Cornell Professor Admits to Lack of Objectivity in His Research, Inserting Advocacy Into Studies
Anthony Ingraffea with his fellow fractivists Mark Ruffalo, Sean Lennon, and Yoko Ono |
The conversation was striking in that Ingraffea dropped any pretense of being a nonbiased academic researcher. Because he is an advocate against shale development, Ingraffea acknowledged he brings a bias into his research:“I’d be lying if I said that I don’t… that I haven’t entered any of the studies that I have participated in in the last five years that led to my being able to publically speak or publish in peer-review papers… I’d be lying if I told you I went into every one of those with an entirely objective, blank opinion. I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Whatever happened when the numbers were done, I’d be [inaudible]. I’d be lying if I said that. I’m sorry. [cross talk] It would be untrue.”
While claiming that his research goes through “extra tough” reviews, Ingraffea admits to inserting advocacy into the final report:Read more by clicking here.“You can read any of the papers I participated in writing and you can easily detect the words we use, the phraseology…predilection. I wouldn’t say bias…it’s too strong a word. But, in the conclusions and in the summaries and the abstract, it’s clear what we owe people to provide by reading this paper. And that’s a form of advocacy. And we have advocacy-laced…advocacy-laced words and phrases in our papers.”
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