Q: The central piece of evidence in the report is the timeline. The whistleblowers had pieced together Lönnstedt's whereabouts using their own records, text messages, Facebook posts, etc. They claimed that she arrived on Gotland to do her study on 4 May 2015, and then left the island on 15 May, which meant she could not have done the 3-week study as described in Science. The board did the same thing using receipts, travel records, and emails, and they arrived at almost exactly the same timeline.
A: Exactly. The difference between the board and the previous investigations is the board actually had all of the evidence.
Q: But why you didn't ask Lönnstedt about the timeline after the accusations were first made?
A: But I did, I confronted her with the timeline. She said she was there and she gave details around the whole timeline, and then I believed her.
Q: The new report also says she and you met in Uppsala on 19 May; after that she went to Stockholm. In other words, she was no longer at the island, but it was only 14 days after the experiments began.
A: It wasn't really clear when she actually started the experiment. She had a whole bunch of experiments. She claimed that because all the data were lost, she couldn't say exactly when the experiment had started. There was a little bit of confusion there. That was something she leaned on all the time, that the computer was stolen and that all the documentation of the experiment was gone.
Q: You have strongly defended your postdoc in the past, saying she was a "meticulous researcher" with a "brilliant career" ahead of her. Now, you seem to distance yourself from her. It may look to some as if you threw her under the bus after the case became hopeless.
A: No, I had trust in her, very much, but it takes a lot before you really change your opinion. … It takes some time to going from trusting her to accusing her. That is very difficult. … During the [CEPN] investigation, it became clear there were some big holes in her story. And then I confronted her with the travel documents, and asked her about that, and said you have to supply me with the travel documents, otherwise I cannot believe you. And she never did.
a little annoying - but you're right, it's funny at the same time.