainstream scientific opinion on climate change, perhaps calling for a government inquiry into sunspots, you can bet she would not hold her current portfolio.

The biggest issue isn’t Duncan’s advocacy for a dubious cause, though. It’s hardly ideal, certainly: a government surfing into power on a promise of “evidence-based policy” and liberating scientists from their political overlords probably shouldn’t have a science minister who was happy to leverage painful anecdotes to try to get the government to spend millions studying something most scientists considered ridiculous.