Oil and gas money shapes research, creates 'echo chamber' in higher education

floodlightnews.org

45 points·rntn··7 comments

I remember a physics department that was funded by BP, on the provision they’d stop their research into solar technology.

Petroleum - oil and gas - changed the world for the better. Not without creating other issues, but the dramatic increase in crop yields and overall standards of living, and dramatic decrease in famine are irrefutable. As we enter the AI era, worth taking that lesson that even the most beneficial of technologies can and do create unintended side effects.

LSU may be bought, but what about Berzerkley? $154M in 10 years!

Damnit Janet!

Seems it was quite impactful at U.C. Berkeley.

Do you mean to say funding impacted chemistry/chemical engineering at UC Berkeley a lot? Berkeley's chemistry majors have always been top in the nation, and there is a "College of Chemistry", separate from the other science (and even engineering) majors which makes it stand out from the rest of the country. So maybe the funding goes there just because it's already a historically distinguished place for chemistry.

Like Quatar financing research?

Oil is a deep rabithole trust me don't go down its path

Academia is a place for intellectual labour, and being sustained by the physical labour of the workers to extract oil is good. Exchange intelligence for the physical labour of the people who made that oil possible

EDIT: consider the innovation that innovated oil refinement, it came from academia!

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