Having been involved in both industry funded and government funded medical research I don't think this is a big deal. To me the most important thing is to make sure that it is disclosed. Many researchers that are great at what they do are highly sought after experts and they should be. The real question is one of integrity. If a researcher has integrity then they will be objective. If they lack integrity then they may be more willing to twist their findings, even if they don't outright manipulate them. It does no good for a company to fund a researcher who is ultimately proved to have faked data.<p>One note on public funding, I believe that there is just as much if not more pressure to shape conclusions from public funding sources. After all these organizations are composed of people as well who are often pursuing an agenda of some sort whether its overt or not. If a researcher is dependent on funding from an agency or a group inside an agency it is often in their best interest to ensure that their conclusions align with that agencies view. If not there is significant risk to future funding.
Considering those professors are Americans i have to wonder what relationship they have to their (home)country when they say fracking is harmless to groundwater.<p>Don't these people have children, grand children?<p>Is money really so important?
There is more to objectivity than where the funding comes from.<p>The discussion of whether cell phone radios cause brain cancer is instructive. There are many people who do not fully understand the physics involved, but tend to be suspicious of technology and industry, who continue to bang the drum about the dangers of cell phone use. I've had conversations with a friend who holds a Ph.D. in toxicology in which no amount of data I could reference could shake her conviction that cell phones cause brain cancer. That is not because of where she draws a paycheck. It is simply a belief she has developed.<p>You see the same thing in any discussion of large-scale energy technology. We've all seen the discussions of nuclear energy here on Hacker News, for instance.<p>Is fracking dangerous? It seems almost certain it could be--any type of engineering on such a large scale has that potential. But there are almost always safer ways to engineer things. And a balanced accounting should attempt to include the benefit that natural gas as an energy source can create for our society. For example, it burns a lot cleaner than coal. This is the aspect of energy development that is most often hand-waved away, in favor of assertions that we should be 100% renewables. Of course solar, wind, and hydro all create their own safety and environmental concerns too.