California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

During the last CARB Board meeting, the very conflicted UC Professor John Balmes, after hearing numerous requests from industry representatives about the importance of sharing key study data with industry, actually took 5-10 minutes to explain why this data couldn’t be shared due to confidentiality agreements with the participants of these studies (assuming diesel emissions haven’t already killed them).

You can see him do his usual double talk about data and confidentiality, and hear and see the transparency that the UC system’s finest fosters by clicking http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=CDTOA.

On February 10, I received an email response to a January 27 letter we sent to the Health Effects Institute (HEI), its board members and president. The email I received was actually from HEI’s President, Dan Greenbaum who is scheduled to also speak at the very important CARB Science Symposium in Sacramento on February 26. This email is posted on our website as a pdf or image file. With the email, he attached the HEI data access policy. In it, he pointed out this portion of the policy:

“It is the policy of the HealthEffects Institute to provide access expeditiously to data for studies that it has funded and to provide that data in a manner that facilitates review and validation of the work but also protects the confidentiality of any subjects who may have participated in the study and respects the intellectual interests of the investigator in the work.”

The question now obviously is, can the data be washed of the confidential information of each subject or participant? The answer is, of course, NO if you ask CARB Board member and activist UC Professor John Balmes. But, of course, the answer from the scientific community with credibility is: yes, data can be washed or “anonymized” of all confidential information!

Below (Read thoughts) are some great thoughts, cases and comments associated with sharing anonymized scientific data. You should be the judge of whether or not CARB and its cronies should be forced to release the data or it can’t be used – ever. That seems reasonable!