Barring some national security concern, I see no valid reason to keep peer-reviewed research from the public. To be clear, by 'peer review,' I mean scientific review and not a political filter.
If a scientist sidesteps their scientific peers, and chooses to take an apparently changeable, frightening and technical scientific case directly to the public, then that is a deliberate decision, and one that can't realistically go unnoticed.
Science has become politicized, and that's an embarrassment.
Questions have arisen about the policing of science. Who is responsible for the policing? My answer is: all of us.
We have to overthrow the idea that it's a diversion from 'real' work when scientists conduct high-quality research in the open. Publicly funded science should be open science. Improving the way that science is done means speeding us along in curing cancer, solving the problem of climate change and launching humanity permanently into space.
I was shocked to find that there were actually climate scientists who wouldn't share the raw data, but would only share their conclusions in summary graphs that were used to prove their various theories about planet warming. In fact I began to smell something really bad, and the worse that smell got, the deeper I looked.
Our lab had always refrained from keeping our studies secret.
Public sharing is an important part of science.
The artist may be well advised to keep his work to himself till it is completed, because no one can readily help him or advise him with it... but the scientist is wiser not to withhold a single finding or a single conjecture from publicity.
They cannot count on the press and they cannot count on Congressional committees to bring the problems of the scientific community to their own attention, or to police the scientific community.
What standards are upheld by the scientific community affect the community internally, and also affect its relations with society at large, including Congress.
EPA has a long history of relying on science that was not created by the agency itself. This often means that the science is not available to the public and, therefore, cannot be reproduced and verified.
