Letter from America: Intimidation of climate scientists threatens a chilling effect

1 Jul 2011 | Uncategorized

As the rest of the world’s governing bodies and opinion polls have gradually come around to a consensus on climate change, the United States stands out as a particularly odd outlier: Supporters and deniers here have in fact grown further apart, with the issue more politically divisive today than it was just five years ago. Public concern about the climate has actually declined. Politicians who once acknowledged global warming have changed their minds. And in a particularly shocking vote earlier this spring, not one of the 31 Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee would vote for an amendment simply acknowledging that climate change exists (which is the position of the government’s own scientific bodies).

In the midst of all this, an even stranger thing has happened — scientists themselves have become controversial figures, now routinely harassed, investigated and attacked for their research.

In a particularly high-profile case, Virginia’s elected attorney general has spent most of the past year trying to subpoena the state’s prestigious public university for the academic records of a climate scientist, Michael Mann, whom he accuses of defrauding the public for grant money to support his research. Mann has not worked at the University of Virginia since 2005.

The latest tactic, inspired by the Climategate email scandal, has been for non-governmental activist groups to file public records requests about individual researchers in the hunt for personal information to discredit them. One such group, the American Tradition Institute, last week sued NASA to obtain records on any ethics or disclosure violations by James Hansen, a top climatologist who blew the whistle on censorship of scientists during the Bush Administration.

The trend is distressing for each of the researchers who’ve become unwitting targets. But, more broadly, academic and scientific organisations increasingly worry that such tactics will have a much wider impact — intimidating the entire scientific community and deterring work on a crucial area of public inquiry.

Exasperated with this trend, one of the country’s most respected scientific organisations (and the world’s largest general scientific body), this week released a formal statement decrying all the harassment. The board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science wrote:

“We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists. Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public. This both impedes the progress of science and interferes with the application of science to the solution of global problems. AAAS vigorously opposes attacks on researchers that question their personal and professional integrity or threaten their safety based on displeasure with their scientific conclusions.”

The scientific community has spent centuries perfecting the process of policing itself — peer review is designed to ferret out research fraud, and the revision and correction of earlier findings is a central element of the very idea of scientific progress.

All of this has been lost on aggressive climate deniers, who have been remarkably successful at creating the public impression of scientists as agenda-wielding partisans in a political war. For their part, cloistered researchers not used to communicating with the public have seemed baffled by attacks that can’t be repelled on data and evidence alone.

As the AAAS points out, the stakes go beyond even the implications for chilled speech. Because all of society will lose out when scientists are intimidated into staying away from climate research that’s needed to inform what we should do about the problem.

As the board put it:

“We are concerned that establishing a practice of aggressive inquiry into the professional histories of scientists whose findings may bear on policy in ways that some find unpalatable could well have a chilling effect on the willingness of scientists to conduct research that intersects with policy-relevant scientific questions.”

 

Surgeon who questions "Boob Job" cream threatened with libel action

11 Nov 2010 | Uncategorized

A long time ago, when I worked for a glossy magazine, I was asked to try a Rodial product in order to tackle my “problem area”. Tummy Tuck –– 100 quid for 125 ml –– claims it is “clinically proven to reduce the abdominal area by up to 2 centimetres in 8 weeks.” I thought it was total bollocks but I doubt I even hinted at that in print.

One thing you work out early on in magazines is that you don’t criticise advertisers. That’s why the big brands feature so prominantly in most fashion magazines. Advertising in magazines ensures a quid pro quo of favourable coverage.

So I was interested to hear about Rodial’s latest exploits:

One of Britain’s leading consultant plastic surgeons has been threatened with libel action by the manufacturer of a £125 ‘Boob Job’ cream for speaking out about her doubts of its effectiveness. Dr Dalia Nield of The London Clinic was quoted in an article in the Daily Mail on 1st October 2010 saying that it was ‘highly unlikely’ the ‘Boob Job’ cream would increase a woman’s breast size. The manufacturer, Rodial Limited had claimed that the cream, reported to be a favourite of Scarlett Johansson, can increase breast size by 2.5cm. Dr Nield said the company had not provided a full analysis of tests on the cream and that if its claims that fat cells moved around the body were true it could be potentially dangerous. Rodial Limited has threatened Dr Nield with libel action. Dr Nield stands by her comments.

The libel campaign brings together stange bedfellows:  Claire Coleman a freelance journalist who occaisionally covers a beauty beat for Grazia, Sunday Times Style and the Daily Mail tweeted an appeal for fellow beauty journalists to sign the Libel Reform petition pointing out the case is going the make it harder to get expert comment for features.

Blogging about the case she said “This isn’t just about one doctor, one cream, and one litigious company, it’s about big brands trying to control what you hear about them, and it’s worryingly Orwellian.”

Former Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris commented: “This sort of libel threat is an unacceptable form of bullying of clinicians and researchers on a matter where the public interest demands the maximum possible scientific and media debate, and it is why radical libel reform  is both vital and urgent. The cases we hear about — where doctors and scientists, and the newspaper or journal, stand up to the threat of costly and uncertain court action – are only the tip of the iceberg because most will simply be forced to retreat in the face of a libel suit.”

In the beauty industry, where its already hard to get the truth, this case is going to make it even harder.

UK: Peter Wilmshurst libel case intensifies

4 Nov 2010 | Index Index, minipost

US company NMT Medical has threatened to step up its libel action against Dr Peter Wilmshurst, over comments he made last year on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. The cardiologist is already being sued by the company for criticising its clinical trials of a device to treat migraines, at a medical conference in the USA in 2007. NMT has alleged that Wilmshurst’s most recent remarks suggested the company “sought to conceal his review”, and intends to take legal action on the grounds of defamation. It is not yet clear whether this will be a separate case or an addition to the existing libel suit.