Scientists self-censor after political attack : Nature News

Description

Scientists whose work came under scrutiny during a political debate about work funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, censored their own later work, a new study has found.

In July 2003, former congressman Patrick Toomey (Republican, Pennsylvania) argued that NIH grants funding studies on certain types of sexual behaviour were less worthy of taxpayer dollars than those on devastating diseases. He proposed an amendment to the 2004 NIH appropriations bill to revoke funding for five grants — four of which examined sexual behaviour.

Toomey's amendment was defeated by two votes, but after a congressional investigation later in 2003, NIH director Elias Zerhouni was sent a list of 250 grants by 157 scientists, most of which were for studies on sexual behaviour and drug use. Republicans involved in the investigation said that the list was sent accidentally. Zerhouni nonetheless investigated all the grants on the list and later wrote to Congress defending the studies.

Now, Joanna Kempner, a sociologist at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, has surveyed and interviewed many of the principal investigators whose grants came under scrutiny. She has found that many of them subsequently used less-controversial language and, in some cases, changed the focus of their work to avoid such areas altogether.

Original URL

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081117/full/news.2008.1234.html

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081117/full/news.2008.1234.html