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A Corporate War Against a Scientist, and How He Fought Back
AthanasiusKircher writes "Environmental and health concerns about atrazine — one of the most commonly used herbicides in the U.S. — have been voiced for years, leading to an EU ban and multiple investigations by the EPA. Tyrone Hayes, a Berkeley professor who has spearheaded research on the topic, began to display signs of apparent paranoia over a decade ago. He noticed strangers following him to conferences around the world, taking notes and asking questions aimed to make him look foolish. He worried that someone was reading his email, and attacks against his reputation seemed to be everywhere; search engines even displayed ad hits like 'Tyrone Hayes Not Credible' when his name was searched for. But he wasn't paranoid: documents released after a lawsuit from Midwestern towns against Syngenta, the manufacturer of atrazine, showed a coordinated smear campaign. Syngenta's public relations team had a list of ways to defend its product, topped by 'discredit Hayes.' Its internal list of methods: 'have his work audited by 3rd party,' 'ask journals to retract,' 'set trap to entice him to sue,' 'investigate funding,' 'investigate wife,' etc. A recent New Yorker article chronicles this war against Hayes, but also his decision to go on the offensive and strike back. He took on the role of activist against atrazine, giving over 50 public talks on the subject each year, and even taunting Syngenta with profanity-laced emails, often delivered in a rapping 'gangsta' style. The story brings up important questions for science and its public persona: How do scientists fight a PR war against corporations with unlimited pockets? How far should they go?"
Go for it! Or ignore it. Your call. If they're not breaking the law, what are you going to do? "Asking questions to make him look foolish" only gets you so far, especially if you just don't answer them, or refer to your previous answer, etc.
There's a certain apparent nobility to it on the surface, it's the right thing to do...but wait, who benefits from pushing it?
Who wants the EPA to do nothing at all? Who wants there to be no EPA at all?
Why?
Every single scientist should fight it. Make them execute every single scummy plan they have on the books. If hundreds of thousands of scientists fight back, you'll see just how "unlimited" corp's pockets actually are. When the majority revolts, the corporate overlords quickly discover pushing their agenda gets costly and isn't worth it anymore...
UTF-8: There and Back Again
I was expecting this to be moderated +5, Funny instead of Insightful.... The jesters please come out now!
The story brings up important questions for science and its public persona: How do scientists fight a PR war against corporations with unlimited pockets? How far should they go?"
How far? The full distance.
Anything less, and it shows you don't really care in the long run.(all within the limits of sane and just laws, that is-in the presence of insane, or unjust laws, then no restrictions...you have nothing else to lose)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
How much did the regulations enforced by the Mines and Minerals Service do to prevent the British Petroleum disaster in the gulf?
How about "Michael Clayton"?
In 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its independent Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) examined all available studies on atrazine and concluded that "atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development based on a review of laboratory and field studies."
Yeah, except... from TFA:
By that point, there were seventy-five published studies on the subject, but the E.P.A. excluded the majority of them from consideration, because they did not meet the requirements for quality that the agency had set in 2003. The conclusion was based largely on a set of studies funded by Syngenta and led by Werner Kloas, a professor of endocrinology at Humboldt University, in Berlin. One of the co-authors was Alan Hosmer, a Syngenta scientist whose job, according to a 2004 performance evaluation, included "atrazine defence" and "influencing EPA."
After the hearing, two of the independent experts who had served on the E.P.A.'s scientific advisory panel, along with fifteen other scientists, wrote a paper (not yet published) complaining that the agency had repeatedly ignored the panel's recommendations and that it placed "human health and the environment at the mercy of industry." "The EPA works with industry to set up the methodology for such studies with the outcome often that industry is the only institution that can afford to conduct the research," they wrote. The Kloas study was the most comprehensive of its kind: its researchers had been scrutinized by an outside auditor, and their raw data turned over to the E.P.A. But the scientists wrote that one set of studies on a single species was "not a sufficient edifice on which to build a regulary assessment." Citing a paper by Hayes, who had done an analysis of sixteen atrazine studies, they wrote that "the single best predictor of whether or not the herbicide atrazine had a significant effect in a study was the funding source."
Uh... "But he wasn't paranoid: documents released after a lawsuit from Midwestern towns against Syngenta, the manufacturer of atrazine, showed a coordinated smear campaign. Syngenta's public relations team had a list of ways to defend its product, topped by 'discredit Hayes.' Its internal list of methods: 'have his work audited by 3rd party,' 'ask journals to retract,' 'set trap to entice him to sue,' 'investigate funding,' 'investigate wife,' etc."
What's next? EPA reading the next page on Steve Milloy's JunkScience website and deciding that DDT ain't bad either?
The correct place is to battle it out in scientific journals. Corporations should not be doing this, but legion are the talking heads and book promoters tearing down things from GM food to Olestra to any number of other things with little or no science backing them.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Are you fucking kidding me? Are you a shill or just stupid?
I thought I was being obviously over-the-top, but Poe's Law strikes again; it's impossible to satirize people who actually think that way.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Judging by the amount of profanity in the posts related to a certain Beta, I would had expected that a profanity slinging scientist would be Slashdot's hero of the day....
Fortunately, the humorists have temporarily achieved the upper hand. It is an unfortunate side effect of the moderation system where 'Funny' points don't give you extra karma leading to well meaning moderators to attach a different mod type to to the post.
That's fine. We know that. I just wonder what happens when a Slashdot naive person looks at these posts and gets a well, different, view of us.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That is funny because it is so inaccurate;
1. Hayes is not a government scientist. In fact the EPA disagrees with him completely.
2. The fight is not against regulation but against statements being put out by Hayes
3. The environmental lobby has nothing to do with it. Hayes's quest for fame by bringing down a big corp might be.
How much did the regulations not enforced by the Mines and Minerals Service do to not prevent the British Petroleum disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?
Are you fucking kidding me? Are you a shill or just stupid?
Neither. I am guesing (s)he is an IP lawyer. Used to thinking about how the company can get its way within the bounds of the law rather than asking whether things like investigating a scientist's wife in the hope of discrediting his research should be permissible in a civilized society. Maybe she does have a bias--maybe she got dumped by your company's CEO. But there's a big difference between *knowing* she has a bias and trying to cook one up.
The company's POV may be valid, but not all of the actions it intended in support of them--whether legal or not--are moral.
The real issue is that any reputable company in response to science that is bad for their products should be saying "this science showed that maybe there's a problem here, we'd better make sure we're not hurting our customers or their neighbors, let's do some research and legitimately see what the deal is." Resorting to discrediting the other guy should only come up, maybe, when and if you've established that his research is wrong, that the product is safe, that the guy's data is wrong, and that he's basically a crackpot. Unfortunately economic incentives make most people feel free to allow their product to poison or even murder despite the science. (See, e.g., cigarettes.) This is actually a good reason for broad diversification--the smaller a percentage of revenue is dependent on one product, the more willing a company is to do the right thing when one product proves unsafe.
He needs an Erin Brokovich to help!
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
He's got my support!
I've heard something about forex, drag queens and gay stallions. Would that work for you Sir?
You might be interested in Last Call at The Oasis: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20...
It streams on Netflix.
Hayes was one of the interviewees in that documentary. He shows off some of the mutant frogs too.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I thought I was being obviously over-the-top,...
Unfortunately, you did not get TO the top, much less 'over the top'.
No insult meant for you, that is just the sorry state of reality. It's appalling, but true.
I myself was tempted to reply to your earlier comment, thinking you were serious. I'm glad I decided not to bother.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
There are the good few (companies) that spoil it for the rotten masses, but they are so rare as to seldom garner a mention.
I would expect that a good company would immediately fire the author of this snivelling little shit strategy, not implement it.
And you will never work again in any related industry.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its independent Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) examined all available studies on atrazine and concluded that "atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development based on a review of laboratory and field studies."
It's called regulatory capture motha f**kers.
You can troll them, but not satirize them. There is no concept far enough over the top to be a satire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... was satire because there was a strong anti-poor movement, but they weren't proposing soylent green or selling your children into slavery, so a satire was possible.
But there do exist people with so radical of thoughts that it would be impossible to satirize them in the same way.
Learn to love Alaska
The knee jerk reaction of "big companies bad, individuals good" is not always accurate.
But it's more likely true than not.
Learn to love Alaska
Look man, I hate the beta in its current form as much as the next guy. I was going to participate in the boycott, but they did respond in a positive way to user feedback. Classic will still be available for the foreseeable future, and that's good enough for me. When they fix the comments system in beta I'll be fine moving there as well. Nothing lasts forever. Be happy they're not forcing shitty beta on you now, and enjoy slashdot as you always have.
Tyrone Hayes [...] began to display signs of apparent paranoia over a decade ago. [...] But he wasn't paranoid
“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you”
-- Joseph Heller (?)
“Paranoia is just having the right information.”
-- William S. Burroughs
That'd be good anti-free-market humor if those types of problems weren't worse, way worse, with people who get in the way of governments, such as whisteblowers.
What can this company do to this guy who has some results the company doesn't like? Some things may not be pleasant, but overall, not that much.
What can the government do to whisteblowers who has evidence that the government (or that cronies of those in power) wants to hide? It turns out, quite a bit.
So, comparatively speaking, I will take the free-market smear, thank you very much.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
"Go Big Red! Smash State!"
Rah-rah.
Don't forget to register for your sophomore semester next year.
Right. We can all print new 3D printers, so we'll only need the one to get started. Plus, the filament that the 3D printers use is extruded from unicorn's butts.
It was already 10 February in Australia when you posted this, you insensitive clod.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
I know it was satire and it's actually uncommon for progressives/environmentalists to understand the other side's argument to provide such accurate satire but unfortunately I think you raised some inconvenient questions. How much was he receiving per speaking event? What is the annual revenue of this company compared to UK Berkeley ' s Taxpayer budget? Kinda makes me wonder who is the wolf?
There seems to be a huge lack of objectivity in science in the US today. Without government support for objective science, it all become politicized. When business runs science, it is just propaganda. Eventually people will become less healthy as the environment dies.
Everything in the US seems to be about ideology now. Fact do not matter, reality does not matter. It seems that nobody cares about reality, just ideology. Even on slashdot, ideology arguements abound.
The trouble, the ideologues can never see factual reality, they are blind to reason.
A business that makes a profit, while destroying the environment is just a wealth transfer vehicle. In economic terms that is a transfer of wealth to a few private hands from the people of the country. It would be cheaper overall just to tax the poor and hand the money to the rich, that way you would save the environment.
How much did the habit of fining the shareholders of a company for the criminal actions of the companies executives do to prevent the British Petroleum disaster in the gulf? You can bet your bottom dollar if they started sending corporate executives to jail for life when their decisions illegally kill people a whole bunch of disasters would be avoided. Time to stop fining the shareholders and start holding the psychopathic killer executives responsible for their actions.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This site used to be great. Even in it's latter days, it's been good. That is poised to change. Before long, it will be mediocre, and ordinary.
I didn't see a problem when Dice Holdings initially bought Slashdot. I figured there would be efforts to drive nerd traffic towards their job listings and such. That was fine. We all need jobs.
Things have changed now. Beyond the shifts in story choices, the slashvertisements, and so on, something fundamental has changed: Slashdot's owners do not appreciate it.
Their recent financials show that they have written its value as an asset down to zero. They have legally claimed it to be worthless. That is at the root of what is happening now. They want to fundamentally change the nature of this site in order to remake it into something with big growth potential.
Beta is just the latest symptom of this disease. It will not be the last. In striving to make it into a site that will bring them a growing user base and growing revenue per user, they have shown a willingness to dumb down the interface in the name of making it more accessible to newcomers, to cast aside essential elements of decade-spanning community culture, and to plow ahead with changes in the face of overwhelmingly negative user feedback.
This is not going to change. This will not go away. I will not support it.
I will be gone for this entire week, in protest. While away, I will work to create a new community where things can be run with quality user discussions as the paramount objective.
Be seeing you.
Once they start writing memos like "investigate his wife" it's probably not about fame anymore. If it was me it would be about making sure that whoever drafted that memo doesn't get a chance to work again without adult supervision.
There is no malice aforethought in libel/slander. You're mixing crime and tort. I understand where you're going with this though. People do have a right of assembly, and so they can form a "company". A company may be fake legally, existing to do nothing that it claims it will do. That isn't fraud. Fraud is very specific legally. What could be done is a complaint to the state in which the company was incorporated (if it was), and then demanding that the articles of incorporation be taken away (if existing), but that still wouldn't stop the same people from forming another group under another name without formal incorporation whose sole purpose is to discredit someone. Consider the number of political groups that exist and serve a primary function of discrediting politicians.
Wrong. People think write-offs are some magical thing that makes you richer. This is a fallacy.
Writing off bad debt doesn't give you a tax benefit. It just means you don't pay taxes on that money you never got back.
It's always better (financially) to make money and pay taxes on it than not to make the money in the first place. It's like any expense.
Spoken as a small business owner.
I used to farm... A bit of information that's kind of interesting about atrazine. Locally, at least, it was only ever used on corn, and would pretty much wipe anything else out. It's residual effects are pretty striking, and if we sprayed it on a field of corn, then corn would be the only thing that would grow on the field the next year as well. Anecdotally, I've known some farmers who could only grow corn for *five years* on land that had been sprayed too heavily. It pretty much made the ground sterile for anything else.
I'm off to boycott... FUCK BETA
and yet, corporations can be owned by people, and other corporations.
actually, I think it is the latter, that engenders a whole lot of mischief and should be disallowed.
Perhaps the first question to ask is whether his "PR war" is justified. The EPA (under Clinton) and APVMA (Australia's equivalent) decided there was no evidence atrazine was harmful, and several studies failed to reproduce his results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
So, the flipside of that question is: what should companies do against persistent but scientifically baseless attacks? Almost anything they can do can be twisted around to make them look even more manipulative and guilty.
This is nothing new. When big business and science collide, big business know no bounds as to what they will do to protect there profit margin
Examples include
Industry attacks against Clair Patterson from the leaded fuel industry.
The tobacco lobby against health professionals
The CFC industry against climate scientists
They continue today with attacks against climate scientists from big oil and coal concerns.
The worry is that the public seem more minded to side with the vested interests against the scientific voice and the fact that many of the attacks come from scientists working within the industry showing a severe lack of morality by the people in those areas. All industry seem to have to do is raise the spectre of potential economic harm and the public go along with them.
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
I've always been baffled at why people believe this. If this were the case, nobody would have insurance, and people would be burning down their own businesses, because tadaa! write-off! It just makes no sense, but people take it as gospel.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
You mean like the dropped regulation in the USA about failsafes and backup processes on the drill casing head that exists elsewhere in the world, but the USA government didn't have? The regulation that would have stopped that event?
Yes, lack of regulation caused the problems there. The regulations were insufficient. Yet you want to pretend that if they're insufficient, they should be removed entirely?!?
Oh, (s)he's working with adult supervision as we speak and was working with one when writing that memo. World of adults is full of vindictive, utterly unethical assholes.
Timeline:
Company has a pesticide, second in use only to Monsanto's roundup.
Concerns begin to grow about the chemicals effect
Scientist is hired by company to join panel of scientists evaluating chemical
Scientist notes that frogs are being born hermaphroditic, or with multiple (excess) malformes testes.
Scientist begins to feel uncofortable, held back, and pressured at company
Scientist leaves, returns to university lab, and replicates experiment, getting same results
Scientists presents findings to company again
Company disputes findings as flawed, by using flawed arguments
Scientist is warned to be paranoid because giant companies with billions in revenue have no problem squashing annoying bugs (pun intended)
Company begins smear campaign against inconvenient scientist, buying search terms, following him, harassing him
EPA holds hearings
17+ studies are presented.
12 from the company, all show no effect on frogs
Scientist presents his fidnings, showing effects on frogs
Other independent scientists present findings, corroborating the scientists findings
Company settles class lawsuit, where details about its smear campaign come out
Sorry, there's more here than just someone trying to get famous.
Essentially ANY STUDY done by a company with a financial stake in the result, showing the outcome the comapny favors must be considered suspect.
Logically, it isnt automatically (100% certainty) invalid...but historically they have consistently been invalid more often than not,as companies attempt to buy out the scientists and fund fraudulent studies. Tobacco is the most famous example.
And btw, when the hearings were over? The EPA proposed further study must be done...and told the company with a finanical stake in the outcome to do it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The USA has always had megacorps that were willing to attack scientists in order to keep on poisoning the people of the USA.
See, for example, how Kehoe, Kettering and Midgely (working for GM, DuPont and the Ethyl Corporation) attacked the reputations and careers of whistle-blowing scientists (like Patterson, Landrigan and Needleman) in order to hide the horrific effects of lead poisoning. The high toxicity of lead was known in the 19th century, and well quantified by the mid-1930s, but hidden from the US public until the 1970s by a concerted corporate disinformation campaign.
In just the last century, we increased our exposure to lead in the environment by 625 times and the effects are going to last for several more generations at least. This poisoning of generations of children, with literally many millions of victims, was done to maximize corporate profits for America's ruling class. And in today's political climate - with Reagan corporatist Obama actually considered to be left-wing or even socialist - you can expect this sort of behavior will continue.
that some of the world's most eminent mathematicians and scientists are crackpots simply because they have been from Berkeley. No wonder you post as an Anonymous Coward.
Corporations should have the right to spew as much toxic pesticide into the environment as they want.
the Earth will have overheated and so thoroughly polluted with toxic pesticides that life will become impossible.
Seriously, the faith people have in the journals is simply idiotic.
"Science" and "scientists" have always, and will always be for sale. I have more respect for an honest whore than I do most corporate "scientists".
I do not have the expertise to make a reasoned judgement here, and I'm gonna assume most of you don't either. When media tries to do science, it's a dangerous thing. It could go either way, with cigarette companies paying doctors to promote their products, and rogue doctors raising doubt in things like vaccines.
There does seem to be some institutional failure in place---Why does it sound like all the studies on Atrazine are funded by Syngenta? On the one hand, companies should be the ones to pay the bill for research to prove their products are safe. But, it does seem that conflict of interest is an ingrained part of the system.
There are lots of statements in that post with absolutely no documents corroborating it. Why should I believe anything you write without references.
Essentially ANY STUDY done by a company with a financial stake in the result, showing the outcome the comapny favors must be considered suspect.
Sure, which is why you have those studies peer reviewed by independent scientists.
And btw, when the hearings were over? The EPA proposed further study must be done...
Every new chemical has long term studies.
I was under the impression that people would fill in the word "responsible" themselves without spoon feeding.
You knew what I meant so why bother with the "correction"? Same reason I got modded down on six completely unrelated posts, some from several days before, just after I had annoyed you last time? I suggest you try acting like an adult yourself.
The CFC issue was about far more than the ozone hole over Antarctica (which is still there BTW, it's just not getting worse any more). There was ozone depletion going on globally as well and ozone's role in blocking UVB radiation is important to all life on Earth.
Would you mind defining "responsible adult"? Because it seems that in the modern world, the most celebrated adults are the ones that are least "responsible" in the actual meaning of the world - taking responsibility for their actions.
Instead nowadays we celebrate those who successfully push the responsibility on others while taking benefits to themselves.
It's a very common phrase so I was just using it's colloquial usage. I'm sure you already knew what I meant so do not need to play the stupid "personal definition" game.
Which was my point. Most people who fall under the definition would in fact do the very thing you seem to claim they wouldn't. If given a task of using all means to discredit the single person, examining his entire life, including that of his close family looking for potential dirt is what "responsible adult" would do.
Then why bother posting?
Let me guess - you just wanted to annoy the person that made you angry before.
To point out the absurdity of your claim. No other reason. If you are annoyed when the obvious absurdity of your comment is pointed out to you, perhaps you should not make absurd public statements?
No - you are clearly just pissed off from the previous exchange. Grow up little troll.
Congratulations.
You're an idiot.
1) every statement came from the source article, which you apaprently didnt even bother to read.
2) you left out the 2nd part of that comment, the idea that the studies arent automatically invalid. which is the point: they arent automatically invalid, but because the company's future depends on the outcome, a favorable outcome should be suspect. which is precisely why peer review and corroboration are so important.
3) you missed the point of the last statement. Yes, more long term studies need to be done. But the point was the EPA told the company with a financial stake in the outcomes to do it. THAT IS THE POINT. the EPA effectively straddled the fence, making a weak gesture that wont offend the giant company. they should have directed an independent lab to do the study.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.