ACTION ALERT
Contact:
Dr. Mark Schlissel, President,‘Mutant Rabbit’ Lost By University of Michigan Laboratory, FOIA
Docs Show
From Sarah Emerson,
MotherBoard.Vice.com, March 25, 2019
The University of Michigan was home to a series of animal deaths in 2018.
'Nature' Editorial Juxtaposes FOIA Email Release With Illegal Hacking
One of science's most important publications assumes science journalists
don't know how to do their jobs.
Private emails between scientists working on a controversial genetic
technology called “gene drive” were released last week. Obtained through a
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, their publication has been
criticized by some as an attempt to discredit the science community.
Gene drives are a genetic engineering approach with huge implications.
They’re meant to seed genetic traits—one that stops mosquitoes from carrying
malaria, for instance, or hampers invasive rodents’ ability to reproduce—in
a population, and with terrifyingly high odds of inheritance.
If things go wrong, gene drives could destabilize ecosystems. (So far,
they’ve only been applied to yeast, fruit flies, and mosquitoes in a lab
setting.) More ideally, they could wipe out deadly plagues by targeting
their vectors, or give threatened species a fighting chance. Like any young
technology, there are a lot of unknowns, and stakeholders are hoping to
provide clarity at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity
next year; the same convention where a proposed gene drive moratorium was
rejected in 2016.
The emails and other documents reveal details about gene drive’s biggest
funders, including DARPA, the US military’s research agency. More than 1,200
files were published—released by North Carolina State University and Texas
A&M University, at the request of biosafety consultant Edward Hammond, and
anti-gene drive advocacy group Third World Network.
The files also contain communications between gene drive researchers and
public affairs firm, Emerging Ag, which works on behalf of Target Malaria, a
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-backed nonprofit focused on malaria
control technology like gene drive.
Emerging Ag, in supporting “advocacy and engagement activities on gene
drive,” tried to coordinate expert participation key United Nations forum,
even suggesting “points you may wish to address.” The foundation’s interest
in gene drive technology is well known, and there’s no proof that Emerging
Ag swayed official discussions about the topic.
Evidence that DARPA is one of the largest funders of gene drives is indeed
news, but was muddled in the way Hammond framed these documents as something
truly nefarious: The site he used to release the documents calls gene drives
“genetic extinction technology,” and called the emails proof of a “covert
‘advocacy coalition’ which appears to have been intended to skew the only UN
expert process addressing gene drives.”
It’s extremely important to note that Third World Network, which is also
credited for the FOIA release, explicitly endorsed the gene drive moratorium
back in 2016, and cannot be considered an unbiased source.
The emails themselves, however, are news, and they were obtained in a
lawful, straightforward way and were reported on by respected traditional
news sources, such as The Guardian, which gave proper context to the files.
The release of these emails by a person who has a clear point-of-view on the
issue, however, has led to yet another discussion of the proper way of
publishing raw documents. Nature, one of the more respected and widely read
science publishers, mentions the release of these emails in the same breath
as emails that were obtained by illegal hacking in an editorial published
this week:
The release of the e-mails echoes the way in which hackers released
documents stolen from climate scientists before a major UN meeting in 2009.
Much commentary on those documents suggested—wrongly—that scientists were up
to no good. Still, damage was done and public trust in scientists declined.
It would be unfortunate if the trick were repeated here, not least because
it is scientists working on gene drives who have raised many of the
concerns.
The 2009 hack that Nature mentions was terrible for scientists—climate
scientists, in particular. When an email server at University of East
Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit was breached, as part of a climate change
denier campaign, emails were dishonestly misrepresented to suggest a
conspiracy was afoot.
It is reasonable and fair game for Nature to take issue with the way Hammond
framed the documents, but juxtaposing the use of FOIA—a crucial process by
which citizens hold their governments accountable—alongside a major incident
of criminal hacking is bizarre, and was handled poorly.
If Nature meant to say that Hammond’s FOIA trove was presented with
malicious intent, then it failed to make that point clear.
“In our view, the editorial did not imply that FOIA—including the publishing
of FOIA documents—is comparable to illegal hacking,” Nature senior press
manager Rebecca Walton told Motherboard.
Motherboard spoke to one of the scientists who was targeted by Hammond: Todd
Kuiken, a senior research scholar at North Carolina State University. He
believes the editorial compares the “similarity” in how the FOIA results
were manipulated, and “not the tactic of how they got the information.”
The framing of primary source documents is a conversation that has
repeatedly come up in recent years, with the newsworthiness of hacked Sony
emails and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s
emails—published by Wikileaks—playing a central role in some of the biggest
stories of the last few years.
There is a difference between these gene drive emails and hacked emails,
though. FOIA is a powerful anti-corruption tool that sheds light on good,
and bad, governance alike. It is especially important in today’s political
climate, where the Trump administration has openly sabotaged its duty to
transparency. Outside of Hammond’s own website, it seems few scientific
outlets have framed the emails as nefarious: The Guardian, Gizmodo, and the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists all reported on the emails for what they
were—evidence of the government’s involvement in a controversial technology.
Newsworthy and noteworthy things are regularly uncovered by people with
agendas, biases, and distinct points of view. It may sound quaint in an era
of disinformation and “fake news,” but we need to trust journalists to cut
through those biases and report what’s important. Nature, in its editorial,
implies that journalists can’t be trusted to do this core task of reporting
when faced with documents that are released by a person or organization with
a bias.
Hammond showed Motherboard what he claims to be the text of his FOIA request
to North Carolina State University. He asked for correspondence between
three university professors and research scholars—Kuiken, Fred Gould, Jason
Delbourne—and various persons in the gene drive community.
On Tuesday, Hammond wrote to a FOIA listserv managed by Syracuse University
for the National Freedom of Information Coalition.
Of course, I'm just a member of the public who happens to file FOIA
requests. But I kinda sorta thought, after being places like this list over
the years, that the media didn't really want draw parallels between felons
and people who publish FOIA results. Probably not a good self-preservation
policy.
“I didn’t read it that way,” Kuiken said when Motherboard described this
reaction.
This isn’t the first time a Nature editorial has taken a polarizing stance
on a subject. But science journalism has benefitted greatly from the FOIA
process, and even the loosest comparison between the law and illegal hacking
could be detrimental. The publisher has made no indication that it plans to
clarify its ambiguous comment.
Open-records laws have been opposed by administrations and in
Congress—perhaps never more-so than now—and it’s disappointing that Nature,
in defending the science community, provided new ammunition for FOIA’s
biggest detractors.