He was commenting in a recent talk to about 60 people at a New Zealand Media and Environment Forum held at the Otago Museum.
The day-long forum focused on media handling of environmental issues in New Zealand, a month before crucial international climate change talks were due to begin in Copenhagen.
It was timely that a Government taskforce had begun reviewing the country's eight Crown-owned science companies, given that the current Crown Research Institute system had been in place since 1992, Dr Salinger said.
It was also time to revisit the growing trend towards imposing "corporate" science controls which restricted the ability of journalists to talk directly to scientists at CRIs, as they previously had.
This meant that, in many instances, even the answering of simple factual queries had to be authorised in advance by centralised public relations "gatekeepers".
CRI science was taxpayer-funded and the public was entitled to know about it.
Reporters did not want to receive only a "sanitised message", he added in an interview.
In other comments, he said there was always scope for intelligent scepticism, but commentators who denied the basic facts about climate change were doing the public a disservice by spreading misinformation.
Dr Salinger grew up in Dunedin, is a University of Otago graduate, and is an honorary research fellow at the Auckland University School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science.
He was a principal scientist with Niwa's National Climate Centre until he was controversially dismissed in April, apparently for speaking to the news media without gaining prior approval.
The Employment Relations Authority has reserved its decision over a subsequent personal grievance claim.
• The forum was organised by Dr Geoffrey Craig, of the Otago University politics department, and was hosted by the department, the Centre for Science Communication and the university's Political Communication, Policy and Participation Research Cluster.
