Abstract
When Index on Censorship launched its libel reform campaign with English PEN two years ago, it was the scientists facing legal action who particularly caught the attention of the press and public. Suddenly libel was not just a matter of stifling press freedom, it could be a case of life or death: with evidence that scientists were being stopped from speaking out, censorship has become an issue of public health and safety. Tracey Brown, whose organisation Sense About Science has been central to the continuing campaign for reform, illustrates just how damaging litigation can be for scientists and how frequently it has become a tool to intimidate and silence criticism [pp. 40–47]: ‘The expansion of science communication has been met by efforts to close down inconvenient evidence – through commercial pressure, intimidation, vandalism of research, sackings and threats of court proceedings.’ The scientist Richard Dawkins and the journal Nature are among the most recent defendants to face libel actions.
Within the science community, some of the most celebrated scientists also consider Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to be part of the armoury of current intimidation tactics. Nobel laureate and president of the Royal Society Sir Paul Nurse said earlier this year that FOI was being used to harass scientists and has called for new guidelines. Yet as the leading science writer Fred Pearce observes in his article for Index, it’s an argument that is becoming increasingly hard to maintain, particularly since the information commissioner ruled that the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia should release its data [pp. 113–119]. It was the furore over ‘climategate’ two years ago, when the CRU’s emails were hacked, that first revealed the level of resistance of some scientists to sharing information.
As Pearce points out, ‘the whole point of research is that it should be open to maximum scrutiny’ – and the irony is that scientists, more than anyone, have been at the forefront of the information revolution that has made data sharing possible on a scale never seen before.
While some scientists claim that FOI requests may jeopardise their research, lack of transparency within the healthcare industry remains a major concern. The BMJ’s Deborah Cohen has done remarkable work for her own publication as well as Panorama and Channel 4 to investigate the secrecy within the pharmaceutical and medical devices industry. She brings her investigations together for the first time in her piece for Index, revealing the consequences of what can happen when critical evidence is unavailable to the medical profession [pp. 59–72].
In the US, Heather Weaver reveals the tactics used by the creationist lobby to push their influence – a battle that has continued since the famous Scopes trial of 1925. Despite the defeat of creationists since then to win in court, they have developed sophisticated means of spreading their message and there is worrying evidence of their influence on the American public – according to a study published by Science in January, 60 per cent of public school biology teachers ‘legitimise creationist arguments’.
Also in this issue, as the Leveson inquiry into the ethics of the media continues in the UK, Julian Petley talks to the distinguished lawyer Sir Louis Blom-Cooper about regulating the press. Blom-Cooper was appointed head of the Press Council at the end of the 80s, one of the last times there was a national crisis about the ethics of the press – his insights into the current climate are worth considering. We’re also delighted to publish celebrated Dutch-Moroccan author Abdelkader Benali’s views on the origins of the Arab spring, alongside fiction and essays from North Africa and Iran. You can follow Index on Censorship as always on our website for the latest stories on censorship around the world www.indexoncensorship.org □