UWA will ignore investigation findings and ask for retraction anyway: academic journal

A now-retracted paper co-authored by Piers Larcombe disputed the findings of embattled climate geoscientist Mick O’Leary and colleagues.

UWA “climate geoscientist” Mick O'Leary.

The University of Western Australia is alleged to have told an academic journal it would ignore the investigation findings of the nation’s top research review body and demanded it retract a paper that disputed findings of embattled UWA “climate geoscientist” Mick O’Leary.

Dr O’Leary was recently excoriated by Federal Court judge Natalie Charlesworth, who described his conduct as “far flung from proper scientific method and falls short of an expert’s obligation to this court”.

Dr O’Leary was found to have “lied” when preparing a report that helped block Santos’s $5.8bn Barossa gas project in the Timor Sea.

“My concerns about Dr O’Leary’s independence and credibility are such that I would not accept his evidence as sufficient to establish any scientific proposition at all, even if his evidence had gone unchallenged and even if he possessed the appropriate skills, qualification and experience to express them,” she said.

Following the judgment, The Australian revealed there had been a long-running academic stoush within the UWA about the veracity of research produced by Dr O’Leary and colleagues about Indigenous artefacts on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula.

In 2022, UWA researchers led by geoarchaeologist Ingrid Ward and co-author Piers Larcombe wrote a paper that was highly critical of those findings.

In June 2023, the original researchers were required to publish a correction to their paper, including addressing errors in three statistical analyses and “additional discussion of interpretations”.

The 2022 Ward and Larcombe paper was retracted in late 2023. Dr Larcombe has previously told The Australian he stands by the scientific content of the work.

The Australian can reveal the Geoarchaeology journal’s publisher, Wiley, says UWA requested the retraction, claiming an ethical breach on the paper led by Dr Ward and Dr Larcombe. That request came despite there being an Australian Research Integrity Committee process under way to investigate the ethics determination process.

UWA said the ARIC finding – whatever it may be – “will not impact its decision”.

Dr Ingrid Ward. Picture: Facebook

Dr Piers Larcombe.

Dr Larcombe learnt this in an email from Wiley on December 7 last year informing him it would be issuing a retraction.

“I can confirm that UWA has written to Wiley and relayed their thoughts on their investigation as well as ARIC’s,” it read. “They have reconfirmed their findings, reissued their request for retraction, and have written that the outcome of ARIC’s investigation will not impact their decision. As such, we will be proceeding with the retraction.”

ARIC is a federal government body established by the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council to undertake “reviews of institutional processes used to manage and investigate potential breaches of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research”, its website reads.

Internal UWA documents show the university claimed ethical breach because the researchers did not meet requirements under the AIATSIS – the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies – code of ethics.

A complaint was lodged in 2022 by the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation about “lack of coll­aboration or adequate consultation”. In response, the paper’s authors claimed MAC had been “kept informed of our work”. However, the preliminary investigation found the study should have had a UWA human research ethics committee approval and it did not.

Dr Larcombe said UWA had selectively applied the ethics code in the case of this paper.

“UWA doesn’t apply that rule consistently and fairly across the board,” he said. “If they did so, and other universities did the same, perhaps no university research might occur because almost everywhere on the Australian continent and across large marine areas, such an agreement would be required.

“According to UWA, every time a UWA researcher conducts research in the bush, takes a reading up a mountain or a soil sample … they should have permission through a formal, written research agreement with the traditional owners. That’s not a practical or sustainable position.”

UWA declined to comment. Wiley did not respond to questions by time of publication.