Two science orgs that are fighting to preserve evolution instruction in Kansas are threatening a hostile school-board with copyright lawsuits to prevent the use of their scientific papers to discredit evolution.
As much as I support their cause, I deplore their tactics.
The heart of science is publication and refutation. The difference between an alchemist and a scientist is that alchemists don't publish their findings and so for 500 years, every alchemist had to discover for himself that drinking mercury was a bad idea. The publication and review of a scientist's findings — especially the reviews of his sharpest critics — is how science progresses. It's how we, as a species, progress.
That's the very heart over the fight for evolution. If scientists start arguing that their detractors are illegal infringers who should be silenced by the courts, they set themselves on a road to ruin.
Science will win this fight, but it can't win it at the expense of the scientific method and free speech.
Copyright is not about endorsement or agreement, and it's not a right to stop criticism, even ill-considered criticism. Quotation can be fair use even in a context the original author abhors — that's precisely when we need fair use most, we on all sides of a political debate.
The organizations are free to broadcast their loud disapproval of the uses to which their publications are being put, and free to sue for misrepresentation if false statements or positions are put into their mouths, but asserting copyright rights seems a heavy-handed way to win a battle of ideas.
