Government - at any level - is an implicit gun pointed straight at your head.
Don’t know her political or philosophical leanings. Nuwer is simply relating the opinions of Richard Smith, who according to the article, “ ... edited the BMJ from 1991 to 2004. He is a founding member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, a former trustee of the UK Research Integrity Office and author of The Trouble with Medical Journals (CRC Press, 2006)
Rachel Nuwer appears to be a free-lance science writer, associated with Sci. American blog network, NYTimes Greenblog, the Smithsonian, Tech Page One etc. so I would not be surprised if she has a liberal’s word view. She’s posted a bio at:
She apparently started out as I did - researching fish. I was a comparative zoologist doctoral student specializing in air-breathing fish. Then I fell into bad company and became a biophysicist and biomedical engineer.
I have once-removed acquaintance with an infamous fraud case - perhaps a major reason why I have no tolerance for scientific dishonesty. In 1968 I had an American Heart Association fellowship to work in Robert A. Good’s lab at the University of MN. In general terms, I was one of many working to elucidate the phylogenetic development of the immune response.
One of the Good’s staff was William Summerlin, later infamous at Sloan-Kettering (to which Good and a number of his people moved) for his “painted mice”. See Hixon, Joseph, “The Patchwork Mouse” and Good’s obituaries at:
http://www.jimmunol.org/content/171/12/6318.full
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2803%2914489-3/fulltext
I barely remember Summerlin; as a 17-year-old I was working mostly with young post-docs and newly-minted residents.