The UK Research Integrity Office is a charitable body funded by British universities and other research organisations. In its publicly stated role of providing a number of services to improve research integrity it is to be commended.
Unfortunately a member of its Advisory Board, Dr Pablo Fernandez has extended this role to encompass reputation protection. Up to a point this may be fine, but when this protection service includes UKRIO collusion with a client university to create false evidence to hide research fraud, matters are getting out of hand.
When the UKRIO Trustees and Chief Executive refused to investigate Dr Fernandez behaviour, they breached all their own guidelines on research conduct.
Given that this corruption has been eating away inside the UKRIO for the last eight years, it may be too late for reform. A replacement charity with better internal integrity may be required.

We reveal how the UK Research Integrity Office has colluded with Manchester University to hide an embarrassing case of research fraud that may have cost lives.

Our evidence suggests that the UKRIO needs deep reform if Britain is to retain its international reputation for delivering honest science.

Given that this corruption has been eating away inside the UKRIO for the last eight years, it may be too late for reform. A replacement charity with higher integrity standards may be required.

Evidence that Manchester University made false statements in claiming public funds for the failed PedSALi project

The Sassy Hats Project is a NESTA supported feasibility study which enables us to work with a professional clothing designer to create prototypes for a new generation of soft, stylish protective headwear. We envisage these hats being used for medium risk activities such as winter hill walking and energetic child play, where wearing a conventional hard hat would be seen as eccentric.

Protecting young brains

The occasional broken limb is a price worth paying for the awareness of risk learned in adventure child play. But head injuries are different; they can result in lifelong brain injury.

 What are core characteristics?

 Core characteristics are sets of data about the energy dissipation provided by a tiny cube shaped sample (unit ceell) of SALi material.

  Why engineers need them
Testing  prototype impact absorbers is an expensive business. So, to keep costs down, engineers carry out computer simulations first.

These computer simulations treat any shape of SALi based impact absorber as being made up of these smal cubes. (Rather like building a Leggo model, but using simple cube shaped Leggo blocsonly.) During an umpact the size of each cube is reduced.

So, before computer simulations can begin, researchers need to obtain experimental core characteristic data relating to different stresses, strains and strain rates.

This is quite a research challenge because each of the many different formulations of SALi has its own set of core characteristics.

Figure 1. If engineers have core characteristic data, they can feed this into computer models that predict the impact absorbing performance of different shapes and sizes of SALi filled bags.

Core characteristics will provide information about:
(i) Elastic energy absorption.
(Which  is useful because it allows the impact absorber to recover its shape after an impact.)

and,
(ii) Viscous damping energy absorption.
(Which is important because it prevents secondary damage caused by the impact absorber recovering too quickly.)

Fraudulent university research costs Britain a 14 year lead in developing SALi based car suspension units

This only one half of the university fraud story. The other half is presented on our PedSALi page.

 We Brit’s have a long history of coming up with profitable inventions, and then leaving others to gain from them. Liquid crystals, computers, the jet engine, penicillin, body scanners and radar are some of the many British inventions that have made other nations rich.

If you want to witness how our sad history is repeating itself, please read on.

Bill’s evidence of the damage done by university research fraud was presented to The House of Commons Science & Technology committee in March 2017.

Battery charging car suspension                                                 Patent application GB0915807.2

Aim: To design a car suspension unit that offers "outstanding performance" and has excellent green energy credentials.

The suspension unit is based on Shock Absorbing Liquid (SALi) Technology, with simmple power generators  being used to convert vibration energy into electricity. 
 

[The claim that SALi based vehicle suspension units offer "outstanding performance" was oriignally made by independent SALi researchers in China. 
H. d. Teng, Q. Chen, Study on vibration isolation properties of solid and liquid mixture, Journal of Sound and Vibration, 2009 doi.10.1016/j.jsv.2009.04.036.]

Pedestrian safety using SALi Technology

How Britain almost made European roads safer for pedestrians, but research fraud at Manchester University is blocking progress.

The project collapsed in research fraud in 2003, but is worth reviving because, in an era of driverless cars, pedestrian safety is paramount.

ARTICLE SUMMARY

This article is about "smart" car bumpers. They are filled with SALi, a compressible, elastic fluid.

They are soft for pedestrian impacts but stiffen up for impacts with other vehicles.

The aim of the PedSALi project was to build and test a prototype SALi filled bumper.

Manchester University received government funding to do the basic experiments. The automotive division of Dow Chemicals was contracted to build and test a full sized bumper.
But an embarrassing University research failure is currently holding up the fitting of soft bumpers to cars.

To hide their failings, the University created false evidence to suggest that soft bumpers would not work.

A Formal Enquiry Panel then went on to create false secondary evidence to hide the original fraud. When this second level fraud was challenged, the University refused to examine the evidence.

The implications go way beyond pedestrian safety. The collusion of senior University management et. al., in the suppression of the truth about research fraud is an attack on science and an attack on freedom of expression within our democracy.

We tell the whole story.