The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a Washington D.C.-based environmental group, launched a free legal defense fund for U.S. scientists in government and academia. The pro bono Alliance for Legal Protection of Science (ALP) is designed to protect the scientists and their work from what PEER calls well funded “harassment campaigns,” according to an article in Chemistry World.
Public scientists at universities and in government face political and industry pressure to stifle their research, notes the project’s director in the article, and shouldn’t have to deal with the fear of getting fired, losing their jobs or having their work hampered by intrusive public records requests. ALP will offer legal information, counseling and formal representation to scientists, who are often ill equipped to deal with these outside pressures.
