
How science failed during the Gulf oil disaster - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/how-science-failed-during-the-gulf-oil-disaster.ars
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Tangurena
Missing from this article are all the scientists who took funding from BP in
exchange for silence. Those scientists betrayed science as well.

Sample: [http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/08/17/contract-gag-
sil...](http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/08/17/contract-gag-silence-bp-
gulf-oil-spill-scientists-released-3103/)

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mcguire
"We had just mapped an underwater plume with a one-of-a-kind underwater
vehicle carrying a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer. It could be the
greatest scientific contribution of my career. But the media wasn’t that
interested. They were more concerned with whether the plume was toxic."

Ah, mad scientists. I love 'em. They're all, "I have a robot that maps
underwater hydrocarbon plumes!" Everyone else is like, "Uh, is that stuff
going to kill us?" and the mad scientist just goes, "You fools don't
understand! I have a robot!"

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D_Alex
Very bad title. Should be "How _some scientists_ failed...".

------
rollypolly

      Water samples taken from within the plume were
      crystal clear.
    

Is that the effect of Corexit?

~~~
kijin
The plume was located more than a kilometer below the surface. I don't think
Corexit sprayed on the surface would reach that far down the water column.
"Crystal clear" is more likely to be a result of high dilution. Just like
groundwater is not a river of water under the ground (it's actually rock with
a bit of water filling the cracks), an oil plume is not a river of oil in the
sea.

~~~
nerdtalker
Remember that in the case of the gulf oil spil, Corexit was used in a way that
it wasn't ever specifically engineered for (based on their own datasheets for
9500). Instead, it was directly inserted into the stream just a meter or so
above the wellhead, underwater. There are videos of this from the ROV streams,
and corroborated by other sources (eg NYT:
[http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/impact-of-gulf-
spi...](http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/impact-of-gulf-spills-
underwater-dispersants-is-examined/) Wiki:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Use...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill#Use_of_dispersants_deep_under_water)
)

The result was formation of these subsurface plumes that the author talks
about.

