[4][5] The awarding of the degree created questions about the standards being applied and whether or not the thesis supervisors and examiners had sufficient knowledge to oversee the research, and led to calls for the university to review the doctorate.
The thesis was conducted from within the university's School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, under the primary supervision of cultural studies professor Brian Martin and the co-supervision of sociologist Andrew Whelan.
The University of Wollongong also agreed to conduct a review into their overall doctoral process, but the scope did not include specific PhD recipients, and therefore did not address Wilyman's work.
[12] Judith Wilyman was awarded a Masters by University of Wollongong (UOW) in 2007 in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts; her thesis topic was the Australian government's pertussis vaccine policy.
[24][13] The Australian reported that "Wilyman [was] shielded from critics" by the university in 2014 when their media office refused a request to promote the 44th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Australasian Society for Immunology, to be held at a Novotel Hotel in Wollongong.
According to the university, they were attempting to limit "the vicious and repeated attacks being directed ... towards a then student"[26] Wilyman entered a PhD a program in 2007 in the same UOW Faculty as awarded her Masters, but with her research focus expanded to cover Australian vaccination policy more generally.
[1] Brull reports that according to supervisor Martin, Wilyman's thesis makes four major points:[28] Other, more specific, claims include that the World Health Organization (WHO) formed a secret committee, which in turn orchestrated "hysteria relating to a global swine flu pandemic in 2009"[5] and that the organisation is "perceived to be out of touch with global communities and … controlled by the interests of corporations and the World Bank".
It dismissed the central idea of the thesis as "rather like a sociologist who insists that jet aircraft remain aloft only because of a conspiracy between aeronautical engineers and greedy airlines" and noted the problem of academic overreach, with the faculty presuming to judge the quality of work well outside its area of expertise.
It characterised the University of Wollongong as putting itself on the wrong side in a "battle of life and death",[31] and questioned whether the granting of the PhD "could 'reasonably be expected' to lead to lower levels of vaccination?
"[30] Alison Campbell, an associate dean and biological sciences lecturer at the University of Waikato, produced a blistering analysis criticising the use of out-of-date references as well as pointing out numerous scientific errors in Wilyman's master's work, including calling the unexplained exclusion of two of four types of vaccine components "an alarming omission for a paper on immunisation".
[33] The Medical Journal of Australia criticised the university in awarding a PhD to a student "demonstrating a glaring lack of understanding of immunology and vaccine science," suggesting that unless legislation keeps the anti-vaccination movement in check "we are ushering in a dangerous time.
"[34] John Dwyer AO, emeritus professor of medicine at the University of New South Wales, wrote: "[Ms Wilyman] has endorsed a conspiracy theory where all sorts of organisations with claimed vested interests are putting pressure on WHO to hoodwink the world into believing that vaccines provide more benefits than they cause harm.
In challenging central arguments of her thesis, the RACP highlighted that the TGA is the regulatory body responsive to the monitoring and investigation of any adverse events and any significant concerns around vaccination safety.
[40] In response to UOW and Wilyman's thesis an online petition called Stop the University of Wollongong's Spread of Disease and Death Via Anti-Vaccination PhD was established in January 2016[41] and attracted over 2,100 signatures within the first few weeks.
[44] In the Elsevier journal Vaccine three months later, UoW's executive dean of the Faculty of Science, Medicine and Health, researcher and toxicologist Alison Jones,[45] co-authored a paper in-part referring to Wilyman, and in discussing the balance of good public health versus unchecked academic freedom stated: Martin responded to Durrheim and Jones, arguing that they had misrepresented parts of Wilyman's work.
[47] McIntyre, a senior doctor at the Westmead Children's Hospital, said that Wollongong University "must bear the major responsibility for manifestly inadequate supervision", saying: "It is clear from even cursory examination that Wilyman's thesis, although raising some legitimate questions about gaps in both the process and transparency of immunisation policy development, is based on a highly selective and poorly informed review of the literature, driven by the imperative to support pre-determined conclusions.
[32] In June 2016 The Australian reported that Wilyman was an audience member at a vaccination forum run by the Telethon Kids Research Institute in Perth.