Ever since they classified
the world’s most widely used herbicide as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” a
team of international scientists at the World Health Organization’s cancer
research group have been under withering
attack by the agrichemical industry and its surrogates.
In a front-page
series titled “The Monsanto Papers,” the French newspaper Le Monde (6/1/17)
described the attacks as “the pesticide giant’s war on science,” and reported,
“To save glyphosate, the firm [Monsanto] undertook to harm the United Nations
agency against cancer by all means.”
One key weapon in industry’s
arsenal has been the reporting of Kate Kelland,
a veteran Reuters reporter based in London.
With two industry-fed scoops
and a special report, reinforced by her regular beat reporting, Kelland has
aimed a torrent of critical reporting at the WHO’s International Agency for
Research on Cancer (IARC), portraying the group and its scientists as out of
touch and unethical, and leveling accusations about conflicts of interest and
suppressed information in their decision-making.
The IARC working group of
scientists did not conduct new research, but reviewed years of published and
peer-reviewed research before concluding that there was limited evidence of
cancer in humans from real-world exposures to glyphosate and “sufficient”
evidence of cancer in studies on animals. IARC also concluded there was strong
evidence of genotoxicity for glyphosate alone, as well as glyphosate used in
formulations such as Monsanto’s Roundup brand of herbicide, whose use has
increased dramatically as Monsanto has marketed crop
strains genetically modified to be “Roundup Ready.”
But in writing about the IARC
decision, Kelland has ignored much of the published research backing the
classification, and focused on industry talking points and criticisms of the
scientists in seeking to diminish their analysis. Her reporting has
relied heavily on pro-industry sources, while failing to disclose their
industry connections; contained errors that Reuters has refused to correct; and
presented cherry-picked information out of context from documents she did not
provide to her readers.
Raising further questions
about her objectivity as a science reporter are Kelland’s ties to the Science Media Centre (SMC), a
controversial nonprofit PR agency in the UK that connects scientists with
reporters, and gets its largest block of
funding from industry groups and companies, including chemical industry
interests.
SMC, which has been called “science’s
PR agency,” launched in 2002 partly as an effort to tamp down news stories
driven by groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, according to its founding
report. SMC has been accused of playing down the environmental and human
health risks of some controversial products and technologies, according to multiple
researchers who have studied the group.
Kelland’s bias in favor
of the group is evident, as she appears in the SMC promotional video and the
SMC promotional
report, regularly attends SMC
briefings, speaks at SMC
workshops and attended meetings
in India to discuss setting up an SMC office there.
Neither Kelland nor her
editors at Reuters would respond to questions about her relationship with SMC,
or to specific criticisms about her reporting.
Fiona Fox, director of SMC,
said her group did not work with Kelland on her IARC stories or provide sources
beyond those included in SMC’s press releases. It is clear, however, that
Kelland’s reporting on glyphosate and IARC mirrors the views put forth by SMC
experts and industry groups on those topics.
Reuters takes on cancer
scientist
On June 14, 2017, Reuters
published a special
report by Kelland accusing Aaron Blair, an epidemiologist from the US
National Cancer Institute and chair of the IARC panel on glyphosate, of
withholding important data from its cancer assessment.
Kelland’s story went so far as
to suggest that the information supposedly withheld could have changed IARC’s
conclusion that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic. Yet the data in question
was but a small subset of epidemiology data gathered through a long-term
project known as the Agricultural
Health Study (AHS). An analysis of several years of data about glyphosate
from the AHS had already been published and was considered by IARC, but a newer
analysis of unfinished, unpublished data was not considered, because IARC rules
call for relying only on published data.
Kelland’s thesis that Blair
withheld crucial data was at odds with the source documents on which she based
her story, but she did not provide readers with links to any of those
documents, so readers could not check the veracity of the claims for
themselves. Her bombshell allegations were then widely circulated, repeated by
reporters at other news outlets (including Mother
Jones) and immediately deployed as a lobbying tool
by the agrichemical industry.
After obtaining the actual
source documents, Carey Gillam, a former Reuters reporter and now research
director of US Right to Know (the nonprofit group where I also work), laid
out multiple errors and omissions in Kelland’s piece.
The analysis provides examples
of key claims in Kelland’s article, including a statement supposedly made by
Blair, that are not supported by the 300-page deposition
of Blair conducted by Monsanto’s attorneys, or by other source documents.
Kelland’s selective
presentation of the Blair deposition also ignored what contradicted her
thesis—for example, Blair’s many affirmations of research showing glyphosate’s
connections to cancer, as Gillam wrote in a Huffington Post article (6/18/17).
Kelland inaccurately described
Blair’s deposition and related materials as “court documents,” implying they
were publicly available; in fact, they were not filed in court, and presumably
were obtained from Monsanto’s attorneys or surrogates. (The documents were
available only to attorneys involved in the case, and plaintiff’s attorneys
have said they did not provide them to Kelland.)
Reuters has refused to correct
the errors in the piece, including the false claim about the origin of the
source documents and an inaccurate description of a key source, statistician
Bob Tarone, as “independent of Monsanto.” In fact, Tarone had
received a consultancy payment from Monsanto for his efforts to discredit
IARC.
In response to a USRTK request
to correct or retract the Kelland article, Reuters global enterprises editor
Mike Williams wrote in a June 23 email:
We have reviewed the article
and the reporting on which it was based. That reporting included the deposition
to which you refer, but was not confined to it. The reporter, Kate Kelland, was
also in contact with all the people mentioned in the story and many others, and
studied other documents. In the light of that review, we do not consider the
article to be inaccurate or to warrant retraction.
Williams declined to address
the false citing of “court documents” or the inaccurate description of Tarone
as an independent source.
Since then, the lobbying tool Reuters
handed to Monsanto has grown legs and run wild. A June 24 editorial
by the St. Louis Post Dispatch added
errors on top of the already misleading reporting. By mid-July, right-wing
blogs were using the Reuters story to accuse IARC of defrauding
US taxpayers, pro-industry news sites were predicting the story would be “the
final nail in the coffin” of cancer claims about glyphosate, and a fake
science news group was promoting Kelland’s story on Facebook with a phony
headline claiming that IARC scientists
had confessed to a cover-up.
Bacon attack
This was not the first time
Kelland had relied on Bob Tarone as a key source, and failed to disclose his
industry connections, in an article attacking IARC.
An April 2016 special
investigation by Kelland, “Who Says Bacon Is Bad?,” portrayed IARC as a
confusing agency that is bad for science. The piece was built largely on quotes
from Tarone, two other pro-industry sources whose industry connections were
also not disclosed, and one anonymous observer.
IARC’s methods are “poorly
understood,” “do not serve the public well,” sometimes lack scientific rigor,
are “not good for science,” “not good for regulatory agencies” and do the
public “a disservice,” the critics said.
The agency, Tarone said, is
“naïve, if not unscientific”—an accusation emphasized with capital letters in a
sub-headline.
Tarone works for the
pro-industry International
Epidemiology Institute, and was once involved with a controversial
cell phone study, funded in part by the cell phone industry, that found no
cancer connection to cell phones, contrary to independently
funded studies of the same issue.
The other critics in Kelland’s
bacon story were Paulo Boffetta, a controversial ex-IARC scientist who wrote a
paper defending asbestos while also receiving money to defend the
asbestos industry in court; and Geoffrey Kabat, who once partnered with
a tobacco industry-funded scientist to write a paper defending
secondhand smoke.
Kabat also serves on the
advisory board of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a corporate
front group. The day the Reuters story hit, ACSH posted a blog item (4/16/17)
bragging that Kelland had used its advisor Kabat as a source to discredit IARC.
The industry connections of
her sources, and their history of taking positions at odds with mainstream
science, seems relevant, especially since the IARC bacon exposé was paired with
a Kelland article
about glyphosate that accused IARC advisor Chris Portier of bias because of
his affiliation with an environmental group.
The conflict-of-interest
framing served to discredit a letter, organized by Portier and signed by
94 scientists, that described “serious flaws” in a European Union risk
assessment that exonerated glyphosate of cancer risk.
The Portier attack, and the
good science/bad science theme, echoed
through chemical industry PR
channels on the same day the Kelland articles appeared.
IARC pushes back
In October 2016, in another exclusive
scoop, Kelland portrayed IARC as a secretive organization that had asked
its scientists to withhold documents pertaining to the glyphosate review. The
article was based on correspondence provided to Kelland by a pro-industry
law group.
In response, IARC took the
unusual step of posting Kelland’s questions and the answers
they had sent her, which provided context left out of the Reuters story.
IARC explained that Monsanto’s
lawyers were asking scientists to turn over draft and deliberative documents,
and in light of the ongoing lawsuits against Monsanto, “the scientists felt
uncomfortable releasing these materials, and some felt that they were being
intimidated.” The agency said they had faced similar pressure in the past to
release draft documents to support legal actions involving asbestos and
tobacco, and that there was an attempt to draw deliberative IARC documents into
PCB litigation.
The story didn’t mention those
examples, or the concerns about draft scientific documents ending up in
lawsuits, but the piece was heavy on critiques of IARC, describing it as a
group “at odds with scientists around the world,” which “has caused
controversy” with cancer assessments that “can cause unnecessary health scares.”
IARC has “secret agendas” and
its actions were “ridiculous,” according to a Monsanto executive quoted in the
story.
IARC wrote in
response (emphasis in original):
The article by Reuters follows
a pattern of consistent but misleading reports about the IARC Monographs
Programme in some sections of the media beginning after glyphosate was
classified as probably carcinogenic to humans.
IARC also pushed
back on Kelland’s reporting about Blair, noting the conflict of interest
with her source Tarone and explaining that IARC’s cancer evaluation program
does not consider unpublished data, and “does not base its evaluations on
opinions presented in media reports,” but on the “systematic assembly and
review of all publicly available and pertinent scientific studies, by
independent experts, free from vested interests.”
PR agency narrative
The Science Media Centre—which
Kelland has
said has influenced her reporting—does have vested interests, and has also
been criticized for pushing pro-industry science views. Current and past
funders include Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont, Coca-Cola and food and chemical
industry trade groups, as well as government agencies, foundations and
universities.
By all accounts, SMC is
influential in shaping how the media cover certain science stories, often
getting its expert
reaction quotes in media stories and driving coverage with its press
briefings.
As Kelland explained in the
SMC promotional video,
“By the end of a briefing, you understand what the story is and why it’s
important.”
That is the point of the SMC
effort: to signal to reporters whether stories or studies merit attention, and
how they should be framed.
Sometimes, SMC experts
downplay risk and offer assurances to the public about controversial products
or technologies; for example, researchers have criticized SMC’s media efforts
on fracking,
cell
phone safety, Chronic
Fatigue Syndrome and
genetically engineered foods.
SMC campaigns sometimes feed
into lobbying efforts. A 2013 Nature article (7/10/13)
explained how SMC turned the tide on media coverage of animal/human hybrid
embryos away from ethical concerns and toward their importance as a research
tool—and thus stopped government regulations.
The media researcher hired by
SMC to analyze the effectiveness of that campaign, Andy Williams of Cardiff
University, came to see the SMC model as problematic, worrying that it stifled
debate. Williams described
SMC briefings as tightly managed events pushing persuasive narratives.
On the topic of glyphosate
cancer risk, SMC offers a clear narrative in its press releases.
The IARC cancer
classification, according to SMC
experts, “failed to include critical data,” was based on “a rather
selective review” and on evidence that “appears a bit thin” and “overall does
not support such a high-level classification.”
Monsanto and other industry
groups promoted the quotes.
SMC experts had a much more
favorable view of risk assessments conducted by the European Food Safety
Authority (EFSA)
and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA),
which cleared glyphosate of human cancer concerns.
EFSA’s
conclusion was “more scientific, pragmatic and balanced” than IARC’s, and
the ECHA
report was objective, independent, comprehensive and “scientifically
justified.”
Kelland’s reporting in Reuters
echoes those pro-industry themes, and sometimes used the same experts, such as
a
November 2015 story about why European-based agencies gave contradictory
advice about the cancer risk of glyphosate. Her story quoted two experts
directly from an SMC
release, then summarized their views:
In other words, IARC is tasked
with highlighting anything that might in certain conditions, however rare, be
able to cause cancer in people. EFSA, on the other hand, is concerned
with real life risks and whether, in the case of glyphosate, there is evidence
to show that when used in normal conditions, the pesticide poses an
unacceptable risk to human health or the environment.
Kelland included two brief
reactions from environmentalists: Greenpeace called the EFSA review
“whitewash,” and Jennifer Sass from the Natural Resources Defense Council said
IARC’s review was “a much more robust, scientifically defensible and public
process involving an international committee of non-industry experts.” (An NRDC
statement on glyphosate put it this way: “IARC Got It Right, EFSA Got It
From Monsanto.”)
Kelland’s story followed up
the environmental group comments with “critics of IARC…say its hazard
identification approach is becoming meaningless for consumers, who struggle to
apply its advice to real life,” and ends with quotes from a scientist who
“declares an interest as having acted as a consultant for Monsanto.”
When asked about the
criticisms of pro-industry bias of the SMC, Fox responded:
We listen carefully to any
criticism from the scientific community or news journalists working for UK
media, but we do not receive criticism of pro-industry bias from these
stakeholders. We reject the charge of pro-industry bias, and our work reflects
the evidence and views of the 3,000 eminent scientific researchers on our
database. As an independent press office focusing on some of the most
controversial science stories, we fully expect criticism from groups outside
mainstream science.
Expert conflicts
Scientific experts do not
always disclose their conflicts of interest in news releases issued by SMC, nor
in their high-profile roles as decision-makers about the cancer risk of
chemicals like glyphosate.
Frequent SMC expert Alan
Boobis, professor of biochemical pharmacology at Imperial College London,
offers views in SMC releases on aspartame
(“not a concern”), glyphosate
in urine (no concern), insecticides
and birth defects (“premature to draw conclusions”), alcohol,
GMO
corn, trace
metals, lab
rodent diets and more.
The ECHA
decision that glyphosate is not a carcinogen “is to be congratulated,”
according to Boobis, and the IARC
decision that it is probably carcinogenic “is not a cause for undue alarm,”
because it did not take into account how pesticides are used in the real world.
Boobis declared no conflicts
of interest in the IARC release or any of the earlier SMC releases that carry
his quotes. But he then sparked a conflict-of-interest
scandal when news broke that he held leadership positions with the
International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), a pro-industry
group, at the same time he co-chaired a UN panel that found glyphosate unlikely to pose
a cancer risk through diet. (Boobis is currently chair of the ILSI Board of
Trustees, and vice president ad interim
of ILSI/Europe.)
ILSI has received six-figure
donations from Monsanto and CropLife International, the pesticide trade
association. Professor Angelo Moretto, who co-chaired the UN panel on
glyphosate along with Boobis, also held a leadership
role in ILSI. Yet the panel declared
no conflicts of interest.
Kelland did not report on
those conflicts, though she did write
about the findings of the “UN experts” who exonerated glyphosate of cancer
risk, and she once recycled a Boobis quote from an SMC
press release for an article about tainted
Irish pork. (The risk to consumers was low.)
When asked about the SMC
conflict of interest disclosure policy, and why Boobis’ ISLI connection was not
disclosed in SMC releases, Fox responded:
We ask all researchers we use
to provide their COIs and proactively make those available to journalists. In
line with several other COI policies, we are unable to investigate every COI,
though we welcome journalists doing so.
Boobis could not be reached
for comment, but told
the Guardian, “My role in ILSI (and two of its branches) is as a public
sector member and chair of their boards of trustees, positions which are not
remunerated.”
But the conflict “sparked
furious condemnation from green MEPs and NGOs,” the Guardian reported,
“intensified by the [UN panel] report’s release two days before an EU
relicensing vote on glyphosate, which will be worth billions of dollars to
industry.”
And so goes it with the
tangled web of influence involving corporations, science experts, media
coverage and the high-stakes debate about glyphosate, now playing out on the
world stage as Monsanto faces
lawsuits over the chemical due to cancer claims, and seeks to complete a $66
billion deal with Bayer.
Meanwhile, in the US, as Bloomberg
reported
on July 13: “Does the World’s Top Weed Killer Cause Cancer? Trump’s EPA Will
Decide.”
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