Trial By Error: QMUL and FOI; Nature and Cochrane; the Pineapple Fund
13 FEBRUARY 2018
By David Tuller, DrPH
Queen Mary University of London seems to have devised a fail-safe method of avoiding having to comply with more PACE-related freedom-of-information requests—just declare no one is around who can deal with it. Earlier this month, the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office issued
a decision in an appeal of QMUL’s rejection of a FOI request. The ICO found that QMUL had breached provisions of the FOI law–but that even so there was no way to order the university to produce the requested data.
Here’s what happened: On October 18, 2016, a FOI request seeking additional data from the trial was filed. Despite the First-Tier Tribunal decision earlier that year requiring QMUL to release other trial data, the university rejected this request on November 14, 2016. It mainly cited exemption provisions of the FOI law that cover data considered part of an ongoing research project or scheduled to be included in future publications, or data considered to be personal information or information covered by confidentiality agreements.
The complainant appealed the decision internally. QMUL upheld its earlier rejection, and the complainant appealed to the ICO in March, 2017. In the interim, on December 31, 2016, Professor Peter White had officially retired from QMUL.
