A Year After a Climate-Change Controversy, Smithsonian and Journals Still Seek Balance on Disclosure Rules

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The Smithsonian Institution has adopted new financial-disclosure rules, one year after a prominent researcher was found to have been quietly accepting industry financing while using a Smithsonian-Harvard affiliation to challenge scientific understandings of climate change.

The institution’s second rule revision within a year, which went into effect this month, requires any staff member publishing under a Smithsonian title to disclose any outside support exceeding $10,000.

Both conflict-of-interest policy changes were adopted by the Smithsonian “in part” because of the actions by the researcher, Wei-Hock Soon, said John P. Gibbons, a Smithsonian spokesman.

Mr. Soon, known as Willie, holds the title of astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. That observatory and one owned by Harvard University together form the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. For years Mr. Soon cited a Harvard affiliation while publicly promoting various theories on planetary warming that minimize the contributions of human activity.

Criticism of that practice peaked last year, when an activist formerly affiliated with Greenpeace produced evidence that Mr. Soon and the Smithsonian had accepted some $1.2 million in support from energy companies and others hostile to government limits on fossil-fuel use, without acknowledging that money in conflict-of-interest statements in 11 articles published in scientific journals.

The activist, Kert Davies, outlined his findings in February 2015. In June the Smithsonian announced plans that included reviewing all sponsored awards for personal conflicts of interest, and expanding its annual financial-disclosure program to cover all institution researchers.

Prohibitive Costs

Some of the scientific journals that published Mr. Soon’s work also promised to review their policies. But doing so has proved complicated, said Thierry Forveille, the editor in chief of one of those journals, Astronomy & Astrophysics. Mr. Soon was a co-author of a 2009 paper in the journal that found that stars, including the sun, have varying cycles of stellar activity. The paper made no mention of climate change, though Mr. Soon has repeatedly suggested — including in testimony before Congress, during which he cited the Harvard affiliation — that fluctuations in solar activity could explain changes in the earth’s climate.

Mr. Soon’s failure to disclose payments to the Smithsonian on his behalf from the Southern Company, a major electric-utility holding company, seemed unusual in retrospect, said Mr. Forveille, an astronomer at Joseph Fourier University, in France. But the lack of disclosure violated no policy at Astronomy & Astrophysics, Mr. Forveille said, so now the journal is considering new rules.

But it is moving warily, he said, because the staffing cost of enforcing such a policy on disclosure may be prohibitive. Astronomy findings don’t typically attract major political or economic attention, he said, so financial conflicts don’t seem to be a concern beyond Mr. Soon.

Harvard and the Smithsonian also have acknowledged limits to what they can and should do, given the unique circumstances of Mr. Soon. Like many Smithsonian researchers, Mr. Soon relies on outside financial support rather than a salary. Unlike most Smithsonian researchers, however, he relies primarily on private support, not peer-reviewed government grants. Mr. Soon did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him for comment.

Possible Loopholes

The new Smithsonian policy requires all staff members to disclose to publishers of their articles “each source of funding above $10,000 for any scholarly research that they conducted and relied upon in drafting a particular manuscript.” Asked about possible loopholes, such as multiple groups’ providing amounts just below the threshold, Mr. Gibbons, the spokesman, said the institution’s leaders “expect and rely on our scientific staff to conduct themselves in an ethical manner.”

Mr. Gibbons also said there are limits to how tightly the Smithsonian can enforce its longstanding ban on Mr. Soon’s use of a Harvard or Smithsonian title for outside activities. As one example, the Heartland Institute, an outside partner of Mr. Soon that challenges the scientific consensus on climate change, has continued to use Mr. Soon’s Harvard-Smithsonian title. Mr. Gibbons said he would pursue the matter with Heartland but ultimately could not compel the institute to change its wording.

The director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Charles R. Alcock, said Harvard also felt limited in its ability to enforce its ban on Mr. Soon’s use of the title. “I don’t have any control over what Heartland does,” said Mr. Alcock, a professor of astronomy at Harvard.

It’s not clear what can ultimately stop a researcher who may be determined to hide a financial conflict, said Robert J. Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University.

“You’re not going to cure a systematic bias by trying to erect disclosure requirements for this, that, and the other journals,” Mr. Brulle said, “because my experience is, they will learn to conceal it.”

At a minimum, said another expert on financial conflicts, Sheldon Krimsky of Tufts University, the Smithsonian could have set its new disclosure limit at $5,000. That’s the point at which the government requires federally financed researchers to report outside income to their institution. The institution then decides which of those sources of income a researcher must disclose to a journal, said Mr. Krimsky, a professor of humanities and social sciences.

Mr. Gibbons said the Smithsonian tracks all funding paid to its researchers, and felt $10,000 was a reasonable limit for reporting to journals. And, he said, any suspected ethical breaches would be immediately investigated.

As part of its response to Mr. Davies’s findings, the Smithsonian also promised an internal review by its inspector general of Mr. Soon’s actions. That review, however, is confidential, Mr. Gibbons said, and the Smithsonian will make no public comment on its progress or any conclusions.

Paul Basken covers university research and its intersection with government policy. He can be found on Twitter @pbasken, or reached by email at paul.basken@chronicle.com.