{"id":31050,"date":"2025-07-29T22:51:38","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T22:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/31050\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T22:51:38","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T22:51:38","slug":"university-staff-criticised-for-fire-ant-treatment-and-vaccine-misinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/31050\/","title":{"rendered":"University staff criticised for fire ant treatment and vaccine misinformation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of Queensland has defended its academics who have pushed conspiracy theories and misinformation around fire ant treatments and vaccines.<\/p>\n

It comes as Australia’s fire ant authorities slam comments by UQ researcher Conny Turni as “ignorant” and “misinformation”.<\/p>\n

Dr Turni said she believed the chemicals used in fire ant bait caused an estrogenic effect in humans and harmed “all living things”, claims which have been debunked by Australia’s pesticide regulator.<\/p>\n

Dr Turni told the ABC she believed the National Fire Ant Eradication Program was denying the human health harms of fire ant treatments to make money.<\/p>\n

“They will dispute that because they want to do this, they’re getting money to do this, and they only get money to do this if they call it eradication,” Dr Turni said.<\/p>\n

“We have been labelled conspiracy theorists because we’ve been speaking out.”<\/p>\n

Dr Turni has also co-authored anti-vaccination papers with two other University of Queensland researchers, Dr Peter Parry and Dr Nick Hudson.<\/p>\n

None of them are medical researchers.<\/p>\n

Dr Turni specialises in agricultural microbiology, Dr Parry in child psychiatry, and Dr Hudson in agricultural metabolic biochemistry.<\/p>\n

One of their joint papers is co-authored with Children’s Health Defense, a widely discredited American anti-vaccine group.<\/p>\n

Dr Turni has spoken at several conspiracy theory rallies, including The People’s Revolution and Stop The Toxic Fire Ant Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"people<\/p>\n

A University of Queensland spokesperson said they follow an academic freedom of speech policy. (ABC News: Lucas Hill)<\/p>\n

A University of Queensland spokesperson said the university did not necessarily share the views of its staff.<\/p>\n

“The university is committed to the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and academic freedom,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

“This means that views expressed by academic staff do not always reflect those of the university, or the broader research community.”<\/p>\n

‘Irresponsible’ and ‘ignorant’ comments<\/p>\n

The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority has deemed fire ant bait safe for humans and other mammals, given its extremely low dosages of insect growth regulator (IGR) chemicals.<\/p>\n

National Fire Ant Program general manager Marni Manning said Dr Turni’s claims were not supported by credible science.<\/p>\n

Ms Manning said there was no evidence that the chemicals used in fire ant bait were harmful to humans, birds, or mammals, given the low dosages used in Australia.<\/p>\n

Loading…<\/p>\n

Ms Manning said the University of Queensland should consider what impact Dr Turni was having on its reputation as an academic institution.<\/p>\n

“I’m at a loss for words. I find it irresponsible and it’s actually quite ignorant of what the program is doing,” Ms Manning said.<\/p>\n

“It’s a question for the University of Queensland \u2014 are they concerned about this reputationally?”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Reece Pianta says misinformation is hindering Australia’s fire ant eradication efforts. (Supplied: Invasive Species Council)<\/p>\n

Invasive Species Council advocacy manager Reece Pianta said Dr Turni was not a medical expert nor an expert in fire ant treatment.<\/p>\n

“I understand this academic is speaking outside their normal field of expertise they mainly publish in,” Mr Pianta said.<\/p>\n

“Everyone has a right to an opinion, but people reading that opinion need to keep in mind they need to seek opinions that are strongly based in peer-reviewed science from field experts.<\/p>\n

“Misinformation does risk slowing down fire ant eradication, delaying action, making it harder for officials to access properties to do the work they need to do.”<\/p>\n

Fire ant conspiracy theorist gets uni funding for field work<\/a><\/p>\n

Southern Cross University provides research funding to a conspiracy theorist who has wrongly claimed fire ant bait causes ADHD, autism, and low fertility in humans.<\/p>\n

Vaccination misinformation<\/p>\n

The paper, co-authored by UQ’s Dr Turni, Dr Parry and Dr Hudson, contains several citations to non-medical papers, including articles from Substack blogs, Wikipedia, and conspiracy theory websites.<\/p>\n

It also contains citations to the widely discredited medical journal the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research.<\/p>\n

In a separate anti-vaccine paper, Dr Parry said “DNA vaccine technology” had allowed the government to “engineer social control of entire populations”.<\/p>\n

“Manipulation and repression of data, and censorship of contrarian evidence-based opinion, even if well-intentioned, have created an historic public health disaster,” Dr Parry wrote.<\/p>\n

“Failure of authorities to act may represent the phenomenon of ‘wilful blindness’ to the red flags of surveillance.<\/p>\n

“We must open our eyes to this global tragedy.”<\/p>\n

\"Dr<\/p>\n

Mark Morgan says COVID-19 misinformation decreased trust in the health system. (Supplied:\u00a0Mark Morgan)<\/p>\n

Royal Australian College of General Practitioners quality care chair Mark Morgan said medical journals had a responsibility not to publish vaccine misinformation.<\/p>\n

“There are strong moral and ethical reasons to be very careful that medical publications present information that is accurate and unbiased,” Professor Morgan said.<\/p>\n

“The stakes are much higher in healthcare than in other debates.<\/p>\n

“In the case of vaccines, children’s lives can be lost because the public is exposed to unbalanced articles dressed up as scientific papers.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The University of Queensland has defended its academics who have pushed conspiracy theories and misinformation around fire ant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[29153,64,63,29148,137,29151,29150,29149,29157,29156,29152,29155,29154],"class_list":["post-31050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-apvma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-conny-turni","tag-health","tag-invasive-species-council","tag-marni-manning","tag-national-fire-ant-eradication-program","tag-nick-hudson","tag-peter-parry","tag-reece-pianta","tag-stop-the-toxic-fire-ant-program","tag-the-peoples-revolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}