OSU College Of Forestry Profs Try To Block Paper On Logging Burned Lands

[hatrack]

A contingent of professors at Oregon State University's College of Forestry want the nation's top scientific journal to withhold a study by an OSU graduate student who found that forests best recover from wildfires when they are not logged and left alone. The issue of the journal Science including the study is due out today, and Donald Kennedy, its top editor, said there is no chance the research will be suppressed. "They're trying to rewind history," said Kennedy, former president of Stanford University who now is a professor emeritus of environmental science and policy there.

The OSU graduate student, Daniel Donato, 29, led researchers in examining lands burned by the 2002 Biscuit wildfire in Southwest Oregon, where the Bush administration and others at OSU had promoted logging as a means of restoring forests quickly. Donato's team concluded logging slows forest recovery. OSU's College of Forestry, which has close ties to the timber industry and receives about 10 percent of its funding from a tax on logging, was immediately and sharply divided. As they do with all studies, Science editors had independent scientists review Donato's research before deciding to publish it. Kennedy on Thursday said the OSU professors, who contend the research is misleading, can respond to the study once it's published. "That's the way scientists handle disputes, not by censorship," Kennedy said.

The step is the latest in an extraordinary dispute, entwined in the heated politics of Northwest logging and spilling out from a normally quiet academia. Many professors aspire all their lives to publish research in Science, and for an OSU graduate student to do so is a rare achievement.

Other scientists inside and outside OSU said they have rarely if ever heard of an attempt by professors to hold back such research, especially when it comes from their college. They said the attempt raises questions about academic freedom and conflicts of interest within the College of Forestry.

EDIT

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1137729313106480.xml&coll=7

[democracyindanger]

1. Stinkin' Beavers.

[Occulus]

2. Of the professors,

who donates to whom?

Knowing that will tell you all you need to know.

[ret5hd]

3. i thought all professors were members of the liberal elite...

:rofl:

[yellowcanine]

4. Someone at OSU needs to kick some academic butt. That sounds

like it may have been a serious infringement on academic freedom. I have never heard of a group of scientists ever trying to stop publication of an article after it had been approved by outside peers. The only grounds for doing so would be if they had strong evidence of academic fraud, which doesn't appear to be the case here. These guys deserve a severe smack down.

[moonlady0623]

5. It's Science they're trying to remake

"They're trying to rewind history," said Kennedy, former president of Stanford University

it's not History folks it's Science. Any gardener knows that organic materials make for a better soil. I'm so tired of this regime's mindfuck.

[phantom power]

6. Clearly, they adhere to the New Epistemology(tm)

">Click Here...

[depakid]

7. Oregon State has long had a bias in favor timber companies

and has long promoted questionable forest practices (to say the least). Back in the 70's, there was even a professor there who drank a beaker full of 2-4-5- T (and ingredient of Agent Orange) during the controversy of massive herbicide spraying (the Alsea studies). He died sometime in the 80's. From cancer, I believe- though don't quote me on that.