Tucked into last month's giant spending bill is an unwelcome message to academic researchers: Their data may be fair game for anyone who asks.
A few words in the section funding the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) would extend the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)--a 1966 law to make government more accountable to the public--to extramural grants. That opens the possibility that scientists at universities, hospitals, or nonprofit organizations might have to turn over the contents of their computer disks of data, or even their lab notebooks, in response to a request to the agency that funded their work. "We're all very troubled," says Wendy Baldwin, deputy director for extramural research at the National Institutes of Health.
The language, inserted by Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), says OMB must revise its rules for administering federally funded research grants "to require Federal awarding agencies to ensure that all data produced under an award will be made available to the public through the procedures established under the Freedom of Information Act." Private parties requesting the data may be charged "a reasonable user fee." At present, only funding agencies themselves can ask grantees for data. The new language implies that federally funded researchers must turn over their data to anyone who files a FOIA request. "The taxpayers have a right to much of this information," says Shelby.
The roots of the provision go back to last year's controversy over new Environmental Protection Agency air pollution rules for fine soot. Industry groups and some legislators demanded that university researchers hand over their data on the health effects of the pollution, leading to an unsuccessful legislative proposal requiring public data release (Science, 8 August 1997, p. 758). This year, a separate funding bill containing a request for OMB to study the issue was vetoed by President Clinton for unrelated reasons, leading Shelby to insert more direct language in the massive spending bill passed before Congress adjourned (Science, 23 October, p. 598).
Some observers are outraged that this sweeping measure was passed with no hearings. "It is ironic that a provision described as a sunshine provision needed to be tucked into a 4000-page bill in the dead of night," says Representative George Brown (D-CA), ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee. And some health researchers are worried that the directive will give industry a new tool to stall health regulations. "If past history is any indication, vested interests will misuse [this provision] to discredit valid research results they don't like and to harass the researchers doing the work," says New York University environmental scientist George Thurston, whose studies helped form the basis for EPA's contested regulations.
Others worry that raw data will be requested before it has been analyzed and peer reviewed. "It's important that we have processes in place for data sharing, but this basically opens the door to anyone's data without any filters," Baldwin says. University researchers say that privacy and proprietary data might also be compromised.
The question facing OMB now is how to implement the new requirement. Agency officials say they hope to be consulted in a process likely to take many months.
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