In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/who-iarc-glyphosate/

by tsaprailis • 7 years ago

115 68 7 years ago

wizzwizz42• 7 years ago

Re-analysing the data, it's conceivable that they genuinely found a link, and that the papers' original authors were fudging the stats. But I don't know how to find out whether this is true.

mirimir• 7 years ago

Many of the studies were likely funded by Monsanto, so it's predictable that they would be biased. So doing independent analysis would be wise. But then, it's also possible that some of the WHO staff or consultants were biased.

Someone would need to look at the original studies and work done for the WHO report. That'd be a lot of work. And it'd be hard to find anyone that both sides would trust.

hhas01• 7 years ago

“But then, it's also possible that some of the WHO staff or consultants were biased.”

Indeed. Which it is why declaring COIs is so important. e.g. From a followup piece on Forbes (emphasis mine):

https://www.forbes.com/sites/geoffreykabat/2017/10/23/iarcs-...

“Portier, an American statistician who worked for the federal government for over thirty years, was the special advisor to the IARC panel that issued the report declaring glyphosate to be “probably carcinogenic.” The transcripts show that during the same week in March 2015 in which IARC published its glyphosate opinion, Portier signed a lucrative contract to act as a litigation consultant for two law firms that were preparing to sue Monsanto on behalf of glyphosate cancer victims. His contract contained a confidentiality clause barring Portier from disclosing his employment to other parties.”

It is easy to view these Glyphosate wars as tiny heroic Davids battling a vast malicious Goliath, and huge multinationals certainly can get up to all sorts of dubious stuff—but so can the “little guys”. And we have been here before: just look at Andrew Wakefield, found balls deep in lawyer money and rival patents, and still causing serious harm (e.g. 79 dead in Samoa) a decade after being busted for the mendacious money-grabbing little shit he really was.

As for the WHO, while it has done a great amount of very good work over the last 70 years, it is a human institution like any other and thus not immune to errors and corruption.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/who-promotes-unscientific-t...

dmix3• 7 years ago

It’s not a paper of original research but a meta analysis of various other scientist’s research which they selectively edited out the papers and science that didn’t support the agenda they had pre-determined. This was the description of the report that was originally given:

> A Working Group of 17 experts from 11 countries met at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) on 3-10 March 2015 to review the available published scientific evidence and evaluate the carcinogenicity of five organophosphate insecticides and herbicides: diazinon, glyphosate, malathion, parathion, and tetrachlorvinphos.

https://www.iarc.fr/featured-news/media-centre-iarc-news-gly...

The article said they added their own statistical analysis that wasn’t supported by the data they originally included:

In one instance, a fresh statistical analysis was inserted - effectively reversing the original finding of a study being reviewed by IARC.

wizzwizz42• 7 years ago

It wasn't supported by the conclusions they originally included. That doesn't mean the data didn't support it (although that might also be true – I don't know).

dzhiurgis2• 7 years ago

PSA: IARC haven’t found a single thing thats is definitely not carcinogenic and lists shit like radio waves or tumble driers as possibly carcinogenic.

IARC are bunch of lunatics.

modmans2nd3• 7 years ago

Sounds like the most garbage meta analysis in the history of science.

ipsum2• 7 years ago

This is sort of off-topic, but I've been getting strange ads about glyphosate not causing cancer disguised as news articles from Twitter and Reddit, presumably sponsored by Monsanto. (I don't have a strong stance of glyphosate at all).

Searching around, looks like other people have encountered this as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/8giwc1/why_ar...

coldtea• 7 years ago

Well, this Reuters piece doesn't sound like non-sponsored either...

dzhiurgis2• 7 years ago

No screenshots or links..?

That’s some flaggin’

craftinator2• 7 years ago

Oh come on. Ipsum has been on here for half a decade and has 2000 karma. This isn't a throwaway account... Do some research first.

dmix3• 7 years ago

I’m guessing some internal activists changed it because they predetermined it was going to be a bad anti-round up report and didn’t want to muddy the conclusion with evidence contradicting it. Politics seemingly trumped science at the org, that’s a really bad look for WHO and their response is total insufficient to explain these anomalies considering the massive implications it’s having in court rooms and industry:

IARC did not respond to questions about the alterations. It said the draft was “confidential” and “deliberative in nature.” After Reuters asked about the changes, the agency posted a statement on its website advising the scientists who participate in its working groups “not to feel pressured to discuss their deliberations” outside the confines of IARC.

I would like to know which scientists are involved here and putting their name on such work.

If glyposphate is actually bad this will only help Monsanto in denials and help them discredit their adversaries. Which means these manipulations is the report will completely backfire for the activists instead of helping the cause.

Edit: I see this is from 2017, I wonder what has happened since.

andybak• 7 years ago

I'm not too sure I buy your use of the word "obviously" here.

My normal spider-sense of "follow the money" seems to find no obvious path. Internal activists is a fairly novel concept - at least activists with the power to make changes like this. I'd like to know who benefits and why...

dmix3• 7 years ago

I’m sure there are plenty of environmental people who want to get rid of glyphosate and other massively popular chemicals used in industrial farming. But you’re right it could be some competitor or monetary influence - besides maybe the incentives within WHO and IARC themselves getting a whole lot of attention and influence from presenting a very damaging report instead of a mixed one.

Maybe it allowed some of them to become “expert witnesses” at major multi million dollar trials and compensated well by the law firms, who knows.

Or it could be as insignificant as some people trying to make their job seemingly important and justified sort of thing. An inconclusive report doesn’t get headlines.

Either way the organization owes the world a better explanation.

Yetanfou• 7 years ago

Internal activists is a fairly novel concept - at least activists with the power to make changes like this.

There's nothing novel about activism in organisations like the WHO, nor in the media which report on the activities of these organisations. It is actually quite hard to find truly objective studies which are not tainted by people-with-a-cause (political or otherwise) on the one side, people-with-financial-interests on the other.

zo1• 7 years ago

Most non-profit organizations are in some way biased toward maintaining their own existence alongside their actual goal. I would reckon that would be a good place to start looking for "follow the money".

I'm sure I could come up with one, though without thinking too deeply, it'd probably end up being a little too contrived, far-fetched or conspiratorial. Not as a way to boast, but more to illustrate that if we accept that money is a huge factor in the things that revolve around us, then we can start seeing patterns previously hidden because we had a bit of a "rosy" world-view.

E.g.:

WHO helps Glyphosate to be banned -> Less food production due to ineffective pesticide alternatives -> More people in the 3rd world countries starving -> More funding for "world Health" due to "poor starving people" -> WHO gets more funding and ensures its survival.

In contrast with:

WHO drives an amazing worldwide initiative to get 50 billion USD in funding -> WHO funds and deploys employees and equipment in starving areas to generate free food -> Solves 3rd world hunger -> Existing WHO mandate no longer exists -> The (Happy) End.

jcranmer• 7 years ago

People at large generally have a set of blinders on where the monetary incentives of large companies are clear and undeniable, but the monetary incentives of concerned organizations are passed over. An anti-vaccine group is going to pay good money to a researcher who can find links between vaccine and $EVIL, and indeed, this is already known to have happened (see Wakefield, Andrew).

In the case of being against agrichemicals, there is a readily identifiable commercial industry: organic agriculture. (And, again, don't discount the size of an industry just because it's the "little guy" working against "the man"--the health supplement industry is an example where the "little guy" is actually guilty of everything they accuse of "the man" of, and much worse). In addition, there is a pretty staunch anti-GMO activism running around in Europe as a whole which provides ready funding fuel here.

The entire glyphosate controversy, to me at least, has long been a case of "[the people against it] know it's somehow evil, because big agriculture, we're just trying to figure out something that will actually show it."

h0l0cube• 7 years ago

(2017)

Lectem• 7 years ago

Yeah... why share something that is 2 years old ?

rmason• 7 years ago

I've said on here before that Monsanto had bad lawyers and they never should have lost those two cases. I was an agronomist for twenty years and remember when Roundup was first introduced on the market.

I worked with the first genetically modified soybeans that could be sprayed with Roundup. One of the biggest selling points was that Roundup was measurably safer than the herbicides it replaced with far better results.

I see all these ads now on late night TV recruiting plaintiffs for new Roundup lawsuits. I seriously think these lawyers think this is like asbestos and they will be proven wrong. Just compare the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) and the LD50 for Roundup compared to other common herbicides.

The fertilizer dealers I know are totally baffled this hasn't been reversed already. They don't understand how Monsanto ever got into this position. Hopefully Monsanto's new owner Bayer will hire better lawyers to protect their investment but it's going to take years before this ever gets rolled back.

burpsnard• 7 years ago

Part of the controversy is around what constitutes a demonstration of safety.

One is "i fed it 50 rabbits and they were all fine the next morning";

another is "LD50 (50% died) within 24hrs of consuming X milligrams per kg of rabbit weight, which well above expected levels present in food";

Another is "more tumours in these 500 rats who were fed glyphosphate - exposed crops, than in these other 500 genetically identical rats fed the same but organic version, after 9 months"

saalweachter3• 7 years ago

I actually haven't seen this brought up for glyphosate but with respect to GMO crops, we've basically run an experiment where we've "autopsied" a billion livestock a year, and there was no observed increase in eg tumor rates when we transitioned from feeding them organic crops to GMO crops.

The same data probably applies to glyphosate, since the two go hand in hand (which is also why many activists get upset about glyphosate specifically, versus everything else that gets sprayed on crops, because it is associated with GMO glyphosate-resistant crops).

deogeo• 7 years ago

Yet another is "bees exposed to X were more vulnerable to parasite Y, but this only revealed itself in regions where parasite Y is present, and the effect could not be detected otherwise". I believe that's how they were able to produce so many studies saying neonicotinoids are safe for bees.

stinos2• 7 years ago

Fair point actually. There's also lot of yelling going on going as far that some think it's actually a proven fact that it causes cancer just because some judge somewhere made Monsanto pay. But there's another aspect as well: if I'm not mistaken (been a while I looked into this thoroughly) the links with the insect decline seem to be much stronger than the link with cancer? And that's also not exactly a good thing.

modmans2nd3• 7 years ago

I thought the insect decline was from theirs of neonicotinoids for pest control not herbicides like glyphosate.

refurb• 7 years ago

Lawyers winning hundreds of millions of dollars in contingency fees is a very strong incentive.

They smelled blood in the water.

shkkmo• 7 years ago

I would point out that bring drenched in the stuff is not really the same as eating food with trace amounts of it.

I would also point out that Monsanto is not being held responsible becauseof the toxicity, but because of the fairly clear evidence that Monsanto put a lot of effort into concealing that toxicity from workers, consumers and regulators.

It is possible for adoption of Roundup to be a net positive for society and for Monsanto / Bayer to be liable for concealing the risks that do exist.

I rather doubt that Johnson's case will be reversed, but I would not to see some other cases fail because they aren't able to show such a direct connection and as extreme an exposure.

saykou• 7 years ago

"Scientists should not feel pressured to discuss their deliberations outside this particular forum."

Then I'm sorry that's is not science, science is based on discussion and the possibility to falsify ones conclusion.

boublepop• 7 years ago

So you are countering that people should be pressured to discuss deliberations?

Science or not, you shouldn’t even feel forced to discuss what you had at lunch yesterday, no matter how many billions are at stake for corporations.

As you say, this is science, there is absolutely no reason to attack the people, when you can provide independent scientific evidence to support your own conclusion which might be counter to their. Then it becomes a question of evaluating the evidence, not evaluating the people.

appleflaxen• 7 years ago

Scientists should be able to discuss their deliberations without intimidation or fear in either direction.

If a scientist deliberates to reach a conclusion that they choose not to explain it's fine: we just need to ignore it.

There is no reason to argue that "scientists should be pressured to discuss their deliberations", which seems like the argument you are making.

ricardobeat• 7 years ago

Seems to me that they edited out opinions, not findings, which is exactly how it should be done.

Ex: "The authors firmly believe" and "the authors concluded"; not exactly scientific facts.

modmans2nd3• 7 years ago

Conclusions are why reports are written.

omar_a1• 7 years ago

Yup, those are common rhetorical devices for presenting scientific fact. It's like dismissing Evolution as "just a theory."

lostmyoldone• 7 years ago

Not taking a position on this case/article, it seems a complex situation which I can't fully evaluate.

However, research reports are written for their results, not their conclusion. The conclusions are often less formal and somewhat prone to bias. The scientific method is to consider results in aggregate to successively form a better understanding of an issue, and as such the individual conclusions in an individual report is really the least important part in a meta study or review report.

CWuestefeld• 7 years ago

From TFA:

"One effect of the changes to the draft, reviewed by Reuters in a comparison with the published report, was the removal of multiple scientists' conclusions that their studies had found no link between glyphosate and cancer in laboratory animals. In one instance, a fresh statistical analysis was inserted - effectively reversing the original finding of a study being reviewed by IARC."

This seems a lot stronger than just editing. Although not perfectly clear, it sounds to me like the report was a composite of multiple distinct studies, and they excised some studies that differed from their desired outcome. That's basically the same thing as dropping experimental evidence that doesn't agree with a study's goals.

If you're not fully acknowledging anything that might contradict your conclusion, then you're sciencing wrong.

thenewnewguy2• 7 years ago

Presumably those "opinions" were based on the data the scientists collected. All of the following cannot be proven to be 100% objectively facts, so we better just throw them out out science:

- Theory of Evolution

- Big Bang Theory

- General Relativity

- Global Warming/Climate Change

- Cell Theory

- Germ Theory

- etc etc (Just look up "scientific theories" or similar if you want more)

Retric2• 7 years ago

There is a huge difference between ’the author believes’ and ‘this evidence supports’. The important bits of scientific research is the evidence not the scientists conclusions.

If an existing test was not sensitive enough to detect some effect, any conclusions from that data are effectively worthless. However, the test still provides an upper bound for the magnitude of an effect.

cies2• 7 years ago

Any food "additive" (including all chemicals used in farming) should be listed, carcinogen or not.

The fact that products can be sold as "cucumber" but actually have a long list of chems on their skin is a very dark practice. See how companies abused their power when ingredient lists where not enforced by law. Or how tobacco comps are still abusing their freedom not to list ingredients. This malpractice disgusts me daily.

emodendroket2• 7 years ago

I kind of agree. I'm not really swayed by arguments that consumers shouldn't have information because they'd use it to make mistaken decisions. Let them; that's not my business.

SpicyLemonZest2• 7 years ago

The concern is that disclosures can be used selectively, to make unpopular businesses embarrass themselves while favored ones skate by. If we make people slap “contains glyphosate” on produce, is there any realistic chance that organic produce will say “contains blood meal” or apples will say “contains beeswax”?

gumby2• 7 years ago

That cuts both ways. Look at California Prop 65: it’s so widely applicable that the posted signs are ubiquitous and thus meaningless.

I don’t have a fix for this problem and I do have a bias for more info; just saying it isn’t obvious.

delhanty• 7 years ago

So I read this story and wondered whether there were any undisclosed links between the author (Kate Kelland) and Monsanto.

Google led me to sites alleging that this 2017 article and others were written to spec on the instructions of Monsanto. [0][1][2]

Not only did Kelland write a 2017 story that Monsanto asked her to write in exactly the way Monsanto executive Sam Murphey asked her to write it, (without disclosing to readers that Monsanto was the source,) but now we see evidence that a draft of a separate story Kelland did about glyphosate was delivered to Monsanto before it was published, a practice typically frowned on by news outlets.

[0] https://usrtk.org/monsanto-roundup-trial-tacker/new-monsanto...

[1] https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/18746-monsanto-fed-r...

[2] https://twitter.com/careygillam/status/1121417187531677696

singularity2001• 7 years ago

There should be a mechanism to reward such highly valuable meta-journalism as you provided.

Also there should be a judicial mechanism to lock up the board of Monsanto in a dark dungeon.

6510• 7 years ago

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/kate-kelland-b5995618

ars• 7 years ago

This Reuters article is basically just a summary of the difference between two reports.

I'm not sure exactly how you can be biased on that, you could go read the reports yourself and do the exact same diff.

jnordwick• 7 years ago

This is about as close to pure ad hominem as you can get.

tomstoms• 7 years ago

Try bias and conflict of interest.

calibas• 7 years ago

Why is there so much attention on glyphosate and not on polyethoxylated tallow amine? Both chemicals are in the weedkiller, yet the latter has consistently been proven to be more toxic.

Merrill• 7 years ago

Banning glyphosate would have some interesting effects:

- more tillage would be required causing more soil erosion and a higher consumption of fossil fuels resulting in more CO2 emissions from agriculture.

- yields would decline due to more weed competition, which, combined with higher costs for fuels would increase food prices.

From a social perspective, higher food prices, a healthier farm economy, and less available income for frivolities like vacations and travel that are also CO2 sources might be beneficial overall.

gumby2• 7 years ago

I consider glysophate environmentally pretty dangerous (e.g. destruction of the subsurface rhizome and mycozome structures/ecosystem) but have never understood the alleged carcinogenic mechanism of action.

A few jobs ago I had a chemist co-worker who’d actually worked on it (manufacturing development, not original synthesis). He was, not surprisingly, a big fan, but we did have Many long discussions as to its chemistry, mechanism, and (lack of?) human impact.

All that being said do note delhanty’s comment which is meta analysis of the posted article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21872497 Just because I don’t understand a particular point (and have some minimal qualifications for such an opinion) doesn’t make me right.

In glyphosate review, WHO agency edited out “non-carcinogenic” findings (2017)

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