The most useful controversies spark light and information along with heated debate.

So it was with the recent controversy among researchers at Oregon State University’s College of Forestry. It began with accusations that some senior researchers had attempted to stifle academic freedom: They had asked the journal Science to delay publication of forestry graduate student Daniel Donato’s research findings regarding the regrowth of fire-charred forests in southern Oregon.

Donato’s preliminary study indicated that salvage logging could slow seedling regeneration.

The senior researchers said their efforts to slow publication were well-

intentioned, as they were trying to keep “a poor piece of reporting” that was flawed in design and documentation, from becoming a part of the scientific database on salvage logging.

That the controversy was a small reverberation of the larger public debate over how much and when to log was the reason it was amplified as a national debate before Congress.

Some — notably state Sen. Charlie Ringo of Beaverton — also were concerned that the college of forestry had become too closely aligned with the timber industry that it was discouraging research that didn’t confirm logging as the aspirin to cure all forestry ills.

To suggest that the college is a branch of the timber industry overstates things, but who could be surprised that, during its 100-year history, the forestry college’s roots intermingled often with Oregon’s timber industry?

The forest industry has a vested interest in funding research that assists it in doing the tightrope walk the public expects; providing timber for wood products while also providing forests for wildlife, forested watersheds, wildlife habitat and recreation.

True, during its first 50 years, the forestry college’s main curriculum was “logging science.” It wasn’t until 1947 that the name was changed to “forest science.”

But since then, the U.S. Forest Service and ecology groups also have made use of the forestry school’s research. Its critics in the timber industry would say that some of that research has also led to “locking up” of forestlands to logging.

It’s hard pleasing everyone. But forestry college officials have done what they can to openly air the concerns raised against the college.

A new Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility at OSU is exploring how faculty and graduate students view the viability of academic freedom there.

An online survey posted by the group indicated that 71 percent of faculty members and 68 percent of graduate students responding believe that their academic freedom is protected.

There is still room for improvement, but the fact that so much of the controversy was openly debated is a sign that healthy debate over research protocol is alive and well, and that is as it should be.