A 2000 study that concluded the well-known herbicide glyphosate was safe, widely cited since then, has just been officially disavowed by the journal that published it. The scientists are suspected of having signed a text actually prepared by Monsanto.

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A quarter-century after its publication, one of the most influential research articles on the potential carcinogenicity of glyphosate has been retracted for “several critical issues that are considered to undermine the academic integrity of this article and its conclusions.” In a retraction notice dated Friday, November 28, the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology announced that the study, published in April 2000 and concluding the herbicide was safe, has been removed from its archives. 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.

In cautious terms, Martin van den Berg, co-editor-in-chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, noted that “employees of Monsanto may have contributed to the writing of the article without proper acknowledgment as co-authors. This lack of transparency raises serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented.” Other failings are cited, notably the failure to disclose the authors’ compensation by Monsanto. “The potential financial compensation raises significant ethical concerns and calls into question the apparent academic objectivity of the authors in this publication,” van den Berg added.

  • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
    22·
    5 hours ago

    I’m a committed Wikipedia reader, so if you’ve got a better source to read (or “parrot”) then go ahead. If you don’t reply I’ll know you’re on the pocket of big dandelion.

    • Randomgal@lemmy.ca
      2·
      5 hours ago

      Maybe read the whole article then, because it would have told you it is still classified as a probably carcinogenic for humans.

      You just decided to ignore the part you didn’t like.

      • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        4 hours ago

        Are you referring to this paragraph?

        The Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR),[109] the European Commission , the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency , the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority [110] and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment [111] have concluded that there is no evidence that glyphosate poses a carcinogenic or genotoxic risk to humans. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified glyphosate as “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”[112][113] One international scientific organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate in Group 2A, “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015.[15][13]

        Because I count that as 6 saying “no evidence of a cancer link” and 1 saying “probably carcinogenic.”

        At the very least, that suggests to me that if it is carcinogenic, it’s at such a low level that the effect is hard to measure, and so not worth worrying about.