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University of Texas Fracking Contamination Study Found to Be Flawed For Failure to Disclose Conflict of Interest

Posted byHoumanitarian
UT Professor Charles “Chip” Groat came under fire for not disclosing significant financial ties to the drilling industry, and has resigned from the University. (Photo: Mose Buchele/StateImpact Texas)

Terrence Henry, State Impact Texas
The long-awaited review of a controversial study on the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” was released [Thursday], and it finds numerous errors and flaws with how the study was conducted and released, as well as University of Texas policies for disclosing conflicts of interest.

The head author of the study, Dr. Charles “Chip” Groat, has retired in the wake of the controversy, and the head of the Energy Institute that released it, Dr. Raymond Orbach, has resigned, the University announced today.

The original report by UT Austin’s Energy Institute, ‘Fact-Based Regulation for Environmental Protection in the Shale Gas Development,’ was released early this year, and claimed that there was no link between fracking and water contamination. But this summer, the Public Accountability Initiative, a watchdog group, reported that the head of the study, UT professor Chip Groat, had been sitting on the board of a drilling company the entire time. His compensation totaled over $1.5 million over the last five years. That prompted the University announce an independent review of the study a month later, which was released today.

The review finds many problems with the original study, chief among them that Groat did not disclose what it calls a “clear conflict of interest,” which “severely diminished” the study. The study was originally commissioned as a way to correct what it called “controversies” over fracking because of media reports, but ironically ended up as a lightning rod itself for failing to disclose conflicts of interest and for lacking scientific rigor. […]

The review finds no “intentional misrepresentation” by Groat, and even believes that, at the time, he was likely not violating established conflict of interest policies at the University. But his failure to disclose constitutes ”very poor judgement,” the review says, and harmed the credibility of the report. […]

While the review says that it would be “impracticable, and likely inappropriate to seek to eliminate all ties” between research and the oil and gas industry, it says that “the key is transparency.”
(Read the full story at State Impact Texas)

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