Censorship Poses Threat To Everyone, Scientists Included

LIBERTY DENIED: The Current Rise Of Censorship In America Donna Demac PEN American Center; New York 171 pages; $6.95 Why in the world is a book on censorship of interest to the scientific community? After all, we’re not writing pornography. And our research—objective and usually not very sensational—hardly seems vulnerable to libelous accusations. Indeed, for most scientists—and most Americans, for that matter— censorship seems to be a form of suppression that happens somewhere else. Liberty Denied was commisoned by PEN, an international association founded to foster international collegiality among writers and to protect their freedom of expression. PEN asked Donna Demac, a lawyer and specialist in telecom-munications at New York University to review the state of censorship in America. Demac deals with many forms censorship in each case providing illustrative examples and an lyzing their implications for the freedom of expression that we take for granted. But this view is myopic, as author Donna Demac successfully points out in Liberty Denied. Demac explores the increase in censorship in the United States over the past few decades, and she finds censorship in science to be very much a part of this picture. She does so in the context of the complex and ambivalent history of free expression in the U.S., a history that has been marked by both commitment to personal rights and intolerance of dissident and unorthodox views. Censorship restrictions, as she observes, have been most controversial when they involve explicit efforts to ban books in schools. And while most such efforts have indeed focused on books that are claimed to be unsuitable on moral grounds, censors have extended their activities to science as well. (Recall the effort by scientific creationists to control textbooks on evolutionary biology.) The threat of libel suits has been another powerful means of censorship—and the science community is affected here as well. Litigation becomes a form of censorship when authors impose restrictions on themselves in order to avoid problems. In a chapter on corporate censorship, Demac writes about the control of those who wish to speak out critically on management practices in order to gain public support. The fate of whistleblowers who try to call attention to harmful technologies is a case in point. Her discussion of censorship by the government—in a chapter titled “The Truth Stops Here”—deals mainly with sensitive political or personal issues, or those defined as bearing on national security. But there are persistent debates about limiting the access of the media in cases of technological disasters as well. After Chernobyl, Demac points out, the U.S. government, concerned about the effects of the accident on the American nuclear power program issued “gag orders” to Department of Energy officials, forbidding them to talk with the press. Most discussions about censorship in academic or scientific research have focused on two issues. First is the secrecy that has accompanied corporate-sponsored research in American universities and the intense competition in potentially profitable research areas. The notion of proprietary science has brought about increased communication controls in fields like biotechnology and computer science. Second are the national secu- rity and export control policies that have restricted dissemination of research deemed “militarily sensitive.” The categories of military classification have expanded. But perhaps more serious, Demac finds increased censorship of nonclassified research through restrictions placed on attendance at conferences and control over the circulation of scientific papers in scien- tific fields. In my book, Science as Intellectual Property (Macmillan, New York, 1983), I suggested that scientists tend to be ambivalent about controls over communication. They strongly oppose those restrictions that might undermine their autonomy, but accept self-imposed constraints on communication that protect the scientific community from external intervention. The diverse examples provided in Liberty Denied demonstrate that censorship is an increasingly serious issue, and that its long-term incremental effects overwhelm any short-term gains. Demac suggests that there is a very broad erosion of the valued traditions of free speech and diversity of information. And most problematic, her examples cumulatively show how censorship can be incremental, diffuse, and often sufficiently subtle to remain unnoticed. Books are not being burned. Large research centers are not being closed. Individual incidents of censorship are not very newsworthy—unless they involve the press. Indeed censorship constraints, especially in science, frequently occur through self-censorship to avoid external regulation. For scientists, the main value of this lucid, concise, and well-written book is that it provides a context for a growing concern about secrecy in science. Scientists as well as poets, playwrights, and novelists depend on open communication and the free exchange of ideas. For in all these fields, communication is the basis of creativity, and excessive constraints can be disastrous. As Demac puts it: “The United States is at a turning point with regard to freedom of expression. The alternatives are clear. We can choose to remain indifferent about the erosion of our rights . . . or we can challenge those who have qualified and curtailed our freedoms and begin an examination of censorship American-style.” Dorothy Nelkin, a sociology professor at Cornell University, is currently a visiting professor in the sociology department at New York University

Censorship Poses Threat To Everyone, Scientists Included

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