Monsanto has been caught out lying so many times even in courts of law, there's just no question but that they are never a source of truth. Examples on the record: When Monsanto lied to the people of Sturgeon Missouri about the "safety" of chemical spills, they ended up losing the court case & paying over $16 million dollars. What did they lie about? Everything. A deadly chemical gets spilled, they sent in their "experts" (including Frank Dost) to conduct "tests" and "studies" so that they could "prove" the chemical spill couldn't possibly hurt anyone, & then they published as "science" fraudulant studies, & hired spin doctors to interpret the false science in simpler terms for a population they clearly regarded as gullible hicks.
They were sued for this fraud & lost because it was discovered their "expert" assessment of the chemical spill dangers was incorrect on the following counts:
Lung cancer deaths should have been reported 143% higher than Monsanto claimed.
Genitourinary cancer deaths, 108% higher than Monsanto claimed.
Bladder cancer death rate, 809% higher than Monsanto claimed.
Lymphatic cancer death rate, 92% higher than Monsanto claimed.
Death from heart disease, 37% higher than Monsanto claimed.
Sworn testimony during the trial proceedings, which had been moved to Illinois, showed that for a period of 30 years Monsanto Chemical Company manipulated, falsified & concealed study results on deaths & cancers associated with their chemical products. If they'd lie for 30 years about that, how long will they also lie about RoundUp? Another 30 years? Forty? Forever? As long as they exist, no doubt.
As for business risk, Monsanto's entire future hinges on the INCREASING marketability of RoundUp in tandem with glyphosate-resistant crops no one but themselves can provide. From their point of view they are "far too businesslike" to ever tell the truth, since the goal is to increase sales of a product that shouldn't be sold at all.
As opposed, of course, to the hired guns put on by the plaintiffs.
You know that your scientific case is lost when you resort to quoting torts as your basis for "truth." The bottom line is that class action torts are not a test for truth in any sense of the word. Junk science is much more often introduced by plaintiffs than defendants in torts, and the courts are incapable of telling the difference.
In federal courts, the admissibility of "scientific testimony" rests on the whim of the judge. While the judges are supposed to use certain criteria (called Daubert criteria for federal cases), most judges are largely illiterate when it comes those criteria. One recent study showed, for instance, that only 6% of judges understood the concept of "falsifiability," only 4% understood what "error rate" meant, and only 71% knew what "peer review" meant. (Gatowski, et al. "Asking the gatekeepers: A national survey of judges on judging expert evidence in a Post-Daubert World." Law and Human Behavior, Vol 25, 433-458, 2001). As I have noted, what gets in as "scientific testimony" has little to do with science (Oliver, WR, "Truth and Beauty in Forensic Medicine." ACM SIGGRAPH Special Session "Truth Before Beauty: Guiding Principles for Scientific and Medical Visualization." 2003).
When it comes to scientific arguments, arguing that something is "understated" by X% because of a *tort finding* is ludicrous. It's like malpractice suits in medicine and the actual presence of negligent care -- there is no relation. Most malpractice suits are made in the absense of negligent care (e.g. most suits are baseless, regardless of the finding), and most people who receive negligent care do not sue. Put a sick kid on the stand and somebody will be putting out money -- regardless of the merits of the case, and regardless of whether it's a malpractice suit or suit against a corporation.
And, as far as the *science* goes, Monsanto is not lying about RoundUp. The studies paghat dismisses are not Monsanto studies, and they are published in peer-reviewed journals.
snipped-for-privacy@netscapeSPAM-ME-NOT.net (paghat) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@soggy72.drizzle.com:
So, what you're saying is that they try to keep up the sales so they are big enough later on to pay for the claims. That could be true, but remember, these are not claims about the damages-caused, but about knowing about the facts and knowingly lie about them. If that can be proved any judge will kill their business.
If the situation is as serious as you say it surely musn't be that hard to prove a case. There are lots of ngo's that have enough money to finance a research like that and after convincing evidence is shown it only remains to be proven that MS knew about it.
I find it hard to believe that if MS _knows_ that this stuff is as dangerous as you claim it to be that they would go on and make these false statements. So, since they keep doing it, they do not know for sure it is that dangerous. And if they don't _know it, how can _you be so sure.
Btw, I'm certainly not a friend of MS, far from it, and I disaprove strongly of their business practice of forcing gentech on the rest of the world, but if we can not prove a case as 'clear' as this one, then who is to blame for the consequences? I think MS is a technocrats business plan, but that is just one part of our society. If ppl disagree massively, and the case is as clear as you say, than surely it must me easy to stop them.
Now you're just being silly. Monsanto practices spin control with a highly paied PR department. They falsify data. They have been caught lying repeatedly even to Congress, and under oath in coruts of law. Examples:
1) Their extraordinary cover-up with falsified data after they poisoned the people of Sturgeon Missouri
2) Being fined & forced by the NY Attorney General to stop telling the whopper you repeated earlier in this thread that RoundUp is safe as table salt, and forced to remove from the label the lies that RoundUp was "biodegradable" and "environmentally friendly." Though fined & forced to take it off the label, they do keep retelling these lies off-label.
3) Though caught lying by the NY Attorney General in 1996, Monsanto did not chagne their ways, and was again fined in 1998 for claiming in an advertising campaign (contrary to what they were forced to admit on their label) that RoundUp was safe to use around water. The only way these kinds of whoppers can be regarded as accidental & unknowing is if you assume Monsanto lacks even rudimentary knowledge of science.
4) EPA's outraged charges against Monsanto for providing falsified data on the safety of dioxin contamination in their products.
5) Dr Ray Suskind's research for Monsanto which was found they routinely misrepresented data for Monsanto, followed by Monsanto's routine claim that they never imagined any scientist they gave a shitload of money to would actually misrepresent findings in order to get the results Monsanto paid for.
6) Deniability is one of Monsanto's trademarks. In 1994, EPA published information on the falsified Monsanto-funded studies on RoundUp, but once again Monsanto claimed they couldn't possibly have known that by paying Craven Labs for specific findings, with renewed funding guaranteed if the findings suited Monsanto, then the findings they required would be fraudulant. Three Craven Labs employees ended up felony charges, sentenced up to five years in prison, with a large number of employees pleading guilty to lesser charges. "Coincidentally" when Monsanto hired another lab to re-do the research, the new lab obediently came to the exact same conclusions as had been falsified. It's all about not getting caught.
7) Deniability doesn't always work since much of the falsified data comes from Monsanto's own labs & is not just paid for from others. Monsanto's in-house "resaerch" falsified data for artificial sweeteners aspartame & neotame. FDA toxicologists, Drs. Adrian Gross & Jaqueline Verrett, first discovered the intentionally falsified data.
8) And how short can memory be. Both Monsanto and Dow lied for YEARS about Agent Orange, and were again caught falsifying supportive data. In one study alone. Yeah, yeh, that was twenty & fifty years ago, but as late as
2002 at a symposium in Hanoi, Monsanto flacks turned up to again wheedle out of responsibility. Monsanto's most famously revealed (of scores) of lies about Agent Orange was when they sent their scientists into the Nitro West Virginia plant to assess health risks to workers. To get the required results, they removed from their study five outright deaths, denied the presence of unusual cancers that were present in the worker population, & in numerous other ways faked data which Monsanto then used to prove Agent Orange was totally safe. In 1979 one of the key researchers, an outraged Bill Gaffey, sued investigative journalists for defamation of character, & lost. A year later, under oath to Congress, he finally admitted Monsanto hired him specifically to falsify data. Despite admitting under oath in
1980 that he lied for Monsanto, the data was nevertheless published as if authentic in 1983, so ended up in court in 1984:
11) In the lawsuit against Monsanto in 1984, Judith Zack made further admissions under oath of being hired by Monsanto to fake data favorable to Agent Orange and to whitewash the effects of dioxins. Oh hell, there's TONS more on Agent Orange. From the 1950s through the 1990s, it was their RoundUp of the era. The same lying techniques used for decades to favor Agent Orange are today being adapted to support RoundUp. Since RoundUp contains dioxin contaminants, Monsanto is still using falsified Agent Orange data, supplemented by new falsifications, to prove the levels of dioxin in RoundUp are harmless (i.e., see #4 above).
9) Lies of omission. Monsanto has never, and will never, conduct or fund any research on RoudUp-caused deaths. Hospital data shows it to be the #3 most dangerous herbicide or pesticide in terms of actual incidents. Yet Monsanto repeatedly cites its own data alleging safety, a fundamental lie they are committed to retelling as often as they can.
10) EPA findings in 1998 were that on RoundUp labels, Monsanto was still using "false & misleading claims." Now I'm pretty sure I'm not unique in assuming statements that are intentionally "false & misleading" are indeed lies.
11) A 1991 document from EPA, "Impact of Falsified Monsanto Human Studies on Dioxin Regulations by EPA & Other Agencies" confirms that the lying chemical companies do gain by lying, because chemicals that should be regulated end up unregulated on the basis of being lied to by Monsanto and Dow.
12) Monsanto after years of lying about bovine growth hormones not making it into the food chain was caught out in the big lie. Robert Cohen testified in 1999 how the lie went: "90% of Bovine growth hormone is removed by pasteurization at 160 degrees for thirty minutes." This is a lie on two levels. First, milk is pasteurized for FIFTEEN SECONDS, not thirty minutes, so the idea that thirty minutes of pasteurization would fix all but 10% of the problem was a red herring. Second, Monsanto's experiments with lengthy pasteurizing had in reality failed to destroy even 20% of the bovine growth hormone, fully 81% of the hormone remained. The FDA should never have okayed this hormone but they did, because so many FDA operatives take advantage of the "revolving door policy" & leave the FDA for high-paying jobs at Monsanto or its numerous subsidiaries. Plus Cohen discovered that it took only 12 members of congress to sink a bill that had the support of 181 congressmen to not allow milk contaminated with bovine growth hormone to be sold to the public. Those 12 men who stopped the bill were called the Dairy Livestock & Poultry Committee. They had all received PAC money from dairy interests & four accepted monies direct from Monsanto. So the method is first, lie. If that fails, buy off Congress.
13) Suppression of truth-tellers. Monsanto sues whistleblowers, but rewards anyone who supports their views. A secret internal memo was leaked to Gene Watch regarding Monsanto's methods of propogandizing the public by controlling what the public is permitted to find out. The full text of this amazing memo can be found at genewatch.org -- it is an outline for controling or misleading government agencies & the public. Monsanto would, for instance, do whatever it could to control who could attend international symposia on gene modified crops; would promote the views of agreeable scientists pretending to do independent research; would buy off government officials in developing countries; would fight through lobbyists for their continuing right to concoct misleading labels; would do what they could to damage or restrict the careers of independent researchers apt to publish data unfavorable to gene modified crops; would provide "experts" to poison control centers around the world to help them understand nothing Monsanto sells is harmful, under the premise that regional legislators rely on information from poison control centers when fashioning laws to protect the public; & would personally train the technicians for lab work at no cost to the independent labs.
14) Anniston, an impoverished rural town in Alabama populated by disempowered blacks, is one of the hotspots for cancer in America, because of illegal massive dumping of PCBs into their local environment. For 40 years Monsanto and Solutia lied about the intentional dumping & paid millions in court costs to keep from having to settle with the people of Alabama before 2001, when at long last they admitted to guilt, but changed their tactic to argue (successfully, alas) that they shouldn't be forced to pay medical costs for illnesses that take a couple decades to show up. So justice has never been done the people of Anniston.
15) EPA investigator William Sanjour found that Monsanto were chronic liars. The examples he cited included A) Paid for falsified studies then knowingly used the false data that "proved" there was no cancer risk from exposure to dioxins; B) falsified data & sent PR men and attorneys to Sturgeon Missouri to lie face-to-face to spill victims; C) Monsanto lied to plant workers about dangerous exposures that occurred in their chlorophenol plant; D) Monsanto knowingly dumped 30-40 pounds of dioxins per day into the Mississippi throughout the 1970s, lied about it, then lied again when the dioxins were found to have made their way into the food chain; E) Monsanto lied in meetings with EPA about dioxin contaminants in & around their plants; F) Monsanto lied in meetings with OSHA about contaminants in their plants; F) Lied to EPA about the feasibility of studying dioxins at all, to excuse their intentional lack of creditable data, but turned out they had already prepared some falsified data which they were afraid to share since they were being too heavily scrutinized at that moment & figured they'd get caught.
The result of Sanjour's findings was that a "full field criminal investigation" should be undertaken against Monsanto because "a potential conspiracy between Monsanto & its officers & employees, exists or has existed to defraud the US EPA, in violation of 18 USC 371. The means of the conspiracy appears to be by (1) providing misleading information to the EPA; (2) intentional failure by Monsanto to fully disclose all pertinent TSCA [Toxic Substances Control Act] related information to the EPA; (3) false statements in notices and reports to EPA; (4) the use of allegedly fraudulent research to erroneously convince the EPA, and the scientific community." After this, some heavy-duty intense lobbying of Congress too place, Congress intervened to shut down EPA's criminal enforcement investigation of Monsanto, & were permitted instead to undertake a two year investigation of whistleblowers. So Monsanto knows: Lying works.
There's much, much, much more. "Monsanto" is virtually a synonym for "Dishonesty" and "Liars." Why Billo would tell such whoppers to the contrary is hard to fathom, except that everything he has posted can be found in Monsanto instructions to employees, including the instruction to cloud the issues whenever possible on the internet (which their own PR firm, the Bivings Group, admitted).
Or to pay their attorneys so that they never have to pay the claims. Even when they settle out of court, they rarely pay off the settlements. So the real point is that they are so heavily invested in RoundUp they can't let go of it no matter how bad it is, they must use every trick in the book to keep it legal. It directly impacts the nature of the crop seed they're also producing. By providing glyphosate-tolerant grains that grow up to be sterile crops, they trap famers into an eternal cycle of always having to buy new seed, plus they can sell them increasing tons of glyphosate to slather all around the crops. Monsanto will make billions & billions off this selling toxins to use on crops that are genetically modified to be tolerant of toxins. This is already far outpacing what they're making by feeding us harmful bovine growth hormones in milk, as they can't actually control the flow of the milk the way they can control seed crops by altering them to never produce fertile seeds. They could have all their products banned & still be a super-giant so long as they can keep glyphosate legal. So they can afford a few million for the attorneys when billions are the reward.
Certainly when the lies add up to thirty years worth & the evidence that they are lying is finally too great & definitive for them to lie any longer, their usual excuse is "we really didn't know." But that assumes there are no actual scientists in the company. They have plenty of scientists. So they know.
Yes, yes, independent peer reviewed science is not as good as Monsanto's famously fabricated "science," & testimony under oath is not as good as testimony from Monsanto PR flacks. I get ya.
Idle curiosity, you're not the same William Oliver who has chaired Monsanto love-fest symposia through the American Chemical Society, inviting primarily Monsanto and DuPont researchers as speakers, persistently giving recognition dinners & awards to Monsanto workers & retirees, gives out chemistry awards funded by Monsanto, & "Fund"amentally kisses Monsanto's butt in order to get them to write out more checks for non-independent research?
I don't really think that's you, as I've never regarded you as that sneaky & have enjoyed so many of your posts for, what, three or for years?, but did want to be sure that in this case you're honestly misguided rather than willfully & as a matter of professional courtesy repeating by rote so many Monsanto whoppers right down their "safe as salt" cliche & their idea that testimony under oath is not as reliable as their PR people, that people concerned about the environment are not as truthful as people profiting by selling toxins, & any science not paid for or conducted by Monsanto can't possibly be correct but their press releases are the real truth.
Roundup at the normal levels is ineffective. I tried it and it was like water, instead of 20 sprouts there would still be 3 or 4. In woods with hudreds of stumps re-application every 2 to 3 weeks is a massive waste of time.
Nope. So far you have not provided a single such article. The one article you claimed showed harmfulness was noted by the authors *not* to show such harmfulness. The article you quoted about sister chromatid exchange admitted within the article that the findings were equivocal. In fact, the peer-reviewed studies show just the opposite. The better-controlled and more rigorous the study is, the less likely it is to show any effect. Those that have shown *equivocal* effects admit that they have no power.
Yes, yes. We all know you hate Monsanto. The question at hand, however, is whether or not RoundUp us harmful. The overwhelming evidence is that it is not. The peer-reviewed studies indicate it is not. And all the sidebar bullshit about how much you hate Monsanto doesn't change that.
I suppose you only believe fake green science from the likes of Needleman, Gould, Epstein, or Landrigan. And what about that big green PR machine that calls itself Greenpeace? They just keep repeating the same lies till people like you start to believe them.
However, none of the peer-reviewed articles I noted are from Monsanto. I am not relying on what Monsanto claims. Thus, whether or not Monsanto has a habit of lying is irrelevant to the pertinent scientific literature, which fails to show a danger of RoundUp.
Whatever social theory one wants to promulgate has nothing to do with the fact that RoundUp is not a danger.
You actually cited very little, but what you did cite, from an abstract cut & pasted from the web, by Elaine Dallegrave et al, indicted herbicides & pesticides including glyphosate -- your point is you didn't find peer-reviewed independent science credible when they used large doses, & you pretended there were no studies not about large doses didn't exist.
Then then you cut & paste another abstract from the web by Williams/Kroes/Munro who did research with Monsanto funding implicitly to prove safety rather than assess risk. Ian Munro, a notoriouis Monsanto flack from way back, officially represents Monsanto interests at symposia. Munro has promoted bogus data even after it was revealed to be falsified in favor of several Monsanto products & is one of the "top ten" liars for the company, but when revealed as promoting frauds in 1993, he claimed he didn't know the research he relied on was faulty. "I know nothing, NOTHING" seems always to be the fall-back position of YOUR favorite scientists. Well, I'm willing to believe Ian this time, because I do believe he knows very little about the diverse topics he jumps around on like a dillatante, depending on what Monsanto needs in the given month, so this time he's promoting genetic engineering, next time glyphosate, before that he worked for tobacco interests when they were still claiming they could prove smoking is harmless. Good lord Billo, who you lionize!
I looked for better citations in all your posts -- they were few & poor -- the criteria being INDEPENDENT research (not Monsanto-paid for) in peer reviewed journals. You cited Monsanto research & now claim you didn't cite Monsanto resarch -- I keep hating to think of you as a liar rather than a dupe, so I'll assume you know so little of what you speak that you really could cite even the most notorious Monsanto toxocoligists & say with a straight face they're not Monsanto. I'll admit some independent research in their favor does exists (truly independent research often waffles with uncertainty -- only when Monsanto does it or pays for it do they get certain). But you someone hit on only the worst Monsanto flunkies. If you'd done a less agregiously bad job & found the tepidly favorable research instead of the gung-ho Monsanto research.
So you've really provided nothing but Monsanto propoganda and the only "peer reviewed" material you've cited that is not Monsanto-related disagrees with you. And the issue isn't that I hate Monsanto -- I hate that they kill people sure -- but that you find nothing whatsoever wrong with the company even in light of their known fabrications of data, even lying quite recently to JAMA, that it doesn't bother you their history with Agent Orange which they are indeed repeating today with glyphosate. It's easy to dislike killers -- the weird thing, the actually sociopathic thing, is your clear & powerful need to give 'em love.
Nice you're at least willing to admit Monsanto notoriously lies about everything, but how you can see that as "irrelevant to the pertinent science" when they even lied to JAMA to get falsified data into print where it could improve sales -- when EPA authors have said the persistant lying by Monsanto face-to-face with EPA and in published falsified data that has affected public policy in Monsanto's favor even when it is against the interests of public health --- well, if you're not a dupe, and you are indeed lying, I guess I can see that that does fit into your philosophy that lying is "irrelevant."
When you can't argue the science, argue the people. Forget about this peer-reviewed articles in peer-reviewed journal stuff; everybody who disagrees with you is a "Monsanto flack."
As I noted, when you don't have science behind your claims, you attack the person. It's the ecofundamentalist way.
The *science* does not back up the claims of toxicity made by the hysterics. Of course one would not "have a nice cool drink of it." That is not how it is properly used. As properly used, the science shows no ill effect.
Yeahbut, please, have a nice tall glass of it, anyway. Save your other blather for use elsewhere. Your "science" is not correct. It's head in the sand, science.
No, I consider the science. I don't criticize the sister chromatid exchange study because the author is a "wild eyed environmental fascist" or somesuch. I criticize it on the basis of the science.
*You* on the other hand, dismiss scientific articles published in peer-reviewed journals by attacking the authors.
No, I make the distinction between courtroom testimony and peer-reviewed science. The courtroom is theater. Conflating the two is a mistake.
On the contrary. Of the two articles you showed that "proved" the danger of RoundUp, in one the authors themselves stated that the association disappeared under multivariate analysis and in the other the authors admitted that their findings were inconclusive because of the high dosage and cytotoxic effect. If the *authors* of the article agree with me, who am I to complain?
No. I said that I was not relying on Monsanto claims, but instead on scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. Because I am not relying on Monsanto's claims, whatever they say is irrelevant to my conclusion.
And here it is. You are such a big fan of scientific research in peer-reviewed journals -- unless, of course, that scientific research in peer-reviewed journals disagrees with your presumption. In that case, you can't argue the science, so you attack the authors. Classic.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.