Edward J. "Ted" Steele is an Australian molecular immunologist with interests in virology and evolution. He is an honorary research associate at the C.Y.O'Connor ERADE Village Foundation in Piara Waters, WA, Australia. Steele was also the subject of a dispute in 2001–2002 with the University of Wollongong, which led to his widely publicized dismissal, court-ordered reinstatement and subsequent undisclosed financial settlement by the university. Steele is a proponent of the panspermia hypothesis, which suggests that life exists throughout the Universe. Scientific interests Ted Steele hypothesized the RNA/RT-based mechanism of somatic hypermutation. This is known as neo-Lamarckism. Steele's hypothesis provided the first mechanism to explain Lamarckian evolution: when successful somatic cell changes occur due to environmental changes, copies of the copious new messenger-RNA that have been produced by the successful cells are picked up by harmless retroviruses acting as gene shuttles and transported across the tissue barrier – the Weismann Barrier – to the germline. Finally, the new genetic information is integrated into the DNA by a process involving reverse transcription. This process of writing or translating new information into the DNA provides the essential precursor to acquired changes being passed on to progeny; to the next generation, thereby demonstrating Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characters. Darwinian natural selection then goes to work on the progeny and subsequent generations: those fit for survival do so and those not fit die out. This recombination of Darwin and Lamarck by Steele has been described as meta-Lamarckism. During the 1980s and 1990s, Ted Steele clashed with the scientific establishment, particularly in the UK, over this hypothesis and his support for Lamarck's place in modern science. Steele has stated publicly in an interview with the ABC program Lateline that his controversial theories have had a strong impact on his career: "To be branded a heretic and a pariah meant that my career to keep doing research in this area were extremely limited." From 2010 to 2018, Ted Steele continued to explore reverse transcription as a mechanism to explain the emergence of complex retroviruses of vertebrate lines at or just before the Cambrian Explosion of ～500 Ma. Dismissal and dispute In January 2001, Steele made several allegations to the media in regard to 'soft' marking resulting in the upgrading of full fee paying international students. Steele was summarily dismissed by UoW's Vice-Chancellor Gerard Sutton, stating that the university's reputation was "placed at a serious and imminent risk