Charity Commission

The following email to Professor Robin Grimes, UK Foreign Office Chief Scientific Adviser explains how The Charity Commission came to be involved in the SALi research problems. It also provides evidence that the trustees of the UK Research Integrity Office have been alerted on two occasions to a lack of integrity within their own charity.

Dear Professor Grimes,

Thank you for your suggestion that I should approach the UKRIO in order to seek their assistance in exposing a case of research fraud at Manchester University.

The PedSALi Project where the fraud was born is referred to in Hansard at ttp://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmhansrd/vo011025/text/11025w18.htm

This case is particularly serious because it may have influenced a (then) pending EU directive and cost thousands of pedestrian lives on European roads.

The British government must act from a position of knowledge. It needs to be alerted in the present case because of current EU issues.

The government will quite rightly be very angry if the story breaks in the days shortly before an EU referendum, negatively influencing its outcome.

Unfortunately the UKRIO is a party to the cover-up of this fraud. In fact their involvement is so critical that I have complained to the Charity Commission about them.

My second letter to the Charity Commission was copied to UKRIO trustees and members of the UKRIO advisory board. This letter was sent almost three months ago, but there is no evidence that they have acted in response. So it has to be assumed that the UKRIO trustees are turning a blind eye to lack of integrity within their own charity.

In the hope of shaming the trustees into doing their duty I am copying them into this email.

I would be grateful if you would keep this email on your records, in case it is required as evidence at a future date.

Thank you,

Bill Courtney

Dear Charity Commission,

I wish to submit evidence about the unethical behaviour of the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO), registered charity number 1147061. This behaviour is damaging to science, may have been instrumental in the deaths of several thousand European pedestrians and is the polar opposite of its justification for claiming registered charity status.

According to the range of activities described on the UKRIO website, the UKRIO presents itself as being proactive in the defence of UK research against the harmful effects of research fraud. However, in my experience as a victim of research fraud, the charity has used its status to assist in the hiding of fraud instead of exposing it.

Specifically, the UKRIO has assisted in the creation of false evidence, to hide earlier research fraud at Manchester University.

This case is particularly serious because the fraud may have cost many thousands of pedestrian lives on European roads since 2005.

[Twenty years ago in the 1990’s, the EU proposed draft legislation that all cars sold into European markets should be fitted with soft, pedestrian friendly car bumpers from 2005 onwards. But the car makers wanted stiff bumpers to be retained in order to keep damage to bodywork down in low speed crashes. I invented a “smart” bumper that satisfied both parties by being soft for pedestrian impacts, but stiff for bodywork damaging impacts. Manchester University was granted EPSRC funding to work with me. But the principle investigator for the University research was unhappy about my pending fame and fortune. So he sabotaged the research and the project ended in failure. There was no other solution to the so called “conflict of stiffness” problem so the legislation was put on hold until 2012. Cardiff University applied for EPSRC funding to work with me to meet this later deadline. But our collaborative work was foiled because a corrupt formal enquiry into the Manchester research created a false impression that my smart bumper design was ineffective. The key extract from the formal enquiry report is discussed in Appendix Two below. A more detailed discussion can be found online at www.cheshire-innovation.com/sali/pedsali.htm .]

Earlier this year the EPSRC (a UK research funding body) called upon Manchester University to examine the behaviour of the formal enquiry panel. But the University has refused to do so. It wriggled out of holding an investigation by using the excuse that the original enquiry panel included a member of the UKRIO and therefore its findings were beyond reproach.

The EPSRC accepted this excuse and dropped its demands on the University to hold an investigation.

I had anticipated this deviousness and had taken the precaution of writing to the UKRIO suggesting that they should hold their own enquiry. But they also wriggled out of doing so. My evidence of these evasive activities is published online at http://www.cheshire-innovation.com/sali/CrashSALi-Project_files/EPSRC%20update.htm .

The Chief Executive of UKRIO is fully aware that the false UKRIO reputation for integrity is preventing an investigation. But he has not taken any remedial action.

You have the proof of this knowledge on your records because the Chief Executive, James Parry, was copied in to the email that I sent to the Charity Commission on 4^th October 2015. Here is the header from my earlier email to you.

For the avoidance of all doubt, my earlier whistle blowing letter to the Charity Commission is reproduced in full below.

This joint misbehaviour by Manchester University and the UKRIO has affected me personally. It has damaged my health and my good professional name. Work on my impact protection invention over the last 29 years since 1986 has largely been wasted.

The £290,000 of taxpayer funds granted to support this work has also been wasted.

The following arguments are presented online for public inspection at
http://www.cheshire-innovation.com/sali/CrashSALi-Project_files/British%20Reward.htm

(i) I have lost my retirement savings of £140,000 as a result of this fraud.

(ii) The automotive division of Dow Chemicals planned to manufacture my smart bumper to meet the EU requirements. They estimated that I would earn royalties of £30 million - £90 million to date. (£30 million from European markets, rising to £90 million if pedestrian friendly bumpers were more widely adopted.)

(iii) Future royalties will be lost until such time as the fraud is exposed and my invention can be resurrected.

(iv) The misbehaviour of a UK registered charity should not be preventing me from earning a fair reward for my many years of hard work and frugal living as an inventor.

More importantly, human lives will continue to remain at unnecessary risk from violent impact injuries until the false research results about my invention are retracted by Manchester University.

I am writing to you again because using the Freedom of Information Act I have obtained a copy of an email from James Parry, UKRIO Chief Executive to the Charity Commission.

This email is economical with the truth. It misleads the Charity Commission by providing false dates relating to the case.

I will now explain how the UKRIO has misled The Charity Commission.

The Chief Executive’s letter to the Charity Commission states that,

“it relates to matters which took place in 2008-2010, a number of years before the UK Research Integrity Office became a Registered Charity.”

This statement is false. The involvement of the UKRIO in fraud started in 2008 but the case is ongoing.

The UKRIO became a registered charity on 29^th April 2012. Since then I have alerted the UKRIO on two occasions to misbehaviour within its own ranks. But it has failed to investigate my evidence.

First occasion, 22^nd August 2012.
My evidence is published online for public inspection at http://www.cheshire-innovation.com/UK%20Research%20Integrity%20Office.htm

Second occasion, 9^th July 2015.
My evidence is published online for public inspection at http://www.cheshire-innovation.com/sali/CrashSALi-Project_files/EPSRC%20update.htm

Parry’s email to the Charity Commission shows a particular contempt for the truth because it was written after 4^th October 2015 when he was fully aware of the serious consequences for justice of his misinformation.

The timeline below shows clearly how the Chief Executive of the UKRIO has misled the Charity Commission.

My evidence (including eventually this email) is published online so that the British public can read about the University and UKRIO fraud that is taking place at their expense.

I acknowledge that it is unreasonable to expect the Charity Commission to analyse the mass of online evidence. So I am including two appendices below to make a condensed argument.

My case

The UKRIO is a “Research Integrity” charity that claims to be proactive in reducing research fraud.

I assert that the UKRIO is acting contrary to its registered charitable aims because:

(i) It has been proactive in the creation of false evidence that hides research fraud at Manchester University.

(ii) It has acted against the public good because its fraudulent activities have hampered the development of a potentially lifesaving British technology.

(iii) It has ignored two opportunities to ameliorate the consequences of its own misbehaviour.

(iv) Since October 4^th 2015, the UKRIO has been aware that its false reputation for integrity is preventing a fresh investigation being held. But it has taken no remedial action to correct matters.

(v) In order to hide its misbehaviour, it has been economical with the truth in a recent communication with The Charity Commission.

This email is copied to the UKRIO trustees to ensure they are aware that the UKRIO is acting in contradiction with its stated charity aims.

Yours sincerely,

Bill Courtney

Appendix One

The email below is from The Research Governance Office at Manchester University.

It provides evidence that Dr Pablo Fernandez, the UKRIO representative on the formal enquiry panel had the last work on the writing of the libelous formal enquiry report.

Email begins

From: Research Governance [This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.]
Sent: 15 December 2009 09:21
To: Bill Courtney
Subject: RE: Progress with complaint

Dear Mr Courtney

I apologize for the delay in sending you the Panel’s report. This is due to the fact that I am still waiting for feedback from the external member of the Panel. I have chased him a few times, but I understand he has some technical problems.

I will contact you as soon as I have the finalized report.

Mrs April Lockyer
Research Practice and Governance Co-ordinator

Research Office
Christie Building
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9PL

0161 275 8093

Email ends

Appendix Two

The following extract is taken from the PedSALi page on my website. (www.cheshire-innovation.com/sali/pedsali.htm)

Extract from web page begins

Q. How did the Formal Enquiry Report avoid discussing the evidence that Dow was falsely blamed for the fraudulent research?

A. By creating a new layer of false evidence that made Courtney look stupid and unreliable by academic standards!.
This allowed the Panel to ignore his evidence in support of Dow. It also allowed the Panel to dismiss all of his evidence relating to research fraud. The documentation on the CD ROM provides six examples of Courtney's good professional name being tarnished by false evidence.

An illustrative example (The ghost Technical Committee mentioned in Appendix 2.)

This is an extract from the Formal Enquiry Report, followed by an annotated version.

(i) The original

“Mr Courtney had promoted SAL1 technology as showing a stress/strain curve of an “Ideal Shock Absorbing Material” and stated that there were indications that SALi behaves like that. Prior to PedSALi and CrashSALi, no tests had been carried out using displacement sensors, so stress strain characteristics could not have been obtained. The results that were generated by the PedSALi and CrashSALi projects did not back up the Complainants beliefs about the ideal behaviour of SALi. The results were scrutinized by the Technical Committee of 6 engineers (Professor Jan Wright, Dr John Turner, Dr Eugenio Toccalino, Dr Xinqun Zhu, Dr George Georgiades and Dr Oyadiji) of more than 120 man-years of engineering experience.”

[Gleeson, Duck and Fernandez, Formal Enquiry Report, University of Manchester, January 2010.]

(ii) The annotated version

Click to see the Dow employee's denial of membership of this committee.

You should also note that the Report refers to "a stress/strain curve". This is false and misleading because SALi based impact absorbers present different shapes of stress/strain curves for different types of impact. Courtney would have been academically stupid to believe that a single curve was involved. A more serious criticism is that it contradicted his published [2, 3, 4] and unpublished [1,18, 19, 20] research.

1984 thinking

In order to believe this section of the Report any reader familiar with the PedSALi project has to abandon logic and use doublethink.

The whole purpose of the PedSALi project was to develop a "smart" SALi filled car bumper that offered a soft material type stress/strain curve for pedestrian leg impacts but a stiff material type stress/strain curve for other impacts. Courtney’s early research had shown this was possible [See the graphs near the top of this page.]
But according to the Report, the inventor was throwing away all of the advantages of his own invention by promoting SALi as a physically impossible “Goldilocks” material having a single stress/strain curve that was just right for many types of impacts. These ranged from the two types of bumper impacts to the far wider range of impacts and vibrations that should have been investigated in the CrashSALi project.

Courtney's true beliefs about how SALi worked were supported by independent research evidence from Cardiff [4] and Nanjing [5] Universities. The Panel were sent copies of these papers, but failed to mention them in their report.

This censorship of good research adds yet another layer of deception to the panels report because they wrote,

"Prior to PedSALi and CrashSALi, no tests had been carried out using displacement sensors, so stress strain characteristics could not have been obtained. "

Yes this was strictly true, but its use to support doublethink was deception. Both the Cardiff University research [4] and the Nanjing University research [5] that the Panel ignored included tests using displacement sensors.

[For illustrative evidence see Figure 3 taken from reference 5 on our CrashSALi page.]

It is also worth noting that it would have been physically impossible for the fictional "Technical Committee" to have tested Mr Courtney's true belief that a SALi filled bumper offered different types of stiffness depending on the type of impact because the University research [12, 13] failed to include bumper-to-bumper impact simulation tests.

Quality control underpins trust in British science. We must not allow a Formal Enquiry Panel to lower our standards by creating false evidence to hide research fraud.

Summary of this section

1 The Formal Enquiry Panel unfairly discredited the inventor Courtney and hid the original research fraud by writing a story about a “Technical Committee” that never existed.

2 There is testable evidence that the Technical Committee could not have existed.

(i) One purported member has provided a written statement denying that he was a member.
(ii) A second purported member resigned from his post and returned to China two years before the committee was supposed to have met.
(iii) Freedom of Information requests have failed to unearth any evidence of the existence of this committee.

3 In order to make their case, the Panel had to create a false set of beliefs that they attributed to Courtney. These “beliefs” were bizarre and made Courtney look stupid by academic standards.

4 The false beliefs attributed to Courtney were the polar opposite of his true evidence beliefs.

5 Courtney’s true beliefs, along with supporting evidence had been published in a journal paper [3]. The Panel had access to this paper and made indirect reference to it in their report.

6 It was Courtney’s true beliefs that attracted the interest of Dow and later won EPSRC funding for the PedSALi project.
They were referred to explicitly in the Manchester University funding proposal to the EPSRC.

7 The committee is supposed to have tested Courtney’s beliefs against the PedSALi research evidence. But this research was flawed and contradicted the laws of physics.

8 Courtney’s true beliefs about the “smart” variable stiffness behaviour of a SALi filled car bumper could not have been tested because the Manchester University researchers failed to carry out the necessary experiments. (But they claimed EPSRC funding for the work!)

9 Cardiff University subsequently carried out the required experiments and published their results. They were in line with Courtney’s predictions. A copy of the Cardiff research paper [4] was presented to the Panel, but is not referred to in their report.

10 The Formal Enquiry Panel that created this secondary fraud consisted of the Heads of Physics and Maths at Manchester University and a representative of the UK Research Integrity Office.

For shear chutzpah, can any other research fraud in history trump this?

Extract from web page ends

Dear Charity Commission,

I wish to submit a complaint about the behaviour of the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO), registered charity number 1147061.

As its name implies, this charity is supposed to be concerned with the maintenance of research integrity standards in the UK. However in my experience as a victim of research fraud, the charity has used its status to assist in the hiding of research fraud instead of exposing it.

The case is a very complex one, going back more than 12 years. In order to keep this email to a reasonable length I will outline the key points and provide you with links where you can find further details.

1 The core page relating to the original research fraud is www.cheshire-innovation.com/sali/pedsali.htm I will refer to this as the PedSALi page.

2 A more concise third party blog relating to the fraud can be read at www.abettermousetrap.co.uk/whistleblower-inventor-alleges-fraud-by-manchester-university

3 The area of technology that has been the subject of the research fraud is known as Shock Absorbing Liquid (SALi).
An outline history of the development of SALi Technology from 1986 to the present day can be found in Section Six of this page http://www.cheshire-innovation.com/sali/what_is_sali.htm

4 In 2009 Manchester University agreed to hold a formal enquiry into the fraud as described on the PedSALi page. The formal enquiry panel comprised two members of staff at Manchester University plus a third member representing the UKRIO.
In principle, the inclusion of Dr Pablo Fernandez, the representative of the UKRIO provided quality control, validating the formal enquiry process.

5 However, as you can see from the PedSALi page, I present testable evidence that the formal enquiry process was flawed.

6 I have made a number of complaints to Manchester University over the last five years and asked it to re-examine the formal enquiry process. But my requests have been ignored.

7 More importantly with regards to the present complaint, the UKRIO has ignored my request to investigate evidence of behaviour contrary to the aims of the charity by its representative, Dr Fernandez.

8 My evidence of behaviour contrary to the aims of the charity is presented at http://www.cheshire-innovation.com/UK%20Research%20Integrity%20Office.htm

9 The Manchester University research for the PedSALi project was funded by the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC).
In March 2015, Ben Ryan, an open minded representative of the EPSRC decided to re-examine my evidence of research fraud. This resulted in Ben writing to Professor Georgiou at Manchester University requesting the University to carry out an investigation into my allegations. Ben’s letter to Professor Georgiou is reproduced at http://www.cheshire-innovation.com/sali/CrashSALi-Project_files/EPSRC%20update.htm

10 Professor Georgiou has written back to Ben Ryan (EPSRC) bluffing his way out of holding an investigation. Here is an extract from Professor Georgiou’s letter that reveals his bluff.

(10 September 2015.)

11 Ben Ryan has fallen for the bluff.
On 29 September 2015 he wrote to me. His letter includes the following passage,“We have carefully considered the University’s response; in particular we note that the investigation panel member nominated by the UK Research Integrity Office has confirmed that in his independent opinion the investigation was properly conducted.
In the circumstances we do not feel that it is now appropriate to continue to press the University to further investigate your allegations – to do so would be to call into question the impartiality and integrity of the independent panel member, for which there is no evidence or justification. As a result we have decided to accept the University’s response as final.”

12 Fortunately it looks as though the EPSRC may have had their doubts because they only sent me a draft letter. I am hopeful that after reading this email the EPSRC position will be revised.

Conclusion

The UKRIO is a charity set up to maintain high standards of research integrity.

I have presented evidence that this status has been misused and that as a result research fraud has been buried instead of being exposed.

There are three strands to this abuse:

(i) A representative of the UKRIO participated in a formal enquiry process that created false evidence to hide research fraud. This activity contradicts the aims of the charity.

(ii) The UKRIO failed to investigate my evidence of misbehaviour by its representative Dr Fernandez whose participation “validated” the fraud.

(iii) Manchester University has exploited the reputation of the UKRIO to trick a government research funding body, the EPSRC, into dropping its investigations into fraud.

Testing my allegations

James Parry (UKRIO) can confirm that the UKRIO has failed to investigate my evidence that one of its representatives, Dr Fernandez, has acted in a manner contrary to the aims of the charity. That is, Dr Fernandez sat on a formal enquiry panel that created false evidence to hide research fraud, instead of exposing it.

Professor Georgiou (Manchester University) can confirm that he deflected a request from the EPSRC to investigate the misbehaviour of the formal enquiry panel by exploiting the reputation of the UKRIO for acting with integrity.

Ben Ryan (EPSRC) can confirm that he was swayed by the reputation of the UKRIO for acting with integrity. As a consequence he concluded that Dr Fernandez must have acted with integrity. And therefore my complaints relating to research and formal enquiry fraud could be dismissed.

James Parry, Professor Georgiou and Ben Ryan are all copied into this email, so you have their email addresses.

Yours sincerely,

Bill Courtney

Cheshire Innovation / Latent Power Turbines Ltd
17 Vale Road, Timperley, Altrincham, Cheshire, WA15 7TQ, UK

Shock Absorbing Liquid (SALi)

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