Independent Review of Fracking Study Prompts Strong Action from University of Texas

From the New York Times:
The University of Texas said today that it has accepted the findings of a damning independent review of the preparation of a report on potential impacts of shale gas drilling by the school’s Energy Institute. The school said it will undertake six recommended actions, the most significant being the withdrawal of papers from the Energy Institute’s Web site related to the report until they are submitted for fresh expert review.
In its news release, the university said that the lead investigator, Professor Chip Groat, retired last month and the institute’s director, Raymond Orbach, resigned.
The independent review, by a trio of noted science administrators and scholars, expressly did not examine the quality of the study’s findings, but focused on issues related to its creation — particularly what it deemed to be serious problems with undisclosed financial interests (earlier Dot Earth coverage is here).
Read the entire article here.

Here is the University of Texas press release, which does note that the actual findings of the report were not invalidated by the independent review or the university's acceptance of that review's findings.

It also should be noted that the independent review was conducted by the group Public Accountability Initiative, which has been described as an "anti-fossil fuel organization funded in the background by ultra-leftist and financial markets manipulator George Soros."  Read more about this here (subscription required).



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