For any scientist, publishing
in Science magazine marks a giant success. It’s
one of the world’s premier scientific journals, and only about 7
percent of submitted manuscripts are accepted. But Dan Donato, a
second-year graduate student at Oregon State University’s College
of Forestry, overcame the odds.
Donato was lead author of
a study on the impact of salvage logging on the area burned by the
2002 Biscuit fire — 500,000 acres in some of Oregon’s most
remote and beautiful wildlands. In a nutshell, Donato found that
doing nothing was better than logging, because cutting down trees
killed seedlings and also increased the fuel load on the forest
floor. Reviewers found his paper met the high standards of Science,
and it was accepted. That should have been the end of the story.
Instead, last January, John Sessions, a professor of
forest engineering at Oregon State’s College of Forestry, and
several colleagues wrote to the editors of Science in an attempt to
delay publication of the study and add a rebuttal. Sessions and
some of his colleagues have long advocated salvage logging,
promoting its ecological benefits. Donato’s paper contradicted
those arguments, and the disagreement turned ugly.
Sessions had been lobbying Congress for a bill aimed at opening the
Biscuit fire area to intensive salvage logging. After the Donato
paper came out, he accused the Donato team of political motivations
and attacked the quality of the team’s research. Sessions was
quoted as saying “We were concerned that a poor piece of reporting
would be in the scientific literature for good. There was the
chance they could revise it before it was ink. We were trying to
help them out.”
This sounds helpful, but I am a
scientist, and when scientists disagree with the methods or
findings of a study, we have established rules to follow. A letter
is written to the journal, explaining the scientific objections to
the work. In Science, this is called a technical comment. This
process is a commonplace occurrence, one that the Oregon State
critics surely understood.
But rather than follow the
rules of engagement, opponents took other actions. Anonymous
threats were tacked on Donato’s door. The Bureau of Land
Management, which had funded Donato’s research, suddenly had second
thoughts. The agency froze his promised money, and only resumed
payment after a public outcry. An editorial in
Science chastised Oregon State faculty critics
for attempting to suppress the paper. Applications for graduate
admissions plummeted, and the strong reputation of the college
suffered. The reputation of Hal Salwasser, dean of the College of
Forestry, also suffered after an Oregon state legislator held
hearings and required Salwasser to release his e-mail
communications. The e-mails showed that Salwasser was deeply
involved in efforts to help the Donato critics, that he worked
closely with the timber industry and even referred to
environmentalists as “goons.” He has since survived a vote of no
confidence and apologized for his behavior.
The
editor-in-chief at Science understood the Donato
critics’ letter to be an effort at suppression; not an act of
kindness. In his words: “We told the letter-writers that we don’t
believe in censorship at Science0; and that they could put their
scientific objections in a technical comment.” Eventually they did
so, but the original study has withstood extraordinary scrutiny.
One lesson stands out. Everything from academic
relationships to political machinations affects science. Sessions’
congressional lobbying, Salwasser’s messages to and from Forest
Service staffers and timber bosses, reveal relationships that were
uncomfortably cozy. It is true that scientists — just like
everyone else — come to work with personal beliefs. But
science works best when the minds of scientists are open and their
biases held in check.
It’s heartening that in this
embarrassing case, the academics attempting to do the censoring
were exposed and criticized. Brilliant science, untainted by
politics, will be critical to help us navigate the next several
decades as we face such giant challenges as global climate change
and flammable forests throughout the West. We need science more
than ever before and must protect the ability of scientists to do
work free of censorship.
Carla Wise is a
contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High
Country News in Paonia, Colorado (hcn.org). She is a
conservation biologist who works at the Institute for Applied
Ecology in Corvallis, Oregon.
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