Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Want To Keep Their Research Work Out of Court
concealment writes "How much privacy is the scientific process entitled to? During the course of their work, researchers produce e-mails, preliminary results, and peer reviews, all of which might be more confused or critical than the final published works. Recently, both private companies with a vested interest in discounting the results, and private groups with a political axe to grind have attempted to use the courts to get access to that material.Would it be possible or wise to keep these documents private and immune to subpoenas? In the latest issue of Science, a group of researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) argue that scientists need more legal rights to retain these documents and protect themselves in court."
Rather than granting special rights to groups, how about we go about fixing the process where said discoveries ought to be more difficult to procure?
There are discoveries made for the sake of discovery and those made for financial gain.
As long as we can support the latter without destroying the former, proceed.
Helps them to be dishonest about results and the research.
It is Science folks... what purpose is served by keeping it secret? Unless someone is up to no good eh?
No certain scientist want to keep their data hidden. Sorry, if you are public ally funded then show your data.. if you are advocating policies and tion based on your findings. You better show your data and methods for scrutiny.
If your beef is with the science then you should be after the method. In the journals. Then redo the result and post your results.
If your beef is with the scientist, then you should say so right up front and persue it like any civil action against a person.
Being able to subpoena anything pretty much means having it done by people who have an ax to grind, or to benefit someone with an ax to grind.
It's like asking "should the police be able to arrest suspects?" The answer is that clearly it's not a good idea for the police to arrest anyone they want to, and that we need to make rules about who the police can arrest, but on the other hand, we shouldn't just say "the police should never arrest anyone". Arrests are necessary to catch suspects, and catching suspects is necessary because some of them will turn out to be criminals.
Sometimes people with an ax to grind will need to see scientists' documents, and actually use them to discredit the scientists--but that's not a reason not to do it--that's the whole point of doing it, just like sometimes people will be arrested, tried, and put in jail.
Then any e-mail that pertains to the research that the public paid for is public information.
Why any scientist would request privacy protections is beyond me. Science is, by definition, supposed to be an open process of record.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
As much as this may be beneficial to scientists, I feel that in the case of publicly-funded institutions, it would set a bad precedent for the overall cause of public sector transparency. It has been a long, hard fight for increased transparency in government (FOI laws and such) and I think creating an exception for scientific agencies doesn't send the right message.
Can we really trust people with all this information? Scientists usually have good intentions; it’s how the rest of the bad people use it for their own evil purposes. I think there should be some oversight, but I don't we can just trust everyone with potentially dangerous ideas.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
When scientists publish their results, they publish their methods and data along with it. Their personal emails are not peer reviewed science and should not have to be published for everyone to read. If there's something wrong with their methods then you should find it in the work they actually published, not some random email they sent out at 4 am without thinking about.
Can we really trust people with all this information? Scientists usually have good intentions; it’s how the rest of the bad people use it for their own evil purposes. I think there should be some oversight, but I don't we can just trust everyone with potentially dangerous ideas.
Jesus, man. What country are you from? To an American, this sounds like Orwell's dystopia. Trusting people with potentially dangerous ideas???
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
It is Science folks... what purpose is served by keeping it secret? Unless someone is up to no good eh?
Agreed comrade! Now, why are you not sharing your personal e-mails and work e-mails with me? Unless someone is up to no good, eh? Surely your business is as "pure" as Science?
When did we drop the "privacy is a human right" mantra on Slashdot? I really miss that. Scientists are humans. Their work should be public if it was paid by the public. Their work should be public if they wish for it to be peer reviewed. But what purpose does opening up their communication hold? If they really wanted to be "up to no good" surely they would merely find another way to communicate than the e-mails that are published? Will this solve anything? Scientists are humans, not slaves. E-mails about picking their kid up from soccer at a time and place should be kept private, even if they use their work e-mail. E-mails where they call a colleague bad names in confidence to a lab assistant should be kept private. Etc. Etc.
If their work involved wrong doing then it should be presented as evidence in court regardless of who paid for it. My biggest concern here is when these court investigations of scientists are politically motivated witch hunts.
My work here is dung.
The problem they are trying to stop is frivilous lawsuits intented to harrass or waste their time, ala Scentology
I have a right to see it.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Is the issue the scientific process, or is the issue the legal system?
It strikes me as the latter. It seems like a reasonable person would easily conclude that a scientific work in progress would contain a lot of incomplete data, a lot of conflicting theories, explanations and incomplete analysis of the data and the project itself.
However, the "reasonable person" conclusion doesn't seem like any kind of barrier from a legal system which makes it very easy for nearly anyone of means to file broad lawsuits by cherry-picking information and forcing defendants to organize expensive, complex defenses.
I think it's important from a justice perspective for anyone to be able to bring a civil suit, however, I think in some cases the rules should be changed to force some kind of automatic review of civil cases whenever some set of standards, like a large asymmetry between plaintiff and defendant resources or damage claims and require "the big guy" to more clearly explain their losses.
All that being said, I think a lot of scientists need to stick to science and be a little more muted with their political opinions. When scientists are extremely strident with their political views it automatically calls into question the accuracy of their science, especially in light of news stories like the huge increase in fraudulent results (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/science/study-finds-fraud-is-widespread-in-retracted-scientific-papers.html).
Scientists who stick to science will tend to be seen more as neutral experts explaining phenomenon and not as biased experts structuring their science to fit their opinions. Furthermore it probably helps the scientists as well, since having a strong political opinion on your research subject is only likely to increase the risk that you'll be tempted to massage your results, conclusions or worse instead of having to face some humiliation for both your theories and your opinions from being repudiated by your own science.
Gary Taubes has done some great reporting in the nutrition field and its remarkable how much the science is weakened when scientists hold strong opinions without strong science to back them up. See his article in Science on salt research for an example.
Why should these scientists be treated any different from government or corporate employees or private citizens with respect to court orders to release private documents. Everybody needs to learn that all written communications, lab notes, memos, emails, pictures, videos and audio recordings are fair game and should be created with that in mind. If scientists don't like it then change the laws for everyone. Meanwhile, don't do dumb stuff.
allow the day to day stuff (not the Reports) be private on an ongoing project but have it accessible after the project (or for more long term projects after say 120 days).
Now it should also be a given that %stupid statement% should be thrown out of any court proceedings IF THAT IS THE ONLY EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING. This is to prevent something said on hour 30 (without any sleep) from hanging a scientist.
and of course anything that is obviously Personal should be redacted from The Public Record (do i really need to know that somebody likes vegetarian pizza or some other similar Horror??)
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If your research is paid with public money, all but personal information should be available via FOIA, not just a subpoena. If your research is privately funded, then it should be available by subpoena if it is relevant to a case.
Your research will be the basis on which another party is penalized by the legal system. In its defense, the party believes it has the right to see your research in order to mount a defense. Isn't this how it is supposed to work? If the defense tries to poke holes in research during the trial, I'm sure the other side will call the scientists or expert witnesses to defend their research.
Allowing this special protection effectively guts the defense of anyone who has scientific research results used against him in court.
They're not special. If the documents are relevant, they can be subpoenaed, just like anyone else's documents. Deal with it.
Currently the public at large is trusting scientists less and less as a group.
If you wan to regain trust, you don't do that by asking to hide more of what you are doing and thinking. You gain that trust back by being more open, more transparent about every step.
Science as a whole would be hurt by efforts like this to make scientists even less accountable for how they conduct research.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If the output of scientific research is going to be used as input in the creation of public policy, as it increasingly is, then it's in the public interest to know exactly how the results were arrived at and any potential conflicts of interest that the researchers might have been subjected to. Scientists are just as capable of bias, conflicts, stupidity, and corruption as anyone else, and the way you uncover any of that is thru disclosure and, yes, an adversarial process. That process might take the form of aggressive peer review, or even skeptics demanding discovery during lawsuits. That's the system we have for getting everything out on the table where it can be examined.
CRU? Nope, their data was open. The data from someone else who said they couldn't publish wasn't.
Mann? Nope, his data was open.
(PS how much funding counts as government funding for the purposes of "you work for me"? And doesn't the WL stuff constitute information done by the government on your dime?)
The organization I work for (which shall go nameless so I can continue to get my paycheck) has this same issue: lots of documents, emails, and the like express opinions and emotions that may not reflect accurately upon the final product. They might even (typically incorrectly) indicate the product is unsafe or dangerous. As you might expect, lawyers in lawsuits LOVE to find those emails and documents. Our corporate solutions? Destroy all documents after about 90 days that are not deemed business critical. The emails and the like just get wiped out. It has vastly reduced the corporate risk. Though, we also regularly have classes about how important it is to avoid emotional emails with words like "failure" and "disaster" in them. Often, the lawyer-speak in these meetings is hilarious. HIghly recommended as a way to ease into your Monday morning.
Slashdot duplicity:
Instructions on how to make a bioweapon should be public. Evidence that the "extroverts are stupider" study did not bother to record that the extroverts studied were drunk at the time needs to be protected from courts.
As an introvert who spends his days annoyed at cowrokers who don't know how to go 5 minutes without making verbal noises (half the time they aren't even words), I would be inclined to believe my hypothetical second example, but I would be more concerned that the claim actually be tested well.
In principle, any published paper should be repeatable by third parties, but this is not always the case due to (1) Specialized equipment, (2) Specialized reagents, (3) access to material for testing, etc. I think it is reasonable for a group or corporation to ask for raw data and processing methods, and maybe even lab notes, if they think a published result is suspicious. But this should be if and only if there is some evidence of falsification or some other impropriety. Otherwise, this just becomes an abuse of the legal system and a dangerous undermining of independent research. Any party with the means and/or power can threaten or halt research they do not like. Any disagreement with rigorously attained results should be settled by a qualified, independent 3'rd party.
Make up a generalized acronym meaning something like;
The included data/text/wranglings may or may not be related to the on-going discussion, and may have been maid while drunk/inebriated/stoned or blitzed or out of their mind with worry about tenure/children/food/housing/transportation or something else equally distracting. Poor statements, bad manners, threats and such should be taken with a large bag of salt.
The process is ugly, but that's not a valid reason to hide the process from the world. If scientists are just going to provide the end result as a decree to which we are all supposed to adhere, then what you have is a religion.
When you decide to obscure or hide away the scientific process, you kill science.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
If drug companies and tobacco companies must share their raw research and correspondence (as they should), then everyone has to. Making it legal to hide raw data and correspondence from the public might be possible, but limiting it only to the kind of research you like would be problematic.
I think the last thing we need is a special kind of secret achievable by putting a label of "science" on something.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Let's have laws linking the right to privacy of the public and scientists, to the rights to privacy of corporate executives, politicians. Let's see if they will relinquish their rights to have private talk corrupt practices. And since they are representatives of public servants of public-supported, publicly owned, legally public entities, they should have very few rights to privacy.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Science is dedicated to the idea that the observer doesn't change the observation. That a scientific fact isn't just observable by liberals but also by conservatives. That the math used to reach a conclusion should be visible to all and not pruned to reach a specific conclusion.
Any emails that legitimately show pruning of data towards a thesis or biasing of tests towards a thesis are not matters of science privacy. They are a matter of charlatans pretending to be scientists and should not be protected using the argument that science is important and needs to be able to keep its privacy.
That said lawyers shouldn't be the ones filtering even the most corrupt of charlatans out of the scientific community.
If BIGDRUGCO, BIGCONSUMERPRODUCTCO, or SMALLRESEARCHGROUP is concerned that they may be sued for data long after their project is done, they may choose to not do certain research at all, do it outside of the reach of United States courts, or do it with an aggressive data-destruction policy in which working notes, draft reports, and the like are routinely and quickly destroyed unless there is a specific reason to keep them when each research milestone is reached.
Imagine what would have happened if instead of doing the research that eventually came back to bite them in-house or at least in the United States, Big Tobacco had farmed it out to independent companies overseas with instructions to "report back any good news, don't tell us any bad news, and destroy all documents 6 months after your final report of there is no report, 30 days after we cancel your research contract."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Say I'm part of a team researching the economic effects of HB1 visas.
Say the subset of data I'm looking at indicates that increasing HB1 visas help the economy.
Say my family and many of my friends are vehemently opposed to increasing HB1 visas.
I can continue to be part of the research team knowing that if the final result supports increasing HB1 visas, I can tell my friends and family that "hey, it's science" and invite them to show me studies that show the opposite.
But if I'm afraid of my working notes being public, I may be afraid to bring what I know to the rest of the team because if the overall result does not support increasing HB1 visas and it comes out years later that I was "pro-HB1" then it could cause me all kinds of grief in my personal life.
That's just one of the more benign examples.
A scientist whose preliminary research leads to him saying things like "maybe we should lower the drinking age to 12" or "maybe marijuana should be widely available over the counter" based on bona fide but incomplete data risks losing his kids in a divorce, losing professional credibility, and many other difficulties that are avoided if he doesn't have to make such claims publicly until the data is all in and the data and his research peers stand together behind the data.
Bottom line: Without a certain degree of freedom to give a preliminary opinion of the data to others on your team, research in controversial areas will be chilled or will be left to those who do not fear the consequences of being seen as holding an unorthodox position by the general public or scientific community.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Or are you paying me to, for example, clean up the rubbish off your streets?
Brain Drain USA
Alberta, Canada
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The problems will arise when companies, exercising their humanity in the only limited way they ever seem to, leverage these rights in the interest of profit.
I ask "define protect".
At least that's the way it should be.
If the taxpayer pays for it, it's public record, and no patents. Period. If we're going to do communism, we could at least have the common decency to do it right.
Reality is that anything that is part of what leads up to the scientific finding out to be available when asked for. Sure, they'll only publish what they want to, but in investigating it, all the materials do need to be available; and when investigating related matters (e.g. judicial matters) everything must be on the table.
If scientists do work for the government, then in the US FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) requests should be sufficient to compel the information so outside observers can investigate the work and findings for whatever reason they so choose. The scientists are, of course, free to challenge any results by said requesting party - e.g. challenge the credentials of the person(s) reviewing the work so as to show that they are or are not capable of understanding what they are looking at. (For instance, a chemist reviewing biology notes may have some insights but would not necessariy be fully qualified to comment on them in whole.)
If the scientists do work for private organizations without any money from government, then standard work practices ought to apply - if requested by subpeona they should comply. Again, the organization and its lawyers can challenge the credentials of the person(s) reviewing it.
The only thing to be gained by hiding the work is to hide the biases, intents, and motives behind it, and to hide any fraudulent results; and to prohibit others from making further findings based on the work (e.g. someone noticing a special attribute that was overlooked).
Yes, peer reviewing has its place; but so does the abilities of others to review scientific work. The other option, of course, is they can do the work, publish, but be prohibited from having it taught about anywhere - without full access its just as useless.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
1) don't do it in the first place. See "chilling effects."
2) contract out the work to someone who will only tell you what you want to hear or report back that they have nothing to say, then self-destruct taking all of their data with them.
3) Teach everyone how to memorize large quantities of information so written records aren't necessary, then have the whole team kill themselves after writing their final, public report.
Obviously #3 is a lame attempt at humor, but if writing things down becomes too legally hazardous, an increase in #1 and #2 will be among the expected results.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Last year the journal Nature reported an alarming increase in the number of retractions of scientific papers — a tenfold rise in the previous decade, to more than 300 a year across the scientific literature.
Last year the journal Nature reported an alarming increase in the number of retractions of scientific papers — a tenfold rise in the previous decade, to more than 300 a year across the scientific literature.
Other studies have suggested that most of these retractions resulted from honest errors. But a deeper analysis of retractions, being published this week, challenges that comforting
This is just a fishing expedition. You need to present to the judge REASON for the emails to be indicative of the facts.
This isn't happening.
Can I get a judge to open up ALL your email and dissect your computer by saying "I think PPH is a paedophile organising the storage of KP"? No. I would have to convince a judge that there's evidence already to hint that you are a paedo and involved in a KP ring before issuing the order.
My biggest problem is that I think we should be talking about science, not the researchers.
And yet look at the Slashdot story that just came up:
"Misconduct, Not Error, Is the Main Cause of Scientific Retractions"
Yes researchers ARE the problem. As they are the main problem they are the thing we should be focusing on figuring out how to keep honest.
You make a good point about how far do we go. It's a hard question to answer but the way to go is not to say we can trust researches implicitly, because they have shown we cannot. Probably the better approach to take is figure out WHY some researchers are engaged in fraud, and eliminate sources of temptation to do so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I only recently began working in research, and what I've found is that the work behind a single paper often includes dozens of rounds of poor or incorrect procedure. My current write-up doesn't include anything from the first fifteen iterations of my simulation. Why? Because the first fifteen iterations of my simulations were incorrectly developed. The final (19th) simulation is the only correct experiment and it is the only one with good results.
It is not dishonest of me not to publish or mention the first 15 sims because it was the procedure for those simulations that was wrong. If someone were to look at them they would only see that the results varied, not that the simulations ran based on a faulty understanding of the world. Finding all of those little problems took me months of work.
In my emails are hundreds of little arguments between myself and my principle investigator (he was right practically every time, lol.) These minor conflicts are part of the process, but would also cast doubt on work.
What should be published? Once a procedure is finalized, all results pertaining to that procedure should be published, as well as all parts of that procedure which was used. In the case of groundbreaking work, extensive photographs and even samples should be retained. All code from the final procedure should be kept, ideally on a public repository (many universities have these). The researcher should be willing to clarify any steps in the procedure, and any properties of his results which are in doubt, via email.
and no more after that. There is a "gray area" of data in science publishing. A scientific paper usually contains a summary of the raw data converted in graphs and figures. The raw data and computer programs for generating the paper and figures should be kept around and perhaps loaded onto tio some public archive for replication. Some research groups (I was in one) already do this. Dead ends, bad data, bad runs should not necessary be published. No one wants to replicate that. And it clogs up the archives.
It's what all of science is based on afterall.
Though trying to avoid political persacution and interfearance has been around since it all began. I'm sure Galileo wasn't really all that keep on the Catholic Church hearing about his research until he was ready to publish. In fact he might have even regret it a few times after as well.
I think the best approach is to simply enforce the burden of proof: the plaintiff in these cases should have to lay out evidence to support their claims, and only if their claims and their evidence survive examination and in fact show some basis for believing something actionable has happened should the plaintiffs be allowed to proceed with discovery. A mere "I believe" should not be sufficient to get discovery. It is not being unfair to the plaintiff to require them to have some evidence to support their claim before they can proceed with a suit. That's supposed to be the minimum they already have before they can file suit, after all.
The misconduct rate was approximately 0.4%.
The actual rate does not matter. I am just pointing out that trying to fix errors in procedure are less important than addressing fraud because fraud occurs more often than procedural errors, which would seem to be true from that article.
The actual overall amount of fraud speaks more to what kind of measures are appropriate to try and address it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whoever is funding your work is the ultimate person to whom you are responsible.
Would you tell your CEO "sorry, dude, I'm not going to show you my emails leading up to the meeting - you can see my final presentation and that's it" (and expect to keep your job)?
In that vein, if your work is paid for by taxpayer dollars, they are entitled to see every shred of it, even the ugly bits.
-Styopa
How many cases of misconduct do you think were discovered by reading emails,
None, because we can't.
How many more WOULD be discovered if we COULD read the emails? That is the more interesting question.
You can't possibly say that all fraud is caught by peer review.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Given this
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/10/02/180226/misconduct-not-error-is-the-main-cause-of-scientific-retractions
it matters.
If the scientific community wants freedom from post-facto scrutiny, then do more honest work and the problem will take care of itself..
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
What we need are penalties and provisions that discourage bad faith law suits.
If I take someone to court on a baseless claim and the court rules as such, maybe I should go to jail, or pay a massive fine(to the the person I harmed). Maybe even bar me from court for a time, even if I have a legit case.
The current legal system is for the rich, the poor can only hope to come out the other side alive.
If you don't want the scrutiny, then don't accept public funding. There's no need to subvert US or UK law when a simple solution already exists.
You are telling me that the mere act of enforcing a company policies like:
"all documents are to be shredded when they are no longer needed"
"draft documents and working notes are presumed no longer needed when the final document is published or the document-creation processes ends without the creation of a final document"
"final documents are no longer needed 5 years after the last customer is no longer paying for product support, unless required by law"
are illegal?
By the way, how do you recover data if all media on which the data was ever stored have been physically destroyed?
For example, if you have data which was only stored on a server and a known (you can put your finger on them) group of computers that were in an isolated (no internet, no outgoing USB sticks or other writeable media) lab and all drives on that lab were pysically destroyed when the project was canceled?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And Haliburton want a word with you.
We scientists invented email as a private, informal, asynchronous communication channel. The business world adopted it as a formal communication mechanism, and now those expectations are being forced on the culture which (please recall) invented the internet and its culture in the first place. But we don't need or use email that way. We need a way to chat with each other.
A generation of science has evolved with this informal communication mechanism. Please recall that key features of science are the global distribution of the community and the small membership of each subgroup. An informal and friendly channel is needed to keep up morale when many of your closest collaborators are thousands of miles away and not easily able to join you at the pub.
If you suddenly declare that we are government agents and that every communication is a formal statement on behalf of that government, we will be thoroughly incapacitated and demoralized. This idea that life as a scientist is supposed to suck is really not well-advised as a policy.
But in fact we should not be viewed as government agents. Rather we are contractors. We are paid by bidding on competitive RFPs. If you want to treat us as bureaucrats you should at least bring back job security.
mt
If it is publicly funded, even just a little, then it needs full disclosure. We have a right to know what our money is funding.
good man have nothing to hide
And get away with it.
No, scientists are not the new priests, they don't get to spend public money in secret, and they don't get to conceal what little actual work they are doing and how corrupt they've been behaving.
Making scientists a special class is absolutely idiotic.
Oh, it was just some little guys who thought easy to take it and pass it as own, then it got compounded with guys who do *hear* while beating you so they can publish anything first. So now... a court would be able to distinguish the criminal case where internet gives the advantage to document most of it real time? Because if you do think it... you can find the guy who *heard* and it is not his. Think the Einstein-Boise case. If you CANNOT keep your process hidden, you need _someone_ to fend off the hijackers. Simultaneous inventions and discoveries: balloney. }:-{
This applies across the board. I'm sure you are only thinking in context along with your political beliefs and this one case. But realize this concept of justice does't care about your side. Think of a gaming censorship bill that is defended in court using research done by scientists hired by the Family Research Council that says gaming turns kids violent. Think of a case backed by the research of the scientists working at the Institute for Creation Research (they do exist) showing how "Intelligent Design" really is real science with no religious component. I would certainly want the judge to consider my request for background communications and documentation relating to the research, because they are very good at BSing, and that material will be helpful to expose any BS to the court.
This is about justice, not politics. If I want judges to have the ability to decide whether such evidence is admissable, then judges gets to decide in all cases, not just ones where I want to see the evidence.