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Published online 6 October 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news061002-12
Column
When it's time to speak out
By confronting ExxonMobil, the Royal Society is not being a censor of science but an advocate for it.
It isn't clear whether Bob Ward, former manager of policy communication at the Royal Society in London, knew quite what he was letting himself in for when he penned a letter taking the oil company ExxonMobil to task for funding groups that deny the human role in global warning. But with hindsight the result was predictable: once his letter was published by the British Guardian newspaper, the Royal Society was denounced from all quarters as having overstepped its role as an impartial custodian of science.
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