Whistleblowing Scientist Who Challenged Environmental Regulation Sues UCLA

[Valin]

FIRE:

LOS ANGELES, June 14, 2012—After 35 years at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. James E. Enstrom is suing UCLA to keep his job. Following many years of disagreement over research on air pollution and its implications for environmental regulations, UCLA finally refused to reappoint Enstrom after he engaged in successful whistleblowing against a member of the department. When UCLA told Enstrom he was being let go because his research failed to accord with the department's "mission," Enstrom turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

 

"FIRE has been helping Dr. Enstrom to keep his job for two years now, but enough is enough," said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. "While a lawsuit should never have been necessary, we're grateful that the American Center for Law and Justice and former FIRE President David French have filed suit on Dr. Enstrom's behalf, and we hope that justice will finally be served."

 

Enstrom has worked at UCLA as a researcher and professor since 1976, being rehired consistently each year until his ordeal began. Beginning in 2004, he worked in UCLA's Department of Environmental Health Sciences (EHS). Over the years, he and a few of his colleagues have sometimes disagreed strongly about research on environmental health issues—for example, on the extent of the threat to public health posed by certain air pollutants, a topic of Enstrom's research which has been the subject of intense debate in California because of its implications for state environmental regulations.

 

(Snip)

 

(Snip)In 2005 Enstrom authored an extensive study that found no relationship between diesel particulates and premature deaths. He says his study, as well as other evidence that agrees with it, have been ignored by an agency bent on passing ever more stringent regulations regardless of their effect on California's economy.

 

Enstrom blew the whistle on CARB for, among other things, failing to publicize that the lead author of the study that was used to justify the new regulations falsified his education history (he purchased his PhD from an online diploma mill).

 

But UCLA didn't come to Enstrom's defense. In fact, officials informed him that, after 34 years at the university, he was out of a job.

(Snip)

 

 

 

H/T NRO