FC: Scientific American responds to flap over environmentalism article

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Thu Mar 07 2002 - 16:23:32 PST

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    "Scientific American assails prof who attacked enviro-article"
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    Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2002 10:53:22 +1100
    From: Bernard Palmer <bwpat_private>
    To: declanat_private
    Subject: [Fwd: from Scientific American]
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    This is the reply I received from John Rennie, editor of Scientific 
    American to my email suggesting he should apologize for the Lomborg fiasco. 
    Bernard Palmer
    
    -------- Original Message --------
    Subject: from Scientific American
    Date: 07 Mar 2002 12:44:19 -0500
    From: "John Rennie" <mailto:jrennieat_private><jrennieat_private>
    Reply-To: John Rennie <mailto:jrennieat_private><jrennieat_private>
    To: <mailto:bwpat_private><bwpat_private>
    
    
    
    It's unfortunate that a number of people who are fans of The Skeptical 
    Environmentalist are spreading a misleading picture of Scientific 
    American's dealings with him, to the effect that Scientific American has 
    tried to stifle his response to our article. This is completely untrue.
    
    I spoke with Lomborg by phone before the publication of our article and 
    assured him that we were very interested in receiving his response to our 
    authors' criticisms. Recently we received a reply for print from him, which 
    arrives just in time for our May issue, which is when it is scheduled to 
    appear.
    
    When Lomborg first posted his reply on his web site, he posted the entire 
    text of our article. This is an infringement of our copyright and 
    interferes with our business of selling the article (which is, after all, 
    how magazines stay in business). We make this request routinely to _anyone_ 
    who republishes Scientific American articles without our permission. We 
    told Lomborg that he could still pu
    blish short quotations from it to ground his argument, however. His 
    response was to post a slightly edited version of our article that still 
    included 3/4 of the original text, which we saw as an act of bad faith. At 
    that point we told him that he should remove all our text.
    
    Note that we never complained about what he said or tried to restrict him 
    from saying whatever he wanted; all we did was inhibit his unauthorized 
    republication of our text. We have no objection to Lomborg saying or 
    writing whatever he likes, however much we disagree with it. All we ask is 
    that he respect our legal rights. No one needs to reprint an entire text to 
    criticize it; like any book reviewers, our authors criticized Lomborg's 
    book without quoting more than a few sentences from it. Lomborg can 
    certainly do the same.
    
    What Lomborg's web site does not acknowledge, moreover, is that when we 
    first pointed out the copyright infringement to him, we volunteered to put 
    his entire response onto our w
    eb site, thus eliminating the copyright infringement problem. This posting 
    will occur concurrently with our May issue.
    
    Scientific American has no interest in trying to stifle debate on this 
    subject and has done nothing toward that end. We are disappointed that 
    Lomborg or some of his supporters might have anyone think otherwise.
    
    -- 
    John Rennie, editor in chief
    Scientific American
    415 Madison Ave.
    New York, NY 10017
    tel: 212-451-8813
    fax: 212-755-1976
    <mailto:jrennieat_private>jrennieat_private
    
    
    
    
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