Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science: The Goodman Affair
Posted on:
Friday, November 29th 2013 at 3:30 pm
Richard Smith, former editor of the
British Medical Journal, has
jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival
The Lancet
had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and
publishing those that reached the bottom. On another occasion, Smith was
challenged to publish an issue of the
BMJ exclusively
comprising papers that had failed peer review and see if anybody
noticed. He replied, "How do you know I haven't already done it?"
As
Smith's stories show, journal editors have a lot of power in science –
power that provides opportunities for abuse. The life science industry
knows this, and has increasingly moved to influence and control science
publishing.
The strategy, often with the willing cooperation of
publishers, is effective and sometimes blatant. In 2009, the scientific
publishing giant Elsevier was found to have invented an
entire medical journal,
complete with editorial board, in order to publish papers promoting the
products of the pharmaceutical manufacturer Merck. Merck provided the
papers, Elsevier published them, and doctors read them, unaware that the
Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine was simply a stuffed dummy.
Fast forward to September 2012, when the scientific journal
Food and Chemical Toxicology (
FCT) published a study that caused an international storm (
Séralini, et al. 2012).
The study, led by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini of the University of Caen,
France, suggested a Monsanto genetically modified (GM) maize, and the
Roundup herbicide it is grown with, pose serious health risks. The
two-year feeding study found that rats fed both suffered severe organ
damage and increased rates of tumors and premature death. Both the
herbicide (Roundup) and the GM maize are Monsanto products. Corinne
Lepage, France's former environment minister, called the study
"a bomb".
Subsequently, an
orchestrated campaign was launched to discredit the study in the media and persuade the journal to retract it. Many of those who wrote letters to
FCT (which is published by Elsevier) had conflicts of interest with the GM industry and its lobby groups, though these were
not publicly disclosed.
The journal did not retract the study. But just a few months later, in early 2013 the
FCT editorial board acquired a new "
Associate Editor for biotechnology",
Richard E. Goodman. This was a new position, seemingly established
especially for Goodman in the wake of the "Séralini affair".
Richard
E. Goodman is professor at the Food Allergy Research and Resource
Program, University of Nebraska. But he is also a former Monsanto
employee, who worked for the company between
1997 and 2004.
While at Monsanto he assessed the allergenicity of the company's GM
crops and published papers on its behalf on allergenicity and safety
issues relating to GM food (Goodman and Leach 2004).
Goodman had
no documented connection to the journal until February 2013. His
fast-tracked appointment, directly onto the upper editorial board raises
urgent questions. Does Monsanto now effectively decide which papers on
biotechnology are published in
FCT? And is this part of an attempt by Monsanto and the life science industry to seize control of science?
To
equate one journal with "science" may seem like an exaggeration. But
peer-reviewed publication, in the minds of most scientists, is science.
Once a paper is published in an academic journal it enters the canon and
stands with the discovery of plate tectonics or the structure of DNA.
All other research, no matter how groundbreaking or true, is irrelevant.
As a scientist once scathingly said of the "commercially confidential"
industry safety data that underpin approvals of chemicals and GM foods,
"If it isn't published, it doesn't exist."
photo: Richard E Goodman, University of Nebraska
Goodman's ILSI links
The industry affiliations of
FCT's new gatekeeper for biotechnology are not restricted to having worked directly for Monsanto. Goodman has an
active and
ongoing
involvement with the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). ILSI
is funded by the multinational GM and agrochemical companies, including
Monsanto. It develops industry-friendly risk assessment methods for GM
foods and chemical food contaminants and inserts them into government
regulations.
ILSI describes itself as a public interest non-profit
but its infiltration of regulatory agencies and influence on risk
assessment policy has become highly controversial in North America and
Europe. In 2005 US-based non-profits and trade unions
wrote
to the World Health Organization (WHO) protesting against ILSI's
influence on international health standards protecting food and water
supplies. As a result, the WHO
barred ILSI
from taking part in WHO activities setting safety standards, because of
its funding sources. And in Europe in 2012, Diana Banati, then head of
the management board at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), had
to resign over her undisclosed long-standing involvement with ILSI
(Robinson et al. 2013).
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