Exxon’s funding of polar bear research questioned

New Scientist

Image: Carol Moshier

Can scientific respectability be tarred by association? The US House Committee on Science and Technology seems to think so. It is scrutinising ExxonMobil’s motives for funding research by an astrophysicist into the impact of climate change on the polar bear population of western Hudson Bay in Canada.

If the polar bear is listed under the Endangered Species Act, steps to protect its habitat could directly hurt ExxonMobil’s economic interests, subcommittee chair Brad Miller wrote in an open letter to the oil giant. The researchers, including Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published their findings as a “viewpoint”, which is not peer-reviewed. They conclude that the polar bears are not threatened by climate change (Ecological Complexity, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2007.03.002). “It’s hard to see this article as rigorous, sound science,” Miller says. Read more on newscientist.com…