I’ve spent much of my time over the past several years focused on trying to understand the world around me. The most consequential thing I’ve discovered over that time is that an enormous portion of the U.S. economy is little more than a rent-seeking racket. It’s everywhere you look. Throughout every industry, at “think tanks,” and within government, there’s some elaborate scam happening that hurts the many while a handful of parasites win. This is destroying the social and economic fabric of our civilization. It’s basically become a rampant disease, and the recent release of court documents related to Monsanto further highlights the point.
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?
“All contributors to Forbes.com sign a contract requiring them to disclose any potential conflicts of interest and only publish content that is their own original writing,” Mia Carbonell, a Forbes spokeswoman, said in a statement. “When it came to our attention that Mr. Miller violated these terms, we removed his blog from Forbes.com and ended our relationship with him.”
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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Michael Krieger
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This country is lost, and ruled by money etc.
Robert Proctor summed up the tobacco industry racketeering a few years ago in his book: Golden Holocaust that I can recommend in case you haven’t read it.
In this book, Proctor for instance shows how many experts, from statisticians to cardiologists to presidents of health care instutions, were bought by the tobacco industry to assume that it was unclear if tobacco caused lung cancer or heart disease. They also had a funding agency ( the tobacco research council) that funded ‘research’ in which one was allowed to research anything as long as it was not research into smoking and disease endpoints in humans. The marketeering of cigarettes is also extensively discussed in the book (with Bernays probably the most known proponent to let women smoke ‘torches of freedom’)
The book is however several hundred pages thick, and can also be summarized in a 1969 internal memo from the tobacco industry that can be Googled (Doubt is our product). It tells you for instance that
‘Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the “body of fact” that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy.’
and
‘Unfortunately, we cannot take a position directly opposing the anti-cigarette forces and say that cigarettes are a contributor to good health. No information that we have supports such a claim.’
and therefore propose to marketeer with the help of
‘a series of studies […] to understand exactly which messages most effectively create anti-smoking sentiment, and then to find the best means “of anticipating and countering the release of misinformation.’
This is very similar to what Monsanto is doing today, as shown in your article and, as it seems, all profit making organisations and governments are following this line of doubt as well in which (your words) some elaborate scam hurts the many while a handful of parasites win.
Fortunately, there is also an antidote to this, what you call ‘rampant disease’, written by Carl Sagan, in an 8 page essay that is called: ‘the fine art of baloney detection’ and which you can find here: http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/eng/Sagan-Baloney.pdf
Another antidote is reading your posts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts here!
It would be easy to say this is a USA.problem. The truth is the same lack of integrity issues occur in all countries. I think most of these other countries are much worse than the USA when it comes to rampant fraud.
The USA was supposed to be a beacon of light in a dark world. A hope for a better way to live together. Unfortunately, people are lost in the illusion.
Surprise!–Yes, this is a USA problem too. It used to be not SUCH a problem, but as we’ve lost our way morally, we’ve just reverted to the ways of all flesh. It’s a problem here because–surprise, Surprise!–we’re humans too. And we ALL have this eentsy, beentsy moral problem.
What’s discouraging are articles like this one which imply that we (whoever “we” are!) can correct the problem structurally, legislatively, or socially. This problem with fraud can’t be corrected with such band-aids. There has to be moral reformation. Not just moral teaching, although that’s a start. The individuals in society have to be changed. And I don’t see that on the horizon. In fact, I see us doubling down on our decision to “do it my way”. This will not end well.
The western “Scientific Establishment” (aka/ the mainstream scientific community) has been for sale through grants and other outside mechanisms since the early 1900’s. Which is why these so-called scientists have zero credibility. What the scientific community did to Nikola Tesla at JP Morgan’s request was a crime.
Today, look no further than the cancer industry in the West. Anyone who falls for the pink ribbons, pink this, pink that, is a chump. As you might imagine, I’m not a lot of fun at parties if someone makes the mistake of trying to foist that bullshit on me.
There is far more money in treating symptoms than treating causes.
Yeah people need to go to jail. Best of luck with that. Ain’t happening.
I am not hearing anything about the potential for glyphosates to cause “immune” problems. There seems to be an association with the rise and increase in allergies since the introduction of GMO food products. I don’t know how many of the readers of this blog site had knowledge of peanut allergies in the 70’s and early 80’s (peanuts are GMO seeds) but I knew none and I am an “old guy”. There have developed Bee Colony problems and information from commercial Bee Keepers that the plants that are GMO seeds seem to be associated with the problem (the French have changed some of their regulations concerning insecticides placed ON seeds and their Bee Colonies have started to stabaliize. We have suddenly had an increase in Autism (regardless of the definition change several years ago). The rate has gone from approx. 1:124 to 1:86 and now 1:68 within the last 6, or so, years (the numbers are increasing in a non-linear fashion). A few of the GMO seeds are: Corn, soy beans, sugar beets, canola, peanuts and several more. It is NOT the seed that is the issue but the fact that the modified plant that allows it to absorb the insecticides and herbicides that kill the weeds in the fields. We, in turn, ingest those chemical compounds… Of interest, Monsanto just sold off the GMO Div. to Bayer, a German company. It all is very convoluted and suspicious. Maybe we should raise the food we eat instead of purchasing foods that contain “unknown” genetics and chemicals.
During March 2015 in an interview by French investigative journalist Paul Moreira, which was first broadcast on French television station Canal+ in September 2014, Patrick Moore a canadian lobbyist for Monsanto was asked about the safety of the herbicide glyphosate. Moore told Paul Moreira that one “could drink a whole quart of it” without any harm. When Moore was challenged to drink a glass of the weedkiller, he refused, and ended the interview. The interview came shortly after the release of a World Health Organization (WHO) report adding glyphosate to a list of probable carcinogens.
Roundup = Paraquat = Agent Orange
I worked in the commercial landscaping business during the Summertime when I was in high school in the 70’s and they knew the stuff was very dangerous then. My employer used to warn us to never even let a drop of it get on our skin.
If you drank it, it would either kill you now, or kill you later.
“that an enormous portion of the U.S. economy is little more than a rent-seeking racket. It’s everywhere you look.”
I find this a very interesting insight. I live in Germany and I would say the same thing for Germany, but with a variation: Not the German economy is a rent-seeking racket, but large parts of “civil society” is rent-seeking are. The economy itself is quite productive in a real sense. But large parts of German society aren’t actually part of this productive economy anymore. Instead, they are socialist rent seekers/receivers, receivers of life long welfare (“Hartz IV”) or holding public sector pseudo jobs etc. Or they are receivers of “free” services (free university education) or subsidization (buying a new car: subsidized; buying electric automobile: subsidized; solar panel on your house’s roof: subsidized and – so – on
I had dinner with one of the expert witnesses for Monsanto in the SF case while he was out here to give testimony.
Now, for some reason, I have a singular knack for touching on the sorest possible subject in a given conversation, with absolutely no intention of doing so… an ex-gf used to call me the “The Akwardator.”
One of my dinner companions mentioned that she had purchased lettuce earlier that week from Whole Foods that tasted a little “chemically”…
I said she should be washing her lettuce regardless of where she purchases it but not to worry because I’m sure Roundup is safe… just like Agent Orange was safe.
The guy on my left spit his water, the lady across from me dropped her fork loudly on her plate and everybody was just staaaaaaaring at me…
I had ZERO idea who this guy was, just that he was from out-of-town…
The Akwardator strikes again, baby!