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Comment by krapht | Hacker News Reader

I'm a little disgusted with these lawsuits. The preponderance of scientific evidence is on the side of Monsanto (gag): Roundup isn't carcinogenic. The one study that is significant to these cases from the IARC has numerous statistical flaws. From the coverage that I've seen, most of these cases have been won on the back of numerous emails and texts from Monsanto trying to delay and suppress the release of potentially negative studies until after their legal cases are resolved.

So I guess Monsanto are jerks but also these cases are flawed science.

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Monsanto can and has spent millions to provide scientific results that back their position. Mansanto can and has spent millions to block scientific research that contradicts their position.

The balance of power is so unbelievably skewed that "the science" simply cannot be trusted. There is no study that Mansanto can't buy. There is no study than mom and pop can buy.

So, we look them in the eyes and we see scumbag villain vs simple folk. We see scumbag villain pumping out lakes of chemicals and crushing people and my what big teeth you have. And you've made how many billions on these chemicals? And how much is the poor little grandma asking for?

It's a no-brainer. Dig some millions out of your sofa cushions and pay the poor family.

It's not scientific. It's emotional. And lots of normal people get pretty emotional about the big bad wolf. Still, they didn't shoot the wolf. It's still alive and able to eat some other grandma. It just had to pay for a grandma it may not have eaten at all.

> There is no study that Mansanto can't buy

Are you saying that there's no study they couldn't create or that there's no study funded by another group they couldn't change? One of those is an exceptionally strong accusation (the other is still quite strong, but a different scale)

Monsanto benefits from conflating glyphosate with Roundup. There are several chemicals in Roundup that may be nastier than glyphosate in isolation, and the purposes of most of those chemicals is to multiply the potency of glyphosate.

These days I tend to assume that anyone posting about glyphosate in a Monsanto discussion has either been taken in by astroturfing or is being paid to confuse the two and everyone they talk to about it.

We aren't talking about a chemical here. We are talking about a commercial cocktail of chemicals.

The balance of power is so unbelievably skewed that "the science" simply cannot be trusted.

I don't think this is an argument you want to be making, as it would legitimize most forms of quackery.

No, it doesn't legitimize any quackery or pseudoscience. Inspecting the financial motivations for bias behind studies can only reveal them to be weaker evidence than they appeared to be at first glance, but it cannot reverse their conclusions.

If removing from consideration the Monsanto-funded studies changes the balance of evidence from "probably safe" to probably unsafe" instead of merely changing it to "I don't know", then that's only because there was already credible evidence on the unsafe side of the scale.

>Inspecting the financial motivations for bias behind studies can only reveal them to be weaker evidence than they appeared to be at first glance, but it cannot reverse their conclusions.

Strictly speaking, you're absolutely right, but in the court of public opinion where policy battles are fought, financing is commonly used as grounds to dismiss entire studies outright, without the slightest thought given to the actual scientific methodology used in the papers.

As well it should be? We've shown time and time again that the source of funding control a) whether or not results get published, e.g. 99 "bad results" don't ever get published but the 1 "good result" is, and b) the extent to which the design and execution of the study is biased towards a "good result".

The pendulum has swung very wide in favor of controlling interests, in fact I would argue that a large portion of the "anti-science" sentiment we are seeing is due to the perceived rigging of the scientific landscape. I say perceived here because even if 95% of science produced today is good the ones that directly affect the public and garner headlines are going to be related directly to a corporate interest, e.g. pharma, chemical companies etc. Also of note, guess who doctored the results about vaccines and autism? A credentialed scientist, obviously retracted at this point but I would put it to you that the very fact that this got published represents to the laity that there is a fundamental problem in science today.

Science was the belle of the ball in the early/mid 20th century, then had the benefit of the doubt as the century ended but now clearly has a public reputation problem. Getting money(the wrong kind) out of science is just as important as getting money out of politics, you should not trust the result of an article paid for by Monsanto anymore than you should trust the politician that they have bought as well.

>As well it should be?

Absolutely not!

The moment you're discounting the science and dismissing stuff based on fallacious reasoning is the moment you place opinion over empiricism.

If the Monsanto-funded studies suck, it will 100% be possible to point to the reasons why in those studies.

> If the Monsanto-funded studies suck, it will 100% be possible to point to the reasons why in those studies.

You can't read a study to determine that it's wrong because of something like survivorship bias, because you're not reading all the conflicting results that didn't get published. The only way to determine that kind of cause is to conduct a lot of independent research seeking to replicate the questionable study. That's more likely to happen if you discount and throw out the questionable studies, leaving you with a more realistic picture of the quantity and quality of evidence you have on the issue. If you take questionable studies at face value, you're more likely to decide that you have enough evidence to come to a conclusion.

Name one study that sides with Monsanto that wasn't paid for by Monsanto. Now name a study that was paid for by Monsanto that puts them in a bad light. Now look at the final draft after the scientists were done and see if it hasn't been flipped on its head.

You can pile up a hundred studies that cheer for Monsanto, and one that goes against them and I will choose the 1 if they were all paid for by Monsanto.

If you think there are multi-national gazillion dollar companies out there willing to go to almost any lengths to build their empire, you might be susceptible to many forms of quackery. Or you could be entirely reasonable.

I find this "science can't be trusted" attitude incredibly worrying. Without science, all you have is a witch-hunt.

The point is that Kool-Aid can release the results of some study they funded that shows that Kool-Aid is healthier than orange juice.

They can say it is scientific because it used scientific techniques.

I'm saying that it can't be trusted. It's not that "science can't be trusted". It's that "not everything can be trusted to be scientific".

Any study paid for by Monsanto goes in my "untrustable" book until it can be independently verified by competent scientists who do not have a conflict of interest and do not rely on any party for funding or publication that has a conflict of interest.

I agree with you there. The problem was you seemed to be implying that because Monsanto is a rich corporation, they control all the science on glyphosate, and we therefore can't rely on science at all. Court rulings have to rely on science to have any legitimacy. There are countless reasons why judgements based on emotions without science are a very bad idea.

In this case, it seems that the jury discounted the scientific value of all the studies that were bought by Monsanto. That didn't leave them much. What was left was not incredibly compelling, but seemed to lean away from Monsanto.

Some studies have leaned away from Monsanto and demonstrably been tampered to lean back towards Monsanto.

So if you're trying to weed out the noise and get down to real science, things don't look good for Monsanto. They don't look terrible for Monsanto until you see how much Monsanto works to bury, obscure, or tamper with real scientific findings. At that point, you bring the hammer down.

If juries are allowed to go around awarding billions of dollars to individuals, the big bad wolf won’t be around for long. I hope whatever we replace capitalism with is good!

Glyphosate isn't carcinogenic. Roundup is more than just glyphosate, though.

I thought the IARC conclusion was that glyphosate was probably carcinogenic? This whole case was built on that, no?

The evidence IARC is relying on is extremely thin. I'm not commenting on the case, so much as making the observation that glyphosate can be fine (it most likely is) without the Roundup product itself being safe.

> Glyphosate isn't carcinogenic.

Opinion is divided on that assertion.

Even Monsanto seems unsure. Why else would they suppress so much unfavourable research and employ all those social media shills?

I don't care much for opinion. Science does not seem too divided on the matter. But humans are emotional creatures, and Monsanto understands that it does not really matter what the science says, it only matters who gets the better media spin. You can bet they are really wishing right now that they had gotten a better handle on the PR.

'Science' certainly is divided on the matter, (and I'd say most of it does not paint glyphosate in a great light) which is why Monsanto tries to suppress the science it doesn't like, hires trolls to brigade social media and engages in obfuscation and obstruction.

I would suggest Bayer/Monsanto like any big company can quash scientific studies if they appear deleterious to their future income streams, first came to light with the tobbacco industry. Perhaps thats why so few studies exist that show glyphosate in its true light, but instead portray's it as a panacea when any inteligent person knows panacea's in the world do not exist, so there must be harmful effects.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/contracts-give-coca-cola...

It's a badly-kept secret that Monsanto suppressed various studies on glyphosate to hide unfavourable results.

> So I guess Monsanto are jerks but also these cases are flawed science.

It seems like the question here should be whether this outcome provides justice, not whether it represents the best scientific conclusion available. Shouldn't Monsanto be punished in some fashion for unethically trying to suppress evidence and mislead the public, even if it eventually turns out that Roundup is not as dangerous as it was suspected/feared to be?

A jury verdict like this is certainly not the best imaginable way to discipline corporations for such wrongdoings, but if this is what's achievable with our current legal system, then it seems to be at least somewhat justified.

The only question in front of a court is whether they broke the law. If they did something unethical but we don't have a law against it... well, fight for a new law.

If you want justice based on your morals & feelings, then you can just drop the pretense of "rule of law" / a legal system and let the mob or powerful rule as they whish. But I doubt such a system will turn out in my favor.

> "The jury found Roundup had been defectively designed, that the company failed to warn of the herbicide’s cancer risk and that the company acted negligently. "

There's certainly reason to question the jury's determination about defective design, since that's a relatively scientific question. But that wasn't the only question before the jury.

The issue of negligence with regards to the disclosing risks to the public seems to be reasonably relevant to Monsanto's misconduct; this certainly isn't a mob lynching a corporation without regard for rule of law, and on the surface it doesn't even appear to be a particularly ridiculous stretch of the law.

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