Both state-level public records laws and the federal Freedom of Information Act, written to ensure transparency and accountability in government, have morphed into potent weapons in legal and business disputes, raising questions about the chilling effects - and costs - they impose on targets who are doing research in controversial or sensitive fields. A 2017 analysis ... found that public-oriented inquiries by concerned citizens and their advocates" account for "only a small fraction of the 700,000-plus FOIA requests submitted each year," wrote David Pozen, a law professor at Columbia University, whose paper reviewed studies on the issue. "The bulk of requests come from businesses seeking to further their own commercial interests by learning about competitors, litigation opponents or the regulatory environment." Public records requests have long been an important tool for a wide variety of groups, like journalists, political opposition researchers, climate-science skeptics, animal rights advocates and anti-abortion activists. But ... their growing use by advocacy groups and business interests to challenge academic work at public universities has alarmed some experts. The weaponization of such requests poses "a real danger that we'll hit a tipping point, where the cost and burden of open records laws will overcome the benefits and we'll have a retrenchment of transparency rights," said Margaret Kwoka, a University of Denver professor. "This kind of abuse fuels the political will to do that."