The water has boiled over between the Canadian Federation of Students and a major scientific research council, who late last week went to court over the fallout of a controversial U of T study. The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council and the Canadian Federation of Students are awaiting a federal court ruling over a complex case involving charges of research misconduct and plagiarism.

“We really want to use this case as an example of the way in which university oversight can break down and how university researchers, to please their sponsors, can pervert the research process if we don’t have strict oversight,” said Ian Boyko, the campaigns coordinator for CFS.

During the summer of 2000, Liza Ballantyne and Robert C. Andrews, both of U of T’s Department of Civil Engineering, conducted a joint study with Indiana University, partially supported by ERCO Worldwide, a Toronto- based chlorine dioxide supplier. They ran their study in the small town of Wiarton, Ontario, whose residents were unaware of the experiment until some began noticing something “funny” with their water and brought the issue to the town council. A survey found that over 40 per cent of Wiarton residents had noticed a “considerable change” in their drinking water.

Though the Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, National Post, and other publications reported these claims, Andrews deemed the project a success.

The study resulted in a paper entitled “Implementation of chlorine dioxide disinfection: Effects of the treatment change on drinking water quality in a full-scale distribution system,” which was later retracted. It stated that monitoring complaints about water quality was crucial. “No customer taste and odor complaints were reported during the study period,” the paper reported

The case was blown open when Chris Radziminski, a former graduate student at U of T, came forward to CFS complaining that the university had plagiarized sections of his master’s thesis on chlorine dioxide for purifying water and that his conclusions had been manipulated by U of T and ERCO Worldwide.

Without his permission or knowledge, he was listed as the primary author of an article published in 2002.

NSERC, whose policy is to oversee research integrity, gave the prestigious Synergy Award for Innovation to U of T and ERCO. Andrews also received funding from NSERC, leading some to believe that NSERC simply looked the other way when things started going in the wrong direction. Andrews did not return repeated phone calls and emails.

Ruta Pocius, U of T’s director of issues management and media relations, noted that the university considers its part in the case closed, and that the ongoing legal battle is an issue between CFS and NSERC. The university conducted three reviews of the alleged research misconduct, each of which found no policies had been violated.