Monsanto flooded scientific journals with ghostwritten articles and interfered in the scientific process in order to defend its glyphosate herbicides
The paper below is a useful peer-reviewed source detailing Monsanto's deceptive activities aimed at defending glyphosate herbicide, as revealed in the company's internal documents force-disclosed in US cancer litigation and obtained by US Right to Know in freedom of information requests.
Monsanto's activities involve the ghostwriting of scientific articles, secretly sponsoring the pro-GMO website Academics Review, and collusion with the journal editor A. Wallace Hayes to obtain the retraction of the Seralini long-term study on the health impacts of a GM maize and the associated glyphosate-based herbicide.
The paper reminds us that Hayes had a history of defending dangerous products due to his experience as a tobacco company employee: "In one of the earliest ghostwriting documents released from tobacco litigation, A. Wallace Hayes who worked for the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in the 1980s, is the author of a memorandum that details a proposal for a ghost writing program that would publish studies from toxicological investigations. The memorandum shows how ghostwritten articles would be reviewed by a panel at Reynolds prior to submission in Cancer Research or The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Tobacco companies such as R. J. Reynolds are credited with writing the playbook for spinning science subsequently adopted by pharmaceutical companies and the agrochemical industry."
The paper concludes, "Whether glyphosate or glyphosate-based formulations such as Roundup are safe is a matter of objective scientific evaluation. Monsanto, however, has poisoned the well by flooding the scientific journals with ghostwritten articles and interfering in the scientific process at multiple levels. This has enormously complicated the task of discovering the truth. If the company had confidence in the safety of its products, there would be no need for such behavior, but it is obvious that there are problems that Monsanto needs to conceal."
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The Monsanto Papers: Poisoning the scientific well
McHenry, L. B. (2018). International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine, (Preprint), 1-13.
https://content.iospress.com/articles/international-journal-of-risk-and-safety-in-medicine/jrs180028
Abstract:
OBJECTIVE: Examination of de-classified Monsanto documents from litigation in order to expose the impact of the company’s efforts to influence the reporting of scientific studies related to the safety of the herbicide, glyphosate.
METHODS: A set of 141 recently de-classified documents, made public during the course of pending toxic tort litigation, In Re Roundup Products Liability Litigation were examined.
RESULTS: The documents reveal Monsanto-sponsored ghostwriting of articles published in toxicology journals and the lay media, interference in the peer review process, behind-the-scenes influence on retraction and the creation of a so-called academic website as a front for the defense of Monsanto products.
CONCLUSION: The use of third-party academics in the corporate defense of glyhphosate reveals that this practice extends beyond the corruption of medicine and persists in spite of efforts to enforce transparency in industry manipulation.