Chomsky: How America's Great University System Is Getting Destroyed

[Divernan]

5. Full professors whoring themselves out like one-sided expert witnesses

The reason the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is the only state in the union which does not place an extraction tax on frackers (even Palin's Alaska & Bush's Texas chose to impose this kind of tax) is that the frackers successfully funded "research" projects by some Penn State professors which concluded that such a tax would keep drillers out of the state. So ridiculous even on the face of it, since all knew that the Marcellus Shale in PA is the mother lode for frackers. So we PA taxpayers subsidize Penn State & the university turns around and not just allows, but encourages its faculty to be bought off to screw us taxpayers out of the extraction tax on fracking.

These corporate funded studies are not peer reviewed but are presented to policy makers and the public with the imprimatur of the universities.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-03/penn-state-faculty-snub-of-fracking-study-ends-research.html

A natural-gas driller’s group has canceled a Pennsylvania State University study of hydraulic fracturing after some faculty members balked at the project that had drawn criticism for being slanted toward industry.

The Marcellus Shale Coalition, which paid more than $146,000 for three previous studies, ended this year’s report after work had started, said Kathryn Klaber, coalition president.

The earlier studies were co-written by former Penn State professor Tim Considine, an economist now at the University of Wyoming who has produced research on economic and energy issues under contract to trade associations. The first study, in 2009, initially failed to disclose its industry funding and was used by lawmakers to kill a state tax on gas drillers. It was characterized as advocacy for producers by groups such as the nonprofit Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center in Harrisburg.

Two Schools

The University of Texas at Austin is reviewing a February study on fracking after reports said the professor who led the project is on the board of a gas driller. State University of New York at Buffalo trustees are reviewing a report on the school’s Shale Resources and Society Institute. In May, the institute issued a study on the environmental record of fracking in Pennsylvania that drew attention to the role of gas companies in creating the institute, according to a Sept. 12 memorandum.