Open Access News

Phil Leggiere, WHO Defends Open Access to H1N1 Data, Homeland Security Today, May 18, 2009.  Excerpt:

While debunking rumor that H1N1 started in lab, WHO director defends public posting of virus gene sequences on internet....

[Dr Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General and Interim for Health Security and Environment for the World Health Organization (WHO)] was responding to the hypothesis of an Austrian virologist Adrian Gibbs widely circulated last week claiming that that the H1N1 influenza virus that has now infected over 8000 people and killed 72 people in 39 countries around the world was accidentally made in a lab....[Gibbs] was not a scientist who was actually working with the influenza viruses, Fukuda said, but rather somebody “who is able to go to the databases and take a look at the sequences available and, on his own analyses, come up with this hypothesis.” ...

Fukuda, while acknowledging that open access to data might result in wider circulation of unfounded rumors and incorrect hypotheses, argued that the policy nonetheless was a sound one.

“We live in a time when there are many different hypotheses, many different rumors, many different accusations, many different theories which are posted on the Web which people bring up in any number of ways,” Fakuda said. “In a sense I do not think this is damaging at all. I think what it shows is that if we have that information it brings up possibilities – and possibilities from very credible people – but it also points out that these possibilities can be addressed and they can be addressed in a really transparent manner.”

“We now live in an age in which it is really not possible to hide things,” Fakuda added. “You know, things have to be looked at in an open way and it is all for the better, as far as we are concerned. It means that things come up that you have to address, maybe it means a little bit more work, but what it means is that you can also address it in a way which is pretty convincing to people. The scientist will publish his paper, it will be looked at by additional scientists – people will debate it and they will also be able to look at the evidence – but this is healthy, this is the way it should be done.” ...

Comment.  I'm dumbfounded that anyone would suggest that we stop providing OA to H1N1 data simply because someone studying the data proposed what now appears to be a false hypothesis.  If that were a ground for suppressing data, we'd suppress all data on every topic, forever.