This website is owned and run by Neil Jones.I am a scientist who has spent may years working with the help of colleagues to build this website. As a scientifically minded minded person who loves reason and the study of scientific learning. I am offended by the irrational nonsense that I regularly read on the internet about ragwort. I am also concerned about the environmental damage that results.
The site is the product of over two decades of detailed research on the subject and is carefully validated by consulting with other experts internationally. There is now abundant proof that ragwort has been the subject of a campaign of falsehoods and misinformation and as it is a very important plant ecologically this is of concern. I regularly advise some of the major conservation organisations in the UK on the subject and although my site is a personal matter, I do occasionally sign letters to the press on this subject on behalf of Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland who trust my expertise.
To contact me please use this email address. ragwortfacts@gmail.com.
Can I trust the information here?
Everything you read on-line needs to be regarded with some degree of scepticism as anyone can create a website or claim to be an expert. So in order for you to be sure that the facts are correct you need to be sure that the statements made are supported by proper scientific studies done in a professional manner and published in peer-reviewed journals. This has been done extensively for this site and has involved years of work reading hundreds of scientific papers and many hours travelling to unusual libraries and locations to find the data. Some of the scientific papers have had to be found from academic sources internationally as they are not available easily in the UK.
Sometimes the claims that are being made are so ludicrous that no scientist should consider them as valid or perhaps nothing has ever been published and there is little that can be found in the literature. This would be the in the case of the false claim that Common Ragwort is a serious problem in South Africa, when in reality the plant has never been recorded there, or regarding the actual figures for possible poisoning cases at an animal hospital (extremely low and almost non-existent). In these cases it has been necessary to research the actual data which may never have been published. This is done by consulting expert sources who hold records or using requests under Freedom of Information legislation. .