4 ms·

Deep sea diving? what study are you referring to there?

• marvin 13y ago
  Not well known in the US, but I've read some history on the Norwegian petroleum industry. There was a big political tug-of-war here in the 1980s when it became evident that current procedures for deep sea diving caused delibitating long-term injuries to the nervous system of the divers. This was very inconvenient for the oil companies and national authorities, because building a deep-sea pipeline was necessary if the nation was to have control over its petroleum exports. There was a very intense campaign (however not necessarily a conspiracy; thousands of people had economic incentives to ignore these findings) of discrediting the scientist who made the findings. The research was initially the result of the single Ph.D. at the Department of Medicine at the University of Bergen. Lawsuits concerning reparations to divers who kept working after these findings were made, are in fact still ongoing. But the science was quite clear at the time, and it has become clearer still afterwards. I wouldn't be surprised if similar controversies happened over this in the US. But it hasn't become a public debate to the same degree.