Stanford denies Big Oil U. status

A Stanford University official has denied linkurl:allegations;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54188/ that the university's climate and energy research is influenced by its corporate sponsors. The linkurl:report,;http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/bigoilu.pdf released by Center for Science in the Public Interest accused Stanford and other major US universities of granting energy company sponsors control over research and publication. But Franklin Orr, the director of Stanford's linkurl:Global Climate and Energy Project;http://gcep.stanford.edu/index.html (GCEP), said that its findings are inaccurate because CSPI boiled down the university's nuanced responses to survey questions to simple yes or no answers. For example, said Orr, for the question "Can the sponsors delay research publication?" Stanford scored a "yes." But sponsors can only delay publication when the research contains potentially patentable ideas. In these cases, corporate funders can delay publication for up to 60 days to decide whether to pursue patents based on the work. "[CSPI] chose to portray it as the company is determining the research," Orr...