Salby responds to the attacks on his recordMurry Salby was sacked from Macquarie University, and Macquarie struggled to explain why, among other things, it was necessary to abandon, and strand him in Paris and hold a “misconduct” meeting in his absence. Since then he has been subject to attacks related to his previous employment. I’ve asked him to respond, which he has at length in a PDF here. The figures listed below refer to that PDF, which encompasses 15 years of events.
I don’t have the resources (unlike the National Science Foundation, the NSF) to investigate it all, but wanted to give Murry the right of reply. On closer inspection the NSF report used by people to attack Salby does not appear to be the balanced, impartial analysis I would have expected. Indeed the hyperbolic language based on insubstantial evidence is disturbing to say the least. Because of the long detailed nature of this I cannot draw conclusions, except to say that any scientist who responds to a question about Murry Salby’s work with a reference to his employment is no scientist.
Remember the NSF report was supposedly an inhouse private document. It was marked “Confidential”, subject to the Privacy Act, with disclosure outside the NSF prohibited. In the end, a confidential, low standard, internal document with legalistic sounding words, may have been “leaked” to those in search of a character attack.
My summary of his reply
First and foremost, there is nothing in any of the NSF claims that questions Murry Salby’s scientific research. This is about paperwork and whether bureaucratic procedures have been properly followed, not about his science.
There is another side to the story and a long and complex history regarding Murry Salby’s work at Colorado University (CU). It started way back in 1997 when he noticed funds were going missing from his NSF-funded research group. After requests for their return were ignored, he reported it to the NSF. By 2003 it reached the stage where the NSF launched a criminal investigation into Colorado University for misappropriation of research funds. The investigation stopped when $100,000 was returned to Salby’s group. Salby was unable to find out where half those missing funds had been placed during the time they had been missing. Possibly this did not make him friends at CU.
Later after Salby left CU in 2008 to come to Australia, Colorado University withheld his computer files and work. After requests for those were also ignored, he launched a case from Australia, and won access to everything — CU paid legal costs as well. Curiously, soon after Salby launched that case, the NSF revived a dormant scientific investigation against Murry which went on to make some extremely serious claims — claims that Salby completely disputes (
see his full letter here).
Read the rest here
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/08/murry-salby-responds-to-the-attacks-on-his-reco...