I've done some work for a research team dealing with air exposure to known and suspected carcinogens and (I think) I can appreciate both sides of this. In order to do the research my team signed various agreements related to data and any publication is dependent on approval from the data sources. Science is about free publication but we don't own the data so we have to play by their rules to access it. The primary reason in our case was an earlier publication of preliminary data that had been sent to media and caused a big stir with damning headlines. Unfortunately the legitimately scientific practice of publishing whatever you have and letting the scientific community build on it becomes quite problematic when the media broadcasts interim results as findings (and then land values plummet, or political pressure halts a multimillion dollar project). So there might be a legitimate reason for the legal threats (Though the article implies otherwise)
On the other hand, pinning down environmental causes of cancer is shockingly difficult and even partial results are very useful for the research because we simply can't put a test subject in a box and pump it full of a chemical to see if they get cancer. Most known carcinogens (by the IARC definition) are known through studies on workplace exposure.
It would be a serious blow if the study had concrete evidence but the legal threats managed to delay publication until after IARC finishes its review.
> It would be a serious blow if the study had concrete evidence but the legal threats managed to delay publication until after IARC finishes its review.
In fact, it would probably result in liability. We can only hope that they have their heads handed to themselves if true.
> a coalition of mining industry groups are legally entitled to review data from the study before publication
You can't blame the lobbyists' lawyers for trying to enforce a provision that their clients successfully negotiated. You should be ripshit that they were able to negotiate the provision in the first place.
I can and do blame them for being immoral and this clearly demonstrates that they have no interest in integrity or the truth. I don't "blame" them in any legal sense however.
> You can't blame the lobbyists' lawyers for trying to enforce a provision that their clients successfully negotiated.
I'm not so sure. By the same logic, one could argue that the lobbyists deserve no blame either, because they were just doing what their clients paid them to do; nor could one blame the business executives who hired the lobbying firm in the first place, because the fiduciary obligation of those executives is to maximize their companies' profits; and so on.
At some point, by reductio ad absurdum, this chain of "we did exactly what we were hired to do" excuses must break down, no? Doesn't the buck stop somewhere?
Or is this a systemic cultural problem where blame is so diffuse that no one can be held reponsible -- i.e., everyone is to blame, therefore no one can be blamed?
It's quite unfortunate that capitalism didn't rule the world when this country was founded, because it was nearly impossible for our founding fathers to predict the massive power and interest businesses now have in government. They let congress regulate themselves because, I mean, who would want to be a congressman in 1780? Low pay, hard job, hardly any kickbacks for the corrupt, and you were personally responsible to your constituents because the population was so small.
Streisand Effect though. Now people know that attempts were made to suppress the information, they are likely to take a much greater interest than they otherwise would, and the information will get a lot more attention and potentially do a lot more damage.
I hope you're right about these lobbyists being subjected to the Streisand Effect to a meaningful extent, but I doubt the broad public will ever take a much greater interest in this situation, because only a tiny, self-selected portion of the population ever comes across -- let alone reads -- articles in AAAS's Science magazine. (An even tinier, also self-selected group reads submissions and/or participates in discussions posted on HN.)
I just looked and it turns out this link has already been submitted to Reddit, where it gathered fewer votes -- and generated fewer comments -- than on HN:
The general public just can't -- or doesn't want to -- invest the time & effort required to learn about and pass judgment on these kinds of situations.
Arguably, this is what allows businesses, lobbyists, and others to get away with unethical behavior.
So what would happen if someone put it up on wikileaks or similar?
Let's see:
-No peer review, ok, but after this publicity some other scientists could comment on it and judge it.
-The lobbyists could claim it was fake. (Probably not a problem, the institutes could back it up.)
-Now, who would the "consequences" be directed at? The two institutes (NIOSH and NCI)?
I just noticed that one of the HN editors changed the title of this submission (I'm the submitter).
TO HN EDITORS: For the record, I did not try to juice up the title when I submitted this! The original title that showed up on my RSS reader was "Patton Boggs Lobbyists Threatens Scientific Journals with 'Consequences' If They Publish or Distribute Diesel Exposure Data" ( source: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/02/links-22312.html ) I just shortened this title to less than 80 characters.
In other news: jrockway threatens "consequences" (including, but not limited to, whining on twitter) unless everyone gives me chocolate covered espresso beans.
Wait, my threat doesn't influence you? That's a shame, because I really wanted some caffeinated chocolate.
(Also, we don't even need to publish the study anymore, we have something even more damning than scientific fact: the Streisand effect. Maybe they should threaten "consequences" for talking about their threat of consequences. And so on.)
Presumably the data is now publicly available? Or at least FOIA-able? What's stopping me from running my own analysis and writing my own paper? I am not part of any agreement the industry made with DEMS.
On the other hand, pinning down environmental causes of cancer is shockingly difficult and even partial results are very useful for the research because we simply can't put a test subject in a box and pump it full of a chemical to see if they get cancer. Most known carcinogens (by the IARC definition) are known through studies on workplace exposure.
It would be a serious blow if the study had concrete evidence but the legal threats managed to delay publication until after IARC finishes its review.