Trump bans EPA employees from giving social media updates.

[Scoobes]

DonFerrari said:

Scoobes said:

They can't post anything work related on social media, so those social media groups would count, effectively eliminating discussion on these sites. 

And science is a growingly collaborative endeavour. Social media sites are an instanteous way to bounce ideas off from scientists around the world. Of course that happens in the smaller groups within a university or company but it has far greater reach on social media. Conferences/sympossiums are also great but they take time to setup and are costly. 

I would bet most companies also ban communication of the work performed inside in any public outlet.

But wellcome to what several classic liberals would tell you. The more power the government have the more power it will use against you.

Didn't we have that discussion already?

Publicly funded research is very different to research and data in private companies.

The research and the data generated at companies is owned by the company as either proprietary or IP. It's funded by the investors of that company and they have the right to see how well that company is doing and get updated on progress of whatever product or service the company provides. 

Public research is paid for by tax payers and unless their are certain circumstances (involved in defence, private company is involved, other legal IP issue) then the information is to be available in the public domain.