A succession of stories in recent weeks involving scientists and open records requests have anguished many who cherish two ideals: academic freedom and transparency. I imagine that journalists have also been grappling with a tension between those two ideals. (I know I have.) More on that in a minute. First a recap. Two weeks ago, I reported in Science 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." Several days after that story appeared, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report 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:
These requests to the genetic engineering researchers, just like other overly broad open records requests that seek excessive access to scientists’ inboxes, are inappropriate.
