Fracking, Academic Freedom, and University Research

"Speaking of frac'ing fraking fracking, the University at Buffalo recently created a new Institute to study the issue. The Shale Resources and Society Institute (SRSI) was created back in April and has already been quite busy. It recently issued its first report on the Environmental Impacts of fracking Shale Gas Drilling.

My first reaction to this report was "Wow, I can't believe they put this together in just one month." Others actually spent more time carefully reading the document, however. Generally, the reaction has been a negative one.I think there are many reasons to criticize the fracking report and to question its findings and others have done so admirably. Environmentalists are concerned about the legitimacy of the study, which concluded that "state oversight of oil and gas regulation has been effective" and that there is "a low risk of an environmental event occuring in shale development, and the risks continue to dimish year after year."

There was some small kerfuffles regarding peer review (peers offered feedback but did not do a formal peer review) and folks disputed the data and the conclusions. I have been quite intrigued by the discussions that have popped up about the funding of the study. While people quickly jumped to the conclusion that the study was funded by oil and gas companies, that turned out not to be true. However, many criticize the publishing of what is a "pro-fracking' report from a public institution. Particularly rankling appears to be the report authors' ties to industry and a earlier report some of them had written for a conservative think tank. This is an issue we rarely face in legal academia as so few of us receive extensive outside funding (and I personally don't know anyone who has received industry funding), but I wonder how much we should have to disclose when publishing articles. Should we include a footnote explaining who our former clients are? what organizations we support? Do these requirements change if we work for public institutions?

Jessie Owley