The "Reflex" project encompassed a number of laboratory studies into EMFs, funded by the EU.
There are allegations that some of the experiments performed at the medical University of Vienna are unreliable. These suggestions were first made by Alexander Lerchl from Germany. The suggestion is that a lab technician fabricated some data.
The head of the Reflex programme (Franz Adlkofer) and the now-retired head of the research group concerned (Hugo Rudiger) appear to have admitted that at least some data were fabricated. But it is unclear exactly how much has been admitted. We understand that they have agreed to withdraw one published paper but have not agreed to the University's request to withdraw another paper involving the same person.
The University ethics committee investigated these claims at meetings in June and July 2008. There was further controversy because it seems that the chair for the first hearing of the ethics committee was a lawyer who had previously woirked for the mobile phone industry. However, a different chair was appointed for subsequent hearings. It appears that the University issued an press release stating that some data were fabricated.
The experiment was supposed to be conducted "blind", that is, the people performing the experiment could not tell when the field was on or off. But Christian Wolf wrote a Brief Communication to the journal Bioelectromagnetics where he stated that it was possible, if the investigator wanted to, to tell when a coil was live and when not from a code displayed by the apparatus.
The experiment in question concerned radiofrequency radiation. But both the Reflex programme and the laboratory in question also performed experiments on ELF EMFs.
