Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

baumhedlundlaw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 131 posts

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#11

Post by bllguo »

themgt wrote: post #8
43224gg252 wrote: post #4

Of course they did. Anyone on the internet about a year - 2 years ago remembers every time you mentioned monsanto they would send shills in to defend them and call you a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist.

It's been really frustrating trying to have any nuanced stance on GMOs with proponents doing the "durr all modern crops are genetically modified by human selection" and such. Like no shit, it is still possible to acknowledge that and believe that there are legitimate concerns about intellectual property, or with modifying a crop to be resistant to a carcinogenic poison farmers are going to dump all over it. A lot of…

I'd probably blame the fanatic GMO opponents first, who can typically be refuted by the simple arguments you mock.

Unfortunately nuance and middle ground are hard to come by online. And it doesn't help when you dismiss all GMO proponents as paid shills.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#12

Post by wu-ikkyu »

kfriede wrote: post #5
43224gg252 wrote: post #4

Of course they did. Anyone on the internet about a year - 2 years ago remembers every time you mentioned monsanto they would send shills in to defend them and call you a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist.

To be fair, I think a good portion of those 'shills' were organic (no pun intended). To this day, a lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob and have a large community of people who dislike them.

>lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob

It's worth noting that having such groups is a commonly used counter intelligence tactic: create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions.

An effective astroturf campaign calls for both pro-x and anti-x shills.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#14

Post by throwaway5752 »

eadz wrote: post #6

It is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore. We'll have to come up with a new word for what we used to call science because I don't think corporations and media set on manipulating public opinion and laws will give it back.

Science is a process and is close to an infallible thing as we have created as humans. There is no problem with science.

What is happening here is "lying". The people creating false and misleading scientific results are liars and it becomes a question of taking skeptical views towards sources and knowing who to trust.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#15

Post by lumberjack »

eadz wrote: post #6

It is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore. We'll have to come up with a new word for what we used to call science because I don't think corporations and media set on manipulating public opinion and laws will give it back.

It's not like it was hard to figure out what was going on.

On one hand you have scientists publishing letters of concern regarding glyphosate arguing for more studies to be done because of hints of carcinogenic properties.

On the other hand you have a full blown shill campaign on Reddit and other website, being all like, "there is absolutely nothing to worry about, why do you hate science!". And lobbyists bullying the EFSA into publishing a statement in support of glyphosate so that it could be relicense for further use within Europe.

You can trust science. You just have to be aware of the conflicts of interests. Monsanto hasn't bought every single scientist out there.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#16

Post by lumberjack »

ada1981 wrote: post #9

Who actually likes Monstanto? I imagine a vast majority of the American people would support an outright shutdown of their business.

They do create useful products so they cannot be shutdown. The problem is in doing so, we trust them with too much power. In this case we are trusting them, not to poison our children in the name of profit.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#18

Post by nerpderp83 »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #12
kfriede wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, I think a good portion of those 'shills' were organic (no pun intended). To this day, a lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob and have a large community of people who dislike them.

>lot of the popular "anti-monsanto", "anti-gmo" groups (e.g. David Avocado Wolfe) are pretty nutjob It's worth noting that having such groups is a commonly used counter intelligence tactic: create a loud and incoherent pseudo-strawman opposition to distract from those who are actually asking legitimate questions. An effective astroturf campaign calls for both pro-x and anti-x shills.

If anyone was in a place to make a Strawman, it would be Monsanto.

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#19

Post by olliej »

Given the number of ghost written publications shouldn't there be a slew of retractions?

It's unethical, and generally a violation of journal rules to publish another's work listed with yourself as an author.

Then there's a journal editor that they pay, who they worked with to get a paper retracted, surely that should result in a re-review of everything involved there as well?

Has anyone done the work to determine which papers are involved and start the retraction notification process?

Re: Monsanto leaks suggest it tried to ‘kill’ cancer research about weed killer

#20

Post by grecy »

eadz wrote: post #6

It is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore. We'll have to come up with a new word for what we used to call science because I don't think corporations and media set on manipulating public opinion and laws will give it back.

> It is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore.

I agree. My brother (Aerospace Eng.) and I (Software Eng.) talk often about this with our Dad (Electrical Eng.).

Given that big business and BIG money has now been proven to have hidden the truth about Monsanto Chemicals, sugar and many other things, how many other things in our would would big business pay billions or even trillions to cover up if they had a study that showed it was somehow harmful?

Just to throw out some ideas, how many trillions would they spend to hide that cell phones are bad, or TVs or "new car smell", or plastic containers for food.

It's quite clear that almost everything in our society that is sold for profit is now backed by trillions and trillions of dollars, and they would hide any ill effects if they could.

It's not that "science" failed us, it's that we let money buy it out, much like democracies too (i.e. unlimited campaign contributions)

Post reply on HN