[Infowarrior] - How Scientists View Law Enforcement

[Richard Forno]

http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/12/science-and-law-enforcement/

How Scientists View Law Enforcement

Anecdotal evidence, including several high-profile cases of scientists  
under criminal investigation, has led to the impression that many in  
the scientific community hold a negative view of law enforcement [1,  
2, 3]. While justified in some cases, this divide is a serious  
liability to law enforcement, since cooperation and consultation with  
scientists aids in threat assessment, investigation, intelligence  
gathering, and the recruitment of personnel with specialized skills.  
But before the two communities can solve this problem with training  
for law enforcement personnel and through outreach to the scientific  
community, it is necessary to get a sense of the types and range of  
views of law enforcement within the scientific community.

Here we present the results of a survey of the scientific community  
conducted in conjunction with the FBI to evaluate the working  
relationship between FBI field agents and scientists. The survey was  
sent to 10,969 members of the American Association for the Advancement  
of Science between January 23 and February 18 of this year. 1,332  
surveys were completed, and the resulting data produced an average  
margin of error associated with the total data set of +/- 2.7 percent.  
A complete version of the survey questions is available in the  
supplemental material (Table 1).

The attitudes of scientists toward law enforcement personnel are not  
vastly different from those of the general public (4) (Figure A,  
below). However, a larger percentage of scientists indicated cooler  
feelings towards the FBI than the general public, suggesting that  
these reservations are particular to the scientific community and  
require specific solutions with the scientific community in mind

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http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/12/science-and-law-enforcement/