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Sunday, May 17th, 2015

This Billionaire Tried To Get University Scientists Fired For Doing Their Job

Author:     Kiley Kroh
Source:     Think Progress
Publication Date:     May 16, 2015 at 1:16 pm
 Link: This Billionaire Tried To Get University Scientists Fired For Doing Their Job
Stephan:   The assumption both the media and the general public makes is that very rich people must be smarter than ordinary folk because they have all that money. The truth is, particularly where it is inherited money, the ultra rich are not only not smarter they are often dumber or, perhaps more often, so captured by their own self-interest, that they are incapable of thinking long term about anybody's interest but their own. Especially where their own self-interest may be negatively impacted.  And because we have a Supreme Court that has authorized the sale of our government to the super rich we are left to deal with their limitations. Harold Hamm is an example of what I mean.
Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm, a man who does not like facts. Credit: AP/Kevin Cederstrom

Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm, a man who does not seem to like facts when they get in the way of his making money.
Credit: AP/Kevin Cederstrom

Despite a growing body of scientific research connecting oil and gas activity to a dramatic spike in earthquakes across several U.S. states, some industry leaders are fighting this characterization. Harold Hamm, billionaire CEO of Oklahoma City-based Continental Resources, told a dean at the University of Oklahoma last year that he was so displeased by the university’s research on the topic that he wanted certain scientists dismissed, Bloomberg News reported.

In an email to colleagues dated July 16, 2014 and obtained by Bloomberg, Larry Grillot, the dean of the university’s Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy, said that he had met with Hamm, a major donor to the university, to discuss his concerns about earthquake reporting by the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS), which is housed in the university. “Mr. Hamm is very upset at some […]

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