5 ms·
Please, before you comment how evil Monsanto is, read the Cochrane review of glyphosate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866614/ https://www.ncbi
by throwaway042722 4y ago
Please, before you comment how evil Monsanto is, read the Cochrane review of glyphosate.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866614/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866614/
This is produced by the Cochran which "is a British international charitable organisation formed to organise medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving health professionals, patients and policy makers. It includes 53 review groups that are based at research institutions worldwide." (from Wikipedia).
Unless you are an expert in the field, you are not likely to do better than a Cochrane systematic review.
The review concludes "Thus, a causal relationship has not been established between glyphosate exposure and risk of any type of LHC." (LHC is lymphohematopoietic cancer).
I find there are a lot of parallels between anti-GMO and anti-vax: calling it "unnatural", saying it is for mainly for profits by multinational corporations, implying conspiracies to suppress evidence against.
Note that also, in the current environment, there is also a lot of money and fame to be gained by being contrarian (especially when you involve trial lawyers). So saying "follow the money" can cut both ways.
- user3939382 4y agoWasn’t there a school groundskeeper who won a lawsuit whose decision was based on it being carcinogenic? If memory serves, he had a lawyer vs a huge team of high priced attorneys who, after a long lawsuit, failed to convince the court. I’m not an expert but courts are designed to adjudicate technical issues like this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit-idUSKCN1N638T https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit-...
- tptacek 4y agoCourts are not designed to adjudicate technical issues like this; the conventional wisdom in our separation of powers is that they're uniquely bad at it, which is part of why controversies in upper courts so often devolve to the question of whether fact-finding should be deferred to legislatures instead of court cases.
- user3939382 4y ago> controversies in upper courts so often devolve to the question of whether fact-finding should be deferred to legislatures instead of court cases You might be right but not what I typically have observed. Usually if things are fuzzy higher courts kick it back to lower courts to work on it more. Deferring to the legislature is what I see when what the public seems to want is at odds with what the court can do based on the law as it's written, which is a different dynamic completely.
- stillbourne 4y agoA court of law is not a court of fact.
- epgui 4y agoWell, in common law countries, it is the literal job of a first instance court or judge to play the role of “trier of fact”. These are however “legal facts”, and not necessarily “scientific facts” (I absolutely hate to call something a fact that is not a fact, but it is what it is: the law treats “facts” differently than science). Due to courts being very poorly equipped to deal with science, and due to rules of evidence making it very difficult to introduce science into the courtroom, court decisions are very often wrong on the science, and sometimes ignore relevant science entirely. Science in the courtroom is a pretty important and difficult problem to solve. Edit/addendum: counter-intuitively, there are also good reasons why courts will deliberately avoid getting into the weeds with science. Basically it all comes down to the fact that the court system recognizes that it is poorly equipped to deal with scientific evidence. Barriers exist to make the courts more time-efficient and also in an effort to make it harder for the court to be misled by legal advocates on either side. It’s very easy to find someone with a PhD to support either side, or to find seemingly contradictory papers to support either side, and it basically takes an expert in science to recognize a real subject matter expert… Anyway, it’s a mess of a problem.
- kuhewa 4y ago> courts are designed to adjudicate technical issues like this Since adjudicate just means to decide something judicially, that is tautological but technically correct. Beyond that narrow definition though, a jury trial is not the mechanism to decide a scientific and probabalistic question like whether spraying weed killer caused a particular case of lymphoma.
- user3939382 4y agoIt's not tautological because of the end of the phrase "technical issues like this". In other words, courts in this case aren't a bunch of laymen sitting around guessing whether this chemical is harmful. They're reviewing the research straight out of the mouths of the most qualified experts both sides can bring to the table. The court's decision on this was the product of the science.
- kuhewa 4y agoNo. The court's decision was what a non-expert jury of peers was convinced of by lawyers. The lawyers' jobs are not to help the jury reach the truth, but to do anything legal to win for their clients, including torturing both facts and the often arbitrary rules of courtroom procedure. There may have been evidence presented that originated with the scientific process, but no, the court's decision was not 'the product of science'.
- dekhn 4y agoCourts do not make legal decisions based on technical information. A court/jury could find the exact opposite of what science said and it would still be considered legitimate legal determination.
- user3939382 4y agoDecisions like this are based on the testimony of subject matter experts.
- dekhn 4y agoYes, but it doesn't follow from that that courts make determinations of law based on scientific evidence. Some SMEs simply lie and the court can't tell. IN other cases the SME testifies, but it doesn't affect the decision.
- nickpeterson 4y ago
- tptacek 4y agoYou can't write comments like this here. Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, bots, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- colordrops 4y ago
- tptacek 4y agoYou're wrong, and you cannot in fact accuse accounts of being shilled simply because their usernames are green. The guidelines are simple: if you think someone's actually a shill, mail hn@ycombinator.com and they'll look into it. The point is that these accusations burn down threads, and the guideline thus asks you to keep this shit off the threads.
- colordrops 4y ago
- ohyoutravel 4y agoWell first of all I don’t think it was just because the account was green, but because they use in their moniker “throwaway,” which indicates someone who doesn’t want their identity known. Second, as a self proclaimed “glyphosate defender” it’s very convenient for you to advocate for disallowing the rampant spread of information against your position while advocating for a very slow resolution to the claims, one whose result wouldn’t manifest until long after this thread was forgotten.
- calibas 4y agoIn response to an article about how Monsanto has undue influence on scientific studies, you posted a review paid for by Monsanto... > This work was supported by Monsanto Company, the original producer and marketer of glyphosate formulations.
- tptacek 4y agoAm I understanding your argument here to be that Cochrane Reviews are untrustworthy?
- cinntaile 4y ago"We do not accept commercial or conflicted funding. This is vital for us to generate authoritative and reliable information, working freely, unconstrained by commercial and financial interests." If your research is sponsored by Monsanto, the producer of RoundUp, I would argue that is considered conflicted funding. I went to https://www.cochranelibrary.com/search https://www.cochranelibrary.com/search (redirected from their cochrane.org site) to search for this review and it wasn't there when I searched for "glyphosate". This is starting to look a lot like they're purposefully trying to mislead people into thinking this is an official Cochrane review, I am surprised Cochrane allows this.
- colordrops 4y agoNever even heard of Cochrane Reviews until tonight, but am I understanding your argument here to be that there exist organizations that are somehow immune to bias and corruption and are perfect at editorial filtering?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- epgui 4y agoSupported or not, I don’t think you understand the weight and quality of Cochrane reviews.
- photochemsyn 4y agoFunny thing about the Monsanto cancer case is that they know that the problem is in the Roundup formulation (including surfactants that are required to get the glyphosate across the waxy plant cell wall barrier) yet Monsanto financed studies on purified isolated glyphosate to demonstrate it didn't cause cancer. Sneaky and dishonest, isn't that? Why not just do the study with the Roundup formulation? > Mike DeVito, acting chief of the National Toxicology Program Laboratory: “We see the formulations are much more toxic. The formulations were killing the cells. The glyphosate really didn’t do it". https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/08/weedkiller-tests-monsanto-health-dangers-active-ingredient https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/08/weedkiller-t... https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/about_ntp/bsc/2017/december/presentations/17devito_508.pdf https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/about_ntp/bsc/2017/december/pr... As far as Monsanto and GMO, modifying certain crops to make them resistant to weedkiller just so you can dump more weedkiller on the field... might be good for weedkiller sales, but I don't think 'feeding the world' is the goal here, more like 'maximizing product sales'. Dumping all that weedkiller into lakes and rivers also destroys the base of ecosystems, which is unwise. https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/glyphosate02.html https://toxics.usgs.gov/highlights/glyphosate02.html
- tfigment 4y agoIf you are not using roundup, you are still using something. "Organic" pesticides do not work better so you will generally be using more and that goes to the same places roundup does.
- photochemsyn 4y agoI like those field-crawling robots that use AI-assisted vision to identify and laser-blast the weeds early in their growth stages. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26841519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26841519
- snovv_crash 4y agoThis is not the first thing an organic farmer reaches for when they have a weed problem though.
- Cadwhisker 4y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 4y agoYou are not allowed to comment this way on HN. This is spelled out in the guidelines, and is probably the single most common mod correction Dan gives.
- Cadwhisker 4y agoYep, fair enough. I'll remove the comment. Others have phrased it better.
- seattle_spring 4y agoIt's sad that the "well you're just a paid shill" retort is used to heavily nowadays. Not just for GMO related discussions either. It's got to be the laziest, empty non-argument out there and I wish more people would call it out for what it is.
- smolder 4y agoPersonally, I blame the rise of paid shills for the rise of accusations of being a paid shill. It's hard work imagining what mental gymnastics people do to rationalize a career spreading lies. Not so much the people who desperately take the job of repeating them, but the people who strategize around what they can get the public to believe.
- 0fcb88 4y agothis is not a "true" Cochrane Review https://www.cochrane.org/search/site/glyphosate https://www.cochrane.org/search/site/glyphosate your link just used the method ( ~ aggregation of Ghostwriting researches) EDIT: check the https://www.cochrane.org/search/site/vaccine https://www.cochrane.org/search/site/vaccine
- tptacek 4y agoThis is an interesting point. Can you say more? How do we determine whether this is a "true" Cochrane Review? Thanks!
- 0fcb88 4y agohttps://www.cochrane.org/about-us https://www.cochrane.org/about-us "Cochrane is an international network with headquarters in the UK, a registered not-for-profit organization, and a member of the UK National Council for Voluntary Organizations." Search 1. https://www.cochranelibrary.com/search https://www.cochranelibrary.com/search 2. type "glyphosate" 3. see the results. Cochrane Reviews : 0 <------ ZERO Cochrane Protocols : 0 Trials : 14 Editorials : 0 Special Collections :0 Clinical Answers : 0
- tptacek 4y agoAh, duh, I should have looked at the link posted upthread, too. Thanks!
- 0fcb88 4y agoin the "Cochrane Trials" 1.) "Measurement of Agricultural and Dietary Glyphosate Exposure Among Pregnant Women" January 2022 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121011051?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139... "Human exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH) is increasing rapidly worldwide. Most existing studies on health effects of glyphosate have focused on occupational settings and cancer outcomes and few have examined this common exposure in relation to the health of pregnant women and newborns in the general population. We investigated associations between prenatal glyphosate exposure and length of gestation in The Infant Development and the Environment Study (TIDES), a multi-center US pregnancy cohort...........Our results indicate widespread exposure to glyphosate in the general population which may impact reproductive health by shortening length of gestation. Given the increasing exposure to GBHs and the public health burden of preterm delivery, larger confirmatory studies are needed, especially in vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and newborns." "Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper."
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 0fcb88 4y ago>I find there are a lot of parallels between anti-GMO and anti-vax: it is a Monsanto gospel "Crowe (Monsanto) preached a scientific gospel of GMOs that went something like this: If you’re pro-science, you must be pro-GMO. If you’re anti-Monsanto, then you’re anti-GMO. Therefore, if you’re anti-Monsanto, you’re anti-science. His objective, it seemed, was to render opposition to GMOs as ridiculous as belief in Bigfoot, and to amass a movement that could be counted on to shout that message from the rooftops." from: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31310371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31310371
- 0fcb88 4y ago> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866614/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866614/ This is a Monsanto sponsored papers. "Funding: This work was supported by Monsanto Company, the original producer and marketer of glyphosate formulations." "Disclosure statement The sponsors were provided the opportunity to review the manuscript prior to journal submission, but inclusion of their suggestions was left to the discretion of the authors, who retained sole control of the manuscript content and the findings. Statements in this paper are those of the authors and not those of the authors' employer or the sponsors. The authors are employed by Exponent, a scientific research and consulting firm that provides services for private and governmental clients, including on projects concerning glyphosate and other pesticides. In the past five years, Ellen Chang has provided consulting services through Exponent on behalf of Monsanto Company on other issues, and she also has provided consulting services on other pesticides and lymphohematopoietic cancers for other clients."