Anti 1080 group forged a scientific report

Have a read of this excellent story at The Spin Off. It will leave you in no doubt that an anti 1080 group called Flora and Fauna of Aotearoa (F&F) fabricated or forged a document claiming to be a lab analysis of how some rats and mussels etc died on the West Coast. It is a superb destruction of the credibility of the so called lab analysis, and the result should be that no media anywhere ever quote something from F&F again.

Their report from an “independent laboratory” concluded the rats etc died from 1080, with 41 pages of “evidence”. The problems were:

1. Contradicted reports from both Landcare and Massey
2. The lab was not named, and they refuse to do so
3. The lab templates appear to be copied from the website of Virginia Tech
4. The results were hand written which is strange as residue analysis is a digital process
5. The lab managed to do testing protocols for three species for which no protocol exists
6. They claimed to have tested 15 samples in two days
7. It claimed the level of poison in the rats was 30 times the normal lethal dose and that starfish managed to imbibe a dosage level while underwater that was 10 times the lethal level
8. The fluorocitrate levels were ten times higher than the 1080 levels, which should be impossible as not all the 1080 converts to fluorocitrate
9. The testing protocol claimed to be used is unheard of
10. F&F published the results of the testing three days before the lab was supposed to have completed the testing
11. The lab claimed to have used a product from a supplier which the supplier stopped selling in 2015

If the group tries such a stunt again, I suspect they’ll end up facing charges for fraud.