By Dr. David Schnare
N.B., Dr. Schnare is the lead attorney in the UVA-Mann email case.
This week Nature Magazine published an editorial suggesting that “access to personal correspondence is a freedom too far” and that Michael Mann, whom they favorably compare to Galileo, should have his emails, written and received while he was a young professor at the University of Virginia, protected from public release on the core basis that to do otherwise would “chill” the work of scientists and academics. I note Galileo was forced to keep his work private. Had he the opportunity, he would have published it far and wide. Mann is quite the opposite. He wants to keep secrets and let no one know what he did and how he did it.
Nature, unfamiliar with the facts, law and both academic and university policy as applies in this case, conflates too many issues and misunderstands the transparency questions we raise.
The facts of the case include that these emails are more than five years old; that they contain none of the email attachments, no computer code, no data, no draft papers, no draft reports; that the university has already released over 2,000 of them, some academic and some not; that when they were written Mann knew there was no expectation of privacy; that all emails sent or received by a federal addressee are subject to the federal FOIA, and many have already been released; and that nearly 200 of the emails the University refuses to release were released by a whistleblower in England.
That latter group of emails, part of the “Climategate” release, do more than merely suggest Mann engaged in academic improprieties. They show he was a willing participant in efforts to “discriminate against or harass colleagues” and a failure to “respect and defend the free inquiry of associates, even when it leads to findings and conclusions that differ from their own.” Other emails document Mann’s communications were not “conducted professionally and with civility.”
Thus, emails already available to the public demonstrate that Michael Mann failed to comply with the University of Virginia Code of Ethics and the American Association of University Professors Statement on Professional Ethics.
A question, not mine, but asked by many who are interested in the history of this period, is not whether Mann failed to live up to the professional code expected of him. It is to what degree he failed to do so and to what lengths the university will go to hide this misbehavior. If we merely sought to expose Mann’s failure to display full academic professionalism, we would not need these emails. Those already in the public eye are more than sufficient for any such purposes.
I want those emails for a very different reason. Our law center seeks to defend good science and proper governmental behavior, and conversely to expose the converse. Without access to those kinds of emails, and, notably, research records themselves, it is not possible for anyone to adequately credit good behavior and expose bad behavior. This is one of two reasons we prosecute this case. It is the core purpose of a freedom of information act. Because the public paid for this work and owns this university, it has not merely a right to determine whether the faculty are doing their jobs properly; it has a duty to do so. This is not about peer review; it is about citizens’ acting as the sovereign and taking any appropriate step necessary to ensure those given stewardship over an arm of the Commonwealth are faithfully performing.
The second reason we bring this case is to defend science and the scientific process. Anyone who has taken a high school science laboratory course knows that the research or experimental process begins with recording what was done and what was observed. As UVA explains in its Research Policy RES-002, “The retention of accurately recorded and retrievable results is of the utmost importance in the conduct of research.” Why? “To enable an investigator to reproduce the steps taken.”
Currently public emails show Mann was unable to provide even his close colleagues data he used in some of his papers and could not remember which data sets he used. A query to UVA shows the university, who owns “the data and notebooks resulting from sponsored research,” had no copy of Mann’s logbooks and never gave him permission to take them with him when he left UVA. The university refused to inquire within Mann’s department as to whether anyone there knew whether he even kept a research logbook, so it’s impossible for me to know whether he stole the logbook or just never prepared one in the first place.
The emails ATI seeks are all that appears to be left of a history of what he did and how. Absent access to those emails, anyone seeking to duplicate his work, using the exact same data and methods, has no way to do so. That is in direct conflict with both good science and the UVA research policy.
Nor should access to these kind of emails “chill” the academic process.
As a former academic scientist, I understand the need and desire to keep close the research work while it is underway. Both I and the university have a proprietary interest in that work, while it is ongoing. Once completed, however, I have a duty to share not only the data and methods with the academic community, I also have a duty to share the mistakes, the blind alleys, the bad guesses and the work and theories abandoned.
Science advances knowledge by demonstrating that a theory is wrong. All the mistakes, blind alleys and bad guesses are valuable, not just to the scientist himself, but to his colleagues. By knowing what did not work, one does more than simply save time. One gains direction. One mistake revealed often opens a vista of other ideas and opportunities. The communications between scientists during a period of research are the grist for the next generation of work. Ask any doctoral candidate or post-doc how important being part of the process is on the direction of their future research. They will tell you that these unpublished communications are as much an important scientific contribution as the final papers themselves. Anyone who wishes to hide those thoughtful discussions hides knowledge.
If anything is “chilling” it is the thought that a neo-Galileo is hiding knowledge.
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Thank you, Keith W.!
Martin, you don’t have to do the kind of research that Keith did to know that SouthernStudies.org is biased. Their own “about us” page declares their purpose to be “an essential resource for grassroots activists, community leaders, scholars, policy makers and others working to bring lasting social and economic change to the region… [for] progressive change…”
Their commitment is not to good science, it is to progressive social change, and what they detest most are capitalists and Christians.
Their smear piece against Schnare at places didn’t even pass the laugh test, as when they referred to the “growing scientific consensus about climate change.”
“I note Galileo was forced to keep his work private. Had he the opportunity, he would have published it far and wide. Mann is quite the opposite. He wants to keep secrets and let no one know what he did and how he did it.”
Just to spell out an implication of that last sentence – in other words, like a magician or occultist.
The wider question that raises is how did we get here, when almost a century ago the Logical Positivist program was supposed to expunge the use of occult entities and processes from the domain of scientific explanation?
@Rattus, re: “Schnare,
“It would be nice if you would provide links to back up your claims. If you can’t I don’t see how you can be considered anymore trustworthy than the character described in the UVa affidavit.”
It is not for Dr Schnare to provide us with those links. Anthony Watts has merely replicated the good Dr’s basic and simple explanation as to why he wants access to these emails. I am sure that any court case would require the evidence you seek to justify such a request of the court to compel Dr Mann to provide the requested emails.
A lot of what Dr Schnare states is common sense and self-evident to any scientist or engineer. Are you opposed to the “scientific method”? IF Dr Mann has failed, as alleged, to uphold the proper and professional and rigorous standards required of a serious scientist, then all evidence supporting that allegation must be heard in court.
It is claimed that Dr Schnare is backed by mysterious ‘energy interests’. I don’t really care if he is or not, but I clicked on the link provided to see the details. The linked source gave no details, but contained another link purporting to back up the claim. So I clicked on that one – and there the trail ends, because the linked page merely asserts that Dr Schnare’s organisation is backed by coal/gas/shale businesses, with no evidence whatever for this.
Dr Schnare,
It is incumbent upon you to do all in your power to get to the truth.
All government paid research that is not state secret stuff, is by law open to the public for scrutiny. Those individuals or institutions that refuse public disclosure paid for by the public purse
should be bought to count and nailed.
The serious nature of this particular case that has caused the waste of billions of dollars around the world, and is ongoing in its stupidity, needs to come to a head soon, so that it can be lanced.
The world will thank you sir.
.
Smokey says:
November 14, 2011 at 6:32 pm
///////////////////////////////////////////////
Being wrong, or even being negligently wrong does not in itself make one dishonest, but it does call into question one’s competence and whether one should be taken seriously.
Does anyone know where we are with the court action? What happens next?
Mann is not worthy to mention in the same breath as Galileo.
Luther Bl’t says:
November 15, 2011 at 2:10 am
“…. Logical Positivis….”
Is there really something called “logical positivism”? And all this time I thought that Monty Python were taking the piss…
@ur momisugly Robert Brown, re: “I have to seriously oppose the release of his email. It would really, really piss me off to have my email spool made public”
The simple answer to that is to NEVER use work email for personal use and NEVER use personal email for work use. If you use your work email for drug dealing, ordering prostitutes or whatever else you used as a hypothetical (I hope) example, then more fool you if and when it becomes public. Your personal feelings (being pissed off) are utterly irrelevant in law. I know of no clause in law which states that emails on a public system belong to the public which paid for them unless the release of such causes the author of the emails to be “pissed off”.
I vote “tough shit” on that one.
Does anyone know of any scientist who is pro AGW and is calling for data and methods to be released?
I think that Dr Fuller supports the idea but can,t think of any others.
Dear Dr. Schnare,
You forgot one very important link. I knew it would be there because I’ve been a unix systems administrator (in addition to doing physics research and teaching) for 25 years, personally wrote two of Duke’s computer security/privacy statements (and helped write or comment the rest, including the current one). You really should read:
http://its.virginia.edu/pubs/docs/RespComp/resp-comp-facstf.html
To quote:
“IV. Email: Rules, Responsibilities, and Privacy
You can expect that, except in specific circumstances, the content of the email files associated with your account will be treated as confidential by the University because it does not routinely examine or monitor such content, except when you have been notified in advance that such examination or monitoring is an expectation in your specific workplace. ”
The document does go on to specify the well-known exceptions, which sum up to: “If a court orders us to give over your email, we will, but unless and until this happens your email is private and confidential.” Indeed, a second document here:
http://www.virginia.edu/abuse/info.html
details the fact that unless the action is part of a faculty disciplinary proceeding, your email is held to be as private as possible internally as well. Similar policies exist here (at Duke) and pretty much every other research University — I know, because I personally helped to make sure that they were in our similar acceptable use/privacy documents. In them, not even my department chair or a Dean can “casually” enter my email spool and read through it, not without just cause, and I would absolutely expect University lawyers and officials to knee-jerk defend the privacy of my email against any outsider not backed up by a court order.
Given this, the University would open itself up to lawsuit, would it not, if it just handed over Mike Mann’s email spool to a perfect stranger without his permission. Not to mention the fact that any IT person and lover of personal freedom would consider any such action repugnant. Faculty, staff, and students do not use their email accounts “only” for professional activities. Staff generally have the lowest expectations of privacy (especially that associated with accounts that are indeed used primarily to help conduct and manage University business) and even there, one has a reasonable expectation of privacy and protection from one’s superiors simply grazing through your mail.
Email is often used by people to engage in truly private communications. A married homosexual person might use email to communicate with an illicit lover — seriously. Things that are personally or professionally embarrassing can easily be said. Email conversations are used to criticize superiors, bash colleagues with whom one disagrees, exchange ideas one wishes to keep close to one’s chest because they have research potential. In my opinion it is perfectly obvious that all of this communication MUST be protected, that researchers MUST be able to communicate with every expectation of privacy, or they will simply set up out-of-band secure communications channels that cannot be casually violated. This is entirely possible, and is a complete pain in the ass (e.g. encrypting every message in a public/private encryption scheme). It is “expensive” in time and storage resources. Far better to simply guarantee privacy within the limits prescribed by law.
Perhaps — perhaps, mind you — Mann violated some actual law conducting his research, although I doubt it. Confirmation bias is not a crime, it is just stupid. Being ambitious is not a crime. Failing to keep good records of one’s research is USUALLY not a crime, although it can be under very specific circumstances and in any event may well violate policies you agree to when you receive grant funding, policies that vary per agency. Similarly, different agencies have different rules for who “owns” what results of the grant supported work — most Universities have an entire office of research support part of whose purpose is to keep track of just what one’s obligations are in this regard.
In this sort of morass, it is by no means clear who “owns” Mann’s work. The obvious first answer is Mann. The possible second answer is the granting agency that supported the work. The latter can almost certainly make ex post facto requests for that work, even privy details of that work, to be made available to them, but PUBLICATION of that work IS generally considered to be fulfilment of a grant contract, and even that publication leaves e.g. the rights to the publications and often any patents etc in the hands of the researcher and/or University (all subject to negotiation per contract). Once again, the knee jerk reaction of any University administration will be to protect the privacy and academic freedom of its faculty, past or present, or else they won’t HAVE a future.
Who would work for a University that would at any time just hand over all of your private work resources to a third party? Who would work for a University that would just publish your email, with all of your dirty laundry and unguarded conversations, to the world?
So please do not blame the University for not simply acquiescing in your demands/requests. For it to do so would be to expose themselves to lawsuits and arouse the righteous indignation of its faculty. It would indeed deal a serious blow to academic freedom and personal freedom, to the reasonable expectation of privacy without which no serious business can be undertaken. The rules are simple. If you have a court order, they will comply. Otherwise, forget it.
Good for them.
And good luck getting the court order — seriously. Because Mann’s work has indeed become a major factor in public policy and may — I say may — have been crafted with malice aforethought and intent to “defraud” (personally I doubt it, at least not at first — never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by simple incompetence and stupidity) it has become fair game for the FOIA, Virginia or Federal, but is hardly unreasonable to require that you convince a judge of that and hence relieve the University of its responsibility to protect Mann’s information. I very much doubt that even a completely convinced judge will let you have access to ALL of Mann’s mail spool even then — you would do well to limit what you seek to his communications with a very select and finite list of individuals, and bear in mind that THEIR communications were made in expectation of privacy as well and you’ll have to convince the judge to override their implicit rights too.
Don’t forget, much as we might admire them in some ways, the people that “outed” Mann’s email in Climategate are >>criminals<< in the eyes of the law. And this is as it should be, or why bother having law.
You, as a lawyer, should appreciate that.
rgb
re post by: Leif Svalgaard says: November 14, 2011 at 8:05 pm
With all due respect, no one can tell if something is good science if key aspects of the data, methods, etc., can’t be seen and examined, and has to be taken on nothing more than an individual’s claims and sheer faith.
Their investigation only covered the time he was at Penn State, which followed his work on the hockey stick. and the investigation was far from thorough, as McIntyre and others have explained. E.g., it called no opposing witnesses regarding the first three charges and evaded certain critical questions.
Dearest Ken,
I just attempted to provide a pair of links to UVAs acceptable use documents but for some reason the reply failed to get posted; perhaps it was too long. In a nutshell, yes, sure, only an idiot assumes that their email can NEVER be made public, but in a University there are actually documents that form a part of the explicit “contract” between faculty, staff and student users of IT systems that guarantee privacy within some very specific bounds. Those guarantees are indeed necessary in order not to stifle academic freedom. Surely you aren’t suggesting that simply because “the government” paid for some part or all of the mail server that I’m using on a University campus that any butt-head can walk in off of the street and demand to read all of my communications made under the reasonable and carefully specified expectations of privacy?
In any event, UVA is legally bound NOT to surrender Mann’s email spool without a court order, and that IS a matter of “law”. The email servers of a University do not belong to “the public” in the sense you seem to be implying, any more than you can just walk in and demand access to people’s private offices and their desk drawers. Indeed, the protections are very similar. If you have reason to believe that a crime has been committed or that you have rights pursuant to the FOIA, by all means try to convince a judge of that. That’s what they are for, because we live in a society bounded by contract and law, and Mann’s contract with UVA includes a reasonable expectation of privacy >>explicitly written out<< here:
http://its.virginia.edu/pubs/docs/RespComp/resp-comp-facstf.html
You (and Dr. Schnare) really should read this, because "ownership" in a University isn't anywhere near as simple as you seem to think that it is.
Ultimately, you — or he — would very likely have to demonstrate that there is a reasonable chance that Mann committed some sort of crime in order to gain access to his email, and indeed NEITHER of you will probably be granted access to his email even then as private citizens, but you might compel a judge to go through it and decide if indeed a crime was likely to have been committed. There is a small chance of getting a small subset of his email spool — communications with a carefully delimited set of individuals, for example.
But I doubt it, because confirmation bias may be many things in research — stupid and counterproductive being at the top of the list — but it is not a crime. Being ambitious is not a crime. Defending your research is not a crime, even if it is being done in ways that are repugnant and counterproductive to the scientific process. A case can be made for the release of Mann's actual research — although that may well be up to the granting agency who supported it (again, a complicated issue of "ownership" that ultimately resides in the specific grant contracts with the specific agency(s) in question).
Actually, the only overt criminals involved so far are the ones that released the climategate emails. That was a crime. Civil disobedience, sure. Justified, perhaps. But without doubt a crime.
rgb
Dr. Schnare, this is an excellent article; thanks so much for it.
I wish to add that the scientific method applies to some extent to all research. When doing my dissertation on dissonance treatment in late 15th-century and early 16th-century choral polyphonic music, I began with a hypothesis: that composers would treat writing in many voices (6 or more) differently than they would treat “normal” 4-voice writing. In pursuit of that knowledge, I analyzed hundreds of works, in both categories, by dozens of composers. What did I find? Indeed, for some composers there were detectable differences in their writing that seemed to depend upon the number of voices; for others, no such difference appeared. I completed the dissertation and the degree, and I still have–35 years later–all my notes, graphs, charts, totals, percentages, tables, and versions of my writing. At the time, of course, very little could be done with such statistics on a computer; what I could do that way, I did on a CPU the size of a bank building, using cards and print-offs. I wrote my work on a Remington typewriter, making 6 carbon copies of 700+ pages. But the research method ensured that anyone else who wanted to check my work could do so. To date, no one has asked, and my work has cost no one besides myself a dime. On the other hand, my research affected no one else; it was pure research and changed no one’s life except mine. Dr. Mann, now–that “work” affects all of us, in needless and wasteful spending of our money on “green” fakery and false premises.
Confucius says:
“It is indisputable,
That in science, results
Must be reproducible.”
(Michael Mann take note.)
The judge will filter those out, or redact personal material. ATI is only asking for the rest.
Would you call the Climategate emails personal communications? (In one sense they were, but in another not. They certainly weren’t purely personal, which is what “personal communications” mis-implies.)
MikeA says:
November 15, 2011 at 1:10 am
I think Dr. David Schnare is being somewhat fractious. If the documents were truly subject to FOI they can be obtained through the normal channels. There are also several unsupported attacks on the character of Dr Mann (pardon me for not using latin to indicate that I am educated). These are personal communications, not inter-office memos, get real! However I do read this blog for amusement and Dr. Schnare has not disappointed.>>>
I think MikeA is being somewhat vacuous. If the documents had been released through the normal channels per the FOI request, there would be no need for court action asking to do so.
Which attacks on the character of Dr. Mann are unsupportable? Unless you make specific reference to these, for all we know you made the attacks up.
There’s no such thing as inter-office memos anymore BTW. Those were multipart notes with “press hard you are making x copies” written on them. One copy was kept “for the record” and the rest were sent to other offices via courier. Do you know why inter-office memos no longer exist?
BECAUSE THEY GOT REPLACED BY E-MAIL.
Smokey at 6.13pm says:
‘Is Michael Mann honest? You decide.’
Darn, Smokey…I thought it was a poll. I wanted to vote!
“I agree with you. What is most sickening is with the academics.”
As an academic, I do feel obligated to point out two very important things:
a) 99% of all academic research is conducted in a proper and above-board manner. For the most part, researchers “got no horse in any race” that anybody but other researchers care about, and the conflicts and debates that occur ARE the scientific process, working the way that it should. Sure, there is always some petty politics, sure, the process isn’t perfect because people do often referee inappropriately (either grants or publications), because the “nepotism” associated with a research community seeded with your “offspring” in the form of ex-students can generate minor inequities and many inefficiencies. It isn’t perfect, but it certainly isn’t “sickening”.
b) The SPECIFIC CASE of climate research is an exception, and even there I very much doubt that it is a universal exception. Indeed, I can read many papers published by people that doubt, or challenge, the “mainline” view of AGW. I’ve read enough, and communicated with enough, people working in this field at this point to have little doubt that a lot of what has happened in climate research IS somewhat sickening, but even so all or most of the work is still being done by idealists working in good faith. The “conspiracy” as it were is limited to a fairly small list of individuals (and we all know who they are) who were thrust, as it were, into a position of public notoriety and influence and who used this position to abuse the general process of moderately objective research.
This would not have been possible without the collusion, or at least acquiescence, of the editors of certain journals. In fact, I think that this is the sorriest aspect of the whole affair. Journal editors are not supposed to be participatory, especially not the editors of major journals such as Nature, yet there seems to be little doubt that they have in many instances failed to preserve the objectivity upon which the entire system of academic publication rests. This is one of the two great tragedies of the whole affair — it has recently made it even into the pages of Physics Today.
The other tragedy is the one implicit in your comment — that you are sickened with “academics”. How sad. It is almost enough to make me wish that AGW was a true hypothesis, although the evidence does not seem to support that conclusion, at least not the way that the IPCC and its paid cherrypickers have asserted from the beginning. As it is, when the AGW hypothesis comes crashing down in solar cycles 24 and 25, when better science fills in the gaps in the Earth’s energy budget and thermal cycle, when the IPCC is finally revealed as being the corrupt deal invented to loot a few trillion dollars and redistribute them in various ways that line the pockets and increase the political power of a bunch of unelected global politicians who have no actual mandate that it really is, ALL OF SCIENCE, all of academia, will suffer.
Science is not based on authority (that’s part of the problem, we’re being constantly told to “trust authority” where in science proper there is no such thing) but to MOST people who CAN’T actually go through all of the papers and read the research for themselves and form a judgement, the academy has been a kind of trustworthy authority. Evolution or creation? Heliocentric or Geocentry (or acentric)? 6000 years old or 13.73 billion years old? Are statins good or bad for you? At the very least one has to trust the process and rely on those that conduct it or we ultimately believe myths and lies to our collective detriment.
When AGW crashes down as I am very afraid that it will, that indeed it already is, with it goes the CREDIBILITY of scientists everywhere, which will allow the religious nuts, the mythicists, the luddites to damage something that for five hundred years has been the one thing that stands between the human race and the dark ages — the “enlightenment” and technology and wealth and knowledge produced by the scientific process, and the trust in those that engage in this process.
So very sad.
rgb
.
The normal channels were used. A Virginia state legislator with an obligation to exercise oversight for the funds used by the University of Virginia and Mann requested the e-mail and other documents required to assure his legislative committe that the state funds were not being used to defraud the state and taxpayers. The University of Virginia denied the official request by falsely claiming the e-mail and documents no longer existed. Now, you can argue whether this was an unintentional oversight or a deliberate lie and fraud, but the end result is that a relatively routine official oversight and inquiry was unlawfully obstructed by false statements.
At the request of state legislators, the Virginia Attorney-General undertook a followup inquiry to determine how and why the legislative inquiry was being obstructed, and whether or not the obstruction could be the result of a yet undiscovered defrauding of the state government. This official investigation was then obstructed by legal delaying tactics and appeals to sympathetic members of the public designed to derail and inquiries, investigations, or potential prosecutions in the event the inquiries found incriminating evidence. You saying “they can be obtained through the normal channels” is a comment seriously detached from reality.
The government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain announced the deliberate conspiracy to withhold and threat to destroy the e-mail correspondence which Mann participated in was a violation of law. Consequently it has already been established in a British court of law that some of the correspondence was not protected in Britian as private correspondence or private communications. Consequently, there is overwhelming evidence and cause to suspect that the finding of a violation of British law by Mann’s correspondents may be reasonable cause to inquire into whether or not Mann also engaged in any violations of U.S. law with respect to the obstruction of official Virginia legislative and executive obligations to exercise oversight of state funds.
Mann’s character is already exposed and evidenced by his own comments in his e-mails exchanged with the conspirators in the UK.
Wow that’s an amazingly poor grasp of history you’ve got there…
One of the first things I was taught about computers was this simple dictum: Never put anything in an e-mail that would make you uncomfortable seeing printed on the front page of the NYT. (Or the WSJ- your pick.) ‘Nuff said.
“Wow that’s an amazingly poor grasp of history you’ve got there…”
Well, as far as he goes he’s correct. Galileo didn’t invent the telescope, he invented a variation of the telescope that doesn’t invert the image. He wasn’t the first person to look at the moon with a telescope, but he was the first person to look at the moons of Jupiter. He absolutely didn’t invent heliocentrism — at least one was invented of by Aristarchus of Samos circa 270 BCE, who also measured the diameter of the earth and attempted to measure the distance to the sun and moon (we know of some of his work from commentary by Archimedes). He also followed Copernicus and was arguing for the general truth of the Copernican model (following the inquisition, both his works and Copernicus work was banned). He was indeed involved in “politics” — for a while the then-current pope had his back, but he made a political mistake in a dialogue he published that appeared to mock both the pope and geocentrism and lost his top cover. FWIW, the Brahe/Kepler team were far better observational astronomers — Galileo opposed e.g. Kepler’s first law because circles were “perfect” and ellipses weren’t, for example, because he lacked the data and means of analyzing it of convincing himself otherwise.
With all that said, his GREATER contribution to science was the invention of kinematics and observations on e.g. near-Earth gravity. Here he trumped Kepler, and with a bit more time or inclination might have trumped Newton; he had a weak grasp of the ideas that led to the calculus, but didn’t quite have the tools (Descartes’ Analytical Geometry, in particular) that Newton did when he managed to combine kinematics with a dynamical principle and invent proper “physics”.
Hardly plagiarism, even when he copied people or borrowed ideas. Early scientific synthesis, if anything. In the end, Galileo’s story has been more than a bit romanticized, but there is no doubt that he was a formidable figure in the Enlightenment and that he became something of an icon for freedom of thought, for the primacy of reason over religion.
rgb