A prominent fisheries scientist at the University of Washington, Ray Hillborn, is accused by Greenpeace of failing to disclose funding from the fishing industry in several scientific papers dating back to 2006, says the NPR blog The Salt. The environmental group calls Hillborn a “denier of over-fishing.”
Greenpeace, which obtained information about Hillborn’s funding sources through a public-records request, says the outspoken scientist got $3.56 million from dozens of industry and seafood groups over a 12-year period and “failed to consistently disclose those conflicts of interest appropriately.” Hillborn questions the dollar total used by Greenpeace and says he lists his major funding sources on his website. NPR says Hillborn received $16.1 million in research funding since 2003 from foundations, environmental groups and government bodies including the National Science Foundation. He has plenty of defenders among scientists, says NPR.
In its investigation of Hillborn’s funding sources, Greenpeace borrowed a tactic from anti-GMO activists, who used freedom-of-information requests to obtain emails showing some activists had previously undisclosed ties to the biotech industry, said NPR. A colleague of Hillborn, also the subject of a Greenpeace request for funding data, says it is unrealistic to expect researchers to list in every paper all the sources of funding over a career.