This is a response from Sandra Steingraber, distinguished scholar in residence at Ithaca College, to the Dot Earth post “When Publicity Precedes Peer Review in the Fight Over Gas Impacts." More: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/fracking

1. This is a response from Sandra Steingraber, distinguished scholar in residence at
Ithaca College, to the Dot Earth post “When Publicity Precedes Peer Review in the
Fight Over Gas Impacts”:
Your recent blog compares and contrasts the claims made by industry-funded reports on
the risks of fracking with those made by academic scientists who speak about their data
in advance of publication. In so doing, you imply there is an equivalency of bias or
motivation.
There is not.
Polluting industries have long ministered to their particular public relations problems and
sought to delay regulatory action (or outright prohibition) by underwriting studies and
reports -- and sometimes entire university-based institutes. The resulting publications
almost never find serious evidence for harm. In the field of environmental health, we
refer to these efforts as "cigarette science."
Throughout several decades of the 20th century, for example, the lead paint industry
funded researchers to investigate the effect of their product on the brain development of
children. Not surprisingly, this research uncovered few serious problems. At the same
time, the industry denounced independent research that did find serious problems as anti-
lead propaganda. (At one point, the industry argued, based on its research, that the
problem was not that the consumption of lead paint made children stupid but that stupid
children ate paint.)
I think filmmaker Josh Fox is exactly right to say, as he does in The Sky is Pink, that gas
industry denials of harm fit into the narrative template of the tobacco story. (We could
also call it the lead paint story. Or the asbestos story. Or the PCB story. Or the DDT
story. See David Gee, Late Lessons from Early Warnings.)
On the other hand, academic researchers who are not on the payroll of industry and who
are trying in good faith to understand the possible public health effects of a new
technology -- which is being unrolled without advance demonstration of safety -- can
sometimes find results that are frightening enough to warrant immediate public
conversation.
This is the story of Elaine Hill, the young Ph.D. student from Cornell who has conducted
the first population-based, observational study of the public health effects of fracking.
Andrew, I would like you to place yourself in her shoes for a minute.
Suppose you took a close look at hospital data on newborn health before and after drilling
and fracking operations arrived in communities (in states where the shale gas boom is
booming away). Suppose you mapped the locations of individual gas wells, looked at the
distance between the wells and the homes where the mothers of those babies lived during
their pregnancies. Suppose you analyzed the data carefully. Suppose you found
significant effects -- bigger even than the impact of cigarette smoking on newborn health.

2. Suppose you took every care to eliminate confounding variables and still believed that
you had evidence to suggest that newborn babies were being harmed by fracking
operations. At the very least, your research seems to raise serious questions in urgent
need of answers.
Now suppose that you happen to live in a state where fracking is not allowed. Suppose it
appears, however, that the governor of your state is giving every indication that he is
preparing to life the moratorium -- even though no a priori attempt has been made to
evaluate the impact of fracking on public health.
Suppose it becomes clear that the governor is going to make his decision before your
research can wend its way through the peer review process and get published.
Suppose you've already presented your findings at two academic conferences and in one
poster presentation and that it has been warmly received by your academic colleagues.
Suppose you have an opportunity to present your research to the public -- and to your
state's senators -- in advance of the governor's decision.
Would you take it? Could you look at yourself in the mirror if you did not? And would
you sabotage your academic career if you did?
Let me say clearly -- as I did in my own Senate testimony -- that I was the one who
suggested to Elaine that she consider testifying. As you quoted me in saying, I think she
made a brave and ethical decision.
At the same time, let me also say -- and I think I speak for Elaine Hill as well -- that I'm a
big believer in peer review. Most academic researchers are. But there can't be double
standards. If peer review is required for all public utterances and assertions about the
possible environmental and health effects of fracking, then let's strip all the non-peer
review studies from the 1,537-page planning document for fracking -- the supplemental
generic environmental impact statement (sGEIS) -- that is the science on which will rest
Governor Cuomo's upcoming decision to permit or prohibit fracking.
If we need to wait for data to be peer reviewed before we act on it -- which is a great idea
-- then we need to maintain New York's moratorium on fracking while Hill's data, and the
other health effects studies now in the planning stage, make their way into a peer-
reviewed journals. The sGEIS itself needs to be sent out for peer review.
If the Governor permits fracking on the basis of an sGEIS full of unvetted, un-peer-
reviewed data, then he can't say the decision was based on science.
Right?
Andrew, take a close look at sGEIS's references. If all the non-peer reviewed citations
were removed from the analysis and its bibliographies, I estimate that the document

3. would be 60-80 percent shorter. At least.
I especially invite you and your readers to examine the bibliographic entries for the
section of the sGEIS entitled, “Human Health Risk Evaluation for Hydraulic Fracturing
Additives.” Not one medical journal or peer-review study informs the conclusion that
public health risk assessments are unnecessary. Instead, what lies behind the document's
dismissive assertion that exposure pathway are geological impossibilities is a list of
industry journal articles and "fact sheets." Not peer-reviewed data.
Tellingly, the first item in that bibliography is a document from the petroleum industry.
The revised draft sGEIS is the worst scientific review I've ever seen.
I’ve served on President Clinton’s National Action Plan on Breast Cancer and as science
advisor to a couple of public research initiatives, including the California Breast Cancer
Research Program. I’ve testified before the President’s Cancer Panel, helped review
literature while in residence at Cornell University's Program on Breast Cancer and
Environmental Risk Factors, and am a co-editor of the University of California
report Identifying Gaps in Breast Cancer Research
(http://cbcrp.org/sri/reports/identifyingGaps/GAPS_full.pdf), which is a 510-page, fully-
referenced science review.
In all cases, I spent a lot of time looking at peer-reviewed data. Indeed, during the two
years I worked on the mammoth California breast cancer report, all the chapters I edited
-- which were based on peer-reviewed studies -- were themselves sent out for peer
review. And then they were revised and re-edited.
This is not even close to the process that has guided the creation of the sGEIS.
So, if -- on the grounds that it is bad form to present data in advance of peer review -- you
criticize my decision to encourage Elaine Hill to present, before a panel of New York
senators, her preliminary research on the impact of drilling and tracking operations on
infant health, then I also expect to hear from you a call to withdraw the un-peer-reviewed
sGEIS on the grounds that it is not science.
The wheels of scientific proof-making grind slowly and with discernment. The decision
to roll out drilling and fracking across the nation proceeds at the frenzied and
undiscerning pace of a gold rush. What would you have us researchers do? Stay silent
until our data appears in print -- even if we have reason to believe that lives are at risk?
Or insert ourselves into the political process?
It would help all concerned -- not the least of whom are newborns -- if journalists like
you would call on the political decision-making to slow down so that the science can
catch up rather than attack researchers who choose to speak their conscience rather than
remain silent in the face of a headlong rush to drill and frack.

4. Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D.
Distinguished Scholar in Residence
Department of Environmental Studies
Ithaca College
Ithaca, New York
Her testimony is posted separately here.