In order to justify expanding fossil fuel production, the Obama administration is citing the economic benefits of this activity. Unfortunately, according the International Business Times, these studies were funded by the same groups which stand to benefit from this expansion:

Buried in the BOEM report’s fine print, though, were footnotes shedding light on how the bureau came to its conclusions: it used studies from the same fossil fuel industry that could benefit from the expansion. Eight of the nine economic analyses cited by government regulators in their report were produced by authors or organizations with links to the fossil fuel industry — whichhasbeen lobbying the federal government on drilling issues in the lead-up to a decision.

This reminds me a great deal of the initial study that set off the anti-vaccination movement: the study was funded by a group to smear a competitor’s MMR vaccine in favor of the group’s M/M/R approach (giving each vaccine separately). The moral of both stories is: biased, namely corporate-funded, research is dangerous. If the studies are found to have any fault in favor of the oil lobby, the publishers and authors should be shamed and expelled with the same intensity as the author of the anti-vaccination “corrupt science”.