Scientists Playing with FOIA, Bound to Get Burned: Stop Worrying, Embrace Transparency

Today's scientists are effectively public servants, and should start behaving accordingly.  The public has a right to know what scientists do and how they do it.  To prevent scandals like Climategate, scientific correspondence, critiques, and even data manipulation must be done in public.  The University of East Anglia and associated climate scientists didn't understand that. I'm not sure they do, even now that their emails were hacked and used to sow doubt about climate science.  Jon Stewart sums up the problem better than I can:

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This isn't an excuse for climate change denialists.  (Please don't call those folks "skeptics".)  Climate change  is real, it's caused by man, and there are reasonable steps we can take to halt and reverse the damage.

The hackers who extracted emails from UEA committed a crime.  In so doing, they exposed that several scientists called people dismissive names, manipulated access to blogs, adjusted data in non-obvious ways, and derided their obligations under the law such as the U.S. and U.K. Freedom of Information Acts (FOIAs).


What bothered me most was the disregard for the law.  The most damning example from the emails I've found includes this passage, from Phil Jones to Michael Mann (emphasis mine):

Mike,

I presume congratulations are in order - so congrats etc !

Just sent loads of station data to Scott. Make sure he documents everything better this time ! And don't leave stuff lying around on ftp sites - you never know who is trawling them. The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does ! The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it.

We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind. Tom Wigley has sent me a worried email when he heard about it - thought people could ask him for his model code. He has retired officially from UEA so he can hide behind that. IPR should be relevant here, but I can see me getting into an argument with someone at UEA who'll say we must adhere to it !

The passage goes on to other topics, but you get the picture.

The reaction to this crime should not be bigger and thicker firewalls, or at least not solely that.  Scientists should realize by now that privacy is not absolute, and in most cases, it's not even a good idea.  They should embrace transparency, by moving correspondence to more open formats like blogs, wikis, and Google Wave.  This move is critical to maintaining the long-term respect and public support for science.  Obviously these platforms need to be adjusted to accommodate the complex manipulations of large data sets; the scientific community is in the best position to demand for and contribute to the development of appropriate applications.  They will find great allies in the library science and open government communities, folks tackling the same essential problem.  One great example is the Alliance for Taxpayer Access.  In any case, scientists need to get out in front regarding transparency, or risk letting deniers define the route, themselves.

Some scientists may argue at this point, claiming that such presumptions of transparency will stifle free and open discussion and debate, that scientists working in the public sphere will censor themselves, and that the best ideas will not come forward.  They might worry that science would become even more politicized than it already is.  These might be fair points; after all, much of scientific inquiry is based on proposing and discarding ideas, ideas that seem crazy at first, but may just be right.

The answer is to embrace the embargo.  Embargoes are already used throughout the scientific enterprise.  Usually, they're used by scientific journals to delay access to non-paying readers, but they can be used in other ways, as well.  Scientist A collects data and wants to analyze it and publish.  While working on it, she shares her data with Scientist B so as not to delay further analysis.  Oftentimes, as a courtesy or by agreement, Scientist B holds his own results under an embargo until Scientist A has had a chance to publish her results.  This avoids confusion over which person should get credit for the initial data and analysis.

Wary scientists should know that everything they do, every email they write, every correction of data, every keystroke, could eventually wind up in the public domain.  The platforms that will serve those scientists best will incorporate a time-bound embargo, with definite and obvious, rolling expiration dates.

As Judith Curry of Georgia Tech puts it (emphasis mine):

[G]iven the growing policy relevance of climate data, increasingly higher standards must be applied to the transparency and availability of climate data and metadata. These standards should be clarified, applied and enforced by the relevant national funding agencies and professional societies that publish scientific journals... The need for public credibility and transparency has dramatically increased in recent years as the policy relevance of climate research has increased. The climate research enterprise has not yet adapted to this need, and our institutions need to strategize to respond to this need.

This actually isn't a loss of privacy–which doesn't really exist, anyway–but rather a move to make science even more legitimate and accessible to the public.  We should all recognize the great value the world has derived from access to earlier scientific correspondence.  Occasionally, the public needs to be reminded that scientific inquiry is a human enterprise.  Transparent scientists are ones they can believe in.

[P.S.: Judith Curry has done a fantastic job of corresponding with (initially hostile) commenters at the Climate Audit blog.  Some of her top comments are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.]


[Edit: Added emphasis.]

Censorship vs Terrorism? Animals vs Science?

The cars of two UCSC scientists and their families were firebombed earlier this month, reportedly by an animal-rights group. In response to these detestable attacks, some scientists have proposed internet censorship as a method of preventing this violent harassment. More than simply ineffective, this measure would be counterproductive. There is another, more transparent way that we should pursue immediately.

To be clear, no group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and the animal-rights community is divided over the issue. The Humane Society has gone so far as to offer a reward for information about the perpetrators of the incident.

In their editorial in Science Magazine, M. R. C. Greenwood, Gordon Ringold, and Doug Kellogg (GRK) correctly characterize the situation while lamenting the lack of public outcry:

These are criminal acts, being investigated as an attempted homicide by local, state, and federal authorities. It is of serious concern that these acts of terrorism and their associated incendiary statements were not immediately condemned by our political leaders. There have been no high-profile or unified statements about the incidents, and days afterward, California's governor had still declined to comment.

GRK further identify the need to address underlying issues in this conflict:

Those responsible must be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Those who oppose animal research, even when conducted under strict federal and state laws, are free to express those beliefs. They are also free to reject the medicines--the fruits of animal research--that now allow us to treat disease and lead healthier lives. But they are not free to conduct a terror campaign.

Though, most animal-rights activists would probably counter that they don't have an alternative; that is, they don't have the ability to reject products that have resulted from animal-testing because there's no rigorous tracking and labeling in place to identify viable alternatives. (Instead, the Center for Consumer Freedom, an industry-sponsored organization, fights all efforts to make products transparent, including nutritional labeling.)

But the proposed legislation, promoting secrecy as a solution, is where GRK really stumble:

State laws that reinforce these protections need to be enacted. A proposed bill in the California Legislature (AB2296), which would extend protection to "animal enterprise workers" similar to that provided for politicians and reproductive health workers, has been much weakened from its original intent. In its original form, it would have prevented the posting of personal information on Web sites with the intent to incite acts of violence or threaten researchers and their families.

This approach of locking down information to prevent violent harassment is wrongheaded and counterproductive. Data leaks do happen. If these lists are going to exist anyway, we are much better off having them in the open. That way, at least we know who's being targeted.

Here's what we should do:

• As a society, we should prosecute these terrorists as criminals, and treat these actions as what they are, organized crime. That means bringing sophisticated financial tracking systems to bear, and applying relevant statutes like RICO to break down the support network for the groups that exist now. Financial transparency of all organizations is a way to prevent such groups from forming in the future.
  
  
• As a scientific community, we should isolate these extremists by working closely with animal rights groups like the Humane Society and individuals like Stephen Kaufman of the Christian Vegetarian Association and Eric Markus of Vegan.com that have denounced violence as a means of progress. Along with pharmaceutical and cosmetic manufacturers, we should create clear tracking and labeling protocols to give citizens real information on how much and what kind of testing goes into each product on the market. This market transparency allows us all to see the real benefits of animal testing research, as well as the opportunity to reject those benefits.
  
  
• Above all, we should not lean on censorship and secrecy for protection against violent harassment! Secrecy is a short-term solution at best, and is inherently unstable. Instead, as individual scientists, we should humanize ourselves to the animal rights community by engaging vigorously with those non-violent groups, to show them, first-hand, the science being done and the results generated.
  

Both scientists and activists agree that both human and animal suffering should be minimized. Let us use that as an opportunity for more transparency on all sides.