Harvard Researchers Falsely Claim Anti-Coal Study Was Independent of the EPA

by Dave Blount | June 5, 2015 2:43 pm

It used to be that a scientific study coming out of Harvard University carried significant weight. This is not necessarily so anymore, now that academics furtively collaborate with the government. Steve Milloy reports at Breitbart:

E-mails obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency show that Harvard University, Syracuse University and two of their researchers appear to have falsely claimed a study supporting EPA’s upcoming global warming rules was conducted “independent(ly)” of the agency.

In early May, a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change purported to support a key EPA claim about its forthcoming global warming rules aimed at coal-fired power plants. The New York Times’ headline, “EPA Emissions Plan Will Save Thousands of Lives, Study Finds,” typified the media coverage.

Across the media, the authors were innocuously described as simply university-affiliated “researchers.” After all, the researchers had declared they had “no competing financial interests” in their study. Both universities had issued media releases heralding the study as the “first independent, peer-reviewed paper of its kind.”

Study co-author Charles Driscoll of Syracuse University told the Buffalo News, “I’m an academic, not a politician. I don’t have a dog in this fight.” The claim of independence was also emphatically asserted by study co-author Jonathan Buonocore of Harvard University. “The EPA, which did not participate in the study or interact with its authors, Buonocore says, roundly welcomed its findings.” [Emphasis added].

This was a lie.

An online search of EPA’s web site revealed that Syracuse’s Driscoll has previously involved as a principal investigator in studies that received over $3.6 million in research grants from EPA. Co-author Dallas Burtraw, a researcher at the think tank Resources for the Future, had been involved in previous EPA grants totaling almost $2 million. Harvard co-author Jonathan I. Levy had been involved in over $9.5 million worth of grants. Co-author Joel Schwartz, also of Harvard, had been previously involved in over $31 million worth of grants from EPA.

Are we to believe that a group of researchers who had previously received some $45 million in grants from EPA, no doubt hoping for more in the future, could possibly not have any dog in this fight? It’s probably not necessary to ask how this slipped past the incurious mainstream media.

By obtaining emails through a Freedom of Information Act request, Milloy confirmed that study authors Driscoll, Buonocore, Schwartz, and Harvard’s Kathy Lambert communicated with the environazis of the EPA regarding the study.

Still more dishonest than creating the impression of independence was the highly dubious claim that Obama’s War on Coal will save anyone’s life.

war-on-coal
A few academics need to be fired too.

On a tip from Stormfax. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/environment/harvard-researchers-falsely-claim-anti-coal-study-was-independent-of-the-epa/