At the same time, Foreign Office officials insisted that "the total amount of information withheld is very small".
A second policy question concerns the impact of data withholding on trainees in science.
A scientific world completely free of data withholding is probably unachievable and, indeed, may be undesirable.
Researchers who were most likely to be victims of data withholding were those who have withheld research results from others, published more than 20 articles in the last 3 years, to have applied for a patent, or spent more than 40 hours per week in research activities.
More than half of geneticists (56%) reported that data withholding reduced their ability to educate students and postdoctoral fellows, and 28% said they had been unable to replicate published research as a result of data withholding.
Respondents referred to "vague and unspecific" conference abstracts or web updates as instances of data withholding - the implication being that concern about patentability caused the withholding of more detailed information.
And to have that data withheld?
We validated predictions using location data withheld from model development.
The amount of data can be overwhelming.
We had a tremendous amount of data.
