"Professor Ridd would be the perfect candidate for such a position, he understands science and the need for organized skepticism."

It seems to me that the only real qualification that Peter Ridd has for this imaginary position is that Jennifer Marohasy agrees with him.

In fact the whole idea of a Science Ombudsman smacks more of a case of "we don't like the science, so we want a political way of sidelining it". It would be virtually impossible to find anyone with the right level of expertise across numerous disciplines to be able on an individual basis for every decision "to check the science before governments commit to spending hundreds of millions of dollars" .

There is already a means for guiding the Government on what the science agrees on. It is called the Chief Scientist.

Agronomist,

Would the Chief Scientist be able to investigate and then report on this blatant misrepresentation of the science... as detailed in the above article...

"A decade ago, there were newspaper headlines claiming dugongs were being killed by a dioxin, which was from pesticide runoff from sugarcane farms. Two years later, the National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology concluded that the dioxin of concern was naturally occurring and common in soils along the entire Queensland coastline, including in regions beyond sugarcane cultivation. Yet even after this clarification and after the information had been passed on to senior bureaucrats, the false claim of elevated levels of fat-soluble pesticides in dugongs was repeated in their influential briefing papers and reports."

More information here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Review55-1DeceitinNameConservation.pdf

I would really like to see this resolved.

How should this information be presented to Chief Scientist? How might he seek to resolve the issue?

""A decade ago, there were newspaper headlines claiming dugongs were being killed by a dioxin, which was from pesticide runoff from sugarcane farms....""

There is not much anyone can really do with newspaper headlines being wrong. However, I thought the problem was with the scientific information that went to the Government. I haven't followed the dioxin story at all closely, but my impression was that the issue was soil run-off from cattle farming areas being dispersed across the reef area and the dioxins present in the soils being picked up by species on the reef. Indeed, this seems to have been specifically addressed by the Great Barrier Reef Protection Amendment Act 2009, which implemented strategies to increase pasture cover and decrease soil erosion.

Neither scientists, not the Baker report claimed the dioxins were from pesticides. That was a separate issue that pesticides do run-off from farmland to the reef and from cane-farming in particular. Although it is herbicides rather than insecticides that are now the main problem. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X11004310

There are also ways of managing these problems http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969713009017 that should be implemented.

I don't see a role for the Chief Scientist to address a decade-old example of you misreading the science and getting confused.

Agronomist,

Herbicides and insecticides are types of pesticides. If you read the information at the link I provided you would see that the original issue was with herbicide use in sugarcane, not insecticide use. You have a tendency to jump to conclusions. ;-).

Indeed, the issue has never been resolved, you would understand this if you read the link that I provided. Here it is again...

http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Review55-1DeceitinNameConservation.pdf

The bottomline is that Dr Baker ignored my correspondence, as did the then head of the Premier's department. I still have the correspondence and would be keen to pass it on to the Chief Scientist should he be interested in correcting the record.

Apparently you are more interested in defending the indefensible.

There is an inherent logic in the proposal of a Science Ombudsman because despite the current authoritative paradigm driven by AIMS, the ARC Centre of Excellence…, and perhaps less forcefully by the GBRMPA, or less influentially by various lesser GBR/NGO pressure groups, there are nevertheless some scientists that are prepared (at some personal career/funding risk) to question the quality of the claims and as to why only the alarming aspects of data are abroad.

One point is, that based on advice from these authorities, (who arguably may have self-interest in creating concerns with those that fund them), governments may make huge investments in response. Yet, some scientists argue at personal risk that such investments are an overreaction.

To check-out such counterarguments has the potential to avoid unnecessary huge investments at relatively low cost.

Whilst the existing (general) Ombudsman might take an interest if he would accept appropriate advice (and that consensus or voting on science may not = truth) it seems doubtful to me (with scientific training) that he has staff trained to handle the subtleties in these scientific controversies.

Thus a Science Ombudsman makes $ sense.

Bob Fernley-Jones (Mechanical engineer retired)

Bugsy,
Any chance you could fill us in in a few details?