RE: Re[2]: NAS President's Statement on FOIA Initiative Relating to Rele

["Weiner, Ruth" <rfweine@sandia.gov>]

I don't quite see how either "junk science" or "bad public policy" are
supported by the NAS letter.  The part of the proposed rule I object to is,
in fact:

"c) The Federal Government has the right to (1) obtain, reproduce, publish
or otherwise use the data first produced under an award, and (2) authorize
others to receive, reproduce, publish or otherwise use such data for Federal
purposes. In addition, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
request for data relating to published research produced under an award that
were used by the Federal Government in developing policy or rules, the
Federal awarding agency shall, within a reasonable time, obtain the
requested
data so that they can be made available to the public...."

"Data," a plural noun, is defined (American Heritage Dictionary) as " 1.
Information, especially information organized for analysis or used as the
basis for a decision; 2.  Numerical information in a form suitable for
processing by a computer."   That is, any information that an investigator
gathers at any time, before the information has been analyzed.  In the
example I cited in my previous letter, this includes our data that proved to
be useless because it demonstrated only a detector malfunction.  Anyone with
experience with FOIA requests from anti-nuclear groups recognizes that these
requests are all too often fishing expeditions to find some damaging thing.