San Diego

Long-simmering feuds among personalities involved in volcano research are set to burst into public view next month with the publication of two books detailing a 1993 volcanic eruption in Colombia that killed six researchers.

The books give starkly different accounts of events leading up to the eruption on 14 January 1993. In No Apparent Danger, Victoria Bruce, a geologist and writer based in Annapolis, Maryland, criticizes the actions of volcanologist Stanley Williams of Arizona State University, who led the fateful expedition into the crater of the Galeras volcano. But in his own book, Surviving Galeras, written with journalist Fen Montaigne, Williams strongly defends his decision to proceed with the expedition.

Deadly data: were seismological readings suggesting volatility ignored at Galeras?

Bruce alleges that Williams ignored important seismology data that suggested Galeras may have been about to erupt. She claims that he was cavalier about safety, thereby contributing to injuries, and misrepresented his role in the incident for years afterwards. She further charges that Williams later misappropriated scientific ideas from another scientist, using them to secure a grant and publish an article with his graduate students.

Williams, who received near-fatal head and leg injuries in the Galeras explosion, denies Bruce's charges, saying he has no regrets about his actions. “The idea of me stealing science is completely untrue,” he adds. But writing his book has forced Williams to acknowledge that he was not the sole survivor of the explosion, as he has repeatedly claimed in the past. “I made a mistake; I am sorry,” Williams says, adding that he has apologized to the other survivors.

At the time of the explosion, Williams was conducting a volcanology workshop. This included a trek into the volcano crater while members of the Colombian media and others observed from the rim. While tests were under way, a volcanic explosion blasted out rocks, killing scientists from Colombia, Russia and Britain. Williams' skull was fractured, his leg was splintered and he nearly died before he was evacuated. He incurred a moderate brain injury.

Killer 'hiccup'

In her book, Bruce — who received a masters degree in geology from the University of California, Riverside, for studies on the Mount Rainier volcano in Washington state — contends that long-period seismology data, which reflect pressure fluctuations in a volcano, suggested that Galeras was potentially volatile at the time of the research trip. Williams ignored these seismology data, she contends.

But Williams says that appropriate significance was attached to the seismology data, and that they “were discussed in great detail” by the volcano explorers. In his book, Williams describes lying injured in the volcano, reviewing his preparations for the trip, and concluding that he couldn't have predicted the explosion. In comparison with other eruptions, the rock burst was “a hiccup”, he writes. “We studied the best available data . . . but Galeras behaved capriciously. I was fooled, and for that I will take responsibility. But I do not feel guilty about the deaths of my colleagues.”

Bruce further charges that Williams misappropriated for publication (Nature 368, 135–137; 1994) research concepts on long-period seismology devised by Bernard Chouet, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey (USGS). From his office in Menlo Park, California, Chouet backed Bruce's account. “He ripped me off,” says Chouet, who says he presented his idea at a November 1991 volcano workshop that was attended by Williams. “I am sorry he [Chouet] feels that way,” says Williams. “He is not correct.”

In dispute

The incidents described by Bruce are not the only ones in which Williams' style has brought him into conflict with other volcanologists.

Norm Banks, a retired USGS geologist, says Williams engaged in an “unprofessional assumption of authorship” of Banks' ideas and data on volcano pyroclastic lava flows in Colombia (Geology 20, 539–542; 1992). Banks says he never again shared any unpublished ideas with Williams. Denying Banks' charge, Williams says: “I'm sorry to hear he looks back at that negatively.”

Nearly two years after the Galeras eruption, Williams was embroiled in a dispute over access to an active South Pacific volcano and his subsequent use of data from Rabaul in Papua New Guinea.

After the USGS declined Williams' request to join its relief mission, Williams obtained emergency funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and went to Rabaul anyway.

Christopher McKee, an Australian seismologist, was at the time head of the Rabaul Volcanological Observatory. Now at the Geophysical Observatory in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, he says Williams did a “snatch and grab raid” for samples for his own publication (Science 273, 490–493; 1996), leaving the local team feeling as if some of their “work had been stolen from them”.

Wally Johnson, a geologist who was then secretary-general of the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior, says he wrote to the NSF complaining about Williams' trip. Johnson, who was at Rabaul, says he found Williams' presence there disruptive. But he adds that Williams “is a good scientist who does good science”.

Williams says he acted appropriately in Rabaul. “I am an aggressive person,” he says. “I am not eager to have US government officials control my thinking. But over the long run, I have remained active on the scene with good results.”