This may be a little bit off topic for the list, but because it deals with secrecy and information generated through research, I thought that maybe you might be interested. Late last night on CSPAN they rebroadcast a House sub-committee hearing from last Thursday on cigarettes. Two former RJR scientists testified about the work they had done, which strongly suggested that nicotine was highly addictive. As many of you might know, RJR management has always denied that anything in cigarette smoke is addictive. The two researchers testified that top RJR management had been informed about their work, and the picture they painted of the interactions between the science people and management makes it pretty clear that RJR management not only knew about the work, they understood and accepted it as well. The company's claims that nicotine is not addictive is sort of hard to swallow given the fact that they were conducting research which was intended to develop other analogue substances which would look like nicotine to the neural receptors in the brain, but which wouldn't put so much stress on the heart. Apparently, such substances were discovered, but the company elected not to pursue further research. This decision was made in the face of over 150,000 deaths each year due to smoking induced heart-attacks in the US alone. The reason I'm writing about this here, on the CP list, is that RJR suppressed the information. The research itself was conducted in a secretive manner (animals were moved into the buildings under the cover of darkness, visitors were not allowed in the facility, etc.). What's more, the scientists involved signed contracts which prevented them from disclosing their work to anyone outside of the company. Those contracts are not unusual in the corporate world, but the researchers claimed that it was highly unusual, unheard of even, for the company to bury the information permanently. According to the researchers, it is considered legitimate to withhold information temporarily, in order to establish a market ahead of competitors, or for other market based reasons. It is not considered to be legitimate to use the contracts to suppress research because the company doesn't like the results of it. After the lab was closed by RJR, the scientists made attempts to publish their work despite the contracts they had signed. In each instance, the journals and the scientists were threatened with law suits, and the journals pulled the plug on the articles. According to the testimony, the work done at RJR during this period (ending in the early 80's) was cutting edge stuff that didn't exist anywhere else. Because RJR suppressed it, other scientists didn't have the opportunity to follow up on it, and millions of people had less information at their disposal when they decided whether or not they ought to smoke. Apparently much of their work still has not been duplicated elsewhere. All of this underscores, I think, the importance of the work that's being done here, on the CP list. It's important for scientists, whistle blowers, or whoever, to be able to distribute information widely and anonymously. Who knows what might have happened if these researchers had had a copy of PGP and a network of remailers at their disposal?