V predchozim sdeleni lze narazit na spojeni v holandstine: 'naar Belangrijke Politieke Personen in het Buitenland'. Ctenari se asi protoci panenky, co je to za silenost, ten sam o sobe uz zcela dostatecne sileny krakaten jeste politizovat. Nez stalo se, ale zatim jsou objasneny jen fragmenty. Vec bude lepe pochopitelna z nasledujicich uryvku z korespondence s uradem Nemeckych vedeckych ombudsmanu. Ten sjednal ve veci poradek, takze zablokovane datove soubory byly zase odpeceteny. Pokud se tyka ostatnich aspektu te paradni BOUDY michurynskeho typu, vyzkumy jeste dale probihaji, a teprve po jejich skonceni bude vydana zaverecna vyzkumna zprava o teto Bavoracke variante Argentinskeho tanga.

Ombudsmen (Ombudsleute)
of the German science

Dear Sirs,

I would like to address you as the Ombudsmen (Ombudsleute) of the German science. I have been Czech (Czechoslovak) citizen. I was accused by a German scientific body, without any ground, of a serious misconduct. Let us start with a key message of the story, the message I got on Oct. 23, 1995 from RZG Garching (belonging to IPP Garching):

"Please don't bother me any more with your problem. As I told you, I am not authorized to do anything about it. As this computer center is located at IPP-Garching and the address is ipp-garching.mpg.de this institution is involved when mails with dobious contents are sent from the user zds@ipp-garching.mpg.de to important persons of the political life of Bundesrepublik Deutschland. That is what happened."

Now, I would like to stress the following. I never sent anything to the abovementioned important persons. I do not what does it mean, and I do not know email address of any such person. I have least idea who did it or how.

Moreover, I would like to mention that nowadays there are millions of workstations or advanced PCs, connected to network. Any person running such device can temporarily change its address, simulate another address if he/she wishes so. Therefore the above formulation sent from is not correct, it should read sent from an unknown site with the label. This is certainly a difference.

I do not actually require too much -- just natural things anybody else would do, experiencing such an odd story:

(i) I would like not to be placed on some German black list. Therefore I have been asking for a quite logical tool -- a list of the German political VIP offices concerned so that I could directly inform them that I have had nothing common with the event claimed by RZG people. I consider my essential right to inform each VIP's office what happened, and what was my real role in it. It should be nothing strange, it would just a logical step of a man who was accused without a ground.

(ii) The user ID zds in RZG was locked sometimes in August 1995. It would be ctritically important to know the date(s) of the emails to the German VIPs -- it is possible that in that time I was on a conference in a place without any network access. This can be proven by statements of the conference participants.

(iii) I would heavily need my files stored under the locked user ID zds for work on our portion of the contributed volume "Molecular Complexes in Earth's, Planetary and Cometary Atmospheres". Clearly enough, our work on the project has havily been influnced as all the important related files with the results have been stored in RZG. This does demage not only to our own participation but also influences other participants as it can cause delays. I have hoped that every scholar would understand this very basic scientific need and duty -- how one can write an article without access to the supporting original data files?

Now, let us move towards a possible root of the oddity. I enclose one interesting example of a pseudoscience or questionable research practice. It is interesting illustration that a pseudoscience may come any time anywhere (this time from the Parnas of the nearby Czech science). The East-European science is a community of its own, with its own rules and problems.

In the unique community, it can happen that someone announces "We discovered ... a compound which is ... the strongest classical explosive, known so far. One hundred times, possibly even one thousand times stronger than trinitrotoluene, dynamite or nitroglycerin", and nobody says a word against ... . I enclose a representative sample of the pseudoscience and also my criticism of it. Probably, only in Eastern Europe this type of irresponsible claims can come from a highly ranking academic official and even be celebrated (after all, infamous T. D. Lysenko was an academy president). I believe it might have something in common with the above strange event. It is perfectly true that Iemailed my analysis of the scientific nonsense to several colleagues in order to have their comments on text before publishing it. This is of course a pretty legitimate email use.

Indeed, science needs its Ombudsmen and also its Whistleblowers. Volume I of the report "Responsible Science", produced by the American N.A.S. / N.A.E. / I.M., clearly states (p. 154): " ... Serious and considered whistle-blowing is an act of courage that should be supported by the entire research community ... ". My steps in the particular case have been serious and considered. There are some indications that the very strange event with my user ID in Garching might be a kind of action to prevent criticism of the above pseudoscience.

In overall, I ask you for any action which would help to clarify the matter and thus to clear my name, and also to allow for my regained access to our own original results.

Yours faithfully,
Zdenek Slanina
Professor of Chemistry