6 ms·

> The disavowal comes 25 years after publication and eight years after thousands of internal Monsanto documents were made public during US court proceedings (th

by jl6 10mo ago

> The disavowal comes 25 years after publication and eight years after thousands of internal Monsanto documents were made public during US court proceedings (the "Monsanto Papers"), revealing that the actual authors of the article were not the listed scientists – Gary M. Williams (New York Medical College), Robert Kroes (Ritox, Utrecht University, Netherlands), and Ian C. Munro (Intertek Cantox, Canada) – but rather Monsanto employees. Why wasn’t the paper retracted 8 years ago?

readthenotes1 10mo ago
It's hard to admit we're wrong
CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
[flagged]
- hombre_fatal 10mo ago
  Big Dr Oz fan eh? Got any quotes from Oprah or other HNers to balance the epistemic master class?
  - superxpro12 10mo ago
    even a broken clock can be right every now and then
    - dctoedt 10mo ago
      > even a broken clock can be right every now and then But a broken clock isn't a reliable indicator of time: You don't know when it's right unless you have another, known-good indicator — in which case just use that other one.
  - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
    No the opposite. I trust Monsanto, they know this chemical better than anyone.
    - davidw 10mo ago
      I wouldn't really trust either one. Plenty of big companies have known how horrible their own products are, like cigarette companies, or fossil fuels. We'll probably learn about social media companies in a few years. That said, just because a product comes from a big company doesn't mean it's bad either. I want to see independent research.
      - isolli 10mo ago
        We already know about social media companies (allegedly, at least): > Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege [0] > In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said. > Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company. > Privately, however, a staffer insisted that the conclusions of the research were valid, according to the filing. “The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” (unhappy face emoji), an unnamed staff researcher allegedly wrote. Another staffer worried that keeping quiet about negative findings would be akin to the tobacco industry “doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves.” [0] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/meta-buried-causal-evidence-social-media-harm-us-court-filings-allege-2025-11-23/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... Edit: it was discussed here a few days ago [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46019817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46019817
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 10mo ago
      Got any hot tips from Marlboro I should read as well?
      - mistrial9 10mo ago
- xenophonf 10mo ago
  CGMthrowaway writes: > Trust the science. Science is a process, not a result. Retractions like this promote the integrity of scientific research and evidence-based medicine. > When Dr. Oz in 2015 spoke out against glyphosate... Oz also promoted MLM dietary supplements, antimalarial drugs as COVID treatments, gay conversion "therapy", colloidal silver, and vaccine skepticism. He has zero credibility and cannot be trusted.
  - KK7NIL 10mo ago
    > > Trust the science. > > Science is a process, not a result. Retractions like this promote the integrity of scientific research and evidence-based medicine. He was obviously poking fun at people who say "trust the science" when what they really mean is "trust these scientits" or, even better, "trust this one study". Undoubtedly "trust the science" is little more than an appeal to authority when used in a casual debate, not some appeal to skepticism, peer review and testability.
    - imoverclocked 10mo ago
      “Trust the science” … always when talking to a flat-earther or similar huckster. There definitely needs to be more nuance to the phrase in the general case. Eg: “trust established science” Let’s be honest though, it’s a lack of nuance in some world views that need science as an authority the most.
      - Lord-Jobo 10mo ago
        “Trust x,y” will also basically never mean “trust, completely, always, equally, and blindly”. Trust the science was a shorthand for “you, or even I, may not understand this thing in perfect detail, but the people working on it do, and they GENERALLY aren’t making catastrophic mistakes that you can detect as an amateur. And when these people collectively stand behind a conclusion the odds of it being completely wrong are exceptionally low. We don’t have a more accurate alternative regardless. Please stop JAQing off about it” But writing all of that over and over again is annoying. And a lot of “”””critical thinkers”””” can’t be bothered to read it. So the shorthand emerges. Sometimes used incorrectly? Definitely.
- DustinEchoes 10mo ago
  > The only large cohort study of high quality found no evidence of an association at any exposure level Was that the retracted study or a different one?
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago
  How many retractions has Dr Oz published? Has he retracted his claim that “raspberry ketones” are a miracle for burning fat in a jar? Idiots look at people who never admit they were wrong and think those are the people to follow. People with the slightest bit of intelligence look at the people (or process in this matter) who are constantly checking themselves and willing to admit they were wrong (or in this case misled by frauds) when they find the truth. Meanwhile, the real issue here is not the science. The real issue here is the American GRAS system, because Europe didn’t allow glyphosates because their political system requires stuff going into your food to be proven safe, whereas the American system simply requires it to not be proven harmful.
  - DANmode 10mo ago
    This is a lot of words to make no real point to who it’s replying to.
    - hombre_fatal 10mo ago
      The guy they replied to didn't make a point, instead threw together some quotes by an HN user and Dr. Oz, relying on you to make the point for them.
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - collingreen 10mo ago
        Would be more effective to simply ask for a point to be clearly made rather than grandstanding about what stupid people vs people with even slight intelligence believe as a way to try to indirectly insult other posts.
- baq 10mo ago
  > The evidence seems to suggest that glyphosate is basically inert in humans It actually might be the case and it still can be damaging to people by affecting the gut microbiome: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00255-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
  - RealityVoid 10mo ago
    > affecting the gut microbiome That is so vague it can apply to everything. Probably drinking a glass of water affects the gut microbiome.
  - sokoloff 10mo ago
    I would disagree with the claim/usage of “inert” if it was damaging to gut microbiome.
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    Did you read the paper? I just did. There's no data in it. It's a broad statement about research directions in glyphosate accompanied by concerns that all chemical agricultural supplements are objects of concern, epidemiologically, with Parkinsonism. I think the point about the microbiome is well taken, for what it's worth. It's a good response to "humans lack a shikemic acid pathway, which is where glyphosate is active".
    - baq 10mo ago
      reference [5] (right in the middle of point 3, the one about gut microbiome) links to https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3233/JPD-230206 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3233/JPD-230206 which is way too dense for me to unpack in general... e.g. Rotenone Mouse Oral gavage ↓ Firmicutes-to-Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratio, ↑ Rikenellaceae and Allobaculum; ↓ Bifidobacterium in both the caecal mucosa-associated and luminal microbiota community structure [169]
      - tptacek 10mo ago
        I'm definitely not going to go crate digging through the cites in this paper! I think for the level of discourse we keep here on HN, it's more than enough to note (1) glyphosate targets metabolic pathways animals don't have, but (2) bacteria do have those pathways, which could implicate the gut microbiome. Point taken! In all these discussions, if I could ask for one more data point to be pulled into the context, it's what the other herbicides look like (my understanding: much worse). I think these discussions look different when it's "late 20th century SOTA agriculture writ large vs. modern ideal agriculture with no chemical supplementation" than when it's "Monsanto vs. the world". A very annoying part of the backstory of the "Monsanto vs. the world" framing are people who care about glyphosate not because they have very fine-grained preferences about specific herbicide risks (glyphosate is probably the only herbicide many of these people know by name), but rather because of glyphosate's relevance to genetically modified crops. I'm automatically allergic to bank-shot appeals to the naturalist fallacy; GM crops are likely to save millions of lives globally.
- potato3732842 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - GeoAtreides 10mo ago
    [ On second thoughts, retracted ]
    - potato3732842 10mo ago
      While it's not great I vastly prefer that sort of not great behavior to achieving the same results by being one of those people who has crappy opinions and then just cherry picks links to back them up when called out on it. Probably a good call on the retraction TBH.
  - u8vov8 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - DANmode 10mo ago
      [flagged]
  - pstuart 10mo ago
    Speaking of luddites, I've recently stumbled on posts that point out that the framing of "luddites" was intentionally misleading and that it was never being against technology but how it was wielded. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/we-should-all-be-luddites/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/we-should-all-be-luddites...
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - kalkin 10mo ago
    Did they turn out to be right? Maybe, I'm not familiar with the research here, but no evidence for that has actually been posted. This study being untrustworthy doesn't make it prove its opposite instead.
- mapontosevenths 10mo ago
  Retracting a paper showing it's safety isn't the same as proving it is unsafe. I don't see anything here that does that. The IARC says the 2A designation was "based on “limited” evidence of cancer in humans (from real-world exposures that actually occurred) and “sufficient” evidence of cancer in experimental animals (from studies of “pure” glyphosatese"* * https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/QA_Glyphosate.pdf#:~:text=The%20IARC,%E2%80%9Cpure%E2%80%9D%20glyphosate%29. https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/QA_Glyph...
  - ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago
    This is all back to front. There needs to be some kind of evaluation of products being safe to use before they're wildly used and even sprayed onto food. For studies to prove that there is harm, there typically needs to be widespread use of it to make it easier to use population studies and certainly long-term studies. Simply relying on "there's no definitive proof that it's harmful to humans when used in a specific way" is naive and a sure-fire way to get large corporations to get away with harming people in the name of profits.
    - mapontosevenths 10mo ago
      Proving a negative is often impossible. The rate of change in society would fall to near zero. Given that technological improvements in farming are the only reason we haven't all starved to death and that society continues to grow while the amount of farmland stays the same I oppose anything that might impede our ability to produce food. Did you know that 80% of the nitrogen in human tissues now originated with the Haber-Bosch process? If we were still waiting around for someone to prove that Haber-Bosch, or Ammonia in general, couldn't possibly harm humans then most humans would have long ago starved to death or never have been born.
      - ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago
        Huh? I don't see why you're focussing on the manufacturing process rather than the products (final product and waste produced) although there are issues with the Haber process (e.g. high energy use and dumping nitrogen which can produce algal blooms). There is a lot of distance between "we must never use any artificial process that hasn't been tested for x years" and "we must use every means of improving agricultural yields even if it means poisoning our children etc". I feel like you're being disingenuous and not really evaluating whether poisonous chemicals should require a level of safety testing or not.
- tptacek 10mo ago
  It's been awhile since I've done any reading on glyphosate, which I mostly paid attention to because of a wave of bullshit stories about how Monsanto was suing people over seeds that blew onto their land (that basically never happened). Nothing in the intervening years, including this specific retraction, changes what I think about glyphosate, which is that it's probably safer than the herbicides that are used when glyphosate isn't. I don't know why you think bringing me into this discussion is useful. If you were thinking that some regulatory agency made decisions based on the persuasiveness of my HN comments, probably no. I'm generally comfortable being on the other side of whatever Mehmet Oz is talking about.
  - rsync 10mo ago
    I think it's quite the compliment - you should be flattered! Unrelated: I really enjoy "Security, Cryptography, Whatever".
    - tptacek 10mo ago
      I'm not offended, it's just weird. And thank you! We've got fun stuff coming out. If anybody knows someone involved in GrapheneOS, we'd really like to get their perspective on modern mobile platform hardening. I will repay them in Monsanto Roundup-Ready(tm) gift certificates.
      - Aurornis 10mo ago
        I agree. It's weird to see HN comments turn into cheap shots (albeit fallacious ones from someone who isn't making a logical argument) against other HN users. Maybe I'm a little sensitive to this since I've rotated HN screen names a couple times after someone tried to track me down off-site to argue a (rather benign) comment I made about something.
      - dabber 10mo ago
        > If anybody knows someone involved in GrapheneOS, we'd really like to get their perspective on modern mobile platform hardening. I will repay them in Monsanto Roundup-Ready(tm) gift certificates.
- Aurornis 10mo ago
  > Trust the science. I haven't kept up with research. Do you have any actual science showing that glyphosate is a carcinogen? Retraction of a paper doesn't automatically mean the opposite is true. It doesn't make Dr. Oz's methods right. Using the retraction of a paper to elevate a known pseudoscience pusher who constantly makes claims without scientific basis is intellectually dishonest. It's a common tactic among pseudoscience and alternative medicine peddlers who think that any loss for the other side is validation for their beliefs.
  - CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
    Non-Hodgkin lymphoma odds ratio 1.41-1.45 (AKA 41-45% higher relative risk): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31342895/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31342895/ NHL odds ratio 2.26: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18623080/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18623080/ Positive trend of NHL risk with exposure: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12937207/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12937207/ 7x risk of follicular lymphoma in those ever exposed: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8082925/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8082925/
    - LorenPechtel 10mo ago
      Am I missing something about the last one? Sample size: 867 cases. 2.2% exposed. Rounds to being 19 of those were exposed. How can they compute odds ratios like that with such a small sample?
- zug_zug 10mo ago
  On what basis should we blindly trust this fao.org study as conclusive? If Monsanto ghost-wrote one paper, how many other studies did it put its finger on the scale for?
- weare138 10mo ago
  The subject of the article is about how one of the widely cited papers on the subject was ghost written by Monsanto, the company that produces Glyphosate. That was the accepted science everyone was trusting which we now know is flat out academic fraud. So how do we know the assessments from organizations like the WHO weren't also based on this same faulty and fraudulent 'science' that was, at the time, widely accepted in academia? We would have to logically assume that any scientific conclusions based on fraudulent scientific studies and false data can not be provably true. Your assertion relies on circular logic.
  - seec 10mo ago
    What is the probability that Monsanto has managed to pay everyone to say it safe. Proving everyone else wrong is quite the incentive for a researcher. To me it's sound unlikely that no one else would jump on the opportunity of fame for proving that it's actually harmful. Money is something but that's not the primary motivator of researchers, otherwise they would be doing way more lucrative work with their intelligence.
DANmode 10mo ago
It takes time for conspiracy theory to become conspiracy fact.

by jl6 10mo ago

readthenotes1 10mo ago

It's hard to admit we're wrong

CGMthrowaway 10mo ago

[flagged]

hombre_fatal 10mo ago
Big Dr Oz fan eh? Got any quotes from Oprah or other HNers to balance the epistemic master class?
- superxpro12 10mo ago
  even a broken clock can be right every now and then
  - dctoedt 10mo ago
    > even a broken clock can be right every now and then But a broken clock isn't a reliable indicator of time: You don't know when it's right unless you have another, known-good indicator — in which case just use that other one.
- CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
  No the opposite. I trust Monsanto, they know this chemical better than anyone.
  - davidw 10mo ago
    I wouldn't really trust either one. Plenty of big companies have known how horrible their own products are, like cigarette companies, or fossil fuels. We'll probably learn about social media companies in a few years. That said, just because a product comes from a big company doesn't mean it's bad either. I want to see independent research.
    - isolli 10mo ago
      We already know about social media companies (allegedly, at least): > Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court filings allege [0] > In a 2020 research project code-named “Project Mercury,” Meta scientists worked with survey firm Nielsen to gauge the effect of “deactivating” Facebook, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery. To the company’s disappointment, “people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social comparison,” internal documents said. > Rather than publishing those findings or pursuing additional research, the filing states, Meta called off further work and internally declared that the negative study findings were tainted by the “existing media narrative” around the company. > Privately, however, a staffer insisted that the conclusions of the research were valid, according to the filing. “The Nielsen study does show causal impact on social comparison,” (unhappy face emoji), an unnamed staff researcher allegedly wrote. Another staffer worried that keeping quiet about negative findings would be akin to the tobacco industry “doing research and knowing cigs were bad and then keeping that info to themselves.” [0] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/meta-buried-causal-evidence-social-media-harm-us-court-filings-allege-2025-11-23/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... Edit: it was discussed here a few days ago [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46019817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46019817
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 10mo ago
    Got any hot tips from Marlboro I should read as well?
    - mistrial9 10mo ago
xenophonf 10mo ago
CGMthrowaway writes: > Trust the science. Science is a process, not a result. Retractions like this promote the integrity of scientific research and evidence-based medicine. > When Dr. Oz in 2015 spoke out against glyphosate... Oz also promoted MLM dietary supplements, antimalarial drugs as COVID treatments, gay conversion "therapy", colloidal silver, and vaccine skepticism. He has zero credibility and cannot be trusted.
- KK7NIL 10mo ago
  > > Trust the science. > > Science is a process, not a result. Retractions like this promote the integrity of scientific research and evidence-based medicine. He was obviously poking fun at people who say "trust the science" when what they really mean is "trust these scientits" or, even better, "trust this one study". Undoubtedly "trust the science" is little more than an appeal to authority when used in a casual debate, not some appeal to skepticism, peer review and testability.
  - imoverclocked 10mo ago
    “Trust the science” … always when talking to a flat-earther or similar huckster. There definitely needs to be more nuance to the phrase in the general case. Eg: “trust established science” Let’s be honest though, it’s a lack of nuance in some world views that need science as an authority the most.
    - Lord-Jobo 10mo ago
      “Trust x,y” will also basically never mean “trust, completely, always, equally, and blindly”. Trust the science was a shorthand for “you, or even I, may not understand this thing in perfect detail, but the people working on it do, and they GENERALLY aren’t making catastrophic mistakes that you can detect as an amateur. And when these people collectively stand behind a conclusion the odds of it being completely wrong are exceptionally low. We don’t have a more accurate alternative regardless. Please stop JAQing off about it” But writing all of that over and over again is annoying. And a lot of “”””critical thinkers”””” can’t be bothered to read it. So the shorthand emerges. Sometimes used incorrectly? Definitely.
DustinEchoes 10mo ago
> The only large cohort study of high quality found no evidence of an association at any exposure level Was that the retracted study or a different one?
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago
How many retractions has Dr Oz published? Has he retracted his claim that “raspberry ketones” are a miracle for burning fat in a jar? Idiots look at people who never admit they were wrong and think those are the people to follow. People with the slightest bit of intelligence look at the people (or process in this matter) who are constantly checking themselves and willing to admit they were wrong (or in this case misled by frauds) when they find the truth. Meanwhile, the real issue here is not the science. The real issue here is the American GRAS system, because Europe didn’t allow glyphosates because their political system requires stuff going into your food to be proven safe, whereas the American system simply requires it to not be proven harmful.
- DANmode 10mo ago
  This is a lot of words to make no real point to who it’s replying to.
  - hombre_fatal 10mo ago
    The guy they replied to didn't make a point, instead threw together some quotes by an HN user and Dr. Oz, relying on you to make the point for them.
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - collingreen 10mo ago
      Would be more effective to simply ask for a point to be clearly made rather than grandstanding about what stupid people vs people with even slight intelligence believe as a way to try to indirectly insult other posts.
baq 10mo ago
> The evidence seems to suggest that glyphosate is basically inert in humans It actually might be the case and it still can be damaging to people by affecting the gut microbiome: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00255-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
- RealityVoid 10mo ago
  > affecting the gut microbiome That is so vague it can apply to everything. Probably drinking a glass of water affects the gut microbiome.
- sokoloff 10mo ago
  I would disagree with the claim/usage of “inert” if it was damaging to gut microbiome.
- tptacek 10mo ago
  Did you read the paper? I just did. There's no data in it. It's a broad statement about research directions in glyphosate accompanied by concerns that all chemical agricultural supplements are objects of concern, epidemiologically, with Parkinsonism. I think the point about the microbiome is well taken, for what it's worth. It's a good response to "humans lack a shikemic acid pathway, which is where glyphosate is active".
  - baq 10mo ago
    reference [5] (right in the middle of point 3, the one about gut microbiome) links to https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3233/JPD-230206 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3233/JPD-230206 which is way too dense for me to unpack in general... e.g. Rotenone Mouse Oral gavage ↓ Firmicutes-to-Bacteroidetes (F/B) ratio, ↑ Rikenellaceae and Allobaculum; ↓ Bifidobacterium in both the caecal mucosa-associated and luminal microbiota community structure [169]
    - tptacek 10mo ago
      I'm definitely not going to go crate digging through the cites in this paper! I think for the level of discourse we keep here on HN, it's more than enough to note (1) glyphosate targets metabolic pathways animals don't have, but (2) bacteria do have those pathways, which could implicate the gut microbiome. Point taken! In all these discussions, if I could ask for one more data point to be pulled into the context, it's what the other herbicides look like (my understanding: much worse). I think these discussions look different when it's "late 20th century SOTA agriculture writ large vs. modern ideal agriculture with no chemical supplementation" than when it's "Monsanto vs. the world". A very annoying part of the backstory of the "Monsanto vs. the world" framing are people who care about glyphosate not because they have very fine-grained preferences about specific herbicide risks (glyphosate is probably the only herbicide many of these people know by name), but rather because of glyphosate's relevance to genetically modified crops. I'm automatically allergic to bank-shot appeals to the naturalist fallacy; GM crops are likely to save millions of lives globally.
potato3732842 10mo ago
[flagged]
- GeoAtreides 10mo ago
  [ On second thoughts, retracted ]
  - potato3732842 10mo ago
    While it's not great I vastly prefer that sort of not great behavior to achieving the same results by being one of those people who has crappy opinions and then just cherry picks links to back them up when called out on it. Probably a good call on the retraction TBH.
- u8vov8 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - DANmode 10mo ago
    [flagged]
- pstuart 10mo ago
  Speaking of luddites, I've recently stumbled on posts that point out that the framing of "luddites" was intentionally misleading and that it was never being against technology but how it was wielded. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/we-should-all-be-luddites/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/we-should-all-be-luddites...
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- kalkin 10mo ago
  Did they turn out to be right? Maybe, I'm not familiar with the research here, but no evidence for that has actually been posted. This study being untrustworthy doesn't make it prove its opposite instead.
mapontosevenths 10mo ago
Retracting a paper showing it's safety isn't the same as proving it is unsafe. I don't see anything here that does that. The IARC says the 2A designation was "based on “limited” evidence of cancer in humans (from real-world exposures that actually occurred) and “sufficient” evidence of cancer in experimental animals (from studies of “pure” glyphosatese"* * https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/QA_Glyphosate.pdf#:~:text=The%20IARC,%E2%80%9Cpure%E2%80%9D%20glyphosate%29. https://www.iarc.who.int/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/QA_Glyph...
- ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago
  This is all back to front. There needs to be some kind of evaluation of products being safe to use before they're wildly used and even sprayed onto food. For studies to prove that there is harm, there typically needs to be widespread use of it to make it easier to use population studies and certainly long-term studies. Simply relying on "there's no definitive proof that it's harmful to humans when used in a specific way" is naive and a sure-fire way to get large corporations to get away with harming people in the name of profits.
  - mapontosevenths 10mo ago
    Proving a negative is often impossible. The rate of change in society would fall to near zero. Given that technological improvements in farming are the only reason we haven't all starved to death and that society continues to grow while the amount of farmland stays the same I oppose anything that might impede our ability to produce food. Did you know that 80% of the nitrogen in human tissues now originated with the Haber-Bosch process? If we were still waiting around for someone to prove that Haber-Bosch, or Ammonia in general, couldn't possibly harm humans then most humans would have long ago starved to death or never have been born.
    - ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago
      Huh? I don't see why you're focussing on the manufacturing process rather than the products (final product and waste produced) although there are issues with the Haber process (e.g. high energy use and dumping nitrogen which can produce algal blooms). There is a lot of distance between "we must never use any artificial process that hasn't been tested for x years" and "we must use every means of improving agricultural yields even if it means poisoning our children etc". I feel like you're being disingenuous and not really evaluating whether poisonous chemicals should require a level of safety testing or not.
tptacek 10mo ago
It's been awhile since I've done any reading on glyphosate, which I mostly paid attention to because of a wave of bullshit stories about how Monsanto was suing people over seeds that blew onto their land (that basically never happened). Nothing in the intervening years, including this specific retraction, changes what I think about glyphosate, which is that it's probably safer than the herbicides that are used when glyphosate isn't. I don't know why you think bringing me into this discussion is useful. If you were thinking that some regulatory agency made decisions based on the persuasiveness of my HN comments, probably no. I'm generally comfortable being on the other side of whatever Mehmet Oz is talking about.
- rsync 10mo ago
  I think it's quite the compliment - you should be flattered! Unrelated: I really enjoy "Security, Cryptography, Whatever".
  - tptacek 10mo ago
    I'm not offended, it's just weird. And thank you! We've got fun stuff coming out. If anybody knows someone involved in GrapheneOS, we'd really like to get their perspective on modern mobile platform hardening. I will repay them in Monsanto Roundup-Ready(tm) gift certificates.
    - Aurornis 10mo ago
      I agree. It's weird to see HN comments turn into cheap shots (albeit fallacious ones from someone who isn't making a logical argument) against other HN users. Maybe I'm a little sensitive to this since I've rotated HN screen names a couple times after someone tried to track me down off-site to argue a (rather benign) comment I made about something.
    - dabber 10mo ago
      > If anybody knows someone involved in GrapheneOS, we'd really like to get their perspective on modern mobile platform hardening. I will repay them in Monsanto Roundup-Ready(tm) gift certificates.
Aurornis 10mo ago
> Trust the science. I haven't kept up with research. Do you have any actual science showing that glyphosate is a carcinogen? Retraction of a paper doesn't automatically mean the opposite is true. It doesn't make Dr. Oz's methods right. Using the retraction of a paper to elevate a known pseudoscience pusher who constantly makes claims without scientific basis is intellectually dishonest. It's a common tactic among pseudoscience and alternative medicine peddlers who think that any loss for the other side is validation for their beliefs.
- CGMthrowaway 10mo ago
  Non-Hodgkin lymphoma odds ratio 1.41-1.45 (AKA 41-45% higher relative risk): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31342895/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31342895/ NHL odds ratio 2.26: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18623080/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18623080/ Positive trend of NHL risk with exposure: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12937207/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12937207/ 7x risk of follicular lymphoma in those ever exposed: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8082925/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8082925/
  - LorenPechtel 10mo ago
    Am I missing something about the last one? Sample size: 867 cases. 2.2% exposed. Rounds to being 19 of those were exposed. How can they compute odds ratios like that with such a small sample?
zug_zug 10mo ago
On what basis should we blindly trust this fao.org study as conclusive? If Monsanto ghost-wrote one paper, how many other studies did it put its finger on the scale for?
weare138 10mo ago
The subject of the article is about how one of the widely cited papers on the subject was ghost written by Monsanto, the company that produces Glyphosate. That was the accepted science everyone was trusting which we now know is flat out academic fraud. So how do we know the assessments from organizations like the WHO weren't also based on this same faulty and fraudulent 'science' that was, at the time, widely accepted in academia? We would have to logically assume that any scientific conclusions based on fraudulent scientific studies and false data can not be provably true. Your assertion relies on circular logic.
- seec 10mo ago
  What is the probability that Monsanto has managed to pay everyone to say it safe. Proving everyone else wrong is quite the incentive for a researcher. To me it's sound unlikely that no one else would jump on the opportunity of fame for proving that it's actually harmful. Money is something but that's not the primary motivator of researchers, otherwise they would be doing way more lucrative work with their intelligence.

DANmode 10mo ago

It takes time for conspiracy theory to become conspiracy fact.