According to colleagues, Lonnstedt, who now lives in Sweden, no longer wants to be contacted about her research and, in fact, has abandoned her career in science.
What she has left behind is a test case of how the science community deals with concerns about alleged malpractice when they are raised.
Veteran marine scientist Walter Starck, who received a PhD in marine science from the University of Miami in 1964, says the Lonnstedt affair is symptomatic of a new era.
Starck says generations of researchers have been schooled in a culture wherein threats to the Great Barrier Reef are an unquestionable belief from which all evidence is interpreted.
“She (Lonnstedt) got into the ocean acidification and global warming and the effect CO2 was going to have on the behaviour of marine animals and she started publishing,” Starck says.
“Immediately the publishers lapped it up. As a graduate student she managed to get as much published in one year as most professors do in a decade.”Lonnstedt’s work is now being picked apart.As well it should, especially as $AUD 1 billion in tax revenue has been spent addressing something that may not exist.