Understanding Threats to Scientific Openness

Petro and Relman present a brief description of some recent findings regarding the potential for open-source science to enable bioterrorist activities, which provide insight into the activities of potential exploiters, and emphasizes the importance of closer interaction between the scientific and security communities. They point out that one potential contribution of the national security community is the opportunity, even if limited, to educate scientists regarding current and emerging threats through unclassified case studies. Moreover, they encourage the life science community to take the lead in partnering with national security professionals to draft guidelines for identifying research of concern and weighing the benefits to national security against the cost to open communication of future life science discovery.