Popline Has Unlocked Abortion Searches

Submitted by Blake on April 4, 2008 - 2:47pm
Topic: 
Internet
Information Retrieval

Here's an update to the Wired.com Blog post we pointed to this morning on Popline who was quietly blocking searches on the word "abortion," concealing nearly 25,000 search results. At some point in the past 6 hours they stopped blocking the search.

Comments

Submitted by shindiru (not verified) on April 4, 2008 - 3:35pm.

Statement regarding POPLINE database posted by the Dean of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2008/popline.org

Submitted by InfoGeek on April 4, 2008 - 4:27pm.

Thanks for the link to the press release, shindiru.

Could someone at POPLINE be looking for other work soon? I've read a fair bit of press-release-speak from academic deans in my day; and Dean Klag is not happy (full text linked in prior comment):

I could not disagree more strongly with this decision, and I have directed that the POPLINE administrators restore "abortion" as a search term immediately. I will also launch an inquiry to determine why this change occurred.

Let's hope whatever discipline occurs has an exemplary effect on other would-be censors.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on April 5, 2008 - 6:21pm.

I think there was more behind this than an admin at the database deciding the make 'abortion' a stop word.