The American Geophysical Union says it received a ‘conduct-related complaint’ against Thomas Jordan.
The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has quietly reversed a decision it made in 2017 to award its highest honour, the William Bowie Medal, to seismologist Thomas Jordan. The action came after an AGU investigation determined that Jordan, the former director of the Southern California Earthquake Center in Los Angeles, had violated the AGU’s ethics policy — which he disputes.
“Last fall AGU received a formal ethics complaint regarding the 2017 named Bowie Medalist’s fitness for AGU’s highest honor,” chief executive Christine McEntee wrote in an e-mail to the AGU Council on 3 May. “This was a conduct-related complaint.” According to the e-mail, obtained by Nature, the AGU Ethics Committee investigated the complaint and recommended that the organization’s board of directors not award the medal to Jordan; the board agreed.
Jordan appealed against the decision, as allowed by the AGU ethics policy, but the board ultimately decided in late April not to give him the award.
