Just when you begin to let yourself believe that BP is doing something right, finally getting the blown out well capped after 85 days of spewing oil into the gulf, you read a story like this. Just when you begin to let yourself believe that BP is doing something right, finally getting the blown out well capped after 85 days of spewing oil into the gulf, you read a story like this. And your blood boils like it's lit by a gas flare all over again.
The latest revelation, thanks to some good investigative journalism on the part of the Mobile Press-Register, is that BP has been buying the silence of Gulf of Mexico research scientists. For the last month, BP has been offering marine scientists at universities all along the gulf coast lucrative contracts in exchange for proprietary use of research that has been ongoing since the outset of the spill. Numbers like $250 an hour have surfaced.
Equally odious is the complicity of the research community who have taken the bait, drawing down a cloak of inky oily darkness over what is actually happening to marine life in the gulf, when what everyone from local fisherfolk to U.S. Justice Department lawyers need is clear information.
Scientists from Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University and Texas A&M University have already accepted offers, according to the article.