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From: sra@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
Newsgroups: net.research
Subject: Re: Suppression of research presentation
Message-ID: <753@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-May-85 20:59:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: oddjob.753
Posted: Sun May 26 20:59:26 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 27-May-85 00:45:14 EDT
References: <166@yetti.UUCP> <20100001@haddock.UUCP> <89@ritcv.UUCP>
Reply-To: sra@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson)
Distribution: net
Organization: University of Chicago, Department of Physics
Lines: 23
Summary: 

In article <89@ritcv.UUCP> mjl@ritcv.UUCP (Mike Lutz) writes:

>It was my impression that the papers pulled from the recent Optics
>meeting were not DoD sponsored.  Does anyone know for certain?

According to Science April 26 p. 471, "Virtially all of the 43 contested
papers were produced by Defense Department scientists or researchers
working for defense contractors.  All were required to submit their papers
for clearance before presentation."  Also, "only one of the papers had
academic authors and none was derived from basic research."
    It does not appear that DoD has done anything here that was not
specifically written into the funding contracts, although the magnitude
of this incident has many people worried about just how far DoD can go
to suppress scientific information and get away with it.  The Administration
line is that research will not be subject to restrictions if it is basic
research, or on-campus applied research unless "there is a high likelihood
of disclosing performance characteristics of military systems, or of
manufacturing technologies unique and critical to defense."
    In any case, I think that everything the military does should be watched
like a hawk (:-).

				Scott Anderson
				ihnp4!oddjob!sra