[Viking Ski Bum]

George Soros and junk science, eh? Sounds like an interesting combination. Either one is bad enough alone but together... YIKES! Anybody know who the sponsor of this bill is?

[Just A Nobody]

Save for later!

[Just A Nobody]

FYI ping.

“It exemplifies the hazard of government ideology controlling the work of science, and of uncritical media promoting false concepts.”

This politicizing of science can be found in the way the United States government spends billions to fund various research programs. One example is the $40 billion spent by the U.S. Global Change Research Program since 1990.

It should come as little surprise that liberal financier George Soros, through his Open Society Institute, is a big fan of “open access” and alternative journals.

[Kay Ludlow]

Yes, this is interesting. Opening the way for more junk science to be accepted as real science (as if it doesn't get enough coverage already).

[TKDietz]

This looks like a classic baseless hit piece. The author throws George Soros' name in hear just to get people worked up even though George Soros has nothing to do with the proposed law. Then the only argument he makes really argues more for this law being passed than it does for it not being passed if you really think about it. If taxpayors are paying for research, we ought to have access to the findings unless the research was on something like sensitive nuclear weapons technology or something like that we wouldn't want our enemies to have. I agree that the government picks what they'll research and that often their research "reflects the outcome of whatever cause or theory government bureaucrats are advancing." That I don't doubt. But allowing the government to bury research that doesn't reach the "right" conclusions will not help in getting the truth out. We ought to know the results of the research we pay for. The government shouldn't get to pick and choose what they release. That only makes it easier for them to work their spin, if that is in fact what is happening. I really cannot think of any good reason not to make taxpayer funded research available to the public unless there is some vital national security interest in keeping it secret.

[TKDietz]

"This bill literally forces publishers of medical, scientific, and scholarly journals, which invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year in their publications, to give away their work. There is something inherently wrong in that. The Open Access bill is, in this respect, an unconstitutional “taking” of intellectual property by the federal government."

This is bull. They don't have to give away their work. They only have to allow that research that is funded by taxpayers to be published on the Internet. If they don't want to do that, they don't have to take government money. Besides, in most cases these publications do not have anything to do with the research, they just publish what is made available to them by researchers. Looks to me like they are opposed to this law because it hurts their monopoly on publishing scientific research. Their fears are overblown though. Professionals who read these publications will still buy them even if they can get some of the reports free on the Internet, just like lawyers still buy legal research materials even though a lot of it is available free on the Internet. And the average person isn't any more likely to read this stuff if it's published free on the Internet than if he had to buy the publications. Reporters who publish articles on junk science will still buy the publications so they'll have it all, and they wouldn't be any more likely to write junk science stories if the reports are available free on the Internet than they would if these reports were not freely available to the public. And personally, I like being able to refer to the actual research report when I read an article making wild scientific claims so I can judge for myself whether the author is full of it or not.

[steve-b]

What a bunch of clap-trap. Requiring that all government-funded research (other than that which is kept secret for legitimate security reasons, which is so obvious that I presume the bill has a provision for it unless the authors are absolute idiots) would prevent agenda-driven manipulation of science (since it would become impossible to completely bury research that discovered politically inconventient truths).

Also, the author might want to work on hiding his leftie-elitist worldview (e.g. "For very good reasons, medical, scientific, and scholarly journals are intended to be read by those in the communities they serve, not the general public."), or at least putting up one of those pine-tree air fresheners to hide its stench.