5 ms·

> If Monsanto caused it with such certainty for you, given the widespread use of Roundup, you'd expect vastly more cases. Monsanto has settled 40,000+ cases, t

> If Monsanto caused it with such certainty for you, given the widespread use of Roundup, you'd expect vastly more cases. Monsanto has settled 40,000+ cases, that’s significant and a lot of cases. I’m not sure your threshold of vastly more cases but when you consider Roundup only came to market in 1976 it’s even more staggering, whereas some of the major tobacco companies had been around 100+ years before losing similar lawsuits. Also it’s not very clear what your threshold of “certainty” is, but my guess is you are trying to apply a higher standard of proof than the courts and law require. > However decades of testing have shown no such effects. That’s just not true, the most complete study published concludes that using glyphosate increases the risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by 41 percent.

ChrisLomont 4y ago
There's 181 studies citing that one on Google scholar. I think the science has moved past the paper you claim as the most complete study. You should look through them instead of latching onto a single paper when there's ample rebuttals in the literature. You can find climatologists that deny global warming. Thus it's not credible to pick one of thousands of results as the truth. Pick the majority of expert opinions, not the outliers.
- throwawaycities 4y ago
  > You can find climatologists that deny global warming. It sounds like your argument is that if people can deny climate change, you can deny roundup causes harm…apparently without the need to cite anything. How many of those 181 studies citing the first concluded something completely inconsistent with the first study? If you think there is a more complete study disproving the 41% increased cancer risk, why not cite or link the study? > Pick the majority of expert opinions, not the outliers. In the case of Roundup/Glyphosate we can skip our own interpretations of hundreds of studies, do you know why? Because the company that manufactures the product in question settled ~96,000 claims for ~$10B. Therefore, we can confidently conclude that after taking into consideration the opinions of their own expert witnesses that they hired and who reviewed all available studies, and could have relied on only the most favorable studies at trial, their opinion was Roundup/Glyphosate causes harm and they should settle.
  - bscphil 4y ago
    > In the case of Roundup/Glyphosate we can skip our own interpretations of hundreds of studies This is a completely insane conclusion for anyone who knows anything at all abut the American legal system. Businesses and individuals settle lawsuits or plead guilty when they are innocent constantly because they believe the end result of doing so is likely to be better for them than the alternative. It is not at all hard to imagine a scenario where a company decides to settle a complicated lawsuit rather than trust a jury to make the right decision and give the press an even bigger field day with dragging their name through the mud. I have no love for big ag, but this is just an obvious fact about how legal conflicts work in the United States.
    - throwawaycities 4y ago
      > This is a completely insane conclusion for anyone who knows anything at all abut the American legal system. From the sound of it, you’re just regurgitating things you have heard but don’t have much 1st hand experience with. If you are a lawyer, it doesn’t sound like you have worked on billion dollar cases. I helped nearly 1,000 claimants on one of the largest tobacco jury verdicts and it was was only an award of ~$800M. So it’s not a knock and I could be wrong, you might be a lawyer too with a plethora of experience in billion dollar cases, it’s just extraordinarily rare and I don’t see someone with that experience making your comment. There is a difference between a plea deal on a criminal case and even a settlement on your average personal injury case where legal fees might outweigh judgments, and cases that involve over a hundred thousand plaintiffs/claimants and billions of dollars in damages. While maybe 90% of cases do settle, billion dollar cases don’t often settle, and this settlement ranks among the largest settlements in history (top 3 or 4). Basically you have cases like the BP oil spill and other big tobacco cases exceeding this settlement. No one settles for $10B because they are worried the jury will get it wrong, nor did these companies settle because they were worried about press having a field day.
      - parineum 4y ago
        Judges, Juries and lawyers aren't scientists. Monsanto doesn't trust those three groups of non-scientists to think like scientists, especially when the prosecution is going to be pulling on the heartstrings. The decision you've made is to trust a party of non-scientists (Monsanto lawyers) who work in a non-scientific field (jury trials) over the actual body of evidence built by actual scientists doing actual science. Perhaps because the science doesn't support your position.

ChrisLomont 4y ago

There's 181 studies citing that one on Google scholar. I think the science has moved past the paper you claim as the most complete study. You should look through them instead of latching onto a single paper when there's ample rebuttals in the literature. You can find climatologists that deny global warming. Thus it's not credible to pick one of thousands of results as the truth. Pick the majority of expert opinions, not the outliers.

throwawaycities 4y ago
> You can find climatologists that deny global warming. It sounds like your argument is that if people can deny climate change, you can deny roundup causes harm…apparently without the need to cite anything. How many of those 181 studies citing the first concluded something completely inconsistent with the first study? If you think there is a more complete study disproving the 41% increased cancer risk, why not cite or link the study? > Pick the majority of expert opinions, not the outliers. In the case of Roundup/Glyphosate we can skip our own interpretations of hundreds of studies, do you know why? Because the company that manufactures the product in question settled ~96,000 claims for ~$10B. Therefore, we can confidently conclude that after taking into consideration the opinions of their own expert witnesses that they hired and who reviewed all available studies, and could have relied on only the most favorable studies at trial, their opinion was Roundup/Glyphosate causes harm and they should settle.
- bscphil 4y ago
  > In the case of Roundup/Glyphosate we can skip our own interpretations of hundreds of studies This is a completely insane conclusion for anyone who knows anything at all abut the American legal system. Businesses and individuals settle lawsuits or plead guilty when they are innocent constantly because they believe the end result of doing so is likely to be better for them than the alternative. It is not at all hard to imagine a scenario where a company decides to settle a complicated lawsuit rather than trust a jury to make the right decision and give the press an even bigger field day with dragging their name through the mud. I have no love for big ag, but this is just an obvious fact about how legal conflicts work in the United States.
  - throwawaycities 4y ago
    > This is a completely insane conclusion for anyone who knows anything at all abut the American legal system. From the sound of it, you’re just regurgitating things you have heard but don’t have much 1st hand experience with. If you are a lawyer, it doesn’t sound like you have worked on billion dollar cases. I helped nearly 1,000 claimants on one of the largest tobacco jury verdicts and it was was only an award of ~$800M. So it’s not a knock and I could be wrong, you might be a lawyer too with a plethora of experience in billion dollar cases, it’s just extraordinarily rare and I don’t see someone with that experience making your comment. There is a difference between a plea deal on a criminal case and even a settlement on your average personal injury case where legal fees might outweigh judgments, and cases that involve over a hundred thousand plaintiffs/claimants and billions of dollars in damages. While maybe 90% of cases do settle, billion dollar cases don’t often settle, and this settlement ranks among the largest settlements in history (top 3 or 4). Basically you have cases like the BP oil spill and other big tobacco cases exceeding this settlement. No one settles for $10B because they are worried the jury will get it wrong, nor did these companies settle because they were worried about press having a field day.
    - parineum 4y ago
      Judges, Juries and lawyers aren't scientists. Monsanto doesn't trust those three groups of non-scientists to think like scientists, especially when the prosecution is going to be pulling on the heartstrings. The decision you've made is to trust a party of non-scientists (Monsanto lawyers) who work in a non-scientific field (jury trials) over the actual body of evidence built by actual scientists doing actual science. Perhaps because the science doesn't support your position.