A succession of stories in recent weeks involving scientists and open records requests have anguished many who cherish two ideals:\u00a0academic freedom and transparency.<\/p>\n
http://www.amandasatoz.com/?page_id=1454 I imagine that journalists have also been grappling with a\u00a0tension between those two ideals. (I know I have.) More on that in a minute. First a recap.<\/p>\n
https://www.randwickpsychologycentre.com/therapists/ Two weeks ago, I reported<\/a> in Science<\/em> magazine that an anti-GMO group had filed a flurry of freedom of information requests, “asking administrators to turn over any correspondence between a dozen academic researchers and a handful of agricultural companies, trade groups, and PR firms.”<\/p>\n
Order Tramadol Online Several days after that story appeared, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report<\/a> detailing how open records requests “are increasingly being used to harass and intimidate scientists and other academic researchers, or to disrupt and delay their work.” The timing of the UCS report was coincidental and had been prepared well before my story was published. Nonetheless, biotech researchers, particularly those requested to turn over their emails to an anti-GMO group, felt that the UCS report had reflected their plight. And Gretchen Goldman, a lead analyst in the Center for Science and Democracy at UCS, seemed to agree<\/a>:<\/p>\n
These requests to the genetic engineering researchers, just like other overly broad open records requests that seek excessive access to scientists\u2019 inboxes, are inappropriate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
https://blackhillsballoons.com/team/ So was this a case where the principles of transparency were\u00a0being (mis)used in a way that threatened\u00a0academic freedom?<\/p>\n
https://theroyalstagproperties.com/contact-5/ Before you answer, consider: Earlier this week, the New York Time<\/em>s reported<\/a> that\u00a0Wei-Hock Soon (informally known as Willie), a\u00a0scientist\u00a0at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had received industry funding explicitly for published work and congressional testimony that was critical of mainstream climate science. (Soon has long been a popular figure in climate skeptic circles.) The environmental group Greenpeace used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents that revealed the extent and terms of Soon’s corporate funding. As the Times<\/em> reports:<\/p>\n
Ambien Buy Without Prescription The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as \u201cdeliverables\u201d that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Ambien No Prescription After the Times<\/em> story appeared, Aaron Huertas, communications officer for UCS, wrote a blog post<\/a> headlined, “Willie Soon’s Failure to Disclose Industry Funding for Contrarian Climate Research is Another Reason to Support Transparency.”<\/p>\n
https://dentalprovidence.com/veneers/ Someone else had the same sentiment.<\/p>\n
Why FOIA scientists? See this great NYTimes piece on corporate cash for a climate researcher. http:\/\/t.co\/C5ldEOT3Gi<\/a> @jswatz<\/a><\/p>\n
https://disneycruisinggroup.com/meet/ \u2014 Gary Ruskin (@garyruskin) February 22, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
http://masterfacilitator.com/flawlessconsultingeurope/ Ruskin is executive director of U.S. Right to Know, the anti-GMO group that recently sent freedom of information requests to four universities that employ agricultural researchers working in biotechnology. Ruskin suspects there is an unholy nexus between companies like Monsanto and some academic scientists.\u00a0Thus his interest in\u00a0any email correspondence between academic scientists and industry. Might such communication reveal unethical relationships similar to that just disclosed between climate contrarian Willie Soon and the energy industry? I’ve talked with many\u00a0of the agricultural researchers targeted by\u00a0Ruskin and they say that they have nothing to hide. One of them, Kevin Folta, a biologist at the University of Florida, Gainsville, has spoken out<\/a> forcefully against what he believes<\/a> is<\/p>\n
Tramadol Online Purchase nothing more than a hunt for words to smear a few visible public teachers and researchers that engage public dialog in animal and plant biotechnology. The effects are larger, scientists feel a violation of privacy, intimidation, and are less likely to reach out to lay audiences, which is what we should be doing most.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
https://forgive123.com/emotional-healing/ Does it matter if\u00a0Ruskin’s actions spring from an ideological bias (anti-GMO), as Folta and his colleagues contend? Do intentions even matter? After all, Greenpeace is hardly a neutral bystander. Is anyone in the media or climate science questioning its FOIA motivations? Or does it\u00a0matter only what the environmental group uncovered with its document request?<\/p>\n
Purchase Tramadol Without Prescription If you want to drill down into the vexing issues surrounding this debate, I highly recommend as a starting point Anna Clark’s recent Columbia Journalism Review<\/em> (CJR) piece.<\/a>\u00a0Here’s the thrust of it:<\/p>\n
https://www.randwickpsychologycentre.com/contact/ While open records requests are designed to protect press freedom, they also make it possible for people who oppose certain scientific viewpoints to exploit them. Ideologically driven record requests to public universities, coming from both the right and left, are often purposefully designed to disrupt research. This is nothing more than bullying, according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which advocates for a measured approach to open records, with a more discrete definition of which requests serve the public good and which do not.<\/p>\n
But as CJR has previously detailed, it isn\u2019t easy to parse harassing requests from legitimate ones\u2014not without trampling on hard-won transparency laws, at least. Yes, some people abuse their right to open records, but the benefits are still a net positive for freedom of information. That means we need to look at how we can support scientists who are unduly subject to harassing requests while still protecting the right of journalists and others to make them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Buy Xanax Online Without Prescription The tension between those two objectives is now on display. As a journalist who has relied<\/a> on FOIA to report several stories, I am biased in favor of those transparency laws. But I am also sympathetic to scientists who feel unfairly singled out because of their work\u00a0or their efforts to communicate the science underlying their\u00a0field of research.<\/p>\n
Xanax Buy Without Prescription You can see the Union of Concerned Scientists striving ever so delicately to find the right balance between transparency and academic freedom. A few days after the Willie Soon story broke, a Democratic Congressman sent letters to seven universities<\/a>, “demanding information about\u2014and ‘communication regarding’\u2014specific professors’ funding sources and their preparation of testimony before Congress and other bodies,” as Ben Geman reports<\/a> in National Journal<\/em>.<\/p>\n
https://dinoeliadis.com/city-of-largo/ Michael Halpern, author of the UCS report<\/a> on academic researchers being “harassed” by freedom of information requests,\u00a0writes<\/a> on the recent developments:<\/p>\n
https://worklivelaos.com/mahosot/ To be sure, scientists should be able to receive industry funding and to collaborate and test ideas with other scientists, and that includes scientists from industry. But it cannot be ignored that inappropriate industry influence on universities is growing both in scope and method of delivery.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In her CJR<\/em> piece<\/a>, Clarke discusses the UCS report and asks Halpern to “expand on where to draw the line between press rights and privacy rights”:<\/p>\n
https://worklivelaos.com/gecko/ He said that there should be open records exemptions that \u201csupport what is truly in the public interest.\u201d Research communications\u2014basically, emails among scientists as they banter and play devil\u2019s advocate\u2014are part of the deliberative process, and essential for \u201cthe ability of scientists to ask difficult questions and produce new knowledge.\u201d The privacy of that is in the public interest, and so it should be exempt, he said. But, as his report emphasizes, information on funding is fair game because there is a public interest in \u201cthe ability of those outside the university to see if funds were misspent or financial conflicts of interest were kept secret.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen creating and implementing exemptions, we should steer clear from looking at the motivation of those making requests,\u201d he said in an email. \u201cThat\u2019s a slippery slope that gives institutions too much power to avoid responding adequately to \u2018inconvenient\u2019 requests.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Purchase Xanax Online Clarke might have been tempted to end her article on that note. I’m glad she continued on:<\/p>\n
But it is just that problem\u2014looking into the motivation of requesters\u2014that is so hard to avoid. The UCS report suggests as much, detailing instance after instance where ideological and commercial interests led to intrusive requests that chill the scientific process. The reader is meant to be appalled at how pervasive this is\u2014and indeed, it is appalling. But the report never details exactly how you can tell a harassing request from a legitimate one without looking at motivations. It seems to come down to the old line about pornography: \u201cI know it when I see it.\u201d And that\u2019s just not enough to build a policy on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A succession of stories in recent weeks involving scientists and open records requests have anguished many who cherish two ideals:\u00a0academic freedom and transparency. I imagine that journalists have also been grappling with a\u00a0tension between those two ideals. (I know I have.) More on that in a minute. First a recap. Two weeks ago, I reported…Continue Reading…<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2496,2553,2561,2961,2962],"tags":[743,835,1126,1581,1712],"class_list":["post-14491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotechnology","category-climate-change","category-climate-science","category-science","category-science-communication","tag-biotechnology","tag-climate-change","tag-gmos","tag-science","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}