Munich

Credit: DPA/BILDFUNK

A long-running dispute over freedom of speech at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMB) in Jena, eastern Germany, has flared up again following a move to stop the former deputy director from publicly criticizing the institute's current research.

Günter Löber published an article in the May issue of Laborjournal, a science news magazine, criticizing what he claimed was the low level of the institute's scientific output. Löber, an east German scientist, helped to develop the IMB's scientific mission when it was recreated in 1992 from an institute of the former East German Academy of Sciences.

The article also argued that the institute's scientific and administrative directors had blocked attempts to develop cutting-edge research in the so-called field of ‘evolutionary biotechnology’ which had been central to the institute's original mission.

To avoid being taken to court for breaking his obligation to maintain silence about institute affairs after retirement, Löber has now signed an agreement promising not to make further public criticisms of the IMB, against a penalty of DM50,000 (US$26,450).

But the institute's move has raised concern among scientists, who feel that freedom of speech is being curtailed. “We should be able to say what we feel is true,” says the Nobel prizewinning chemist Manfred Eigen, who headed the IMB's founding committee and its international supervisory board. “It is an insult to science that a research institute, backed by a [state] research ministry, should force retired scientists not to speak [out],” he says.

Eigen himself resigned from the supervisory board in 1997, complaining that his own freedom of speech had been curtailed (see Nature 385, 761; 1997). During a leadership dispute at the institute, Eigen was told by the research ministry in the state of Thüringen only to speak to institute directors in the presence of a ministry representative. The other board members resigned in sympathy.

Much of the current controversy centres on the institute's research strategy. Previous disputes, which outsiders see as having been fanned by personality clashes, have resulted in the departure of all senior scientists hired to work in molecular evolutionary biotechnology, the identification of drug targets by following changes in gene expression resulting from evolutionary pressures.

Evolutionary biotechnology will conti-nue, says Rolf Hilgenfeld, the institute's current scientific director, but at a lower level than originally envisaged. A new position of department head was advertised this summer.

He believes the ‘evolutionary biotechnology’ approach to drug design to be risky, however, preferring to give greater weight to the more “careful approach” of examining single specified genes as potential drug targets.

But Eigen and Löber claim that the institute's research is becoming mundane, contrary to political aspirations to make research institutes founded in east Germany after the country's reunification break the conservative mould of west German science. “Nothing is innovative now,” comments Eigen.

Hilgenfeld denies allegations of scientific mediocrity, claiming that the atmosphere at the institute, and the quality of the scientific output, have “dramatically improved” since 1997. Hilgenfeld says he appreciates the “great contribution” of the first generation of scientists at the IMB — including Löber. But he is “sad that some of them are trying to run the IMB down as soon as they retire”.

He says it was necessary to take a legal move against Löber to protect the IMB's reputation. He was worried that Löber's “campaign” had been launched in a bid to influence the institute's evaluation next month by Germany's science council, the Wissenschaftsrat. He also points out that Löber immediately agreed to the injunction and willingly agreed to pay half the legal costs.

Löber says he was not planning a prolonged campaign, which was one reason why he was prepared to agree not to make further criticisms in public. But Peter Schuster, a former research director at the IMB who left during one of the disputes, sees the step to silence Löber as more harmful to the institute than Löber's public comments. “It is scandalous, and bad for the image of science,” he says.