Scientists studying an especially deadly bird flu strain inadvertently opened a can of worms with far-reaching implications for how scientists share data.

The research created a version of the H5N1 virus that was aerially transmissible between ferrets. The controversy was sparked in late December when the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity recommended the results of that research not be published in their entirety. The board, which has no authority to enforce its recommendation, was concerned the full work might provide bioterrorists the instructions for creating a deadly pandemic.

“I don’t like to scare people,” microbiologist and board chair Paul Keim told Nature News on January 3. “But the worst-case scenarios here are just enormous.”

The two journals asked to censor the work, Nature and Science, have agreed to consider the request if the government works out a way for legitimate scientists to access the complete results. The United States, the World Health Organization, and other international actors are now discussing how to go about that, according to a Nature article published Wednesday.

And on Friday, researchers agreed to another rarity—a 60-day moratorium on their work. The freeze is a direct response to the public and scientific community's reactions to the proposed redactions.

“We recognize that we and the rest of the scientific community need to clearly explain the benefits of this important research and the measures taken to minimize its possible risks,” lead scientists Ron Fouchier, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, and 37 other researchers working with H5N1 wrote in a statement published jointly in Nature and Science. “We propose to do so in an international forum in which the scientific community comes together to discuss and debate these issues. We realize that organizations and governments around the world need time to find the best solutions for opportunities and challenges that stem from the work.”

The suspension in research will halt experiments with live H5N1 viruses and the newly created variety H5 HA, according to the statement.

While the censorship—anathema to the scientific community—has generated plenty of conversation, many have also said the usefulness of making viruses deadly doesn’t outweigh the risk. Others champion the surveillance benefits of such research in early pandemic response and say it should resume immediately.

Either way, it’s unclear why this particular research is the catalyst for this debate. Although H5N1 is considered especially deadly, killing about 50 percent of its victims, it’s not easily transmitted between humans. That was the point of the experiment—to see what it would take for the virus to mutate to a condition where it might be a serious threat, according to a December 26 New York Times article.

“There are highly respected virologists who thought until a few years ago that H5N1 could never become airborne between mammals,” Fouchier told the Times. “I wasn’t convinced. To prove these guys wrong, we needed to make a virus that is transmissible.”

The initial studies were carried out by two teams—one led by Fouchier at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and one led by Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin-Madison—with very different results. Fouchier’s results were alarming, with the virus quickly becoming airborne and transmissible between ferrets, who then died at the expected rates. (Ferrets weather the flu much like humans.)

Kawaoka’s ferrets caught the airborne flu and became sick, but their illnesses were successfully treated with existing vaccines and antiviral compounds, Kawaoka told the Times Wednesday. Both teams' results were shared with researchers and journal reviewers, and Fouchier presented his findings at a virology conference in September, according to a December 20 Times article.

Why put the kibosh on sharing the full details of these already public and conflicting results? There doesn’t seem to be a lot of consensus. The National Institutes of Health’s Amy Patterson indicated to the Times that the biosecurity advisory board was moved by the new virus’s ability to cross species. In the same article, Science editor Bruce Alberts said the virus's aerial transmissibility was reason for the journal to consider limiting access.

Regardless of whether this research is more worthy of redaction and postponement than any other, what happens next month when the WHO hosts a meeting in Geneva to discuss the matter is certain to reverberate.

“It’s a precedent-setting moment,” Alberts told the Times, “and we need to be careful about the precedent we set.”