If you are new to this site, first check basic information.
Documents and links are included here for the following topics:
Brian Martin, Whistleblowing: A Practical Guide, is a
manual for people who speak out in the public interest. It tells how
to assess options, prepare for action, use official channels, build
support and survive the experience. Second edition published in 2013.
"I wrote this
book to record all the things I'd like to say to every person who
contacts me with a problem, but for which there is never enough time.
It sums up everything practical I've learned in talking to and acting
for dissenters over two decades."
Brian Martin, Suppression
Stories, describes
experiences and insights from years of studying and opposing
suppression of dissent. The book covers patterns of suppression, the
problem of defamation, peer review, formal channels, the role of
media, difficulties in opposing suppression and advice for
dissidents. It uses numerous case studies to illustrate suppression
and methods of dealing with it. Suppression Stories provides a
personal account of how to go about investigating and resisting
suppression. Published in 1997.
Full list of Brian Martin's publications on suppression of dissent
Many whistleblowers are subject to bullying, as are many other workers.
Brian Martin, Tactics against bullying at work, 2007
Brian Martin, Review of 11 books on workplace bullying, 2000
Brian Martin, Combating online abuse with the principles of nonviolent action, 2017
Inmaculada Rodríguez-Cunill in a 2014 article "Making visible the act of watching: artistic resistance in the face of psychological violence" tells how she created art works to portray and challenge workplace harassment.
Kim Sawyer, "The invisible hand: when the firm becomes the bully", 2015: on bullying and whistleblowing
Catherine Waerner has written on thwarting sexual harassment on the Internet, both a practical leaflet and a full-length essay.
Dealing with electronic and other unusual forms of harassment
Comments by Brian Martin
Banned by Trans is a website linking to numerous cases in which some transgender activists have tried to silence people (especially radical feminists) who question transgender people or ideology. Isla MacGregor and Bronwyn Williams describe cases in Tasmania in their 2018 article "Silencing and censorship in the transgender rights debate". Free Speech Alliance Australia released a list of women in Australia who, as of 2023, have been censored or threatened for speaking out about their views on women’s sex-based rights.
William De Maria, Whistleblowers and secrecy, conference paper, 1995
The File Room is an archive of censorship cases from many different parts of the world and historical periods.
Sue Curry Jansen and Brian Martin, "Making censorship backfire," Counterpoise, 2003; "Exposing and opposing censorship", Pacific Journalism Review, 2004; "The Streisand effect and censorship backfire", International Journal of Communication, 2015
Rodrigo Ochigame and James Holston in their 2016 article "Filtering dissent" document bias in social media algorithms and their effect on land struggles in Brazil.
Defamation law and free speech, a leaflet with information about legal rights and options for action for people who may be threatened by a legal action or who are worried about something they want to say or publish
Brian Martin and Truda Gray, How to make defamation threats and suits backfire, Australian Journalism Review, 2005
Animal Liberation's leaflet
on defamation gives
information and hints for activists dealing with defamation threats
and suits.
Sharon Beder,
SLAPPS
(Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation), Current
Affairs Bulletin, 1995
Defamation
and the Australian media: a case study:
how an article for a newspaper was altered because of defamation
law
Defamation threats relating to pages on this website
Environment Defenders Office Victoria, How to face legal threats: a resource kit for activists, 2002, gives special attention to defamation
Brian Martin, What to do when you've been defamed. 2006.
Brian Martin, Being defamed Q&A, 2024. Responses to people requesting advice about dealing with being defamed.
Brian Martin, Defamation havens, First Monday: Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet, March 2000: publishing in the face of defamation threats, with case studies from the University of Adelaide and the University of Western Australia (see education section below)
Book review of George Pring and Penelope Canan, SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out
The Kumarangk Legal Defence Fund documented (among other things) the large number of defamation suits brought by Tom and Wendy Chapman in relation to the Hindmarsh Island bridge in South Australia, including threat of a defamation action over the web site itself. See links in footnote 14.
Lee-Anne Raymond and Demetrios Vakras, Australian surrealist artists, have been sued for defamation by a gallery owner, for describing his treatment of their exhibition. Raymond and Vakras have launched a petition to reform Australia's defamation laws. See Artists' exhibition critical of religion declared racist by gallery owner are then sued for writing about it (February 2013).
Australian university speech codes. Documents about university policies that enable or restrict public comment by staff
The Subversion of Australian Universities, a book edited by John Biggs and Richard Davis and published by the Fund for Intellectual Dissent in 2002. It treats a variety of cases dealing with dissent and suppression.
Paul Barnes writes about academic freedom in the field of accounting, including his experience of being sued for defamation as a PhD student, in his 2018 article "Academic independence, freedom and 'enlightenment'."
Steven Bartlett, in "Encounters with intellectual suppression," tells of his experiences in schools and universities, providing critical commentary on student careerism, peer review and intellectual mediocrity.
"Bystander beware": a case study of an Australian university's management of a case of bullying. A later version of this article was published as "Never, but never, be a bystander" by the journal Issues of Concern for Justice & Society.
"When cancel culture comes for you: a toolkit for responding", Heterodox Academy, 2021: advice for targets of public denunciations (especially on social media), colleagues and administrators
Roland Chaplain was dismissed from the University of Birmingham in 1969. A detailed analysis of this case reveals many fascinating facets.
Commercialisation of university research. Thanos Mergoupis lost his job at the London School of Economics when a research sponsor withdrew funding. His case and others are described in these accounts:
Kevin Dew, "Academic freedom and its limits", 2004, describes constraints on researchers, with many examples.
"The ethics and politics of ethics approval": how a university administration abused ethics procedures to shut down bullying research.
Facundo on Freire. Paulo Freire is a widely known and respected advocate of "critical pedagogy". Blanca Facundo wrote a critique of Freire's ideas and her own experiences using his methods. Facundo's critique is a strong dissenting view to the largely uncritical admiration for Freire's work.
University of Florida: Bob Allston has a web site dealing with suppression of free speech and dissent at the university, with examples from the Medical School and the Law School.
Robert M. Frumkin was dismissed from his tenured post at Kent State University in the 1970s. His book The Ivy Conspiracy gives his comprehensive account.
Linda Gottfredson came under attack at the University of Delaware because of her research on intelligence. She recounts what can be learned from this case study in "Lessons in academic freedom as lived experience."
Jacqueline Hoepner studied the cases of 18 academics or scientists who came under attack for their research on controversial topics. See her 2017 PhD thesis "You need to shut up": research silencing and what it reveals about academic freedom and her 2019 article "Silencing behaviours in contested research and their implications for academic freedom".
Robert Kuehn and Peter Joy, "'Kneecapping' academic freedom", Academe, 2010: attacks on US law school clinics by corporations and governments. See also Robert Kuehn and Bridget McCormack, "Lessons from forty years of interference in law school clinics", Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, 2011.
The Link, 2024. Special issue on academic freedom in the US in the wake of protests against the Gaza genocide.
Brian Martin,
Whistleblowers - and why academic freedom is most threatened from within, Campus Review, 1993
Brian Martin, Advice
for the dissident scholar,
Thought and Action, 1998
Brian Martin, Free speech on Australian campuses: hidden barriers, Australian Universities' Review, 2019
John Morgan in "Life after whistleblowing" reports on academic whistleblowing, Times Higher Education, 2014
Don Parkes in his book Doctored! tells how fraudulent candidatures, a scholarship and doctoral level examinations were handled by university, state and federal officials.
Dudley
Pinnock tells how he
was victimised and declared redundant at the University of
Adelaide.
University of South Florida: Sami Al-Arian, Associate Professor of Computer Science, was dismissed from his tenured position in December 2001, in violation of due process, essentially because he expressed his opinions. The United Faculty of Florida set up a website at http://w3.usf.edu/~uff/AlArian/ dealing with this severe attack on academic freedom.
Kathleen Stock reports on silencing of gender-critical UK academics, with 26 personal stories revealing a wide range of techniques and consquences. See also "Stonewall's LGBT guidance is limiting the free speech of gender critical academics".
"A teacher's story" tells what happened to a teacher who made a complaint about superiors at work.
UWA-David Rindos case. David Rindos was denied tenure at the University of Western Australia after exposing problems in the Archaeology Department. A giant collection of documents is available at http://rindos-anthropology.webapps.buffalo.edu/ [site copy, with many broken links]
Zedek, the official journal of the Social Activist Professors Defense Foundation, 1981-1984. Articles about attacks on US professors.
Jane Cargill describes how citizen opposition to mining in Greenbushes, Western Australia was met by intimidation and government inaction.
"How the environmental lawyer who won a massive judgment against Chevron lost everything", The Intercept, 2020. On the plight of Steven Donziger.
Don A. Driscoll et al., Consequences of information suppression in ecological andconservation sciences, 2020. See also Anthony Ham, "The spin and secrecy threatening the Australian environment," 2021
Robert Kuehn writes about attacks on attorneys who act pro bono on environmental cases in "Shooting the messenger," Harvard Environmental Law Review, 2002.
Robert Kuehn, "Suppression of environmental science", American Journal of Law and Medicine, 2004
Brian Martin, "Intellectual suppression: why environmental scientists are afraid to speak out," Habitat Australia, 1992
Brian Martin, "The scientific straightjacket: the power structure of science and the suppression of environmental scholarship," The Ecologist, 1981
The National Parks and Wildlife Service of New South Wales, Australia, is the subject of a detailed critical examination by "Jane Doe" titled "NPWS Management - A protected species! NPWS Staff - A threatened species!" She uses categories developed by the Government Accountability Project to help make sense of her experiences. See also comment by parlimentarian J F Ryan (1996).
William Sanjour's collected papers tell of whistleblowing and the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Susan Wilson and Ian Barnes surveyed Australian environmental scientists and found that a majority believed speaking out on environmental issues could jeopardise a scientist's career prospects or research funding.
Polio vaccines
and the origin of AIDS.
One theory of the origin of AIDS is that it developed from
contaminated polio vaccines used in Africa in the late 1950s. This
theory, if correct, has major implications, but it has never been
properly investigated. Many key documents about the theory and its
reception by the scientific community are given here.
Corporate
healthcare documents.
Extensive documentation is provided here concerning Tenet Healthcare
(previously National Medical Enterprises), Columbia/HCA, Sun
Healthcare, Mayne Nickless and other health, aged care, and managed
care corporations. Information is provided about investigations into
and convictions for health care fraud, conduct in Australia,
Singapore and the US (including attempts to enter new markets),
questions about government policy and the effectiveness of
whistleblowing. This material is provided by Michael Wynne.
Several corporate healthcare pages have been the subject of complaints or threats to sue, delivered to the University of Wollongong:
Kathy Ahern in "Institutional betrayal and gaslighting" explains how nurses become traumatised by being caught in a maze of enforced helplessness.
Aubrey Blumsohn complained about the research integrity of research funded by Proctor and Gamble carried out at the University of Sheffield, raising concerns about data being withheld and articles being ghostwritten. He had far more impact going to the media than via internal complaints. SeeBlumsohn's scientific misconduct blog at
http://www.scientific-misconduct.blogspot.com
Stephen Bolsin et al., "Whistleblowing and patient safety", Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 2011
Christine Cameron worked as a nurse and struggled against abuses in the health system. She tells her story in I Will Not Die, but Live!, published in 2016 and available in several formats at Smashwords and here in pdf.
James DeMeo documents attacks on alternative health therapies by the US Food and Drug Administration and attacks on orgone research.
Richard Deyo et al., "The messenger under attack: intimidation of researchers by special-interest groups", New England Journal of Medicine, 1997
Phil Hammond and Andrew Bousfield in "Shoot the messenger" tell how whistleblowers in Britain's National Health Service are "silenced and sacked".
Eve Hillary has written about attacks on alternative health products and practitioners in "TGA skeletons: WHO privatised the regulator?", "Casualties of corporate medicine: the Jenny Burke story" and "Codex - the sickness indu$try's last stand".
Jean Lennane, "Whistleblowing": a health issue, British Medical Journal, 1993; Employers blamed for work stress, NSW Doctor, 1994
Mitchell Liester, "The suppression of dissent during the COVID-19 pandemic", Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 2022
Anthony Liversidge presented a paper, "The
scorn of heretics", in
Naples in 2001. It gives special attention to the difficulties faced
by Peter Duesberg and other HIV-AIDS dissidents.
Victoria Martindale, in "A patient's story: a complaint and the aftermath" (2022), gives a detailed account of her experiences after making a complaint to a British healthcare trust.
Britta Matthes, Raouf Alebshehy and Anna Gilmore, "'They try to suppress us, but we should be louder': a qualitative exploration of intimidation in tobacco control," 2023
The site NHS Managers Exposed reveals information about problems in Britain's National Health Service, including medical negligence, child health, disability discrimination and private hospitals. "Name and shame", from BMJ in 2009, is an excellent account of problems faced by whistleblowers in the British health system.
In the Australian state of NSW, overseas trained doctors face serious professional obstacles. Robyn Iredale has spoken up about this problem. Two documents are given here:
Yaffa Shir-Raz et al., "Censorship and suppression of Covid-19 heterodoxy," Minerva, 2022, reports on the experiences of doctors and scientists who have come under attack over their views about Covid.
Dr P Grahame Woolf in "Whistleblower to vexatious correspondent" tells of his experiences as a member of the Mental Health Review Tribunal in the UK. In Woolf's words, it is a case of a complaint backfiring against the complainer, with unjust suspensions converted to dismissal and loss of main employment all without a proper meeting with an opportunity to voice his concerns freely. See also "In memoriam", Society of Clinical Psychiatrists, 2013.
Dr John Wright was dismissed from a major Sydney university teaching hospital. This is his story of how and why.
Integrity versus fraud and corruption, section 9 in Tracey Bretag (editor-in-chief), Handbook of Academic Integrity (Springer, 2016, in press).
A case of disputed authorship at the Australian Museum. Brian Martin tells about the case of a scientific paper published in the Records of the Australian Museum in which there is no acknowledgment of the contribution of a person who was coauthor of an earlier version.
Marcoen Cabbolet writes about forms of scientific misconduct that directly harm others, including ones that suppress dissent, in a 2013 paper.
Dr John Hewitt's website, entitled "A
Habit of Lies: How Scientists Cheat",
describes his work and experiences dealing with the subject, in
biology, of capping and particle movement on the surface of
cells.
Al Higgins has produced a massive database of more than 4000
references, each annotated and summarised, on fraud in science, as part of his listserv.
"Stephen Lee: unacknowledged sources?" summarises information provided by parents of students at Methodist Ladies' College, Perth.
Carlo Alberto Magni tells about his experience of being plagiarised and being falsely accused of plagiarism in a 2017 account.
Brian Martin analyses two types of plagiarism in an article, "Plagiarism: a misplaced emphasis", Journal of Information Ethics, 1994
Michael Pyshnov, in a web site entitled University of Toronto fraud, alleges that credit for his research was taken by others.
Marek Wronski has exposed many cases of scholarly misconduct in Poland. In several articles he documents serious cases of plagiarism.
Abuse of medical assessments to dismiss whistleblowers. Referrals to psychiatrists and diagnoses of mental illness can be used to get rid of whistleblowers.
APS Dignity, two blogs about psychiatric examinations used against members of the Australian Public Service, 2012
Marianna Fotaki et al., "Whistleblowing and mental health: a new weapon for retaliation?", 2015
Sherrie Gossett, two stories on the US National Security Agency and psychological abuse of whistleblowers, Cybercast News Service, 2006
Cynthia Kardell, "Forced psychiatric assessments", The Whistle, July 2014, pp. 2-4. Advice on the legal aspects.
Jean Lennane, Battered plaintiffs - injuries from hired guns and compliant courts, on whistleblowers' problems with psychiatrists and lawyers
Armadillo-leprosy controversy. Dr H. P. Burchfield provides detailed documentation alleging misconduct in medical research by US Public Health Service scientists in relation to a World Health Organization effort to develop an anti-leprosy vaccine based on use of leprosy bacilli grown in nine-banded armadillos.
Chris Brook wrote an article about the scientific evidence for diagnosing "shaken baby syndrome", analysing an Australian case. The editor of the journal retracted the published paper. Brook and co-authors in a later paper revealed that improper pressure had been applied "to avoid scrutiny".
Marcoen Cabbolet tells how to detect when criticisms of scientific work are themselves unscientific, in "Tell-tale signs of pseudoskepticism", 2015. In the second edition of his dissertation on elementary process theory, he provides an extended account of establishment attacks on him and his ideas about repulsive gravity.
Etzel Cardeña describes suppresson of research on parapsychology in "The unbearable fear of psi", 2015
Pieter Cohen, a Harvard researcher, was sued for defamation by a manufacturer of dietary supplements in an overt attempt to discourage research in the area, as reported in a 2017 story.
John Colquhoun and Bill Wilson, "The lost control and other mysteries: further revelations on New Zealand's fluoridation trial", Accountability in Research, 1999
John A. Davison tells of his experiences of marginalisation in "What it means to be an antiDarwinian at the University of Vermont".
Jason Delborne presents a framework for understanding scientific dissent in "Transgenes and transgressions: scientific dissent as heterogeneous practice", Social Studies of Science, 2008.
Jason Delborne, Suppression and dissent in science, 2016
Maryanne Demasi, "Scientific consensus - a manufactured construct", 2023: how consensus can be used for censorship
Tom Devine and Alicia Reaves, Whistleblowing and research integrity: making a difference through scientific freedom, 2016
Richard Dunford in a classic article documents how companies use patents to suppress technological innovation.
Peter Gøtzsche's 2022 book The Chinese virus killed millions and scientific freedom includes story after story of censorship and suppression of dissent in science.
Tyrone Hayes has discovered dangers from the pesticide atrazine. He was targeted for attack by Syngenta, the chemical's manufacturer. Rachel Aviv tells the story in "A valuable reputation".
David J. Hess reports on suppression of parapsychologists, 1992
David J. Hess, "Suppression, bias, and selection in science: the case of cancer research", Accountability in Research, 1999
David J. Hess, "Scientists, censorship, and suppression," Sociology Compass, 2024. A major study of US cases "involving chemical and climate change expertise."
Mae-Wan Ho of the Institute of Science in Society documents suppression of dissenting scientists in "Independent scientists an endangered species".
Joanna Kempner and colleagues have written about "forbidden knowledge" in science, in a short 2005 article in Science and a longer 2011 article in Sociological Forum.
Stuart Macdonald and Bo Hellgren, "Supping with a short spoon: suppression inherent in research methodology", Accountability in Research, 1999
Brian Martin, Enabling scientific dissent, New Doctor, 2008.
Brian Martin, Suppression of dissent in science, Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 1999
Brian Martin. Suppressing research data: methods, context, accountability, and responses, Accountability in Research, 1999
Brian Martin, Strategies for dissenting scientists, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1998
Brian McLean comments on the behaviour of scientific authorities in Scientific criticism by and for the scientifically untrained.
John Potterat tells about bias in research, the persistence of orthodoxy, resistance to dissent at top scientific journals, crucial research left undone, and verbal abuse in his long experience studying HIV transmission in heterosexuals, in a chapter titled "Why Africa?" from his 2015 book Seeking the Positives: A Life Spent on the Cutting Edge of Public Health.
David Rasnick in his 2015 article "The tyranny of dogma" discusses ways of stifling challenges to dominant views in science, with a case study of AIDS.
Claire Robinson reports on suppression of scientists who study the safety of GM foods in "Is Monsanto on the side of science?", 2015
Adrienne Samuels in her 2013 book It Wasn't Alzheimer's, It Was MSG tells about the machinations of industry to hide and distort scientific findings about MSG. Also available at http://www.truthinlabeling.org. See also "The toxicity/safety of processed free glutamic acid (MSG): a study in suppression of information", Accountability in Research, 1999
Jeff Schmidt worked as an editor at the magazine Physics Today for 19 years. On the side, he wrote a book, Disciplined Minds, telling how professionals are made into ideological conformists. After publication of the book in 2000, he was fired. Following a campaign supported by many physicists, he received a favourable settlement in 2006. Read about it here.
Walter Schumm, in his 2015 article "Navigating treacherous waters - one researcher's 40 years of experience with controversial scientific research" tells of censorship, denigration of opponents, ignoring of unwelcome findings, and many types of bias in scientific articles.
Toby J. Sommer, "Suppression of Scientific Research: Bahramdipity and Nulltiple Scientific Discoveries", Science and Engineering Ethics, 2001.
Caroline H. Thompson, "The tangled methods of quantum entanglement experiments", Accountability in Research, 1999
Veterinary profession suppression, in relation to processed pet foods and alternatives, is documented at the Raw Meaty Bones website.
Kieran Pender, "The cost of courage: fixing Australia's whistleblower protections," Human Rights Law Centre, 2024: a penetrating analysis.
Stuart Dawson discusses whistleblower legislation and related issues in his 2000 paper "Whistleblowing: a broad definition and some issues for Australia".
William De Maria in his 2002 paper "Common law - common mistakes" analyses strengths and weaknesses of whistleblower laws from five countries. (For a somewhat different, published version, see "Common law - common mistakes? Protecting whistleblowers in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom", 2006.) In another 2002 paper, "The Victorian Whistleblower Protection Act: patting the paws of corruption?", he analyses the Victoria government's new law.
Venkatesh Nayak gives a detailed analysis of the proposed whistleblower law in India in "Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making the Disclosures Bill, 2010 (India's whistleblower bill): a comparison with international best practice standards".
Kim Sawyer assesses whistleblower legislation with special attention to Australia in his November 2004 paper "Courage without mateship".
Kim Sawyer, "Lincoln's law: an analysis of an Australian False Claims Act", September 2011
Kim Sawyer examines whistleblowing from the point of view of a public-private partnership in his 2014 paper "The partnership called whistleblowing".
Whistleblowing for change, edited by Tatiana Bazzichelli and published in 2021, is the most important publication available showing how whistleblowing can be a form of activism. It also shows connections to art. A review.
Courage without martyrdom: the whistleblower's survival guide. The classic US advice manual, published by the Government Accountability Project.
Brendan Jones, "A whistleblower's guide to journalists", 2013. This advice is based on contact with many Australian journalists.
The Dissident Defence Network documents harassment and persecution of dissidents, whistleblowers and critics of elite rulers. See http://www.dissident-net.info/
Peter Bowden (peterbowden@ozemail.com.au) has given talks about whistleblowing. His Powerpoint slides are available here.
Kim Sawyer, "The scapegoats," 2022, draws on his long experience as a whistleblower and studying whistleblowing to comment on scapegoating, the Dreyfus affair, the game of whistleblowing, karma, injustice and several case studies.
Women Whistleblowers: stories honouring women who face the double challenge of workplace discrimination and reprisals for whistleblowing.
Resisting unfair dismissal: a campaigning approach, a four-page leaflet by Brian Martin, 2005
Schweik Action Wollongong, Challenging Bureaucratic Elites. Sometimes workers and clients of a bureaucracy need to oppose the people at the top. The organisation may have strayed from its original purpose or there may be serious corruption -- and sometimes the bureaucracy is taken over by ruthless rulers, as when the Nazis occupied Europe. This booklet presents seven illuminating case studies, including the Movement for Ordination of Women and the Australia Card debate. It also gives examples of people's challenges to authoritarian governments. These case studies provide important lessons concerning the vital task of bringing about change in bureaucracies.
William De Maria and Cyrelle Jan, Behold the shut-eyed sentry! Whistleblower perspectives on government failure to correct wrongdoing, Crime, Law & Social Change, 1996. A revealing study.
Jean Lennane, The canary down the mine: what whistleblowers' health tells us about their environment, conference paper, 1995
Jean Lennane, What happens to whistleblowers, and why: insights into the treatment of whistleblowers, 1996. This is a classic article, reprinted in 2012.
Kim Sawyer, A test called whistleblowing, conference paper, 2005: to survive, whistleblowers need to get through five tests
Kim Sawyer, Jackie Johnson and Mark Holub, "The necessary illegitimacy of the whistleblower": organisational legitimacy theory can be used to understand what happens to whistleblowers
Sylvia Survivor, "Taking on a dysfunctional department: tips and traps", 2011. Written by an former public service employee, this account is based on experience with numerous successful legal actions over four years.
Anti-terrorism powers could be used against dissent. Some resources for organising against this are available: see "Resisting repression".
See Whistleblowers Australia for lots of information including "Whistleblowers of national significance" (Mick Skrijel, Bill Toomer, Kevin Lindeberg and Jim Leggate) and all issues of The Whistle.
John B Cole provides documents about a coroner's findings into a suicide in a Hobart clinic. He claims the findings are a whitewash.
Robert Cummins tells his story in "Surviving whistleblowing - with difficulty".
Allan Fels, former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, tells of the value of whistleblowing for exposing anti-competitive actions including price-fixing and cartels in "Understanding the corporate governance and public sector reforms."
The shredding of the Heiner documents. The Queensland state Cabinet approved the shredding of documents gathered during an official inquiry into a youth centre, although they were being sought for purposes of a prospective court case. See http://www.heineraffair.info/
Raymond Hoser is a whistleblower who has exposed corruption in government bodies, the police and the legal system. His books include The Hoser Files, a detailed account of his experiences in Victoria, and Smuggled-2: Wildlife Trafficking, Crime and Corruption in Australia. At the end of 1996 his web sites at http://www.kew.starway.net.au/~adder/ were shut down without consultation not long after he successfully defended a court action aimed at banning Smuggled-2. His most recent books are on Victorian Politic Corruption. For more information, see his sites, now at http://www.smuggled.com/, or contact Raymond Hoser at adder@smuggled.com
John Host, a professional historian, in 2004 wrote a lengthy report in support of an Aboriginal land claim. In 2009, without his agreement, his report was published as a book. In a critical review, Host analyses what he sees as shortcomings in the book version of his report. For information about the South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council's efforts to block access to Host's original report, see "Struggle over the Host report".
Sheila Jeffreys, who has done research on prostitution and the sex trade, was able to give talks in Tasmania in 2012 despite attempts by the Scarlett Alliance to discredit her and prevent the talks. See "Australian sex worker rights group fails in bid to gag professor".
Brendan Jones, "Debunking Dreyfus on free speech and freedom", September 2014. This is a comprehensive treatment of barriers to free speech in Australia, covering whistleblower laws, defamation and the role of the mass media, with numerous examples and references.
Sharnie Makinson's experiences of dealing with bullying at work in Legal Aid Queensland are described in an article in the Courier-Mail, 7 February 2004, and an ABC interview, 23 June 2004.
National Whistleblowers Day, 30 July 2015. Comments on the Australian scene by Cynthia Kardell.
Networked Knowledge deals with miscarriages of justice in Australia, using scientific and legal skills, funded from voluntary contributions. The book A State of Injustice, by Robert N Moles, documents the sort of miscarriages that occur.
Gaye Nicholls, in "Children with cochlear implants: an untold story", sets the record straight about her work in the 1980s.
Peter Pockley tells about censorship and a climate of fear within the CSIRO, in a 2006 article.
Frank Scott, a former police officer, tells about corruption in the West Australian police force, much of it in the 1980s. In a second article, he writes about "The rise of an organised bikie crime gang." See also "The state sanctioned murder of Shirley Finn: breaking the code".
Mick Skrijel, a classic story of the consequences of opposing corruption, with numerous documents and news reports.
Janet Walton tells the story of her experiences with the legal system in Western Australia in her 2012 book An Absence of Law.
Allan Warren was a major in the Australian Army. Apparently due to trivial matters, he was drummed out of the service in 1981 by manipulation of the officer report appraisal system.
Juliet Wills has a webpage dedicated to police whistleblowers in Western Australia in the 1970s and 1980s.
Attack on education: A programme called the Special Tutorial Program ("Programa Especial de Treinamento" or PET in Portuguese) has come under attack. Professor Marcos Cesar Danhoni Neves, a leading PET advocate, has come under personal attack. In 2005 he was seriously threatened. In 2006, the mayor used political criteria to choose school directors. See Suppression of dissent in Brazilian education.
Update, July 2010 In 2005, the Tutorial Education Program (PET in Portuguese) was re-institutionalized in the Ministry of Public Instruction. At that time, the Brazilian government initiated a process of exclusion, preventing dialogue with CENAPET (the organisation of teachers and students defending PET against the threats by the Brazilian government). On 21 June 2010, after two years without a meeting of the Superior Council of the Program, SESu (Office of the Brazilian Ministry - Secretary of Higher Education) acted against CENAPET, threatening to end representation of the professors and imposing restitution to a student in a coercive and authoritarian form. The Brazilian government is preparing a repressive act (announcement) to replace, in two years, all the nearly 500 teachers who lead tutorial groups involving around five thousand students. Acting in this way, the Brazilian government, and especially its Ministry of Public Instruction, prepares to destroy PET.
Dick Nadeau revealed information about paedophiles in prominent positions in Cornwall, Ontario but had to shut down his website. See Cornwall: the inquiry at http://www.theinquiry.ca/
Robert Norburn, a quality assurance supervisor at Fleet Industries, blew the whistle on production and quality control problems. This is his story, as told by Dave Kewley in a two-article in The Spectator, 1990.
Denis Rancourt, a highly productive physicist and radical activist, was dismissed from his tenured position at the University of Ottawa in 2009, allegedly because of his system of grading. See for example "Academic freedom? How nasty can a university be?"
Dr Mauricio Schoijet, a social scientist who has written on many controversial issues, tells of his struggle for proper scholarly recognition in his "Background and statement for a lawsuit against the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores" and "Summary of a Lawsuit against the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores". Schoijet and Richard Worthington, in "Globalization of science and repression of scientists in Mexico", describe a pattern of discrimination and intimidation.
Aziz Choudry reports on the criminalisation of dissent in an article from the Otago Daily Times, December 2000.
Jane Kelsey, The closure of critique: embedding the new regime, 1996: an assessment of critical voices in New Zealand.
Health disaster cover-up. Bob Woffinden reports in The Guardian about a 1981 health disaster that left 1000 dead and 25,000 seriously injured. Blamed at the time on cooking oil, there is evidence that the real cause was pesticides, but many who said so were silenced.
Jeannette Campbell, Dare I blow the whistle?, a 2004 study of South Africa's Protected Disclosure Act of 2000
Christopher Merrett, Back to the past in South Africa? Information for Social Change, 1996
Edgar Gillham tells about his whistleblowing
experience at a military electronics firm.
Brenda
Hill blew the whistle
on a real estate company that sued her in retaliation. She was
eventually vindicated, but at a cost.
Roberta Ann Johnson in a 2005 article tells of the special issues involved in "Whistleblowing and the police".
Leroy J. Pletten is a US Army whistleblower concerning drugs and other issues.
John Suter worked at Anchorage International Airport, reported safety violations and racism, and was eventually dismissed. Read his own account on pages 9-10 of the November 2005 Whistle and two news stories from 2016: story 1, story 2.
Ian Thomas was dismissed from the US Geological Survey for putting maps on the web. He found out, after he was fired, that they were politically sensitive.
Suppression of dissent website
email: bmartin@uow.edu.au
revised 31 October 2024