http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/10/2006102002n.htm

Today's News

Friday, October 20, 2006

Disputed Report on IBM Workers Is Finally Published, in Peer-Reviewed 
Online Journal

By SUSAN BROWN

A long-suppressed report by a Boston University researcher of elevated 
cancer rates among semiconductor workers at IBM factories was published 
online on Thursday in the open-access peer-reviewed journal Environmental 
Health: A Global Access Science Source.

"Mortality Among U.S. Employees of a Large Computer-Manufacturing Company: 
1969-2001," a paper describing the study, by Richard W. Clapp, is available 
on the journal's Web site.

For the study, Mr. Clapp analyzed data about employee deaths and work 
histories obtained from IBM's company files during a lawsuit over worker 
illnesses. He was a consultant for the plaintiffs in that trial. Although 
his analysis was revealed during a deposition, it was not allowed in the 
trial itself. IBM has claimed that the company data were provided in 
confidence and cannot be made public. The company has also contended that 
the data that Mr. Clapp used were not appropriate for his analysis.

Peer reviewers have disagreed three times. Mr. Clapp has twice submitted 
papers based on the analysis to other journals. He withdrew the first 
submission, to Medical Clinics of North America, after receiving a stern 
legal warning from lawyers for IBM.

The second submission successfully passed through peer review at Clinics in 
Occupational and Environmental Medicine but was rejected by the company 
that publishes that journal. The publisher, Elsevier, said at the time that 
the journal published only reviews and that Mr. Clapp's paper contained 
original, previously unpublished results. A guest editor and other authors 
whose work was scheduled to appear in the same issue as Mr. Clapp's 
boycotted the journal by withdrawing their papers in protest.

In order to establish the right to publish the paper, "we had to go to 
court," Mr. Clapp said in an interview on Thursday. A lawyer for the 
plaintiffs in the original litigation sought clearance from a state court 
in Westchester County, N.Y., for the report to be published. In March, the 
judge issued a ruling that finally allowed Mr. Clapp to publish his findings.

"I was free and clear and wouldn't be in contempt of court if I did," he said.

The online journal that made Mr. Clapp's paper available is published by 
BioMed Central, which has more than 150 peer-reviewed open-access journals. 
In his report, Mr. Clapp concluded that men and women involved in 
manufacturing at the company died of cancer more frequently than people in 
the general population, although he was unable to draw any conclusions 
about what chemicals might be responsible.

Mr. Clapp is pleased to have the results finally made public, saying he 
hopes the information will help to protect future workers from harmful 
exposure. "It finally saw the light of day."

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