The anti-frackers at the Johns Hopkins-Bloomberg School of Public Health are out with another bought-and-paid-for (by anti-drillers) “study” that implies the presence of fracking in Pennsylvania leads to causing or making worse asthma attacks. You may recall the same group of antis pushed out a study last October that supposedly shows fracking leads to premature births (see New Junk Science Claims PA Fracking Leads to Premature Births). That study was quickly debunked (see EID’s Devastating Critique of PA Premature Birth “Study” and Another Devastating Critique of Fracking/Premature Birth “Study”). This newest study, “Association Between Unconventional Natural Gas Development in the Marcellus Shale and Asthma Exacerbations,” evaluates thousands of health records from the Geisinger Clinic in PA, looking for patterns between people showing up with asthmatic symptoms and correlating it to how close they live to shale wells being drilled. The incredible thing about this latest run at smearing the miracle of fracking is this: the authors (most of them students) admit in their own study they only have theories, no proof that ties fracking to asthma. You read that right–there is no proof, no smoking gun. Only wild theories that are unsupported by the data. Yet fawning (and frankly stupid) reporters at places like the AP, PBS StateImpact Pennsylvania and USA Today are trumpeting this “study” as scientific proof of a link that fracking kills ya. It seems the Johns Hopkins-Bloomberg School of Public Health doesn’t produce science–it produces politics dressed up as science…
