Category Archives: science and politics

Plagiarist or Puppet? US Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s reprehensible defense of Elsevier’s Research Works Act

By Michael Eisen | Published: January 13, 2012

There has been lots of activity this week surrounding the “Research Works Act“, a bill introduced in the US House of Representatives that seeks to end the NIH’s Public Access Policy. Despite the flurry of attention to the bill, its authors – Reps Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) have remained silent (save a […]

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Protect public access to taxpayer funded research

By Michael Eisen | Published: January 10, 2012

I have an op-ed out today in the New York Times prompted by a new effort by publishers to restrict public access to the results of publicly-funded scientific research. If you’re as incensed by this as I am, you have several important opportunities to weigh in. Help protect the NIH’s Public Access Policy in Congress If […]

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Our scientific societies need to quit the Association of American Publishers

By Michael Eisen | Published: January 7, 2012

By coming out in favor of the odious Research Works Act, which would end the NIH’s Public Access Policy, the American Association of Publishers has proven, once again, that it is eager to place its narrow interests ahead of those of the scientific community and public. It should come as now surprise that publishing behemoths […]

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Elsevier-funded NY Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney Wants to Deny Americans Access to Taxpayer Funded Research

By Michael Eisen | Published: January 5, 2012

In 2008, under bipartisan pressure from Congress to ensure that all Americans would be able to access the results of taxpayer-funded biomedical research, the US National Institutes of Health instituted a Public Access Policy: The NIH Public Access Policy ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to […]

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Stop the presses! H5N1 Frankenflu is going to kill us all!

By Michael Eisen | Published: December 23, 2011

I have watched the escalating hysteria about recent NIH-funded experiments to humanize H5N1 influenze (aka bird flu) with a mixture of amusement, horror and confusion. The amusement is born of the predictable hysteria that always infuses media coverage of research on lethal virus. The horror comes from the largely unchallenged move to censor publication of the […]

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Does the UC patent amendment provide an opportunity for mischief?

By Michael Eisen | Published: December 20, 2011

About a month ago, I received an email with the subject “PLEASE SIGN NOW: UC Patent Amendment”. Being quite interested in issues of intellectual property in academia (as I will explain below, I think all IP arising from publicly funded work should be in the public domain) the combination of such insistent language along with […]

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NIH public access policy made “permanent”

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 13, 2009

The consolidated appropriations bill passed by Congress and signed into law on Wednesday has a provision that makes the NIH public access policy permanent: [Via THOMAS] Sec. 217. The Director of the National Institutes of Health (`NIH’) shall require in the current fiscal year and thereafter that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or […]

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Why I hate bioethicists

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 9, 2009

Yuval Levin, former Executive Director of the President’s Council on Bioethics, has an op-ed in Tuesday’s Washington Post arguing that Obama’s new stem cell policy is dangerous. Levin does not argue that stem cell research is bad. Rather he is upset that Obama did not dictate which uses of stem cells are appropriate, but rather asked […]

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Response to Conyers on Huff Po Front Page

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 9, 2009

I tightened up my earlier response to John Conyers’ letter, and it’s now on the Huffington Post front page.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-eisen/john-conyers-tries-and-fa_b_172944.html

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John Conyers Tries [and Fails] to Explain His Position

By Michael Eisen | Published: March 7, 2009

Lawrence Lessig and I have been writing about the link between publisher contributions to members of the House Judiciary committee and their support for H.R. 801 – a bill that would end the newly implemented NIH public access policy that makes all works published as part of NIH funded research freely available to the public online. On Friday, […]

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