Transparency versus harassment

Abstract

O pen records laws worldwide are critical to holding public institutions, including universities, accountable. Such laws protect against inappropriate influence on the scientific enterprise and promote public trust in the integrity of science and scientists. But the growing use of electronic communications by researchers makes these laws vulnerable to misuse. Conversations that used to occur in person and by other less-recordable means are now electronically written. Increasingly, activists across the political spectrum in several countries are requesting not only records of discussions about the strengths and weaknesses of work, but also preliminary paper drafts and private constructive criticisms from colleagues. These requests can attack and intimidate academics, threatening their reputations, chilling their speech, disrupting their research, discouraging them from tackling contentious topics, and ultimately confusing the public.* So what level of disclosure is appropriate? How can public accountability be balanced with the privacy essential for scientific inquiry? As AAAS President Rush Holt noted, "…excessively intrusive demands for personal or irrelevant information that go beyond appropriate levels of oversight" can negatively affect scientific discovery. † As recent examples, four U.S. universities received open records requests for years of correspondence between biologists and several private companies from activists who oppose genetically modified organisms. In 2012, a mining company asked West Virginia University for draft documents and peerreview comments about occupational health research. The burden from these requests can be considerable even if documents are ultimately kept confidential. In 2009, British tobacco marketing researchers reported stress and weeks of lost time after a tobacco manufacturer requested not only correspondence but also primary data, questionnaires, and record descriptions. In 2015, University of Arizona climate researchers reported spending weeks culling through e-mails in response to a request for their correspondence documents.

Scientific integrity issues in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry: Improving research reproducibility, credibility, and transparency

“…Research integrity policies or requirements for data transparency can be used as weapons to bury public university or government scientists with vexatious, intrusive, and costly demands for records such as raw laboratory notebooks, instrument calibration records, emails between coauthors, working drafts, and peer comments and responses. Such demands can be effective tools for interfering with the work of public‐sector scientists, including academics in public institutions (Folta ; Halpern and Mann ; Kloor ; Kollipara ; Lewandowsky and Bishop ) or academics in private institutions who receive research support from public sources (Hey and Chalmers ; Shrader‐Frechette ). For example, Deborah Swackhamer, an environmental chemist at the University of Minnesota, USA, was targeted under state open records laws with legal demands for raw unpublished data, class notes, purchase records, telephone records, and more from a 15‐y period.…”