Oil and natural gas companies have gone beyond providing needed energy and the resources required to make life-saving medical equipment by donating time, money and supplies in their communities – even while facing unprecedented challenges brought on by COVID-19 and the state of the oil market. Meanwhile, “Keep It In the Ground” activists have repeatedly attempted to use the pandemic as a tool to attack the oil and natural gas industry.

Most recently, KIITG groups have been touting a yet-to-be peer-reviewed Harvard University article on small particulate matter (PM2.5) and COVID-19 – that has nothing to with oil and natural gas – as a new reason to oppose fracking. In fact, the server hosting the article even includes guidelines about these types of articles, which they call preprints – articles that have not been peer-reviewed and “may contain errors” – for journalists and others who may cite them. MedRxiv, the server hosting the article, explains:

“We also urge journalists and other individuals . . . to consider this when discussing work that appears on medRxiv preprints and emphasize it has yet to be evaluated by the medical community and the information presented may be erroneous.”

Read the full post on EIDHealth.org.