No joke: Take It With a Grain of (Sea) Salt: ----- Gulf Microbe Study Was Funded by BP

[kpete]

Take It With a Grain of (Sea) Salt: Gulf Microbe Study Was Funded by BP

by Marian Wang
ProPublica, Today, 4:09 p.m.



Earlier this week, major <1> news <2> outlets <3> ran with headlines about how a new microbe <4> has been found eating up BP’s oil <5>, and how microbes have degraded the hydrocarbons so efficiently that the vast plumes of oil in the Gulf are now undetectable <6>. No joke.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100825/ap_on_sc/us_sci_gulf_oil_eating_bugs

A bit skeptical of all the oil-is-mostly-gone claims <7>, the day that microbe study was released we chose instead to focus on the Gulf’s thousands of dead fish <8>. Lucky for us.

MIT’s Science Tracker <9>, in a post published yesterday, noted that the microbe study was conducted by U.C. Berkeley scientists through a grant with the Energy Biosciences Institute, and that the Energy Biosciences Institute is funded by none other than BP <10>, through a $500 million, 10-year grant <10>. (To the researchers' credit, they also mentioned the funding in their press release <11> — you just had to read about three-quarters of the way through.)

That relationship shouldn't have been a total surprise. In July, news reports <12> had noted the U.C. Berkeley-BP connection <13>. Activists had protested the $500 million in funding, worried that the funding source would influence the science. The response from U.C. Berkeley? From the Associated Press, emphasis added:

***** But UC Berkeley officials say the institute has nothing to do with the Gulf spill, and the university has no plans to end its research partnership with BP.

more:
http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/take-it-with-a-grain-of-sea-salt-gulf-microbe-study-was-funded-by-bp

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. This is the same argument used against global warming scientists.

"Climatologists are paid with grants from people who believe in global warming, therefore they are wrong and fradulent."

For fuck's sake. These people are implying some sort of malfeasance from UC Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National fucking Laboratory.

Christ.