I can give you an example. Since I retired, I and other retired scientists as well were invited by the director general here in Newfoundland to attend a session by 25 scientists who were doing an assessment of St. Pierre Bank, just about 10 years ago. We sat with them for about seven or eight days during which time these scientists presented the information they had as a result of their at-sea research efforts and so on. They debated and argued and so on, but finally came up with a consensus. There were three men out of the group assigned to the job of putting together their consensus for presentation to the management.
My friend the scientist and I were asked to sit in while these people decided on the.... We sat there and we felt they had done a hell of a good job on it. It really reflected what had taken place over the past 10 days. So there was some message.
About a week later that was sent back to the same group for change. They came back three times before it was accepted for presentation to the bureaucrats and the minister, by which time it had been watered down quite a bit.