The “right to be forgotten” is a European legal right in which Europeans may request that information concerning themselves be deleted from web sites and search engines, and the providers must comply. This is going to lead to some interesting situations, as Retraction Watch observes:
A subject in a documentary film about the psychology of religious ideation has pushed the BMJ to take down its review of the film, based on a complaint citing a European internet privacy rule.
On July 3, BMJ posted a retraction notice for an article that barely said anything:
This article has been retracted by the journal following a complaint.
The 2002 article is a review of a documentary film entitled “Those Who Are Jesus,” directed by Steven Eastwood, a British filmmaker. The review has been removed from the BMJ site, as well as PubMed.
BMJ told Retraction Watch that it took down the film review in response to a European citizen exercising his or her “right to be forgotten,” an internet privacy idea that, according to the European Union, ensures:
A person can ask for personal data to be deleted once that data is no longer necessary.
The journal declined to comment, beyond saying:
This review was taken down following a request based on the European Court of Justice’s ruling in the 2014 Google Spain case about the right to be forgotten.
Barely any information about this film exists anywhere on the internet. The only description we could find was from a 2015 post on the blog Boing Boing, which says the film is about:
Three people who have true delusions of grandeur based on “profoundly religious or revalatory (sic) experiences.”
That blog post once contained an embedded video of the documentary, but that has been removed as well. It’s unclear if these disappearances are related.
I have concerns about this sort of thing happening in science journals, because, while perhaps a film review doesn’t necessarily participate, most publications are part of chains of evidence and reasoning concerning diseases, syndromes, and other such conditions affecting humans. By removing a link in that chain, the chain may be shattered absent duplicating confirmatory evidence – and what then?
Regarding that “right”, in my opinion, if you did it, you own it. Either affirm or apologize, but just ripping it away as if it never happens is profoundly wrong. It begs the question of taking responsibility. Begs hard.
