SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Freedom of Spill Research Threatened
from Nature News
It started with a story in the Press-Register of Mobile, Alabama. On 16 July, the paper reported that beleaguered oil giant BP was hurriedly signing up scientists to gather data for the company, to aid its defence in cases arising from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The catch was that these lucrative contracts also restricted the scientists' freedom to publish their research. Within a week, headlines around the world were accusing BP of 'gagging' scientists.
But researchers in the Gulf of Mexico region describe a more complex situation. Scientists, they say, are being trapped in the middle of a scramble by BP and the federal government to round up expert witnesses. The rush is being driven by the Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA), a process defined by US federal law, in which those responsible for the spill, along with state and federal agencies, collect data to assess the environmental impact of the accident.
Government agencies typically rely on their own scientists, whereas responsible parties consult with firms that have in-house scientific expertise, says Michael Wascom, a coastal and ocean management lawyer at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. The size of this spill is unprecedented, however, so academic scientists are increasingly being called on.
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