Efforts to keep science secret by “redacting” scientific papers might cause the very problems it is supposed to prevent. That was the warning from leading cyber-security specialist Bruce Schneier to a meeting of flu and security experts this week at the Royal Society in London in the wake of the decision by the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity to publish two scientific papers reporting on a strain of H5N1 flu that can spread among mammals.

The NSABB had previously called for the papers to have vital details omitted, or redacted, of how the viruses were made, so would-be bioterrorists could not make them. The board changed its mind when no means emerged to make those details available to those who needed them, such as public health agencies looking for viruses with the same mutations. The controversy led the US government to publish a policy governing such research last week, calling for redaction in such cases in future.

However, Schneier, chief security technology officer for telecommunications firm BT in London, told the meeting that this will cause more problems than it solves. Troublemakers, like computer hackers, are unlikely to trawl the internet looking for random scientific files to hack into.

“If no one knows about it, it’s safe,” he says. “If you announce that you have sensitive information by putting out a redacted paper, then if someone wants to know, they will. Any computer can be hacked.”

Schneier emphasised that he was not just talking about the scientific paper itself being hacked, but all the data and experimental notes that are kept electronically in labs.