Can Big Oil-Funded University Departments Remain Objective In Their Research?

“As Oxford alumni, staff and students, we are united in our opposition to this new partnership and the growing trend of oil companies funding, and thus influencing, the research agenda of our universities.” The letter published in The Guardian was crystal clear: Oxford University’s students and staff do not want Shell to fund a new laboratory in their Earth Sciences department.

Shell’s £5.9 million ($8.9 million) funding over five years is meant to finance research into “unconventional hydrocarbons”, including the geological impact of the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for shale gas. It will also fund research into Carbon Capture and Storage (CSS), another controversial technology for burying carbon from power stations underground. But the Council of Oxford Student Union voted to oppose the partnership and to ask the vice-chancellor to reconsider it.

They accuse the university of hypocrisy for accepting funding from Shell. In the letter published, they write that “Shell is a particularly inappropriate choice of funder for an Earth sciences laboratory.” They point out that the Anglo-Dutch company’s core business of oil production is in conflict with research produced by university scientists on the causes and effects of climate change. “Oxford’s own climate scientists are warning that we need to leave the majority of known fossil fuels in the ground and yet this new partnership will undertake research to help Shell to find and extract even more hydrocarbons,” the letter says.

 

Independent and objective research?

Oxford University’s decision to accept an oil company’s money appears to be in direct contradiction with the conclusions of some of its own research. But the funding by Shell raises a more fundamental question. Research is supposed to be rigorous, objective and independent. To what extent are researchers able to maintain their independence when they depend on certain private parties for their financing? What would happen if the research undertaken reaches conclusions that go against Shell interests? Taking fossil fuel money for energy research is like taking tobacco money to fund cancer research: Can it really be objective and neutral?

Additionally, it looks like the British government is comfortable with universities and research centers being funded – and in all likelihood, influenced – by some of the most controversial companies, with energy and climate change secretary Ed Davey attending the launch of the new partnership. It also appears to be giving in on its own responsibilities to fund research and advance human knowledge.

The students and staff of Oxford University also accuse Shell’s research money of “[buying] legitimacy for its unconscionable activities globally.” The Anglo-Dutch oil company has a long history of human rights abuses and environmental damage. Amnesty International has consistently highlighted Shell’s poor human rights record in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. The human rights NGO has produced several reports on the area that was contaminated by two large oil spills in 2008 and still has not been cleared.

These spills, in conjunction with gas flaring, have caused extensive damage to the health and livelihood of the Ogoni people who live in the region, leaving these communities with little option but to drink polluted water, eat contaminated fish and breathe in air that reeks of oil and gas. Despite several court cases, Shell has consistently failed to own up to its responsibilities.

In Canada, Shell is accused of destroying vast swathes of land through its extraction of tar sands. Its activities there have regularly leaked known carcinogens into a nearby river and caused vast scars on the landscape with large ‘tailing ponds’ of effluent. Indigenous people living downstream from the extraction points complain that the influx of hazardous chemicals is damaging their traditional way of life; they also report unusually high levels of rare cancers and autoimmune diseases. However, Shell has repeatedly disregarded their right to “free, prior and informed consent” as laid down by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Shell is also accused of reckless drilling plans in the Arctic, and last week, it reiterated its plans to construct the world’s deepest oil well in the Gulf of Mexico, akin to BP’s disastrous Deepwater Horizon well, preparing to drill 9,500 feet — nearly two miles — beneath the surface of the sea to suck oil out of a reserve that was discovered eight years ago, 200 miles southeast of New Orleans.

By accepting Shell’s money, Oxford University has thus chosen an odd bedfellow. The partnership with the oil company does not do favors to Oxford’s reputation as a research institution and university of world-class standard. Considering that Oxford’s climate scientists have consistently warned of the dangers of burning fossil fuels, the partnership also reveals the institution’s lack of consistency and ethical and moral standards, showing it is mainly concerned about its pocketbook.

 

Divest from fossil fuels campaign

British campaigners have decided to take the fight further: People & Planet – a student network campaigning to end world poverty, defend human rights and protect the environment – is about to launch a new Fossil-Free UK movement. The campaign calls on higher education institutions not only to divest their large endowments from fossil fuels, but also to reassess their research funding and other relationships with the fossil fuel industry. It mirrors a similar movement in the U.S., championed by environmental campaigner Bill McKibben and 350.org, which is running on over 300 American college campuses.

Indeed, the partnership between Shell and Oxford University is only one of many such collaborations. Last year, for example, BP announced that it will spend £60 million ($91 million) on research at Manchester University, partly to help drill deeper for oil. In Canada, universities go further: David Lynch, dean of engineering at the university of Alberta, appears in advertisements by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, whose purpose is to justify and normalize tar sands extraction.

Many universities have become complicit seekers of funding for short-term interests, when at stake is a liveable future for the very students they educate. In broader terms, the tightening of links between learning institutions and corporations is squeezing out the ideals of academic rigor and free thinking in education. It suggests that education is about learning what businesses want you to think.

Science has long been considered the neutral, objective domain, free from passion, greed and specific interests. Since researchers are providing input to government decisions and are relied upon by courts to provide independent expert arguments, their opinion should be neutral. This is proving increasingly difficult when researchers are effectively financed by the industry because it means that the people receiving the funding are compromised in terms of their objectivity. This is likely to prevent them from providing the impartial advice expected from them.

Today, even science is increasingly at the service of the economy, growth and the forces that drive it, to the detriment of people and knowledge itself. Across Europe and the United States, pliable scientists and compromised researchers have come to support the most flagrant injustices. As a result, we increasingly lack a moral check on the pursuit of self-interest. There is an urgent need for a disinterested class of scientists and intellectuals who act as a counterweight to prevailing mores and who uphold sound and universal values, free from any particular interest.