An academic forced to retract a scientific paper she co-authored after significant errors were exposed, Dr Jennifer Sanger, has now been revealed as a campaigner for the Bob Brown Foundation.
The report has been condemned by the Australian Senate as “bodgy”.*
In an opinion piece published in The Conversation, Dr Jennifer Sanger is disclosed as “working “ for The Bob Brown Foundation.
Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) CEO Ross Hampton has called on the University of Tasmania to urgently investigate whether Dr Sanger has misused her academic position to campaign against the native forestry industry, and whether the University had seen any disclosures that she was employed by the Bob Brown Foundation.
Mr Hampton said, “whilst everyone has the right to protest, most Australians would find it inexcusable that an academic, submitting a ‘bodgy’ paper to a prestigious journal like Fire and then using it to call for an end to the timber industry, would not be up front that she works for an organisation dedicated to closing down the same industry. This is clearly a conflict of interest.”
* the Australian Senate passed a motion noting that the “report used by the Australian Greens to assert that forestry operations cause bushfires has been retracted and withdrawn after insistence from the academic community” and “that the withdrawal of this paper was required because of the number of significant errors and wrong conclusions and that it did not meet the standard for ‘high-quality scientific works’ as required by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)”.
The original media release is here: Media Release – Academic author of flawed bushfire report outed as Bob Brown Foundation campaigner