

Natural Gas Fracking Industry May Be Paying Off Scientists - steelhive
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/07/gas-fracking-science-conflict/

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sseveran
Having been involved in both industry funded and government funded medical
research I don't think this is a big deal. To me the most important thing is
to make sure that it is disclosed. Many researchers that are great at what
they do are highly sought after experts and they should be. The real question
is one of integrity. If a researcher has integrity then they will be
objective. If they lack integrity then they may be more willing to twist their
findings, even if they don't outright manipulate them. It does no good for a
company to fund a researcher who is ultimately proved to have faked data.

One note on public funding, I believe that there is just as much if not more
pressure to shape conclusions from public funding sources. After all these
organizations are composed of people as well who are often pursuing an agenda
of some sort whether its overt or not. If a researcher is dependent on funding
from an agency or a group inside an agency it is often in their best interest
to ensure that their conclusions align with that agencies view. If not there
is significant risk to future funding.

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malandrew
It seems to me like funding should be "double blind" by having all
participants on both sides of an issue that want research performed to funnel
the money into a general purpose fund. Scientists should not know where the
money is coming from, and industry shouldn't be allowed to pick and choose
which scientists do the research so there is equal chance of funding people
with opposing viewpoints of what industry wants people to here.

AFAICT most corruption can be mitigated by clean interfaces that reduce if not
eliminate conflicts of interest.

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Smrchy
Considering those professors are Americans i have to wonder what relationship
they have to their (home)country when they say fracking is harmless to
groundwater.

Don't these people have children, grand children?

Is money really so important?

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sageikosa
I would imagine if they are scientists, they assert fracking is harmless due
to knowledge and research. If something is injected at a depth below the water
table, and is at least as dense or denser than water, it does not move upward
against the pull of gravity unless acted upon by an outside force. Their
nationality has nothing to do with that.

My father the (retired) hydro-geologist (and former professor) is not alarmed
by fracking; and to the best of my knowledge he hasn't taken big oil and gas
money (or he's been holding out on me). He never did big research projects,
although he did also consult for a civil engineering firm analyzing and
remediating super-fund sites and drilling contamination-free water wells for
various communities across the north-eastern US.

Oil and gas companies give/grant/donate money to universities for a variety of
reasons, not least of which is to improve the talent pool for recruitment. And
if you want to commission a study, you go to where the experts are.

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CWuestefeld
No way did this comment deserve a downvote. It's _at least_ as thoughtful as
the comment it replied to. This would appear to be downvoting as "I don't like
your opinion", as opposed to "you're not adding any value to the
conversation".

Addressing the concern of the actual article:

The fact is that you can't escape from having researchers having some kind of
tie to their subject matter, on one side of an issue or another.

The reason that people have chosen a given area of research is that they've
got some kind of interest in it -- for or against. There's really no way
around this, and so we rely on openness of results, and the peer review
process to police research.

The same problem looms in governmental regulation, where regulatory capture
[1] is an unavoidable problem. If you want someone to write regulations who
actually knows what the heck they're doing, you're going to have to go with
someone who got experience from somewhere, which is more than likely from
working in the industry. The problem here, of course, is that there is no
openness nor peer review in regulation.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture>

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sageikosa
I'll add a couple of things I didn't originally.

First, the operations around fracking do involve risk and the potential for
contamination, the same way as drilling any other hole (sealed or unsealed) in
the ground, through a water table; and there are already numerous regulations
and licenses (and rights issues) involved with these, but typically the
fracking injection process itself is fairly well insulated from causing
widespread surface damage.

Lode-changing stresses on pre-existing faults should probably be the most
pressing area of reasearch, and as always, deliberate malfeasance via
oversight and enforcement of existing clean-air and water laws is important
regardless of the science behind the fracking operation itself.

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CWuestefeld
As the owner of a largish block of land on top of the Marcellus shale, I've
got an interest in this, and I've been watching the discussion carefully.

The two biggest areas of concern that I've heard are (1) the possibility of
releasing methane into drinking water sources; and (2) the manner in which the
used water and fracking fluid will be disposed of.

As you note, #1 isn't specifically a fracking thing, but related to any deep,
powerful disturbance of the ground.

From what I've read, #2 is generally OK, but marred by occasional malfeasance.
(It's difficult to write regulations to deal with people who are, by
definition, breaking the regulations.) But I've also read that there are newer
methods of fracking being tried, that don't need the same sorts of chemicals,
or quantities.

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snowwrestler
There is more to objectivity than where the funding comes from.

The discussion of whether cell phone radios cause brain cancer is instructive.
There are many people who do not fully understand the physics involved, but
tend to be suspicious of technology and industry, who continue to bang the
drum about the dangers of cell phone use. I've had conversations with a friend
who holds a Ph.D. in toxicology in which no amount of data I could reference
could shake her conviction that cell phones cause brain cancer. That is not
because of where she draws a paycheck. It is simply a belief she has
developed.

You see the same thing in any discussion of large-scale energy technology.
We've all seen the discussions of nuclear energy here on Hacker News, for
instance.

Is fracking dangerous? It seems almost certain it could be--any type of
engineering on such a large scale has that potential. But there are almost
always safer ways to engineer things. And a balanced accounting should attempt
to include the benefit that natural gas as an energy source can create for our
society. For example, it burns a lot cleaner than coal. This is the aspect of
energy development that is most often hand-waved away, in favor of assertions
that we should be 100% renewables. Of course solar, wind, and hydro all create
their own safety and environmental concerns too.

