A June report in this column told of an escalation in the campaign by climate skeptics to reclassify public university researchers’ email as routine public property. Now a Virginia judge’s ruling in the matter has caused Nature’s editors to urge scientists and academics to escalate opposition to any such campaign.
The case parallels similar legal efforts by Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli; at issue is a freedom-of-information claim by the American Tradition Institute (ATI), which wants access to email messages by climatologist Michael Mann from his time at the University of Virginia several years ago. Nature’s 10 November editorial “Academic freedom” reports that in Manassas, Virginia, Judge Gaylord Finch “last week tore up an agreement that would have given the e-mails, with conditions, to attorneys for” ATI and “also granted Mann's request to join the University of Virginia ... in a lawsuit to block their release.”
The editors call the decisions “welcome news” because, they say, “Access to personal correspondence is a freedom too far.” They add, though, that “the case highlights, yet again, how woefully unprepared the academic community is to meet this kind of challenge.” The editors declare, “This must change.” They note that “Virginia's freedom-of-information law provides the university with a solid basis to deny access to this kind of blanket request for e-mail records: academic work is exempt.” They add, “This is as it should be, and the university should fight to protect that exemption now and in the future.”
The editors stipulate that “yes, the public has a right to know, and yes, greater scrutiny of public spending is a good thing.” They continue:
But research practice is typically protected for good reasons too. To protect academic freedom is a foundation for intellectual property and copyright laws, while in court, both Mann and the university warned of the chilling effect of such demands on communication between scientists. Certainly, many researchers are more wary of e-mail today, and given Mann's experiences, who can blame them?
The editors express gladness that scientific organizations, including the American Geophysical Union, are supporting Mann. They close by cautioning, “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.”
It seems worth appending, however, some highly anecdotal evidence that not everyone sees the issue as the editors do. Here are the opening sentences from the first online comment beneath the editorial:
I am having trouble seeing how academic freedom is at issue in the Mann case.
Professor Mann was an employee of a publically funded institution, using an email account provided him by the university. The terms and conditions of that use are pretty clear.
There is at least some reason to believe that Professor Mann may have been involved in unprofessional, possibly unethical behavior, which is exactly the sort of thing that a FOIA request was meant to uncover.
Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are collected each Friday for "Science and the media." He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.
