Last Tuesday, a colleague called to say that the Science Media Centre's robust call for more openness from scientific advisers to government had made it into the Science and Technology Committee's report on scientific advice in emergencies.
On Thursday, among an audience of more than a hundred, I was one of just a handful who voted for the apparently anti-transparency side in a public debate at the Royal Statistical Society (RSS).
Why the change of heart? Mainly because I felt the anti-transparency speakers did a far better job and, given they were onto such an apparent loser, that was quite something. But also because they raised some important points about the limitations of transparency.
The debate, organised by the RSS, the BBC College of Journalism and the Media Standards Trust, was in the old Oxford Union tradition, with two supporting and two opposing the deliberately provocative motion: 'We have too much transparency in our society, not too little.'
Kevin Marsh, former Editor of the Today programme and now Executive Editor of the BBC College of Journalism, was pitted against Mark Stephens from Assange's legal team and Vaughan Smith, Assange's current host.
Marsh kicked off by getting his defence in first, lest anyone try to interpret his support for the motion as support for secrecy. Referring to his background in the BBC, he dismissed that out of hand - he is against secrecy and not really against transparency. But the basis of Marsh's argument was that transparency does not equal truth.
I was already warming to Marsh's case when he placed his cards on the table: instead of transparency for the sake of it, he was arguing for a thing called journalism. Marsh's point was that too many of us now demand and applaud transparency as if it will automatically deliver THE truth.
Marsh, it emerged, holds to the rather unfashionable belief that, to move from loads of information to something called the truth, we need to apply the tools of journalism. Referring to the best journalistic tradition represented by the likes of the Sunday Times Insight team, Marsh described the processes applied to information: "narrative skills, intuition, salience, analysis, connecting one thing to another, judgment" and so on. Either bravely or foolishly, Marsh predicted that massive information dumps like Wikileaks are unlikely to unearth real scandals in the way that journalism has done: "Wikileaks will not deliver the next thalidomide."
Marsh's co-debater, Rodric Braithwaite, a former diplomat, seemed not to have entirely embraced the spirit of Oxford debating in declaring that he was not sure which side he would vote for. However, he went on to admit to having written many diplomatic briefings along the lines of those leaked by Assange and remind us that they are a diplomat's opinion of the truth.
He even challenged the notion that the leaked documents were especially secret, suggesting that any decent journalist could have discovered the contents with relative ease.
I also think a reason I voted for Marsh was that it was so refreshing to hear someone applying a little more critical questioning to the concept of transparency. Like motherhood and apple pie, transparency is good - but the world is messy and complicated and it's worth shining a light on the darker corners every so often.
So, for instance, I am in support of all climate data being made available, but we should not kid ourselves that we will all know more about climate science when that data is made public when some of those asking for it are poorly qualified to analyse it.
I have argued passionately that universities should be more open with their data on animal research - even on primates - but when some of the people demanding that information are convicted animal rights extremists, I have to concede that transparency raises difficult issues.
And there is nothing like having your own private emails released as a result of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to make you reflect a little on the wonder of FOI. I can think of umpteen press briefings that would never have happened if we had not first been able to share our expertise and experience privately, as a way of giving scientists the confidence to speak out.
That means umpteen stories that would never have reached the public domain had we not had the right to private conversations. These kind of perverse consequences of an over-obsession with transparency were raised by Braithwaite, and a woman from the floor who talked about the way people are now changing how they write private emails and documents to allow for them ending up in public.
So the unintended consequences of unfettered transparency could mean more secrecy not less. Of course the need for institutions to conduct business in private should not necessarily override the public's right to know, but at least Marsh's side conceded that these tensions exist and can be messy.
Of course none of this amounts to an argument against openness and transparency, and I remain unconvinced there is one. Nor does it amount to a case against Assange, who I still see as brave and courageous. What it may have done, however, is nudge Assange's enthusiastic supporters to at least feel the need to explain what purpose all this transparency serves.
Marsh did not deal with where the kind of quality journalism he espouses is coming from these days. It was significant that he was harking back to the Insight team for his examples.
Marsh suggested that journalism may even be damaged if the rush to make everything publically available is seen by editors as a cheap alternative to properly resourced journalism. Whether it's on the web, or through crowdsourcing, or from the good old BBC, we need to ensure that the era of transparency is matched by the kind of journalism needed to hold truth to power and information to account.
Fiona Fox is Director of the Science Media Centre, an independent press office working on the front line between national news media and science on controversial issues.
