One of the world’s leading science journals weighs in on the far right’s attempt to pervert Freedom of Information into a surveillance tool for Big Brother. Trimmed version below, go to the link to read the whole piece.
Scottish law exempts academic work from the freedom-of-information laws, but the rest of the United Kingdom does not. Ireland also exempts, and although the United States is commonly thought to, it turns out that, as so often in that country, it is left to the courts to decide. So, just what should researchers make of freedom-of-information laws?
American climatologist Michael Mann, now at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, probably knows the score better than most. And in the latest twist in a long-running saga over who should be able to read Mann’s e-mails, a Prince William County Circuit Court judge in Manassas, Virginia, last week tore up an agreement that would have given the e-mails, with conditions, to attorneys for the American Tradition Institute (ATI), a conservative think tank. Judge Gaylord Finch also granted Mann’s request to join the University of Virginia (his former employer and holder of the e-mails) in a lawsuit to block their release.
As both sides argue about whether the messages should ultimately be made public, the two legal decisions come as welcome news to those (including this journal) who believe that access to personal correspondence is a freedom too far. But the case highlights, yet again, how woefully unprepared the academic community is to meet this kind of challenge. This must change.
As both sides argue about whether the messages should ultimately be made public, the two legal decisions come as welcome news to those (including this journal) who believe that access to personal correspondence is a freedom too far. But the case highlights, yet again, how woefully unprepared the academic community is to meet this kind of challenge. This must change.
Mann is also getting help from a new fund especially designed to aid climate scientists hit by legal challenges,(see button on this page – PS) and organizations including the American Geophysical Union, the American Association of University Professors and the Union of Concerned Scientists have weighed in as well. All of this is good and useful, but it is no substitute for a solid institutional defence. Individual universities and research institutions everywhere should review their own policies and make sure they know the applicable laws as well as do those who would use them for mischief, or worse.
I don’t think the investigations have gone far enough. When will e-mail traffic among seaweed, species fleeing for the poles, glaciers, lakes, and Arctic sea ice be subpoenaed. These alarmist co-conspirators in the global “warming” socialist world-government plot must be brought to account!
agreed. that’s what got my attention – a different approach. One wonders how this would fare in a gale.
It’s time those radicals hiding behind the “nonhuman” defense be called to account.
Exactly. Seems as though we could call the migrating species “fellow travelers,” whereas the changing natural features are simply dupes, taken in by the propaganda spewed by the likes of you and me. I don’t know about you, but I feel gratified to be so persuasive.
So have the climate contrarians set a good example and made *all* their emails and data sources freely and publicly available for everyone to scrutinise?
No? Colour me, um, not at all suprised.