Climate scientists complain about Freedom of Information laws

**Locutus** · 05-26-2011, 06:23 AM

Sir Paul Nurse says climate scientists are being targeted by campaigns of requests designed to slow down their research.

Freedom of information laws are being misused to harass scientists and should be re-examined by the government, according to the president of the Royal Society.

Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse told the Guardian that some climate scientists were being targeted by organised campaigns of requests for data and other research materials, aimed at intimidating them and slowing down research. He said the behaviour was turning freedom of information laws into a way to intimidate some scientists.

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Freedom of information laws are used to harass scientists, says Nobel laureate | Politics | The Guardian

It's not easy being green.

**IdRatherBeSkiing** · 05-26-2011, 01:56 PM

People are just supposed to take their research as they say and stop their bitchin.

Or they could just hire an admin assistant to deal with that stuff.

**CDNBear** · 05-27-2011, 05:30 PM

Funny, Ton and I were just talking about the FoIA, earlier this month.

**Stoney Toni** · 05-27-2011, 07:12 PM

Originally Posted by IdRatherBeSkiing

Or they could just hire an admin assistant to deal with that stuff.

The grant agencies, or the scientist?

Whatever the answer, both will result in lower efficiency for dollars allocated to research and development. A shame.

**CDNBear** · 05-27-2011, 07:43 PM

Originally Posted by Stoney Toni

Whatever the answer, both will result in lower efficiency for dollars allocated to research and development. A shame.

Hmmm, I should have thought of that dodge when you and I were discussing the FoIA.

**Mark** · 05-27-2011, 07:52 PM

Originally Posted by Stoney Toni

The grant agencies, or the scientist?

Whatever the answer, both will result in lower efficiency for dollars allocated to research and development. A shame.

But wouldn't you agree that the science should be accountable to scrutiny?

**Stoney Toni** · 05-27-2011, 08:37 PM

Originally Posted by Mark

But wouldn't you agree that the science should be accountable to scrutiny?

Absolutely. But there are huge differences between an honest and competent audit, and one scientist getting ganged up by organized campaigns to shut down their work which disagrees with someone or some group's politics.

We have audit trails at work, I work in development, and I know it's far more acceptable for us than it is for the research department. But that's the way it is. We are submitting dossiers to regulators to get our vaccines approved, and they must be able to see everything that went into the product.

There's a happy medium where audits can occur smoothly, and in a timely fashion, without grinding research to a halt. And that's the gist of Nurse's comments following from the report on open and informed policy from science.