Public access to scientists’ email increasingly politicized
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.8138
In announcing the February 2015 Union of Concerned Scientists report Freedom to Bully: How Laws Intended to Free Information Are Used to Harass Researchers, the UCS charged: “Open records laws are increasingly being used as a weapon against researchers whose work threatens private interests.” But sometimes seekers of scientists’ email target researchers whose work instead aids private interests, as seen in this headline from above the fold on the Sunday, 6 September, New York Times front page: “Emails reveal academic ties in a food war: Industry swaps grants for lobbying clout.”
The UCS announcement summarized the growing politicization of scientists’ email:
The use of open records laws to harass researchers emerged with the growing use of electronic communications. Conversations that used to take place over the phone or in person are now conducted by email, a format that leaves a permanent record. When these email discussions are made public through records requests, the privacy that academics have long enjoyed in discussions with colleagues is compromised. This can have a chilling effect on the frank exchange of ideas and constructive criticism, a crucial part of the scientific process.
Abuse of open records requests can also hinder researchers simply by hijacking their schedule. Complying with requests may take dozens or even hundreds of hours of researchers’ time, putting their real work on hold or on the back burner for a long while. This may often be the main purpose of such requests.
The announcement gave examples involving, for example, climate scientists supporting the climate consensus, climate scientists opposing it, tobacco health-effects researchers, an environmental chemist “saddled with ‘the largest open records request ever made in Minnesota’ in an apparent effort to shut the research down,” and an occupational health scientist who “found himself on the receiving end of multiple open records requests from the Highland Mining Co. starting in 2012" for investigating the health implications of the environmental effects of mountaintop removal.
The Times article followed up on controversy that had been brewing for some months. The Times obtained email messages through open-records laws to show that Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, had relied along with industry partners on scientists, and on the special authority of science, in defense of genetically modified crops. The fight is mainly about herbicides used on the crops.
The Times judges that anti-GMO forces have been winning this “public relations war.” The front-page piece quoted a Monsanto official who sees a “misinformation campaign” that is “overwhelming” and that “is really hurting the progress in translating science and knowledge into ag productivity.” It also quoted a public relations executive: “Professors/researchers/scientists have a big white hat in this debate and support in their states, from politicians to producers.”
The “debate over bioengineered foods has escalated into a billion-dollar food industry war,” the Times reported, declaring as well that the “use by both sides of third-party scientists, and their supposedly unbiased research, helps explain why the American public is often confused as it processes the conflicting information.” Intensifying the controversy is pending federal legislation to forbid states from enacting laws requiring that food with genetically modified ingredients be so marked.
In some cases, the Times charged, biotech industry consultants have offered draft articles for use by “prominent academics.” The Times didn’t say whether such work has made it into the peer-reviewed scientific literature. It did charge, though, that although there is “no evidence that academic work was compromised ... the emails show how academics have shifted from researchers to actors in lobbying and corporate public relations campaigns.” The article reported that Monsanto and its industry partners have “passed out an undisclosed amount in special grants to scientists ... to help with ‘biotechnology outreach’ and to travel around the country to defend genetically modified foods.”
The Times quoted a scientist who believes genetic modification safe and who sees saying so to be part of his job: “Nobody tells me what to say, and nobody tells me what to think. Every point I make is based on evidence.” The Times adds, “But he also conceded in an interview that he could unfairly be seen as a tool of industry, and his university now intends to donate the Monsanto grant money to a food pantry.”
The Union of Concerned Scientists was not alone earlier this year in engaging the overall issue. In February, Wired ran the commentary “Anti-GMO activist seeks to expose scientists’ emails with big ag.” Last month, the Los Angeles Times ran the op-ed “Why it’s OK for taxpayers to ‘snoop’ on scientists” by prominent journalism watchers Charles Seife and Paul Thacker.
Those two observed that “in the last decade or so, the research community has been moving toward increased transparency, particularly when it comes to any financial entanglements that might cast doubt upon a scientist’s objectivity,” but that now a “backlash” has begun. They asked, “Why should scientists have a privileged position when it comes to freedom of information requests?” Without defining or clarifying the term civil servant for this context, they concluded, “Taxpayers have the right—the duty—to try to understand what they’re doing. Scientists should be subject to the same rules as every other civil servant.”
The Times article has stirred some media attention, maybe most notably the 8 September overview commentary in the Scientist on using the Freedom of Information Act to read scientists’ email. That same day, the Chronicle of Higher Education posted a piece headlined “Academic scientists are foot soldiers in battle over bioengineered foods.” At the Examiner, which claims to serve more than 20 million readers monthly, a commentary criticizing “sloppy reporting” charged that the Times article “slanders scientists and claims their research is questionable on the front page” even though “the rest of the article provides not a single instance of any scientist’s research being influenced or corrupted.” One of the scientists covered in the Times article called it a “cherry-picking fest.”
The Public Library of Science apparently perceives high contentiousness in all of this. Last month, after Seife and Thacker made their arguments in a blog posting there, Retraction Watch told what happened to the posting via this headline: “Following criticism, PLOS removes blog defending scrutiny of science.”
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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.