When publishers lobby against open access legislation, no one is surprised. After all, OA can hurt their profits, so they are expected to fight. However, when the lobbying is done by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), falsely claiming to speak on behalf of 125,000 researchers, the efforts have devastating consequences. FASEB has an ugly history of misrepresenting the attitudes of the scientific community, resulting in watered down OA bills and the death of the biomedical preprint server effort from the NIH in 1999. They are trying again to sway the NIH with their recent letter against allowing preprints in grant applications. The dangerous power of FASEB lies specifically in their misappropriation of the research voice. As Rob Kling, Joanna Fortuna and Adam King wrote when analyzing the undermining of the 1999 E-Biomed NIH preprint effort: Because we speculate that Harold Varmus was willing to take seriously the comments he posted to the E-Biomed forum, we would expect that the comments heavily influenced the subsequent shaping of the E-Biomed proposal. However, though only nine of the 269 messages in the E-Biomed forum were written by scientific society officials, subsequent versions of the proposal were much more sensitive to the concerns of those societies than to the concerns of the much more numerous individual respondents. How did such a small minority of the respondents in the online forum have such a disproportionate impact on the subsequent revisions of the proposal? There are several explanations for this outcome. First, the official statements signed by one or several top officers of a scientific society were presented not as the personal opinions of the signatories but as the official position of the Society's membership. As such, these official statements implied a unified viewpoint held by every member of the society. As #ASAPBio petition against the latest FASEB effort notes, the official letterhead of the FASEB letter to NIH explicitly notes that they are “Representing 125,000 researchers.” Moreover, the director of science policy at FASEB said in an interview that 'there is surprising consensus' against preprints among FASEB members: Yvette Seger, director of science policy at FASEB, said she had held several conference calls with the coalition’s members and found a surprising consensus. “We’re very confident that this does reflect the views of the community,” Seger said of her organization’s letter to the agency. Individuals in the community So FASEB is certain that they reflect the community views. Well, as a member of the Genetic Society of America (GSA), I am also represented by FASEB in their letter. I happen to be the CEO and co-founder of protocols.io, a preprint server for life science methods. I personally know faculty who have cited their protocols.io method preprints on their NSF and NIH applications. It makes no sense for FASEB to speak on my behalf and advocate against the ability of researchers to cite the methods that they shared on our platform. The #ASAPBio petition is mushrooming (please sign it!) and over 600 scientists have already signed it in just two days. Most of these people are scientists represented by FASEB. I also asked NIH's question as a Twitter poll: Should preprints be included in @NIH applications and reports? (please RT) — Lenny Teytelman (@lteytelman) January 17, 2017 From the moment I launched the poll, the support for preprints has been steady at 80%-82%. I realize that this is informal and biased towards supporters of preprints. The true attitude of FASEB members in favor of preprints in NIH applications is probably slightly lower. Whatever the number, at least I asked the community. FASEB has simply decided to present a united consensus front with no basis for it whatsoever. They seem to derive their authority from the fact that they represent the views of the member scientific societies. But do they? Member Societies I had a hard time believing that the FASEB letter had support of the GSA. That is because the GSA was the first society to partner with protocols.io and helped us tremendously from day one of our effort. As a society, they are also a leader in supporting the adoption of the bioRxiv preprint server. The GSA was the first to partner with bioRxiv to make it easy to simultaneously publish a preprint when submitting a paper to them. I and others reached out to the GSA two days ago, to ask for their position on the FASEB anti-preprint letter to NIH. Today, the society commented as follows: We're aware some of our members feel misrepresented by the FASEB statement on preprints in NIH grants. We’ve reached out to a few folks individually and are also speaking with society leadership as we draft a public statement. GSA is and has been committed to supporting preprints in publishing. We don’t currently have a society position on their use in other contexts. We do want to re-examine our process for working with FASEB on future statements, so our members can have more direct input. If you support the use of preprints in NIH grants, please sign the #ASAPbio petition; it’s a great way to show your personal support. [Update 1/19/17: Another FASEB member, American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) issued a statement today, along the lines of the GSA position. Again, not the anti-preprint "consensus" that FASEB claimed. ] Conclusion The letter from FASEB is ungrounded. It is does not reflect the positions of its member societies or the positions of the researchers seemingly represented by FASEB. However, history shows that while the FASEB letters are divorced from the sentiments of the research community, they can be extraordinarily powerful. Do not assume that the NIH will ignore the FASEB position. Please sign the ASAPbio petition and contact your society if they are a member of FASEB, asking them to clarify their specific position on preprints. ---------------------