Evidence that

• Manchester University misled the EPSRC about Bill Courtney's role in the PedSALi project
• The EPSRC system encouraged this deception

Page summary

Under his trading name of "Cheshire Innovation", the Department for Transport appointed Bill Courtney as the lead partner for the PedSALi project.
In the aftermath of the project, when he suspected financial fraud, Bill requested details of all submissions that the University had made to the EPSRC. The University response was evasive but he eventually obtained copies of the proposal and final claim documents from the EPSRC. He discovered that Cheshire Innovation's role had been airbrushed out of both documents.

Below we present evidence that:

1    Cheshire Innovation (Bill Courtney)  was appointed as lead partner for the PedSALi project/

2    Manchester University airbrushed his name out of funding documents submitted to the EPSRC.

3   The EPSRC's self assessment scheme favours the fraudster.

4   The EPSRC failed to inform its project assessors of Courtney's suspicions of research fraud.

1 Evidence that Cheshire Innovation was appointed lead partner for the PedSALi project

  Annotated document as submitted to the Formal Enquiry Panel.

Comment
Cheshire Innovation could have pocketed an extra £10,161 for doing nothing, but chose not to do so.

Financial fraud
As we show in Appendix Three on the PedSALi page, Manchester University pocketed their public funding these activities.

2  Evidence that Cheshire Innovation was airbrushed out of Manchester University's funding documents
     to the EPSRC

2.1 This is a copy of page 1 of the proposal

2.2 This is a copy of the collaboration page of the proposal.
It gives the impression that there was only one partner, Dow Chemicals

2.3 Bill Courtney's role as lead partner for the PedSALi project is not mentioned on EPSRC PedSALi web page

2.4 Cheshire Innovation was airbrushed out of Manchester University's
    final claim form to the EPSRC

 (i) Dow Chemicals is named as a partner in the project.

(ii) But the space where Cheshire Innovation's name should have been added is left blank.

3    Evidence that the EPSRC's self assessment scheme favours the fraudster

Bill Courtney was surprised to discover that EPSRC research projects are not assessed by neutral "blind" assessors; they are aided by a Self Assessment Form.  This is a great time saver for assessors because instead of having to evaluate all of the evidence in its own right, they just have to check if the self assessment correlates with the other evidence submitted by the same research team.

This system favours fraudsters and the vain, at the expense of the honest and the modest.

Here is the Self Assessment Form for the PedSALi project

NOTE Key phrases have been retyped in a clearer font.

4   Evidence that the EPSRC failed to inform its project assessors of Courtney's suspicions of research fraud.

The admission appears in the penultimate paragraph of the email below.

Here is the penultimate paragraph

Comments

1. Due diligence 
   The EPSRC has a moral obligation to examine evidence of research fraud before making grant payments. Consequently the following excuse made by David Kidd is not acceptable,
   “I acknowledge your comments about your “warnings” regarding papers not being passed onto the final report assessors, such actions would not have been in line with established processes and as such, EPSRC did not fail in its duty to follow its own procedures in the peer review of the final report.
2. Bill never received any feedback about lessons learned by the EPSRC.
3. The EPSRC indifference to the research chaos at Manchester University was very frustrating.
   During the four years between project approval and its collapse in failure in June 2004, nobody from the EPSRC attended any of the PedSALi group meetings or contacted the lead partner Bill Courtney or the major industrial partner Dow Chemicals. This is quite surprising given the European Directive importance of the project and the blatant evidence that things were going very baldy wrong at Manchester University.
   In contrast, representatives of other government agencies [DfT and Foresight] regularly visited Manchester University because of worries about the research chaos. They shared their concerns with the EPSRC.
   This EPSRC tactic of distancing itself from embarrassing bad research when pedestrian lives were at stake was morally wrong.
4. The EPSRC assessors agreed with the Manchester University Self Assessment by rating the University PedSALi research as "Tending to internationally leading."
   European pedestrians who have been crippled by stiff car bumpers may come to a different conclusion.
5. As late as May 2013, Tracey Moulsley of the EPSRC was ignoring Bill Courtney’s request for an investigation into the research, financial and formal enquiry fraud at Manchester University.
6. Some of the evidence that was available to the EPSRC in 2013 is reproduced in Section Six of our "What is SALi Technology^TM?" web page.
7. Additional evidence available to the EPSRC is presented on this linked web page.

Trust nobody

You can check the evidence above by requesting copies of the relevant documents from the Department for Transport and the EPSRC.