Are legal concerns stifling scientific debate?

Make 2 lawyers happy: sue someone today! Surely the best way to refute perceived errors in a paper is to produce your own, showing how the paper is erroneous?

Should we protect university research by having something akin to Parliamentary Privelige? Of course sanctions would still need to be applied in cases of material damage, personal libel, or discrimmination, racism etc.

When investigative journalists take on university-based scientists, they not only confront the university and/or individual, but also private biotech firms who marshal huge resources to defend their often murky investments in the research. The relationship between private industry and increasingly cash-starved universities is opaque at best, and dangerous at worst.