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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The relevant question isn't whether fracking can be safe. It's whether fracking is safe, as practiced.
And that's what's purportedly being studied. And what the article alleges is likely being perverted by corporate contributions.
After all, we know that drilling for oil can be acceptably safe. And we also know that in the absence of effective oversight, some drillers will lean as far from safety and caution as is economically feasible, to the point of running decidedly unsafe operations.
This research is meant to answer the question of whether fracking companies are sufficiently safe on their own, or whether the public interest can only be protected with increased oversight. [1]
[1] There is no serious policy argument that we stop fracking altogether. Natural gas has become the cornerstone of the United States' energy independence strategy. The only policy question is whether we consider natural gas "good enough" or we view it as a transitory step toward renewable sources. In every case, it will continue. The debate here is merely about oversight vs profits.
I agree that the science behind any analysis is what is important, and not the nationality of the researcher, nor the paternity of the researcher, nor the existence of money that the researcher may have had direct or indirect connections to.
The original article was focused on scientists having a pathway to corporate funds, and the original poster in this thread began what I can only see as a rant against scientists akin to creating a strawman, then burning in effigy.
My points were made to hopefully paint a "rebuttal" image that scientists may come to conclusions different than a prevailing crusade without being soul-less foreigners taking money so they can afford to eat other people's children.
As a minarchist, my environmental stance is confined by individual rights infringement; and that does not excuse air and water contamination. One's rights to dump crap in their water-table ends where my aquifer begins; and these types of laws do exist, if they are not being enforced, shame on the hooligans we elected and appointed.
I do not assume a broad conspiracy, if there is malfeasance, it is a non-confederacy of petty malfeasers.
If we assume that the researchers in question are in fact intentionally misleading and misrepresenting the facts then yes, that is alarming.
But what does that have to do with being American? Pocketing money from industry at the expense of public health and safety would be disappointing given any nationality.
He means as opposed to having foreign researchers putting out the claims, who could conceivable have less of an ethics barrier, since it's "not their land".
Still agree with you though - pretty shameful if true.
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.
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.