Oil-eating microbes: Fact or fiction?

An Aug. 24 study in the journal Science had great news for Gulf Coast residents: A newly discovered, voracious microbe is rapidly eating the oil spilled in the BP gusher. The specially adapted oil-eating bacteria are so effective, said lead researcher Terry Hazan of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that they have apparently devoured an entire 22-mile-long underwater plume. Skeptics noted that Hazan's research was funded by BP. Does that discredit the good tidings?

Don't trust the sunny news: The BP funding sure makes this look like "fuzzy science," says Alex Moore in Death + Taxes. But worse, all the good news is coming from government-affiliated labs and federal agencies. Private labs are "skeptical," and one of them, Woods Hole, just reported that the undersea plumes appear intact. Wouldn't the Obama team gain a lot by turning "the worst oil spill of all time to the luckiest" one?

"Scientists reporting natural cleanup funded by BP and US Dept of Energy"

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Of course the microbes are real: I didn't need Hazan's team to tell me the BP spill would turn out to be "a relatively minor problem," says Paul Mulshine in The New Jersey Star-Ledger. Oil has been seeping into the Gulf for eons, and it "disappears naturally thanks to the extreme heat and the bacteria that feast on it." Thanks to the dispersants, the BP plumes are no worse than this natural "background oil."

"Don't tell the rest of the media, but the Gulf oil spill dissipated..."

More info, please: "There's probably nothing sinister" in BP financing Hazan's research, says The Boston Globe in an editorial, and even though the latest findings seem a contradictory "mass of confusion," it's quite possible the government scientists are right. But its up to the Obama team to help us "wade through the data," and show it isn't "tainted" by "the government's quest to seek damages, nor by any effort by BP to minimize them."

"A lot more underwater, or not?"