Concerns raised about the ethics of anti-wind farm research

blogs.crikey.com.au
20 May 2013

Crikey journalist Amber Jamieson recently reported that the National Health and Medical Research Council is examining whether anti-wind farm campaigner Sarah Laurie has breached ethical codes of research conduct. The NHMRC and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency were recently sent a dossier raising questions about the work of Laurie, CEO of the Waubra Foundation (an anti-wind farm activist group).

The dossier, whose author/s are not named, was forwarded to these agencies by the Public Health Association of Australia. It documents statements by Laurie about conducting interviews and other forms of research. The Waubra Foundation has since put out a statement calling for ICAC or a Royal Commission to investigate the "anonymous and malicious" dossier.

"The Board of the Foundation considers that what has transpired, plus the contemporaneous and coordinated press campaign prominently featuring chronic critics of the Foundation's works, is properly the subject of a referral to an ICAC or a Royal Commission", the statement says. "To ignore the documented suffering of people, and openly to ridicule them, is not only unethical, it is immoral, if not criminal".

The Waubra statement does not address the concerns raised by the dossier below. I wonder how long until we hear more on these matters from the NHMRC et al...

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