What the outlet published · Sentence 5
“...while pointing to the work of tailings dam expert Steven Vick, who said the eventual failure rate was 100%.”
What this claims, in our words · ES
El artículo citó a un experto en balsas mineras, presentado como catedrático, que situaba la tasa de fallo final en el 100%.
What the other side says
«Santana also complains that it was inaccurate to refer to the expert mentioned in the article as "Prof Steven Vick" as he is not a professor. He is a geotechnical engineer and consultant with no university affiliation. The incorrect title inflated the apparent authority of the claim and misdirected readers.» «[T]he claims appear to have come from a research paper by Mr Vick in which he said that the structural failure probability of tailings dams "approaches 1.0 after several hundred years" [when constructed using 20th-century technology].»
Santana Minerals' complaint, Media Council ruling, 8 June 2026. EDITOR'S NOTE: on this point the paper corrected itself. The Otago Daily Times accepted the error and the page no longer says "Prof". The Council added that the correction should have been flagged on the article itself.