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June 10, 2007

Freedom of speech for academic bloggers - UCL forces Prof Colquhoun to remove his blog

David Colquhoun's a chemistry professor at UCL, and also runs an Improbable Science blog - criticising dodgy 'scientific' claims. Sadly, Colquhoun has been forced to remove his blog from UCL's servers: Colquhoun reports that an

item about claims made for alleged benefits of the red clover and other herbs has resulted in complaints being made to the provost of UCL (Malcolm Grant), and to Chair of Council (Lord Woolf). The complaints have come from Alan Lakin, husband of Ann Walker. I have received no complaints from them myself.

Describing these complaints and complainants, Guardian journalist Ben Goldacre notes that

it is striking that none of them engaged the Prof himself on the issue of the ideas. In fact, they all ran behind his back to the Provost, or rather, to teacher; and the Provost, after serving up a sterling defense of academic freedom in responses to them, quietly asked Colquhoun to take his blog elsewhere, on the grounds that it was bringing the university too much flak.

You can read more details about the affair at Colquhoun's and Goldacre's blogs (including more detail on the UCL provost's responses to the situation). Colquhoun has decided to stand his ground, and moved his blog to a new domain (instead of taking it offline). Colquhoun states that "I don't enjoy rows. They keep me awake at night. But some things are just too important to duck out of them."

I should declare something of a personal interest in this: I'm currently applying for funding for a research project on Mapping Virtual War, and I've proposed building a substantial project website for research dissemination. I've also found the online materials provided by a number of institutions - not least the Watson Institute's Infopeace site - extremely useful in my research.

Some aspects of my website will no doubt be controversial (it's hard to discuss mass killing without being controversial). Colleagues have been very supportive of my application - and I'd trust that if there were some controversy my university would support me. However, I would still be concerned that events such as those with Colquhoun and UCL could have a chilling effect on the many valuable attempts by academics to use the Internet to disseminate their work to - and discuss it with - the wider public.

Posted by jon_mendel at June 10, 2007 04:38 PM

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