“Secret” Report Revealed
It was a big scoop: On the eve of this week’s G8 summit, The Guardian reported Friday that a “secret” World Bank study had concluded that “biofuels have forced up global food prices by 75 percent — far more than previously estimated.”
The British paper quoted “senior development sources” who surmised that the World Bank report, completed in April, must have been suppressed “to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.”
Over the weekend, scores of news organizations and bloggers excitedly repeated the juicy details.
There was just one problem: The story turned out to be inaccurate. The Wall Street Journal’s blog “Environmental Capital” has the details. (See link below.)
In short, the report wasn’t secret at all; it was an unofficial working paper that is still going through peer reviews. And a spokesperson passed on a statement from World Bank president Robert Zoellick in which he characterized the study as one of many views — and its calculations are “probably at the far end.”
In fact, no other expert has ventured a guess anywhere near that extreme.
The lesson is that when an issue is as hot as biofuels, it is especially important to get the facts right.
Sources:
Environmental Capital. (Wall Street Journal Blog.) “Bad Juice II: Biofuels Maybe Not Quite So Bad, World Bank Says.” Posted by Keith Johnson. July 7, 2008, 7:35 pm.
The Guardian. “Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis,” by Aditya Chakrabortty. July 4, 2008.
