University clears scientist of logging industry’s misconduct allegations

The University of Tasmania has cleared one of its scientists of wrongdoing after she was accused by the Australian logging industry of publishing flawed research linking logging to increased forest flammability and of having a conflict of interest with an environmental group.

The university then implemented mandatory research integrity training for its school of geography, which Jennifer Sanger, the researcher who worked in that school, suggests is due to the university’s “very strong ties with the forestry industry.”

In May 2020, Sanger published a study titled, “Propensities of Old Growth, Mature and Regrowth Wet Eucalypt Forest, and Eucalyptus Nitens Plantation, to Burn during Wildfire and Suffer Fire-Induced Crown Death,” in the journal Fire. The study found that logged forests were generally more flammable than those left unlogged, a finding that has been upheld in recent research.

On August 13, Sanger requested that Fire pull the study, according to Alistair Smith, the journal’s editor-in-chief. Sanger asked for a retraction after a reader went through the study’s dataset and found issues with its analysis, she explained in an email:

We noticed the errors when a forestry researcher looked at the data points we published and noticed the errors. I’m not sure why he did this, it must have taken him ages. This researcher had published quite a controversial paper finding the opposite of what we did in our study. Maybe he was keen to prove us wrong? Once he notified us of the errors, we retracted the paper. 

The retraction notice was published August 28 and reads, in part:

The authors were informed of some errors in the categorization of forest types by a colleague. The major error was the incorrect inclusion of a category of plantation from a publicly available vegetation type layer. There were also other sites which were incorrectly categorized. 

After finding the errors, the authors repeated their analysis. The notice continues:

The authors reclassified or removed the sites that were obviously incorrect, added new randomly located sites to compensate for excluded sites and added more site pairs. The data were then checked by an independent colleague, an expert in the forest type, who was able to check each identification. The results of analyses of the new data set were sufficiently different to those of the original paper to make it inappropriate to make minor corrections. During the reanalysis, a close examination of the data indicated that the outcomes were highly sensitive to variation in fire intensity in a low number of sites, indicating a need for a larger data set and complementary analyses using GIS techniques.

A few days after the retraction, the Australian logging industry seized on the pulled study, with one organization posting a release titled: “Fake bushfire research thrown out by independent journal.” The Institute of Foresters of Australia asked the University of Tasmania — where the researchers were employed — for a public apology. The Australian Senate also condemned the work, calling it “bodgy.”

Sanger said that some of the press releases issued by the logging industry had inaccurately characterized her work:

Two of the lobby groups made public statements about how they were going to ‘seek an apology’ from the University. Here is a press release from one of them. There are lots of inaccuracies here, notice how they say it’s a ‘fake paper’ and that it was the journals [sic] decision to retract the paper- that’s incorrect. My coauthors and I requested it to be retracted when we found the errors in it. 

In response to complaints by the logging industry, the University of Tasmania launched an investigation into research misconduct, according to reporting by The Guardian. Among the allegations were that Sanger had a conflict of interest with the Bob Brown Foundation, an environmental activism group. 

Sanger, who was cleared of wrongdoing last month, told Retraction Watch that the University of Tasmania’s investigation was due to “political pressure”:

The only reason that there was an investigation was because of the forestry industry. Here in Australia we have very powerful forestry lobby groups how [sic] attack anyone who speaks up about forestry issues. There [sic] main tactic is to complain against any researcher who has found a result that shows forestry practices in a negative light. I have had many colleagues from other universities who have had complaints against them. The difference is that other universities stand by there [sic] researchers and honour freedom of speech, where as University of Tasmania did not at all. 

University of Tasmania has very strong ties with the forestry industry, have received over $7m in research funding over the last ten years. This whole saga was them bowing to political pressure. 

After clearing Sanger of wrongdoing, the University of Tasmania announced that its geography department would implement mandatory training on “research integrity.” Both the Institute of Foresters of Australia and the Australian Forest Products Association commended the university for implementing the training, according to reporting by The Guardian.

Anthony Koutoulis, the associate dean of research at the University of Tasmania, would not share a report of the investigation, calling it confidential, and directed our questions to Jason Purdie, the university’s director of corporate affairs. When asked why the university was implementing mandatory trainings, despite Sanger being cleared of wrongdoing, Purdie said:

I’m afraid your follow-up again relates to the content and outcomes of the review which, as Professor Koutoulis has said, is confidential.

Sanger said that the university decided to implement mandatory training because “they are feeling pressure to ‘do something’. I really don’t know to be honest.”

Smith, the Fire editor-in-chief, said that the journal would not amend the retraction notice after Sanger was cleared of wrongdoing:

Fire’s decision to retract the article came at the request of the authors and had nothing to do with the University of Tasmania’s internal investigation. We respected the authors reason for the requesting the retraction and as such the notice was written accordingly. To my knowledge the methodology concerns raised to the University of Tasmania was not about the matter the authors raised when they requested the retraction. I am in constant discussions with my Editorial team about this an [sic] other matters and if we feel we need to make a edit [sic] to the information that is posted, we will do so in due time.

Sanger’s honorary research associate position at the University of Tasmania has ended, and she “will definitely not be renewing it,” she wrote in an email. Sanger now works at The Tree Projects, an environmental communication group that she runs with her husband.

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