Interesting footnote on "oil eating bacteria" article

[n2doc]

I know most of this has been posted elsewhere, but I found this part interesting:


Note: Funding for the study was provided by the Energy Biosciences Insitute, a joint project of the University of California, Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Chicago at Illinois-Champaign and BP, who gave the EBI a $500 million, 10-year grant. Terry Hazen sits on the EBI’s Executive Committee, as does BP executive Tom Campbell. Conflicts of interest are rarely as black-and-white or simple as they seem, but this ought to be mentioned.



Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/gulf-plumes-revisited/

[n2doc]

1. I was at a major oil spill scientific meeting yesterday

And no one, no one, had a clue about how the BP "500 million" was going to be spent. This meeting had Overton and a host of other big players in spill studies at it. Clearly the funding is going to insiders without a peer review or other check and balance process.

[BadgerKid]

3. Not sure it's *entirely* insider.

Sure, there's always indirect costs, SWAG, etc., that people usually don't know or talk about. But in their defense, their web site list calls for academic jobs, a new building to be completed in 2013, and a call for pre-proposals that ended two months ago. At the very least, they probably haven't written the checks yet.

Assuming this information is accurate, of course.

[n2doc]

4. It is insider

The grant was awarded without any external consultation that I know of. And it sounds like they larded it up with lots of stuff not relevant to spill studies, which is typical for such things. A new building? What a bunch of crap.

As I said above, the impression the Gulf scientific community has is that the BP money has not been awarded (except in tiny chunks) and is in the hands of the Gulf State Governors. So this article came as news to me.

[BadgerKid]

6. I mistakenly commented on a different issue, sorry.

It may be that bacteria can degrade the oil quickly, but IMO it would be pretty irresponsible if the scientific paper deny the possible existence of the observed plume. I'll have to look at the paper. Reproducibility of results is essential to good science.

[xchrom]

2. recommend

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. I knew it.

Everybody knows there's no such thing as bacteria, and they certainly don't eat oil.