Professor Advocacy Group Fights Transparency on Tax Funded Climate Research
“to maintain a free and vital university system”
Anything funded by taxpayers should be available for explicit review by taxpayers.
The College Fix reports:
Professors group wants taxpayer-funded climate change research blocked from public scrutiny
The American Association of University Professors has filed an amicus brief arguing professors at a public university should be exempt from public records act requests from a conservative think tank seeking to review the scholars’ unpublished climate change research.
The brief, filed with the Arizona Court of Appeals in the case Energy & Environment Legal Institute v. Arizona Board of Regents, argues that professors at public universities should be able to keep their unpublished research records private, according to a press release from the AAUP last Friday.
In the email announcing the amicus brief, the association argued the public records requests “targeted” professors and amounted to “harassment.” The association did not respond to requests for comment from The College Fix for access to the amicus brief in full.
The association’s email states the brief argues the research should remain private “to maintain a free and vital university system, which depends on the protection of academic freedom to engage in the free and open scientific debate necessary to create high quality academic research.”
“Where the requests seek prepublication communications and other unpublished academic research materials, as in the case at bar, compelled disclosure would have a severe chilling effect on intellectual debate among researchers and scientists.”
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Comments
Why is it “chilling” to be made to tell the truth?
As a research chemist I can tell you that you only hide your research and data when you either are pursuing a patent/trade secret or because you have something bad to hide. In my experience, there has been an almost 100% correlation with those who were not pursuing a patent or trade secret, trying to keep their data confidential, and scientific misconduct. Being that tomorrow’s research is built on the foundation of today’s results, keeping data confidential is not only an indicator of misconduct, but it is antithetical to science itself.
Sounds to me like we need a lot more FOIA requests for projects funded in whole or in part with public dollars. Let the sun shine in!!
I can understand wanting to hide data during ongoing research (“prepublication”). Researchers jockey for grants and other funding, and they are sometimes pursuing ideas similar to other researchers. Why would they want the money and their effort on a scientific endeavor available for other researchers to use without having to secure the money or do the work?
That being said, warmist climate researchers have a bad habit of concealing research post-publication. This makes their (valid) arguments to keep their prepublication research confidential ring hollow. If they didn’t already have this bad reputation, we would be more patient and would await the availability of all of their data post-publication. But we’re afraid that ain’t gonna happen, and rightly so.