;)
Paul Thacker. Image from, erm, the Harvard Center for EthicsJudith Curry is looking an article at PLOS by Paul Thacker and Charles Seife about freedom of information as it applies to universities. The authors are focusing on attempts to investigate industry funding of researchers in the area of genetically modified organisms, but also cover well-known FOI requests for information from climatologists. They tread a fine line between trying to argue that it was OK for Michael Mann's work to remain secret and arguing that in general it should be open to concerned citizens.
There is an interesting twist to the tale, when Thacker and Seife discuss a Keith Kloor article about a University of Florida GMO researcher named Kevin Folta, suggesting that Kloor had failed to mention that Folta was a paid consultant to Monsanto:
The article also does not report on an email titled “CONFIDENTIAL: Coalition Update” from the researcher to Monsanto in which the scientist advised Monsanto on ways to defeat a political campaign in California to require labeling of GMO products.
In fact the email concerned turned out not to be written by Folta at all, and the authors were forced to issue a correction, but by that time the damage had been done, as Folta explained in a comment:
My alleged monkeywrenching of the California GMO labeling initiative as a Monsanto secret PR agent has now spread Twitter and is now installed as a permanent part of the “can’t trust scientists, can’t trust Folta” narrative.
This story caught my attention because Thacker's name was a familiar one: he was involved in some of the early attempts to denigrate McIntyre and McKitrick - see CA stories here and here. Around the same time he seems to have played fast and loose with some quotes during an interview of Judy Curry in order to try to score some points against Roger Pielke Jr.
Keith Kloor, in the comments at PLOS seems similary unimpressed with the standards of Thacker and Siefe:
Alas, I feel strongly that Thacker and Seife similarly misrepresented my reporting by suggesting that I had left key information out of both my stories.
Let's hope the Folta incident really was an unfortunate error.