The
government's Office of Research Integrity had earlier found Popovic guilty of «relatively minor»
misconduct based on what the appeals board called a «handful of words and notations... in one heavily edited paper written
by a
scientist with limited English skills during a volatile period of scientific discovery a decade ago».
Willingham's case has come to prominence again because his was one of the first investigated
by a Texas
government commission set up to examine errors and
misconduct by forensic
scientists — something that Canada has recent experience with.