Studying wet dogs might not cure cancer - but neither will cheap shots at scientists | Science | The Guardian

"Yet also of concern are the contradictory messages sent about how open science should be to the broader public. On the one hand, the report makes a reasonable argument about public access to research: taxpayers pay for research so they should have an idea of where that money is going.

On the other hand, the report illustrates why some scientists have been wary of raising the visibility of their research. Most of the studies listed in Flake’s report have been published open-access and all of the researchers targeted had agreed to share their work with journalists and press outlets. In a sense, Senator Flake is penalising researchers who chose to make their findings widely available and interact with a larger public. And rather than engage with the research agenda behind the studies, the report takes experiments out of context, then dismisses them with a corny one-liner...."