This short discussion is included in the book by Brian Martin, "Suppression
Stories". It underscores how powerful institutional suppression is in some
departmental sciences. This story has a good ending I believe....

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/dissent/documents/ss/ss2.html


"In the early 1970s, Richard and Val [Routley] wrote a book entitled Fight
for the Forests. It was a frontal attack on standard forestry practice and
the assumptions underlying it. Richard arranged for it to be published by
the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU. However, members of the
Forestry Department at ANU obtained word of the impending publication.
Apparently as a result, the Vice-Chancellor wrote requesting that the book
be shown to the head of the Forestry Department and revised in accordance
with any comments he might make. This attempt at censorship failed. Fight
for the Forests was published in 1973 and two later editions appeared in
1974 and 1975. It was and still remains the best critique of Australian
forestry available. Environmentalists and others sought it eagerly. All
three editions sold out, but no money was made available for future
printings or editions.

Perhaps the most bizarre part of this story was that Richard Routley was
barred from using the Forestry Department library on campus for six months
in 1974. David Dumaresq, who worked as a research assistant for Richard,
used to use the library on Richard's behalf, almost surreptitiously. David
later worked in the Human Sciences Program and obtained an additional taste
of the treatment of environmental radicals. When the bar on Richard's use of
the library was brought to the attention of a new head of the Forestry
Department, it was rescinded.

In her letter to me with comments on my draft paper, Val not only mentioned
their own experiences with Fight for the Forests but also suggested that I
contact Peter Rawlinson, a forests activist who worked in the Zoology
Department at La Trobe University in Melbourne. I talked to Peter on the
phone and in April received from him a long letter and pile of documents.
This case actually involved not only Peter but also Philip Keane, a lecturer
in the Botany Department at La Trobe.

In January and February 1977, Peter had given radio and television
interviews in which he criticised the Forests Commission of Victoria,
especially regarding the spread of a tree disease caused by cinnamon fungus.
At the time he was the official spokesperson for the Conservation Council of
Victoria. The chairman of the Forests Commission, Dr F. R. Moulds, made
complaints to senior officials of La Trobe University. A courier was sent to
the university to hand-deliver letters of complaint. Eventually 10 letters
were delivered. Moulds also complained about Philip Keane, who had written
an article about cinnamon fungus in a weekly newspaper, the National Times.
Moulds suggested that the administration should take action against
Rawlinson and Keane.

This story had a happy ending. The Vice-Chancellor defended the academic
freedom of Rawlinson and Keane. The staff association also took a strong
line against the attack. The Rawlinson and Keane cases were a nice addition
to my list of cases. They showed that attacks can be resisted. They also
fitted my provisional conclusion that direct attacks from the outside are
less likely to succeed than attacks from the inside even allowing that they
sometimes serve outside interests.

My contact with Richard and Val Routley led me to look more deeply into the
forestry issue. The Forestry Department at ANU was one of the few places in
Australia where professional foresters were trained. It had strong links
with the government forestry commissions and with the forest industries.
These links included shared perspectives, conferences, consultations and
even a humorously named international organisation, the Concatenated Order
of the Hoo-Hoo. I was referred from one critic of the forestry establishment
to another, collecting information and getting comments on a short section
in my paper about forestry. Ray Hammond, who had worked for the NSW Forestry
Commission, gave me many valuable comments. Ian Penna, who worked in
Melbourne for the Australian Conservation Foundation, gave me information on
links between the forest industries and government forestry commissions. Ian
Penna referred me to John Dargavel, who had worked in the industry for 20
years and who at that time was undertaking a PhD in the Forestry Department,
applying a left-wing perspective. And so on.

I diligently collected information and also noted down the names of everyone
who had helped me. But there were also a few people who were quite willing
to help but didn't want to be mentioned in my paper, not even in the
acknowledgments. They were afraid to be associated with any criticism of the
establishment, since it might jeopardise their careers.

Throughout the first half of 1980 I kept revising and expanding my paper,
showing updated versions of appropriate sections to relevant people. This
was before the days of word processors, and I was doing all the typing
myself, so an entire new version wasn't such a simple matter. In May, I
circulated a new full version to all the key people. By this stage I had
collected 10 cases, including the dismissal of John Coulter which I'll
describe in chapter 7. I submitted the paper to Science, which quickly
rejected it, and then to Social Studies of Science, which did the same. (My
experiences with publishing work on suppression are covered in chapter 8.)
Then I tried the Ecologist, which had published my critique of CRES. To my
delight, the paper appeared in the January-February 1981 issue. I had
changed the title to "The power structure of science and the suppression of
environmental scholarship," as suggested by Jeremy Evans. The Ecologist
demoted this to a subtitle under a new title, "The scientific
straightjacket." [end of quote].