Re: FW: The Lomborg decision

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Jan 17 2003 - 17:53:32 MST


An intresting issue here is that the committee seems to regard having a
subjective agenda contrary to good science, even in the case of a debate
book. Essentially they seem to say that researchers should only deal
with objective stuff, and leave the debate about the meaning or how it
should be interpreted to other people. While this is reasonable for
scientific publications it also puts a gag on scientists as participants
in the public debate. If it is considered bad professional practice for
me to strongly outline my vision of how the world works and how it ought
to be changed in public debate then my freedom of speech is being
dampened. I can still speak, but will know my statements may hurt my
professional career even when it is unrelated - the same kind of
chilling effect that the DMCA has on other kinds of free speech.

On Fri, Jan 17, 2003 at 06:32:52PM -0600, Damien Broderick wrote:
> A legal friend writes:
> ====================
> This does put rather a different light on things:
>
> http://www.forsk.dk/uvvu/nyt/udtaldebat/bl_decision.htm
>
> Incidentally, as I read it, Lomborg has technically been found *innocent* of
> the charges. The Danish committees observe that publication of the book was
> not good scientific practice, but it appears that their only job,
> technically, was to find whether complaints of scientific dishonesty should
> be upheld. The test for that has both an objective element about the content
> of the material and a subjective element about the state of mind of the
> researcher (requiring either deliberate dishonesty or gross negligence). The
> subjective element was not found in this case. Thus, Lomborg has been
> criticised, but not found guilty of scientific dishonesty.
>

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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