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after its publication, one of the most influential research articles on the potential carcinogenicity of glyphosate has been retracted for “several critical issues that are considered to undermine the academic integrity of this article and its conclusions.”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.

  • SGGeorwell@lemmy.world
    66·
    1 day ago

    Scientists who allow their names to be used as cover for corruption should be barred from ever publishing again, and all their other papers should have an asterisk.

    • FoxyFerengi@startrek.website
      21·
      1 day ago

      All but one of the authors of this paper are dead. I agree with you though, and I would hope a retraction of a paper as serious as this would trigger a review of all the papers connected to the authors.

    • BilboBargains@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 day ago

      They ceased to be scientists at that point.This is a problem generally in science. Research is often funded by business and their objectives only ever align with the pursuit of scientific truth by accident. The Open Science initiative has some good mitigations for this problem.

    • SeeMarkFly@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      22 hours ago

      To be clear, this is a gross business failure but this particular business is too big to do that.

  • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
    14·
    1 day ago

    It’s important to understand that glyphosate has been the subject of a lot of studies. Naturally those studies require increased scrutiny now, in case the same dishonest tactics have been used on others, but the likelihood is that the overall conclusion that glyphosate is safe is still true.

    Unfortunately the retraction of a paper by a journal only really harms the scientists who were involved, not the company that instigated the fraud. When there’s a financial incentive to subvert scientific transparency, that seems insufficient. But I dunno how you could resolve this legally (or legislatively).