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Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

disinformationchronicle.substack.com

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Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#101

Post by makeitdouble »

pronlover723 wrote: post #78
makeitdouble wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is exactly villainized because of the many billions of dollars of free services they provide and use as a source of the data they funnel to the advertisers, while killing competition as a second order effect. Philanthropy should be done by entities dedicated to it and ethically responsible, not as a camouflage for private data brokering.

Do you have some links of Google funneling data to advertisers?

I assume you are making a fine distinction between straight handing down user identifying private information, and providing special access to targeted users that will only hit the advertiser in full as they hit the ad.

Technically and legally both are different, but I still see both as funnelling data to advertisers.

Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#102

Post by colordrops »

tptacek wrote: post #23
diogenescynic wrote: post #2

Monsanto also pays shills to comment positively about pesticide use and try to brow beat anyone who is has a negative opinion their products. It's crazy how aggressive it is. Basically any thread on Twitter or Reddit the same users will defend Monsanto. You see the same thing about other controversial products, such as BPAs. It seems like some tactic they learned from Big Tobacco and Big Oil to just push as much doub…

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…

Often an intuition as to whether a particular comment is a paid shill is inaccurate, but one cannot deny that there are clear trends that indicate that paid shilling is occurring in general for a particular topic or organization. There are swarms of posts and comments with the same talking points that you find on the company's website, small subreddits in support of them that have no real reason to exist other than as aggregators of talking points, and an exaggerated responses to seemingly non-controversial statements that go against the company.

It's not some lizard man conspiracy that bot nets and sock puppet accounts exist. In fact they are a pretty standard MO on the internet.

Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#103

Post by heavyset_go »

tptacek wrote: post #94
nickpeterson wrote: post #9

I think a more effective strategy might be shaming individuals who make up the company. Just start buying internet ads with a persons name and how they wrote reports to try and convince people something that caused cancer didn’t cause cancer.

How's that strategy working out for the antivax movement?

Pretty well, I'd assume. Antivax sentiments have never been as widespread and mainstream than they are right now.

Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#104

Post by harry8 »

tptacek wrote: post #92
seattle_spring wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They likely don't want to discuss ethics because the exact same arguments and insults get trotted out everytime. Especially because if his arguments don't align with the common narrative, several people will likely just dismiss him as a "paid shill." Why would anyone willingly wade into that mess with nothing to gain?

Yeah, this is what I was getting at.

Maybe say so plainly rather than faking at playing dumb?

What you're assuming was meant wasn't actually said either. Make your case. Make well. Make it clearly and forcefully but please don't go in for those kind of hollywood-drama-style courtroom argument tricks, it's not helpful to any given discussion.

Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#105

Post by geotus »

makeitdouble wrote: post #101
pronlover723 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some links of Google funneling data to advertisers?

I assume you are making a fine distinction between straight handing down user identifying private information, and providing special access to targeted users that will only hit the advertiser in full as they hit the ad. Technically and legally both are different, but I still see both as funnelling data to advertisers.

Excuse me, but one of those things is actually providing data to advertisers, and one of them clearly, legally, and functionally is _not._ You don’t get your own set of facts just because you irrationally hate Google.

Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#106

Post by aporetics »

whatshisface wrote: post #75
tptacek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you maybe summarize it further, for those of us who don't know what you mean by this?

Inside life is great and people are nice, and all of the evil is generated at the boundary between the inside and the outside. On top of that, information about the evil is very much suppressed within the organization, so that the people working on it are even more ignorant about it than external bystanders. For example, take the oil industry in 2006: everyone inside it was inundated by detailed climate change denial…

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 efficient for other companies to do whatever they do, how do you assess (and take responsibility) for your work? Can you? If you can’t, what are you doing?

If you work in the cloud, this is you.

Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#107

Post by colordrops »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #99
colordrops wrote: post #82

Earlier 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.

I'm googling around as well, and they seem to be an umbrella for a large number of publications. I just can't believe that every iota of information under their purview is of perfect veracity, regardless of their level of rigor and process. No entity is that perfect.

Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#108

Post by [deleted] »

geodel wrote: post #26
nickpeterson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least defense contractors can argue they’re helping the “good guys”, people at Facebook know they’re part of the problem but they can’t turn down the money.

Huh, Monsanto employees can claim they are saving millions from hunger and death by providing GMO seeds. Also saving farmers from ruin by providing disease resistant seeds. Now you can come claiming well that's bullshit. But that can again be said for most of the companies.

[deleted]

Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#109

Post by [deleted] »

sammalloy wrote: post #37
alexashka wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have they no compassion for their fellow humans? Yes. Compassion for your fellow humans is quite unnatural for a lot of people. It's why Christianity was a thing - a non trivial percentage of the population will only pretend to be a human being out of fear.

> Compassion for your fellow humans is quite unnatural for a lot of people. Could you please quantify? I recall reading the exact opposite conclusion in behavioral and psychological science journals. It’s the reason why the military has to break people down to teach them to kill. Our natural reaction is to have compassion for each other and not to kill each other. We are a cooperative species that works well together…

[deleted]

Re: Monsanto’s ghostwriting to influence science and media

#110

Post by colordrops »

fny wrote: post #63
0fcb88 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is not a "true" Cochrane Review https://www.cochrane.org/search/site/glyphosate your link just used the method ( ~ aggregation of Ghostwriting researches) EDIT: check the https://www.cochrane.org/search/site/vaccine

Both authors appear squeaky clean though from prestigious institutions. They've published about several other carcinogens throughout their careers and have appear to have no trouble with funding. I'm not sure why they'd be incentivized to ruin their careers over a single publication.

Do you want to expound on this? "squeaky clean" is a subjective value judgement of little value, and I can list dozens of heavily corrupt individuals from "prestigious institutions".
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