FBI attaches strings to its DNA database
Christopher Anderson · Nature · 1992
FBI attaches strings to its DNA database Washington.Researchers are criticizing the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which controls one of the largest databases of human DNA samples, for refusing to allow an independent researcher to use the data unless FBI scientists are permitted to review his work and to be listed as coauthors.Although the FBI says that the ruling is not agency policy, officials admit that they have not yet decided how to handle the issue of data access.A recent report by the US National Academy of Science (NAS) strongly recommends that data be made freely available to all researchers.In a letter dated 12 May to Seymour Geisser, a University of Minnesota statistician, James Kearney, the head of the FBI forensic science research centre, refused to permit the use of the data unless Geisser agreed to give an FBI scientist the right to approve the paper.Kearney says that the FBI is "not quite sure of [Geisser's] intent" in seeking to analyse the data, pointing out that Geisser has testified for the defence in DNA fingerprinting cases.Kearney acknowledged that the FBI has provided the data to other researchers (he named three scientists, at least two of whom have testified for the prosecution in DNA fingerprinting cases), but said they were picked because they were experts in population genetics.Kearney agreed to provide the data only on the condition that Geisser analyse them in collaboration with Bruce Budowle, an FBI scientist, and that Budowle should have final approval of the paper.Geisser rejected that arrangement as "obviously unacceptable".He has since revised his paper -on statistical techniques as they apply to population data -to use an artificial dataset.Geisser had asked the FBI ftlf permission to use the data on the advice of Charles Epstein, editor of the American Journal of Human Genetics, which is considering Geisser's paper.Although the data had been released as part of a court case, Epstein recommended that Geisser seek explicit approval from the FBI for their inclusion in the paper.But he decided to drop the FBI data entirely after the FBI refused to grant permission and after Geisser said he was unwilling to let the agency researchers "censor" the paper."It's an unfortunate situation when such data are not made available, presumably because they [the FBI] might not be in agreement with the outcome", says Epstein. "By trying to extract that kind of promise [of coauthorship] they are showing that they are not truly interested in the free flow of information."Earlier this year, the same paper triggered a dispute with the FBI after federal prosecutors demanded that Geisser tum over a draft of the manuscript and any comments