13 ms·

Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews

300 points by Red_Tarsius 9y ago

londons_explore 9y ago
I don't really see anything wrong with using a ghostwriter, as long as the person/organisation whose name is on any document fully read and agreed with the contents, and would stand by them as their own.
- mjmj 9y ago
  Did you read the article? The concern is about Monsanto heavily editing what should've been unbiased independent research around the safety of roundup, yet releasing it as such. knowingly giving the general population carcinogens and fighting hard for it. Deplorable.
  - trophycase 9y ago
    The saddest part is that there are real live people who willingly do this for a living. Nothing will ever change as long as this behavior is enabled or encouraged.
    - Clubber 9y ago
      My question is there any residue on the crops when they come to market in the grocery store?
      - cestith 9y ago
        Well, I'm sure not all of it is in the drinking water downstream from the fields where it's over-applied beyond concentrations even Monsanto recommends. So it has to go somewhere. Still, a largely plant-based diet will help your health more than hurt it. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/health/natural-health/pesticides/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/health/natural-health/pe... It and one of its degradates are found in the majority of drinking water or wastewater samples in some areas (different reports from different studies report 18% and 36% of samples undegraded, 68% and 69% of AMPA). It's typically far below what the EPA considers a safe level. That "safe level", of course, is set based on understanding the body of safety studies about it. https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/glyphosate02.html https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/glyphosate02.html I grew up along a major river in the Midwest. I've been reading studies and study summaries about glyphosate for years. I'm less concerned, honestly, at the levels I see reported about it being a carcinogen than as a possible developmental neurotoxin and problem for reproduction. https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/pollution-environment/neurobehavioral-effects-developmental-toxicity https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/pollutio... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24636977 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24636977 http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/roundup-weedkiller-brain-damaging-neurotoxin http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/roundup-weedkiller-brain-da... It's also found to be potentially far more toxic as mixed in Roundup than in isolation. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-her... http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/glyphogen.html http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/glyphogen.html Herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, including the herbicide glyphosate, have been shown to potentially lead to gut microbe imbalances and other subtle biological changes like immune, endocrine, and neurological symptoms. Depression, autism, ADHD, diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, birth defects, miscarriage, and lupus are among the disorders other than cancers found to be strongly correlated with working in or living near agriculture. http://chem-tox.com/agriculture/index.htm http://chem-tox.com/agriculture/index.htm Again, a largely plant-based diet will help your health more than hurt it. Be sure to wash your food and maybe have some of it organic. I'd like more and better studies on these chemicals, but neonicotinoids seem to be a much bigger long-term threat than glyphosate.
- s73ver 9y ago
  You don't see anything wrong with the company being it's own ghostwriter? The company, who is clearly going to agree with the contents that are charitable to itself?
- justforFranz 9y ago
  I love Hacker News apologists.
  - dang 9y ago
    This sort of personal attack will get your account banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else may be, so please don't do this again. Someone holding a different view than you do is not evidence of bad faith, and the internet trope of you-must-be-a-shill is poison. Since you've posted like this before, it's important that you fix this and not do it again. You've also been uncivil in other comments, and that needs to stop too. Here's how to approach HN commenting: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.
- vkou 9y ago
  Ghostwriting research into your own products is a colossal breach of corporate, academic, and ethical integrity.
- jandrese 9y ago
  If a regulator can't be arsed to bother writing the report themselves, what makes you think they are carefully reviewing the findings in the report before rubber stamping it? What makes you think there aren't errors of omission? Who is verifying what they write in the report is the truth? This system would only work if the company in question was trustworthy enough to not need regulation in the first place. In the real world it will never work.
jaclaz 9y ago
The actual "news" are IMHO only that this can proven as they have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I often dream of some news like "Independent research actually found to be independent".
shapiromatron 9y ago
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2016.1214677 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2016.12... > The Expert Panel Members recruitment and evaluation of the data was organized and conducted by Intertek Scientific & Regulatory Consultancy (Intertek). The Expert Panelists were engaged by, and acted as consultants to, Intertek, and were not directly contacted by the Monsanto Company. Funding for this evaluation was provided to Intertek by the Monsanto Company which is a primary producer of glyphosate and products containing this active ingredient. Neither any Monsanto company employees nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panel's manuscripts prior to submission to the journal. Seems misleading.
- denzil_correa 9y ago
  What exactly is misleading? The next line explains further > Monsanto’s internal emails tell a different story. The correspondence shows the company’s chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, and other Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts. At one point, Heydens even vetoed explicit requests by some of the panelists to tone down what one of them wrote was the review’s “inflammatory” criticisms of IARC.
  - shapiromatron 9y ago
    Ahh, sorry, yes. I was just pointing out what was actually written in declarations is different than what was reported by the bloomberg story.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    It's worth bearing in mind, whatever the process failures here may have been, that IARC is not above criticism. Their assessment of glyphosate as a human carcinogen is not well established by the literature, and was made in passing in a report (which covered tens of other herbicides and pesticides) that the WHO, their parent organization, has effectively disavowed. The same source made hay out of Monsanto's efforts to push back against a study trying to establish a link between cancer and glyphosate. They neglect to mention that the study was Séralini's, and that it was famously criticized and eventually retracted.
pella 9y ago
1 week ago: "Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer (baumhedlundlaw.com" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14923009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14923009
rubatuga 9y ago
You should realize how important money is in research today. The main job nowadays of principal investigators (PI) for research labs is to write applications for grants and fundings. These labs are usually underfunded and will accept any private funding if necessary. For example, the PI for my nutrition lab received funding from a Canadian agricultural company for a study on Canola oil. When the test results of the study were investigated (which I don't exactly recall), they were not in favour of Canola oil. The PI therefore "voluntarily" decided not to publish the results. I asked her why, and she said that if she published the results she would not be likely to ever receive funding from the company again. My point is that a lot of research conducted today is funded by ulterior motives, be it political, private interest, or a company like Monsanto. I fully expected a company like Monsanto to be engaged in this behaviour. The days of pure/basic research are dead, especially with funding from the public sector drying up. edit: oops i meant to write principal investigator (PI)
- devrandomguy 9y ago
  > The days of pure/basic research are dead, especially with funding from the public sector drying up. I have been wondering, could pure research work well with a crowd-funding model? In addition to applying for a grant, the PI would post a similar or identical application to Kickstarter & co. Stretch goals could be used to commission media-rich presentations that are true to the research, rather than leaving the original scientist-oriented study to be interpreted by rushed journalists.
  - Zigurd 9y ago
    You can bet that industry-friendly stealth-subsidized projects will come in to displace genuinely truth-seeking projects in a crowdfunding model. It would be more straightforward to condition public funding on publishing all results.
- adam-p 9y ago
  "PI" is principal investigator.
- 09bjb 9y ago
Cryptogocrazy 9y ago
I don't know the legality of what they did, but it's pretty clearly a reason to favor government involvement in fringe cases like this. Sounds like what they did was fraud.
throwawaymanbot 9y ago
Yet again, American style Capitalism giving regular ole Capitalism a bad rep.
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  "Real capitalism wouldn't have these problems" is No True Scotsman in action.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwawaymanbot 9y ago
    Theres capitalism, and then theres this current incarnation of American style capitalism. Paid lobbyists (or in this case paid writers) creating laws (or in this case "research") that crush competition/rivals (which capitalism needs to thrive), = American capitalism, (as it currently stands).
ManyEthers 9y ago
They also have an army of trolls constantly defending them. The first time I was ever sure I was dealing with paid opposition was years ago with some comments I made about Monsanto and the fracking industry. In 3, 2, 1... they will probably be here also.
unclebucknasty 9y ago
Interesting timing for me. I just yesterday read an Atlantic article titled "How America Lost Its Mind" [0]. The tldr; of that article is that Americans have had an increasing tendency to create our own realities and to believe anything we choose. This includes conspiracy theories like the government is purposely allowing cancer treatments to be withheld, as well as the idea that vaccines cause autism, etc. The article then goes on to suggest that choosing what to believe is part of being American. I don't necessarily agree, as I think the article was woefully inadequate in assessing the damage that financial interests play in willfully misleading people and creating a post-truth world. Here on HN, I've had "debates" with people who nearly suggested that glyphosate is the greatest thing that ever happened to mankind. When I cautioned about safety concerns due to overuse, I got the standard pointer to the studies, etc. If you question the studies, then you find yourself being painted as some sort of anti-science conspiracy-theorist. This, when we essentially all know how research is done and the degree of rampant regulatory capture that exists. I guess my point is that when many of the institutions we're supposed to trust are largely captured and firms that have direct financial incentive to mislead are allowed to decide what's real, then it is an assault on truth and reason. When we ignore this fact and encourage blind-belief in these institutions (worse, allowing them to act as proxies for "the ultimate truth of science"), then we are aiding in the creation of the very post-fact world we claim to abhor. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-ame...
cryoshon 9y ago
so, where are the HN commentators who were defending monsanto left right and center during the recent safety debates?
- kirrent 9y ago
  Well, I just woke up. Monsanto has done something pretty screwy here as far as scientific ethics because people within the organisation were angry with the IARC. I can understand being angry with the IARC. Its decision was extremely stupid and a PR nightmare. Pretty dumb of Monsanto to fight stupidity with stupidity. They should know better. On the other hand, the editing does appear to be cosmetic, with Monsanto wanting to skewer the IARC, and there are plenty of truly independent investigations into the effects of glyphosate. All of the science still says glyphosate is safe in the concentrations we encounter it in. http://www.who.int/foodsafety/jmprsummary2016.pdf?ua=1 http://www.who.int/foodsafety/jmprsummary2016.pdf?ua=1
exabrial 9y ago
"every company" was accidently misspelt as "Monsanto" in the title. I'm not trying to jump to their defense, but can you think of a situation where the opposite would happen? Think about it, any company that funds research is going to be a subject area in their market. Unless there was a specific ethical issue here, this isn't "news", this is a thorn in the side of the [otherwise wonderful] free market.

300 points by Red_Tarsius 9y ago

I don't really see anything wrong with using a ghostwriter, as long as the person/organisation whose name is on any document fully read and agreed with the contents, and would stand by them as their own.

mjmj 9y ago
Did you read the article? The concern is about Monsanto heavily editing what should've been unbiased independent research around the safety of roundup, yet releasing it as such. knowingly giving the general population carcinogens and fighting hard for it. Deplorable.
- trophycase 9y ago
  The saddest part is that there are real live people who willingly do this for a living. Nothing will ever change as long as this behavior is enabled or encouraged.
  - Clubber 9y ago
    My question is there any residue on the crops when they come to market in the grocery store?
    - cestith 9y ago
      Well, I'm sure not all of it is in the drinking water downstream from the fields where it's over-applied beyond concentrations even Monsanto recommends. So it has to go somewhere. Still, a largely plant-based diet will help your health more than hurt it. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/health/natural-health/pesticides/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/health/natural-health/pe... It and one of its degradates are found in the majority of drinking water or wastewater samples in some areas (different reports from different studies report 18% and 36% of samples undegraded, 68% and 69% of AMPA). It's typically far below what the EPA considers a safe level. That "safe level", of course, is set based on understanding the body of safety studies about it. https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/glyphosate02.html https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/glyphosate02.html I grew up along a major river in the Midwest. I've been reading studies and study summaries about glyphosate for years. I'm less concerned, honestly, at the levels I see reported about it being a carcinogen than as a possible developmental neurotoxin and problem for reproduction. https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/pollution-environment/neurobehavioral-effects-developmental-toxicity https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/pollutio... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24636977 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24636977 http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/roundup-weedkiller-brain-damaging-neurotoxin http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/roundup-weedkiller-brain-da... It's also found to be potentially far more toxic as mixed in Roundup than in isolation. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-her... http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/glyphogen.html http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/glyphogen.html Herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, including the herbicide glyphosate, have been shown to potentially lead to gut microbe imbalances and other subtle biological changes like immune, endocrine, and neurological symptoms. Depression, autism, ADHD, diabetes, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, birth defects, miscarriage, and lupus are among the disorders other than cancers found to be strongly correlated with working in or living near agriculture. http://chem-tox.com/agriculture/index.htm http://chem-tox.com/agriculture/index.htm Again, a largely plant-based diet will help your health more than hurt it. Be sure to wash your food and maybe have some of it organic. I'd like more and better studies on these chemicals, but neonicotinoids seem to be a much bigger long-term threat than glyphosate.
s73ver 9y ago
You don't see anything wrong with the company being it's own ghostwriter? The company, who is clearly going to agree with the contents that are charitable to itself?
justforFranz 9y ago
I love Hacker News apologists.
- dang 9y ago
  This sort of personal attack will get your account banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else may be, so please don't do this again. Someone holding a different view than you do is not evidence of bad faith, and the internet trope of you-must-be-a-shill is poison. Since you've posted like this before, it's important that you fix this and not do it again. You've also been uncivil in other comments, and that needs to stop too. Here's how to approach HN commenting: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't comment until you do.
vkou 9y ago
Ghostwriting research into your own products is a colossal breach of corporate, academic, and ethical integrity.
jandrese 9y ago
If a regulator can't be arsed to bother writing the report themselves, what makes you think they are carefully reviewing the findings in the report before rubber stamping it? What makes you think there aren't errors of omission? Who is verifying what they write in the report is the truth? This system would only work if the company in question was trustworthy enough to not need regulation in the first place. In the real world it will never work.

jaclaz 9y ago

The actual "news" are IMHO only that this can proven as they have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I often dream of some news like "Independent research actually found to be independent".

shapiromatron 9y ago

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2016.1214677 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408444.2016.12... > The Expert Panel Members recruitment and evaluation of the data was organized and conducted by Intertek Scientific & Regulatory Consultancy (Intertek). The Expert Panelists were engaged by, and acted as consultants to, Intertek, and were not directly contacted by the Monsanto Company. Funding for this evaluation was provided to Intertek by the Monsanto Company which is a primary producer of glyphosate and products containing this active ingredient. Neither any Monsanto company employees nor any attorneys reviewed any of the Expert Panel's manuscripts prior to submission to the journal. Seems misleading.

denzil_correa 9y ago
What exactly is misleading? The next line explains further > Monsanto’s internal emails tell a different story. The correspondence shows the company’s chief of regulatory science, William Heydens, and other Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts. At one point, Heydens even vetoed explicit requests by some of the panelists to tone down what one of them wrote was the review’s “inflammatory” criticisms of IARC.
- shapiromatron 9y ago
  Ahh, sorry, yes. I was just pointing out what was actually written in declarations is different than what was reported by the bloomberg story.
- tptacek 9y ago
  It's worth bearing in mind, whatever the process failures here may have been, that IARC is not above criticism. Their assessment of glyphosate as a human carcinogen is not well established by the literature, and was made in passing in a report (which covered tens of other herbicides and pesticides) that the WHO, their parent organization, has effectively disavowed. The same source made hay out of Monsanto's efforts to push back against a study trying to establish a link between cancer and glyphosate. They neglect to mention that the study was Séralini's, and that it was famously criticized and eventually retracted.

pella 9y ago

1 week ago: "Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer (baumhedlundlaw.com" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14923009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14923009

rubatuga 9y ago

You should realize how important money is in research today. The main job nowadays of principal investigators (PI) for research labs is to write applications for grants and fundings. These labs are usually underfunded and will accept any private funding if necessary. For example, the PI for my nutrition lab received funding from a Canadian agricultural company for a study on Canola oil. When the test results of the study were investigated (which I don't exactly recall), they were not in favour of Canola oil. The PI therefore "voluntarily" decided not to publish the results. I asked her why, and she said that if she published the results she would not be likely to ever receive funding from the company again. My point is that a lot of research conducted today is funded by ulterior motives, be it political, private interest, or a company like Monsanto. I fully expected a company like Monsanto to be engaged in this behaviour. The days of pure/basic research are dead, especially with funding from the public sector drying up. edit: oops i meant to write principal investigator (PI)

devrandomguy 9y ago
> The days of pure/basic research are dead, especially with funding from the public sector drying up. I have been wondering, could pure research work well with a crowd-funding model? In addition to applying for a grant, the PI would post a similar or identical application to Kickstarter & co. Stretch goals could be used to commission media-rich presentations that are true to the research, rather than leaving the original scientist-oriented study to be interpreted by rushed journalists.
- Zigurd 9y ago
  You can bet that industry-friendly stealth-subsidized projects will come in to displace genuinely truth-seeking projects in a crowdfunding model. It would be more straightforward to condition public funding on publishing all results.
adam-p 9y ago
"PI" is principal investigator.
09bjb 9y ago

Cryptogocrazy 9y ago

I don't know the legality of what they did, but it's pretty clearly a reason to favor government involvement in fringe cases like this. Sounds like what they did was fraud.

throwawaymanbot 9y ago

Yet again, American style Capitalism giving regular ole Capitalism a bad rep.

Analemma_ 9y ago
"Real capitalism wouldn't have these problems" is No True Scotsman in action.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  Theres capitalism, and then theres this current incarnation of American style capitalism. Paid lobbyists (or in this case paid writers) creating laws (or in this case "research") that crush competition/rivals (which capitalism needs to thrive), = American capitalism, (as it currently stands).

ManyEthers 9y ago

They also have an army of trolls constantly defending them. The first time I was ever sure I was dealing with paid opposition was years ago with some comments I made about Monsanto and the fracking industry. In 3, 2, 1... they will probably be here also.

unclebucknasty 9y ago

Interesting timing for me. I just yesterday read an Atlantic article titled "How America Lost Its Mind" [0]. The tldr; of that article is that Americans have had an increasing tendency to create our own realities and to believe anything we choose. This includes conspiracy theories like the government is purposely allowing cancer treatments to be withheld, as well as the idea that vaccines cause autism, etc. The article then goes on to suggest that choosing what to believe is part of being American. I don't necessarily agree, as I think the article was woefully inadequate in assessing the damage that financial interests play in willfully misleading people and creating a post-truth world. Here on HN, I've had "debates" with people who nearly suggested that glyphosate is the greatest thing that ever happened to mankind. When I cautioned about safety concerns due to overuse, I got the standard pointer to the studies, etc. If you question the studies, then you find yourself being painted as some sort of anti-science conspiracy-theorist. This, when we essentially all know how research is done and the degree of rampant regulatory capture that exists. I guess my point is that when many of the institutions we're supposed to trust are largely captured and firms that have direct financial incentive to mislead are allowed to decide what's real, then it is an assault on truth and reason. When we ignore this fact and encourage blind-belief in these institutions (worse, allowing them to act as proxies for "the ultimate truth of science"), then we are aiding in the creation of the very post-fact world we claim to abhor. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-ame...

cryoshon 9y ago

so, where are the HN commentators who were defending monsanto left right and center during the recent safety debates?

kirrent 9y ago
Well, I just woke up. Monsanto has done something pretty screwy here as far as scientific ethics because people within the organisation were angry with the IARC. I can understand being angry with the IARC. Its decision was extremely stupid and a PR nightmare. Pretty dumb of Monsanto to fight stupidity with stupidity. They should know better. On the other hand, the editing does appear to be cosmetic, with Monsanto wanting to skewer the IARC, and there are plenty of truly independent investigations into the effects of glyphosate. All of the science still says glyphosate is safe in the concentrations we encounter it in. http://www.who.int/foodsafety/jmprsummary2016.pdf?ua=1 http://www.who.int/foodsafety/jmprsummary2016.pdf?ua=1

exabrial 9y ago

"every company" was accidently misspelt as "Monsanto" in the title. I'm not trying to jump to their defense, but can you think of a situation where the opposite would happen? Think about it, any company that funds research is going to be a subject area in their market. Unless there was a specific ethical issue here, this isn't "news", this is a thorn in the side of the [otherwise wonderful] free market.