This is precisely why nobody trusts institutions or “experts” any more. People aren’t being anti-science so much as they rationally no longer trust fraudsters acting like they’re doing work to inform the public. It’s not my fault for not trusting them, it’s their fault for being shady.
Here’s some of what The New York Times reported regarding the Monsanto docs:
Documents released
Tuesday in a lawsuit against Monsanto raised new questions about the
company’s efforts to influence the news media and scientific research
and revealed internal debate over the safety of its highest-profile
product, the weed killer Roundup.
The active
ingredient in Roundup, glyphosate, is the most common weed killer in the
world and is used by farmers on row crops and by home gardeners. While
Roundup’s relative safety has been upheld by most regulators, a case in federal court in San Francisco continues to raise questions about the company’s practices and the product itself.
The documents underscore the lengths to which the agrochemical company goes to protect its image. Documents show that Henry I. Miller, an academic and a vocal proponent of genetically modified crops,
asked Monsanto to draft an article for him that largely mirrored one
that appeared under his name on Forbes’s website in 2015. Mr. Miller
could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Miller’s 2015 article on Forbes’s website was
an attack on the findings of the International Agency for Research on
Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization that had labeled
glyphosate a probable carcinogen, a finding disputed by other regulatory
bodies. In the email traffic,
Monsanto asked Mr. Miller if he would be interested in writing an
article on the topic, and he said, “I would be if I could start from a
high-quality draft.”
The article
appeared under Mr. Miller’s name, and with the assertion that “opinions
expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.” The magazine did not mention any involvement by Monsanto in preparing the article.
Mr.
Miller did not respond to calls or a Twitter message asking for
comment, and the Hoover Institution, where he is a fellow, could not
reach him.
Forbes removed the
story from its website on Wednesday and said that it ended its
relationship with Mr. Miller amid the revelations.
Mr. Miller’s work has also appeared in the opinion pages of The New York Times.Who publishes “fake news” again?
The documents also
show that a debate outside Monsanto about the relative safety of
glyphosate and Roundup, which contains other chemicals, was also taking
place within the company.
In a 2002 email,
a Monsanto executive said, “What I’ve been hearing from you is that
this continues to be the case with these studies — Glyphosate is O.K.
but the formulated product (and thus the surfactant) does the damage.”
In a 2003 email,
a different Monsanto executive tells others, “You cannot say that
Roundup is not a carcinogen … we have not done the necessary testing on
the formulation to make that statement.”
The documents also
show that A. Wallace Hayes, the former editor of a journal, Food and
Chemical Toxicology, has had a contractual relationship with Monsanto.
In 2013, while he was still editor, Mr. Hayes retracted a
key study damaging to Monsanto that found that Roundup, and genetically
modified corn, could cause cancer and early death in rats.
Mr. Hayes said in
an interview that he had not been under contract with Monsanto at the
time of the retraction and was paid only after he left the journal.
“Monsanto played no
role whatsoever in the decision that was made to retract,” he said. “It
was based on input that I got from some very well-respected people, and
also my own evaluation.”
Yeah, it was just a total (and lucrative) coincidence that Monstanto put him on the payroll after he retracted the study.Experts are just liars for sale like everyone else.
— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 2, 2017
People always ask me, what should we do about all this? The first thing we need to do is admit we have a systemic fraud problem. You can’t deal with problems you haven’t accurately identified. Next, we need to change the incentive structure. Right now, corporate executives are essentially above the law, so there’s an enormous incentive to engage in white-collar crime.
Until we start putting wealthy and powerful people in jail, nothing will change. Of course, that’s just the beginning, but it’s an important first step.
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