March 2012 (UTC)
"That sentence assumed that there was wrongdoing. The rest of that section still implies it by the juxtaposition of the funding information with the report details. You may think that this is obvious, but we need a source that explicitly states that the findings of the the UT report were influenced by the funding received."Perhaps personal correspondence with the authors of the Texas study admitting their findings were indeed swayed by the knowledge that the business interests of major donors to their institution and research programmes would likely be substantially affected in the negative if said findings did not produce a clean bill of health for fracking? I mean, that's about the only way you could ever meet your demand. What an utterly absurd request. It's easy to see why it was made, though: just set the bar so high it can't be jumped, then use the failure as an excuse to chop out what you don't like. Maybe you'd have me hack the e-mail accounts of the authors, fish around for evidence (assuming there is even any there), then leak it to a major newspaper so they can write an article that I can cite on here. Only the most naive idiot can fail see the potential for conflict of interest from a study put out by Texas. The university's state is the heart and soul of US oil & gas, but that's certainly not worthy of so much as a mention given that which is also true: the university has multi-million-dollar and other links with the largest provider of fracking services in the United States, not to mention other oil & gas companies with interests in fracking. I have no idea whether their report was swayed by industry links, but only a fool would suggest the potential isn't there. If you don't like the juxtaposition, just open up a gap with a caveat—and make it as weak, pathetic and denigrating as you like for all I care, maybe something like, "socialist—nay, communist!—campaigners in the pay of a European Maoist group have alleged a potential for a conflict of interest, noting that..." For comparison, take the recent global-warming sceptics at the Heartland Institute: as soon as details of the Institute's funding were leaked, they were prominently reported in the press. We don't even need leaks here, the information is freely available to anyone who takes the time to find it out, as Smm201`0 and others have done. All you are interested in doing is eliminating even mention of perfectly obvious potential for conflict of interest. According to Ian Urbina, we can't even get a decent, untarnished report out of the EPA; unlike Texas, the EPA doesn't even take industry funding, for god's sake, yet still it can't escape heavy industry pressure to redact. Aside from irrelevances like minor earthquakes, I have no idea whether fracking is causing all the problems it is alleged to, though I am extremely suspicious given the documented efforts of industry (and their paid-for puppets in government) to tone down or eliminate negative findings, and the truly just ridiculous claims about fracking's potential by people like Lord Browne here in England. And I couldn't care less if fracking's safe or not. Why should I? or anyone? If it's not, it's not; if it is... it is! Outside of a lunatic asylum, who would care? If it is safe (enough), bring it on: jobs, tax receipts, increased energy security, reduced use of coal burning... only a fool wouldn't be interested in those things, particularly given the current economic situation. What I don't like are those desperate only to hear what they want to hear making up totally unreasonable tests so they can get rid of what they regard as offending material.~   00:59, 28