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44 SEEDWORLD.COM SEPTEMBER 2015 ONE OF THE MOST prominent professors to be hit with the Freedom of Information Act request is the University of Floridas Kevin Folta a professor in the Horticultural Sciences Department. Folta is also an author on GMOAnswers.com and is an advocate of science. The U.S. Right to Know USRTK organiza- tion filed the request late January saying that it seeks to understand the dynamics between the agrichemical industrys PR efforts and the public university faculty who sometimes are its public face. USRTK is a new nonprofit food organization that investigates and reports on food companies. We taxpayers deserve to know the details about when our taxpayer-paid employees front for private corporations and their slick PR firms says Gary Ruskin executive director of U.S. Right to Know. Its important to note that Ruskin led the charge on Proposition 37 in California for the mandatory labeling of genetically modified foods which failed when it was sent to voters. Folta was one of 14 university scientists from the University of Nebraska to the University of California Davis and the University of Illinois targeted by the USRTK. The group requested the professorsresearchers turn over their email corre- spondence with agribusinesses trade groups and public relations agencies. This is troubling news for academic scientists says Karl Haro von Mogel a research geneticist at the University of Wisconsin. These FOIA requests risk violating academic freedom and having a silencing effect on scientist-communicators who fear becoming political targets. Through the university Folta has since turned over three years worth of email. Not long after sto- ries on the PLoS One blog started rolling out about Foltas so-called connections to big ag. My central fear was not revealing incriminating or proprietary information as the activities of a professor in a Horticultural Sciences Department arent terribly exciting Folta says. I was comfortable with university I.T. pulling three years of email from university servers. However I had one suspicious fear that this venture was nothing more than a way for activists to spin my state- ments and manufacture devious and defamatory narratives. Despite the increased scrutiny Folta says as scientists we need voice our outrage about such tactics. More importantly as scientists we all need to better connect with the public in the pop-controversial areas of science. We must be conversant in the consensus syntheses of climate change vaccines and transgenic crop technology. We all need to actively integrate into the sciencesociety interface teaching and interpreting the scholarly literature. We must be honest communicating the strengths and weaknesses risks and benefits to maintain and expand public trust. According to a report Freedom to Bully from the Union for Concerned Scientists open records laws are increasingly being used as a weapon against researchers whose work threatens private interests. An onslaught of Freedom of Information Act requests filed by an organization that opposes genetically modified organisms leaves public scientists scrambling to prove they have nothing to hide and consumes their time. Julie Deering Information Requests Seek to Silence University Researchers Targeted for his outreach initiatives on communicating science specifically GMOs Kevin Folta was required to disclose three years of emails to an opposition group. PHOTOUFIFASTYLERJONES.