"A month after the Deepwater Horizon disaster began, scientists from the University of South Florida made a startling announcement. They had found signs that the oil spewing from the well had formed a 6-mile-wide plume snaking along in the deepest recesses of the gulf.

The reaction that USF announcement received from the Coast Guard and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agencies that sponsored their research:

Shut up.

'I got lambasted by the Coast Guard and NOAA when we said there was undersea oil,' USF marine sciences dean William Hogarth said. Some officials even told him to retract USF's public announcement, he said, comparing it to being 'beat up' by federal officials."

Craig Pittman reports for the St. Petersburg Times August 9, 2010. [2]