Government Scientists reverse findings when ordered to release data. Scientific Fraud?

Photo credit Tavish Campbell.

Homiskanis (Don Svanvik)
Alexandra Morton

Summary
In 2023, the Canadian Scientific Advisory Secretariat (CSAS), Canada’s highest science authority, reported that salmon farms do not elevate sea lice infections on wild salmon. This finding opposite to research published over several decades by Canada’s leading universities raised questions.
Internal DFO documents reveal a draft of this CSAS Sea Lice Report had been altered inexplicably reversing the original result that salmon farms do increase lice on wild salmon.
Your government’s upcoming 2029 ban on open net salmon farming in BC hinges on whether the industry causes less than minimal impact on wild salmon, including transmission of farm lice infection. Sea lice are an intractable global problem harming both salmon farm profits and the wild salmon exposed to salmon farms.
It took two years and a direct order from the Information Commissioner of Canada to force DFO to release the data used in CSAS Sea Lice Report. As soon as these data were made public, DFO authors of the CSAS Sea Lice Report reversed their conclusions in an abstract posted May 8, 2025, on a scientific journal website. Using the same data, these authors reverting to the original result that sea lice on salmon do increase sea lice infection of wild salmon, opposite to the Science Advisory Secretariate’s declaration.
Cermaq entered this CSAS Sea Lice Report as evidence against Canada and our Fisheries Ministers, in a Civil Claim for losses due to closure of salmon farms. We now understand that the authors no long stand by its conclusions, since the report’s data were made public.

Brief Outline
The Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) Sea Lice report, completed in 2022, released in 2023, cleared salmon farmers of responsibility for sea lice outbreaks that are harmful to young wild salmon. The list of authors includes DFO scientists Jewoon Jeong, Dr. Simon Jones, Dr. Stewart Johnson and Jay Parsons.
Internal DFO documents show Dr. Simon Jones altered a draft of the CSAS Sea Lice Report provided to him by Jeong. Jeong’s analysis states salmon farms are implicated in lice infection of wild salmon. Without explanation Dr. Simon Jones, senior DFO scientist, struck out portions of this manuscript and added text in a WORD document which recorded his initials on his edits. These edits reversed the conclusions so that the document now reported salmon farms are not responsible for sea lice outbreaks on wild
salmon. The intent of this edit carried over into the final version posted on the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat website.
Independent scientists with decades of experience studying the relationship between salmon farms and sea lice infestations on young BC wild salmon, were not convinced and requested the CSAS Sea Lice Report data for reanalysis. DFO refused provide this data until, after a two-year effort, the Information Commissioner of Canada found the reasons to withhold invalid and ordered the Minister of Fisheries to release this data.
Shortly after the data was released, Jeong, Jones, Johnson and Parsons, authors on the CSAS Sea Lice Report, appear on an abstract posted on a scientific journal website where they use the same data to conclude that indeed sea lice from salmon farms do infect wild salmon.
The Sea Lice Report posted on the Canadian Scientific Advisory Secretariat website and the scientific paper by the same authors, using the same data, cannot both be true.

Details
2023 DFO released the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS) Sea Lice Report which stated there is “No statistically significant association” between sea lice on farm salmon and sea lice on young wild salmon swimming past the farms. Jeawoon Jeong, Simon Jones, Stewart Johnson and Jay Parsons are listed among the authors.
January 30, 2023, Sixteen non-government scientists highly qualified in this field deemed these results unsubstantiated and sent a critique of the CSAS Sea Lice Report to the Minister of Fisheries listing serious ethical and technical concerns. They went on to request the data used by DFO to allow open and transparent confirmation of the outlier conclusion. Open access data is a modern standard of science. Among the scientists’ concerns was omission of key data that altered the final result, a red flag of potential scientific fraud. DFO refused to provide the data.
Internal DFO documents accessed by Alexandra Morton appear to show Dr. Simon Jones, senior DFO parasitologist, identified by his initials in a WORD doc altering a draft of the Sea Lice Report provided to him by his assistant, Jeong. Jeong’s words that farm lice do influence infection on wild salmon were struck out and replaced, without explanation, that sea lice infection of wild salmon could not be explained by lice in salmon farms. (See page 5, comment “JS” Jones, Simon).
This perversion of the original result carried over into the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat Sea Lice Report which states ”No statistically significant association was observed between” farm lice and wild infections (See page 23).
The salmon farming industry promoted this Canadian Science Advisory Secretariate CSAS Sea Lice Report as confirmation their industry was not impacting wild salmon with lice infections. Mowi and Cermaq used it in their judicial review against the Fisheries Minister’s decision to protect wild salmon by closing 17 salmon farms in the Discovery Islands, Canada’s biggest wild salmon migration corridori and Cermaq cites the CSAS Sea Lice Report as evidence in their civil claim for losses against Canada’s Ministers of Fisheries for closing salmon farms:

27. “In January 2023, CSAS released Science Response 2022/045 concluding that there was no statistical correlation between the presence of Atlantic salmon farms and sea lice counts on wild juvenile Pacific salmonii”.

February 16, 2023, Stan Proboszcz, Watershed Watch, filed an access to information request for the data used by the CSAS Sea Lice Report.
June 2, 2023, Proboszcz received material from DFO in response to his request (A-2022-01091), but the CSAS Sea Lice data had been redacted.
May 30, 2024, a year later, Dr. Andrew Bateman, Pacific Salmon Foundation, one of the 16 scientists who critiqued the CSAS Sea Lice Report, received incomplete files from David Morin Director General, Ocean and Regulatory Science, with the pertinent data omitted.
Proboszcz filed an Environmental Petition to the Auditor General of Canada and on January 28, 2025, commissioner Caroline Maynard “ordered the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans [Diane Lebouthillier] to fully disclose the records.”
April 2025, during the election, the CSAS Sea Lice Report data was finally released.
May 8, 2025, within weeks of release of the data in an inexplicable twist, Jeong, Jones, Johnson and Parsons, appear as coauthors on a scientific paper stating the opposite of their CSAS Sea Lice Report. They revert to Jeong’s original result, before Dr. Jones added his edits, that salmon farm lice do increase lice infections on young wild salmon.
By this time, the Strathcona Regional District board had voted to support salmon farms citing the CSAS Sea Lice Report as evidence that salmon farms in the Discovery Islands were not harming wild salmon. And this CSAS report from Canada’s highest science authority was entered into evidence in lawsuit by the salmon farming industry against Canada.
May 2025 the Government of Canada continues to display the CSAS Sea Lice Report as scientific advice that salmon farms are not harming wild salmon with sea lice infection, while the DFO authors of this report now claim the opposite.
We respectfully submit a list of potential actions in response to this information:

1. Immediately remove the CSAS Sea Lice Report from the Government of Canada website.
2. Inform Government of Canada lawyers working to defend Canada against the Civil Claim that the authors of the CSAS Sea Lice Report no longer stand by their 2022 results.
3. Require from this time forward that the Canadian Scientific Advisory Secretariate release all underlying data used in their scientific advice to repair trust in Canadian government science.
4. Examine the current CSAS Sea Lice do over which is underway to ensure it does better than the 2022 process by interviewing the non-government scientists involved to record their evaluation of the hope that the outcome will not be a repeat of the current disarray.
5. Fully evaluate the state of wild salmon returns in all regions of British Columbia with special attention to wild salmon survival rates where salmon farms have been removed vs. where they still operate, sharing data with non-government scientists to ensure balance.
6. Review the actions of the scientists involved through the lens of potential Scientific Fraud; a recognized trend since the tobacco industry dangerous to society and could be discouraged through mandatory requirements for transparency.

i We Wai Kai and Wei Wai Kum First Nations, MOWI Canada West Inc., Cermaq Canada LTD., and Grieg Seafood BC vs The Minister of Fisheries - Diane Morrison Affidavit, paras 101-102, Peter McKenzie Affidavit, para 26
ii Cermaq Civil Claim against Minister of Fisheries para 27, Court File No. VLC-S-S-251228, Feb 18, 2025

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