Ken McLeod

PO Box 51
Moruya NSW 2537
14 June 2012

TO: PROFESSOR TIM MARCHANT,

DEAN OF RESEARCH,
UNIVERSITY OF WOLLINGONG,

Dear Professor Marchant

RE: THE OPEN LETTER FROM JUDY WILYMAN TO YOU

I am the Ken McLeod referred to by Judy Wilyman in her open letter. Having been
grievously misrepresented by her, I wish to set the record straight.

Wilyman says: “Dr. Berryman is a subscriber to the Skeptics organisation, the same lobby
group that funded a prize to Ken McLeod for making a false claim to the Health Care
Complaints Committee (HCCC) about the consumer advocacy group, the Australian
Vaccination Network (AVN).”

First, I did not make a “false claim to the Health Care Complaints Committee (HCCC)." (Note
that the correct name of the organisation is Health Care Complaints Commission.) My
complaint was vindicated by the HCCC. The Supreme Court found that there was insufficient
information in my complaint to justify an investigation, namely I did not include the name of
a person affected by the AVN's information. The findings in the HCCC report were not
overturned, nor did the Court find in any way that my complaint was "false."

Second, I was awarded the Australian Skeptics’ “Thornett Award For The Promotion Of
Reason” 16 months after I submitted my complaint to the HCCC. The two events have only
a passing acquaintance. Even if the two events were inseparable, they have no relevance to
Dr Berryman’s statements or to Wilyman’s attack on the McCafferys. A short response is
“so what?”

Next, I refer to Wilyman’s claim that “at no time have I ’targeted grieving parents’.” Any
rational person reading Wilyman’s diatribes can not fail to come to the conclusion that this
was the most outrageous attack on grieving parents; good people who have pleaded many
times to be left alone.

Last, Wilyman’s claim that the McCafferys have received money “from the Skeptics or any
other lobby group” is so insensitive an attack that it beggars belief. Here it is in a post she
made on June 3 2012.
Is this the standard of scholarship acceptable to the University of Wollongong? I find it hard
to believe that someone who has had advanced to the rank of PhD student could so
grievously misrepresent the Supreme Court judgement, my award from the Skeptics, her
articles concerning the McCafferys, and the McCaffery’s motives, as Wilyman has.

These attacks on me and the McCafferys are indeed sad reflections of the state of academic
freedom in Australia and I ask you to have Ms Wilyman disciplined.

Yours sincerely

Ken McLeod