Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Monsanto's competitors aren't paying you, they should be. /s
Monsanto doesn't have any competitors. It just buys them.
Wrong, Monsanto was bought by Bayer.
Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
151–160 of 192 posts
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you wish to enlighten us?
well, from my googling around it seems Cochrane holds a high position in the health field when discussing research, sort of similar to the ACM or the IEEE, or maybe the CRA. But I think maybe more guarded of their reputation and the reputation of its publications.
if you're just googling things to participate in an internet argument, what are you adding to the conversation?
Cochrane is generally well-trusted. It's not perfect and it has been manipulated. They are better than nothing, though.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#153Please, before you comment how evil Monsanto is, read the Cochrane review of glyphosate. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4866614/ This is produced by the Cochran which "is a British international charitable organisation formed to organise medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving health professionals, patients and policy makers. It includes 53 rev…
Wasn’t there a school groundskeeper who won a lawsuit whose decision was based on it being carcinogenic? If memory serves, he had a lawyer vs a huge team of high priced attorneys who, after a long lawsuit, failed to convince the court. I’m not an expert but courts are designed to adjudicate technical issues like this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-glyphosate-lawsuit-...
Courts do not make legal decisions based on technical information. A court/jury could find the exact opposite of what science said and it would still be considered legitimate legal determination.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 I’m a biochemist and while I’m not interested in sticking my neck out to defend any company, a lot of the criticism directed at Monsanto is unfair, uninformed and/or unintelligent. This is particularly true of criticism levied against glyphosate (one of the least-bad herbicides I know of) and GMOs (which people are usually just super confused about). Disclaimer: zero conflict of interest, I make all my money build…
If you run "ad campaigns" like Monsanto I don't think you can really call it unfair at this point. Why demand fairness here? If you are a biochemist you may have been either a victim or a participant in their campaigns. You should be angry at them if they damage scientific integrity apart from that because it will reflect on anyone working in that field. Here is the multi billion dollar company trying to influence re…
Even if Monsanto is trying to influence reporting, that doesn't mean that the criticism against GMO is automatically correct. That doesn't even make sense
The previous commenters are talking about the criticism of GMO in which GMO organisms are suddenly killing babies because there's corn making fish proteins. The criticisms literally don't make sense from a biochemical mechanism standpoint, and the previous commenters are pointing this out.
That means that the previous commenters are standing up for scientific integrity while you come along saying "big company bad, therefore everything big company says is lie"
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you run "ad campaigns" like Monsanto I don't think you can really call it unfair at this point. Why demand fairness here? If you are a biochemist you may have been either a victim or a participant in their campaigns. You should be angry at them if they damage scientific integrity apart from that because it will reflect on anyone working in that field. Here is the multi billion dollar company trying to influence re…
Even if Monsanto is trying to influence reporting, that doesn't mean that the criticism against GMO is automatically correct. That doesn't even make sense The previous commenters are talking about the criticism of GMO in which GMO organisms are suddenly killing babies because there's corn making fish proteins. The criticisms literally don't make sense from a biochemical mechanism standpoint, and the previous commente…
A genetically modified mold is used to create citric acid for a hundred years now and it used in almost all types of food. Maybe better if people don't know but even there are still problems with intellectual property.
Still, not the point. The topic of the article is corporate propaganda and you hand wave criticism away by making fun of "big company bad" remarks. To feel better than some of the most stupid criticism? That doesn't elevate you that much higher.
Yes, big company is bad. It did influence reporting and research for its own interest. That is very, very bad. Much worse than a criticism not hitting the mark by miles.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 I’m a biochemist and while I’m not interested in sticking my neck out to defend any company, a lot of the criticism directed at Monsanto is unfair, uninformed and/or unintelligent. This is particularly true of criticism levied against glyphosate (one of the least-bad herbicides I know of) and GMOs (which people are usually just super confused about). Disclaimer: zero conflict of interest, I make all my money build…
If you run "ad campaigns" like Monsanto I don't think you can really call it unfair at this point. Why demand fairness here? If you are a biochemist you may have been either a victim or a participant in their campaigns. You should be angry at them if they damage scientific integrity apart from that because it will reflect on anyone working in that field. Here is the multi billion dollar company trying to influence re…
> I don't get the incentive to even mention that.
"The best way to damage a cause is to advocate for it badly."
If you allow bad anti-GMO/Monsanto arguments to proliferate, the good ones will have a harder time reaching the light.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny thing about the Monsanto cancer case is that they know that the problem is in the Roundup formulation (including surfactants that are required to get the glyphosate across the waxy plant cell wall barrier) yet Monsanto financed studies on purified isolated glyphosate to demonstrate it didn't cause cancer. Sneaky and dishonest, isn't that? Why not just do the study with the Roundup formulation? > Mike DeVito, ac…
If you are not using roundup, you are still using something. "Organic" pesticides do not work better so you will generally be using more and that goes to the same places roundup does.
...therefore it's OK to lie about the toxicity of roundup?
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only those that I have immediate experience with do I trust to have the intention of being unbiased. Even then I would be hesitant to assign a label such as "likely correct" to such a complex topic, unless likely here just means > 50%.
>Only those that I have immediate experience with do I trust to have the intention of being unbiased. sure, but as you said earlier you have no knowledge of this organization prior to this post. There seems to be two types of people in this post, those who know exactly who Cochrane is and who think knee-jerk accusations of bias are ridiculous and those who don't know who Cochrane is. I'm betting the people who don't…
I've worked in multiple fields, and I understand human nature. I would trust an org to have good intentions and generally put out good research, but I know that all humans and organizations are fallible, and including ACM. A bad study can get through any org. It doesn't have to be corruption either, just a miss. I never insisted that it must be corruption.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real evil is always in not asking and not thinking about the meaning of the work. If you work at a company because it has a great engineering culture, but the work it happens to make it super efficient to turn babies into cowfeed, you’re still evil…for not thinking about the meaning of what you do. If you work at a company because it has an awesome engineering culture, and the work is to make it really easy and e…
You have got to make some finer distinctions for what is or isn't evil than "the cloud." All you will accomplish with overbroad strokes is convincing people that ethical distinctions do not actually exist. As for what the distinctions actually are, for a start, how about products that harm parties which have not agreed to anything?
Ah. I wasn’t calling the cloud evil, I was showing that working in the cloud poses some difficult questions about how to identify the meaning of the work. It would be easy to defer such a task. (But what would it mean to spend your life working in such a way that the meaning of your work is always up to someone else?)
I was pretty clear in locating the root of evil in thoughtlessness.
Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've defended Monsanto repeatedly on HN (there are some extraordinarily popular beliefs about Monsanto that turn out, from what I can tell, to be just completely false, and they used to wind up here a bunch). I'm not carrying any water for them. I'm pro-GMO just in principle, but neutral-to-skeptical about any company of Monsanto's size. I'm sure the company itself is perfectly amoral. I'm just calling actual issues…
What's yet even more funny is the website in your user info is suckpuppet.org. Heavy irony I guess? I hope?
I've owned that domain since before the word took on its current message board meaning. I just liked puppets made from socks.