A new post up at the Guardian from two researchers highlights a worrying problem facing academia: oil industry funding.
While we often point out the industry funding behind fake news outlets like the Daily Caller, less visible but more insidious is the funding provided to universities to advance the oil industry’s agenda.
Case in point, as told by Drs. Benjamin Franta and Geoffry Supran, is a recent event at Harvard that showcased a movie by Shell called the “Rational Energy Middle Series”. The event was sponsored by Shell, the panel featured a Shell VP, and the Harvard Kennedy School has received millions in funding from Shell.
The various speakers were all oil-funded to some extent, and of course this wasn’t clearly disclosed. So it should come as no surprise that the “rational energy” choice was the continued use of fossil fuels, particularly natural gas.
Now it might not be a totally terrible thing for Harvard and MIT to get oil industry money, since the more funding they have the more science they can do. But not disclosing this relationship at events like this one is clearly problematic. As Franta and Supran point out, this is like letting the tobacco industry fund public health studies- something we all know from experience didn’t produce quality science.
They end with two suggestions for addressing this issue- mandatory disclosure, and a greater emphasis on research and personnel who are not so fiscally biased.
This is a good start, but leaves something to be desired. Even if you disclose your funding, you still may (even unintentionally) produce biased work. Instead, if oil companies really want to be altruistic instead of self-serving, their funding for universities shouldn’t go to specific projects or centers.
Instead, it should be more like a block grant that the school can use for whatever it wants. That way these prestigious institutions get funding, oil companies get to write off the donations and bias is reduced.
But that, of course, assumes the oil industry’s aim is altruistic. Can we trust them though? We should ask Wayne Tracker and see what he thinks...
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