The scientific journal “Scientific Reports”, part of “Nature” magazine, has refused to withdraw a paper by eight Serbian scientists that details the harmful effects of the “Jadar” project on the environment in the region of Serbia, Nova.rs has learned.
According to our findings, the journal rejected the company Rio Tinto‘s request to remove this scientific article but did accept certain technical corrections to the text itself.
However, these do not change its essence.
This information was confirmed for the Nova.rs portal by the former dean of the Faculty of Forestry, Dr. Ratko Ristić, one of the text’s authors.
“They accepted our answers with minor corrections, mainly related to citing the literature. The work is definitely accepted,” Ristić told the Nova.rs portal.
Dr. Dragana Đorđević, one of the authors of this scientific paper, confirmed for Nova.rs that she received official corrections to the paper and the corrected paper this afternoon.
“The corrections mainly relate to the harmonization of data, as we used the available data at the time of writing, and Rio Tinto is constantly changing them,” she told us.
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Let us recall that professors from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and the Faculty of Mining and Geology of the University of Belgrade, together with the chief scientist of the Rio Tinto company, submitted a letter in August to the scientific journal Nature – Scientific Reports requesting the correction or withdrawal of the paper “Impact of exploratory activities of a potential lithium mine on the environment in western Serbia” by authors Dragana Đorđević and colleagues.
Rio Tinto stated in a press release at the time that they submitted this letter due to, as they claim, “a large number of shortcomings, inconsistently applied scientific methodology, and manipulation of facts and references based on which the authors draw incorrect and scientifically unfounded conclusions.”
This scientific paper, “The Impact of Exploratory Activities of a Potential Lithium Mine on the Environment in Western Serbia,” provides a detailed scientific analysis of the harm experimental drilling in Jadar does to the environment and human health.
“Thousands of people who rely on agriculture will lose their jobs, more than 800 hectares of land will be destroyed at the very beginning, the water supply of as many as 2.5 million citizens will be endangered, and high intake of harmful substances will cause serious diseases of the stomach, liver, kidneys, brain, which can even lead to death,” warned a group of eight Serbian scientists, university professors, who worked on this thorough research on the impact of lithium mining.
The authors of this scientific paper are Prof. Dr. Dragana Đorđević, Jovan M. Tadić, Branimir Grgur, Ratko Ristić, Sanja Sakan, Jelena Brezjanović, Vladimir Stevanović, and Bogdan Šolaja.
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Source: Nova.rs
Photo: Reuters/David Gray