The NSW Court of Appeal has found that ABC Radio National’s Science Show defamed Professor Bruce Hall by accusing him of scientific misconduct.
The show, hosted by medical journalist Norman Swan, defamed the scientist on ten occasions in a 2002 broadcast, according to a recently published court decision.
Hall claimed the program accused him of scientific fraud, including fraudulently presenting experiments at a conference which were never done, and that he gave an opinion on the actual treatment of transplant patients at a Conference which he knew was based on fraudulently misrepresented animal data.
According to court documents, at the time of the broadcast, Hall was an immunologist, scientist and Professor of Medicine of the University of New South Wales at Liverpool Hospital.
The ABC is preparing its defence against the defamation decision. Defences can include establishing that the defamatory imputations were true, were properly formed statements of opinion, or were protected reports.
The ABC argued in the interests of investigative journalism and public interest, saying:
“It is the public interest point of a public broadcast running investigative journalism. What is the alternative, these things never come to light and no one ever chivvies the University of New South Wales for not getting on and the public is not aware of an allegation that moneys have been misused and researchers abused and worse still research which may translate into helping human patients has not been done as it should be done.
“In a nutshell this is what the ABC asks you to consider when you are thinking about the balance of those scales taken as a whole as you have to take it as an ordinary reasonable listener would take it. Taken as a whole, when you look at the impression it leaves you with, does not this broadcast story really say there are things here so serious that if they are true that they urgently need investigation…”
A hearing to decide defences and damages is expected later this year.
The full judegment can be found at the link below.