A controversial Australian marine scientist who rejects research showing major human-caused impacts on the Great Barrier Reef has been fired from Queensland’s James Cook University for alleged multiple breaches of its code of conduct.
Peter Ridd was fired on 2 May, according to the termination letter posted on Ridd’s website, after ignoring previous warnings and disciplinary action from the university.
Formerly a professor at the university, Ridd sued his employer in November 2017 after it censured him for allegedly denigrating research carried out at JCU’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Science and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) in a way that breached the university’s code of conduct.
In a statement released on Sunday, the university’s deputy vice chancellor, Prof Iain Gordon, said Ridd had “in numerous ways seriously and repeatedly breached the code of conduct” and his “employment has been terminated on this basis”.
Suggestions that Ridd had been fired for challenging Great Barrier Reef science were “simply wrong”, Gordon’s statement said.
Ridd has reopened a crowdfunding campaign to pay for his legal bills, estimated at $260,000, after initially raising $95,000 in just a few days. He has also published all the legal letters relating to his case and his sacking on his website.
On his crowdfunding page, Ridd said he would fight his sacking in court, as well as the misconduct claims. “JCU appears to be willing to spend their near unlimited legal resources fighting me,” he wrote.
Gordon pointed out in the statement that the court case had been brought by Ridd himself, adding: “While Professor Ridd has determined to publish documents, rather than to focus on his legal proceedings, on review of the conduct in which Professor Ridd has engaged, it is patently clear that this is not about his views on the reef. These matters reflect a senior member of the university’s repeated disregard for the same terms and conditions that apply to all staff.”
Conservative media outlets and climate science deniers jumped to Ridd’s defence over the weekend, attempting to frame the issue as an attack on academic freedom and freedom of speech.
British climate science denier James Delingpole wrote on Breitbart that Ridd was “fired for telling the truth” and encouraged readers to help fund his court case.
John Roskam of the Institute for Public Affairs, which is supporting Ridd and, according to a letter from Ridd’s lawyer, paid $8,566 towards his early legal costs, said: “The search for truth has been replaced by unquestioning allegiance to group-think.”
News Corp Australia commentator Andrew Bolt called for JCU vice-chancellor Sandra Harding to be sacked.
JCU’s initial actions against Ridd related to comments he made to the Australian and to SkyNews. He said “we can no longer trust” research from Aims and the university’s own Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Science.
In March, researchers at the government-funded Aims responded again to Ridd’s criticisms of their work, laying out in detail why they felt Ridd’s critiques were invalid.
In an interview on Sunday on the Sky News show Outsiders, host Rowan Dean described Ridd as a “friend of the show” and told him: “You are a brave warrior for free speech and more importantly a scientist prepared to buck the all pervasive current zeitgeist about climate change and what we call the climate change hoax.”
Ridd said he had been “polite and constructive” in his public comments and rejected JCU’s claim he had breached the university’s code of conduct.
Ridd repeated claims the Great Barrier Reef was not in trouble from human-caused global warming or from increased amounts of sediment in the water.
The reef has been hit by back-to-back bleaching events in 2016 and 2017. One study has shown a “marine heatwave” that started in March 2016 killed 30% of the reef’s corals and radically changed and degraded its diverse habitat.
A JCU profile page, which is no longer live, said Ridd “raises almost all of his research funds from the profits of consultancy work which is usually associated with monitoring of marine dredging operation”.
That consultancy was carried out through the Marine Geophysics Laboratory, which Ridd led, and which has carried out work on several coal terminal expansion projects.
Ridd’s case against JCU is adjourned until 9 June.