A Corporate War Against a Scientist, and How He Fought Back 253
AthanasiusKircher writes "Environmental and health concerns about atrazine — one of the most commonly used herbicides in the U.S. — have been voiced for years, leading to an EU ban and multiple investigations by the EPA. Tyrone Hayes, a Berkeley professor who has spearheaded research on the topic, began to display signs of apparent paranoia over a decade ago. He noticed strangers following him to conferences around the world, taking notes and asking questions aimed to make him look foolish. He worried that someone was reading his email, and attacks against his reputation seemed to be everywhere; search engines even displayed ad hits like 'Tyrone Hayes Not Credible' when his name was searched for. But he wasn't paranoid: documents released after a lawsuit from Midwestern towns against Syngenta, the manufacturer of atrazine, showed a coordinated smear campaign. Syngenta's public relations team had a list of ways to defend its product, topped by 'discredit Hayes.' Its internal list of methods: 'have his work audited by 3rd party,' 'ask journals to retract,' 'set trap to entice him to sue,' 'investigate funding,' 'investigate wife,' etc. A recent New Yorker article chronicles this war against Hayes, but also his decision to go on the offensive and strike back. He took on the role of activist against atrazine, giving over 50 public talks on the subject each year, and even taunting Syngenta with profanity-laced emails, often delivered in a rapping 'gangsta' style. The story brings up important questions for science and its public persona: How do scientists fight a PR war against corporations with unlimited pockets? How far should they go?"
Fight with numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
sdfasdf (Score:5, Insightful)
The correct place is to battle it out in scientific journals. Corporations should not be doing this, but legion are the talking heads and book promoters tearing down things from GM food to Olestra to any number of other things with little or no science backing them.
Re: (Score:2)
By then (Score:2)
the Earth will have overheated and so thoroughly polluted with toxic pesticides that life will become impossible.
Re:Fight with numbers (Score:4, Insightful)
What good is it to be an activist when your research shows something bad, when the journal you published it in copyrighted and paywalled it, and the public has no ready access?
Obviously, some research should be classified. But that's such a minuscule percentage that it is hardly worth considering. Other than that tiny amount, publicly funded research should be public. Period.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Further, I wasn't necessarily referring to the "20th Century". The problem that most people have remarked on seems to be more of a phenomenon of the last decade or so.
"For example there's a mountain of easily accesible and very credible information about AGW from just about every scientific institution you can care to name, but some people still quote Anthony Watts as a credible source on the subject."
What matters is not the source, but the validity of the science the source is reporting on. This obsession with who the source is undermines real science. Shooting the messenger is not a valid scientific argument.
Having said that, I am NOT claimin
Re: (Score:2)
Having said that, I am NOT claiming Watts is a wonderfully reliable source ... I'd definitely rate him as less biased than realclimate.org, ...
ROTFL - I'm blowing mod points but I can't let that ridiculous statement stand. The only bias I've seen at Real Climate is for good science and they've got the data to back it up. The guys running it are among the leading scientists in the field. I guess that might seem biased to someone who is already biased against what their science says but in the end the real world will tell you what they got right and what they got wrong. So far they're doing pretty good.
Re: (Score:2)
"The only bias I've seen at Real Climate is for good science and they've got the data to back it up."
What data is that? You mean like HadCRUT and GISS? Don't make me laugh.
If you don't start paying attention to both "sides" of the debate, you're going to end up looking pretty foolish.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you made me laugh. When the independent Berkeley Earth Science Temperature project found essentially the same temperature trends as HadCRUT, GISS and NOAA I think the accuracy of them was pretty much confirmed. Even if you just take the raw unadjusted temperature data you don't get substantially different results.
I do pay attention to the climate debate but I've seen very little good science coming from the climate contrarian side. One example of that is Anthony Watts bringing a lot of attention to
Re: (Score:2)
Part of the problem is that publicly-funded science hasn't necessarily been public-access anymore.
Publically funded research has never been public-access in the sense you mean. Journals have a strangle hold, and it is difficult to pry loose the death grip. JSTOR [wikipedia.org] was -- in its day -- a revolutionary step towards better public access, but with the rise of the internet, it's obvious that this is not enough. There are strong moves towards open access journals in academia (seriously, academics have no love of the journals, which are leeches), but the incentive structures that advance academic careers are a
Re: (Score:2)
"Publically funded research has never been public-access in the sense you mean."
I am aware of this. But the problem is more widely recognized than before.
The fact that it wasn't that way in the past is not an argument against change. As a taxpayer, it makes me angry. If I've paid for it, it should not be held hostage in corporate (publisher) vaults, so to speak. Other than things classified for genuine national security reasons, publicly funded research should be public.
"A cultural change needs to occur in how academics are assessed by their university administration in order to break the stranglehold."
I agree, and I agree that the situation is looking up. We still have a way to go, though.
Re: (Score:2)
when the journal you published it in copyrighted and paywalled it, and the public has no ready access?
That is public access. Any member of the public can obtain it by simply buying the article, or a subscription. "Public access" doesn't always mean "must provide everyone a free copy."
Re: (Score:2)
No, but it should. That's the point.
If the public paid for it, the public should have open access to it. There is no valid societal or ethical reason private publishers should have a stranglehold on publicly-funded research.
Re: (Score:3)
Every single scientist should fight it. Make them execute every single scummy plan they have on the books. If hundreds of thousands of scientists fight back, you'll see just how "unlimited" corp's pockets actually are. When the majority revolts, the corporate overlords quickly discover pushing their agenda gets costly and isn't worth it anymore...
Depends on how many of those scientists can be bought, perhaps with funding for their projects for example.
Re: (Score:2)
The CFC issue was about far more than the ozone hole over Antarctica (which is still there BTW, it's just not getting worse any more). There was ozone depletion [wikipedia.org] going on globally as well and ozone's role in blocking UVB radiation is important to all life on Earth.
The sky's the limit..... (Score:3)
The story brings up important questions for science and its public persona: How do scientists fight a PR war against corporations with unlimited pockets? How far should they go?"
How far? The full distance.
Anything less, and it shows you don't really care in the long run.(all within the limits of sane and just laws, that is-in the presence of insane, or unjust laws, then no restrictions...you have nothing else to lose)
Re:The sky's the limit..... (Score:4, Insightful)
How far? The full distance. Anything less, and it shows you don't really care in the long run.
Is there anything wrong with having the correct knowledge, and not really caring?
Re: (Score:2)
Profanity (Score:2)
He needs an Erin Brokovich to help (Score:2)
He needs an Erin Brokovich to help!
Re: (Score:2)
Fight on! (Score:2)
Fight back (Score:2)
And you will never work again in any related industry.
Anyway (Score:5, Interesting)
Tyrone Hayes [...] began to display signs of apparent paranoia over a decade ago. [...] But he wasn't paranoid
“Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you”
-- Joseph Heller (?)
“Paranoia is just having the right information.”
-- William S. Burroughs
Slashcott! (Score:3, Interesting)
This site used to be great. Even in it's latter days, it's been good. That is poised to change. Before long, it will be mediocre, and ordinary.
I didn't see a problem when Dice Holdings initially bought Slashdot. I figured there would be efforts to drive nerd traffic towards their job listings and such. That was fine. We all need jobs.
Things have changed now. Beyond the shifts in story choices, the slashvertisements, and so on, something fundamental has changed: Slashdot's owners do not appreciate it.
Their recent financials show that they have written its value as an asset down to zero. They have legally claimed it to be worthless. That is at the root of what is happening now. They want to fundamentally change the nature of this site in order to remake it into something with big growth potential.
Beta is just the latest symptom of this disease. It will not be the last. In striving to make it into a site that will bring them a growing user base and growing revenue per user, they have shown a willingness to dumb down the interface in the name of making it more accessible to newcomers, to cast aside essential elements of decade-spanning community culture, and to plow ahead with changes in the face of overwhelmingly negative user feedback.
This is not going to change. This will not go away. I will not support it.
I will be gone for this entire week, in protest. While away, I will work to create a new community where things can be run with quality user discussions as the paramount objective.
Be seeing you.
Atrazine (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm off to boycott... FUCK BETA
was it justified? (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps the first question to ask is whether his "PR war" is justified. The EPA (under Clinton) and APVMA (Australia's equivalent) decided there was no evidence atrazine was harmful, and several studies failed to reproduce his results.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
So, the flipside of that question is: what should companies do against persistent but scientifically baseless attacks? Almost anything they can do can be twisted around to make them look even more manipulative and guilty.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps the first question to ask is whether his "PR war" is justified.
Actually, you're confusing the issue. It's fine to debate the environmental impact of atrazine, but that's not the question at hand. The issue is *the ground rules of a fair and civilized debate*.
I can't punch you in the mouth to shut you up, just because you're wrong. A civilized debate allows the wrong side to make its case without harassment, because freedom to have only "correct" opinions is no freedom at all.
So, the flipside of that question is: what should companies do against persistent but scientifically baseless attacks? Almost anything they can do can be twisted around to make them look even more manipulative and guilty.
Seriously, you don't know the answer to this question? You can't see a more appropriate respon
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
No, actually I can't see a more appropriate response. After the EPA and other agencies looked at his data and rejected it, the scientific debate was over. If Hayes wanted to make more contributions as a scientist, the only way to do it would have been to p
Re: (Score:2)
You're absolutely right. And scientific debate continues by scientists reproducing experiments and contributing more and more scientific results. That's what proved Galileo right, and what failed to happen in Hayes' case. Instead, Hayes hung up his scientific hat and became an activist, and that is not part of "scientific debate".
I'm sorry you don't understand the difference, "friend".
Unfortunately nothing new here (Score:3)
This is nothing new. When big business and science collide, big business know no bounds as to what they will do to protect there profit margin
Examples include
Industry attacks against Clair Patterson from the leaded fuel industry.
The tobacco lobby against health professionals
The CFC industry against climate scientists
They continue today with attacks against climate scientists from big oil and coal concerns.
The worry is that the public seem more minded to side with the vested interests against the scientific voice and the fact that many of the attacks come from scientists working within the industry showing a severe lack of morality by the people in those areas. All industry seem to have to do is raise the spectre of potential economic harm and the public go along with them.
Business as Usual, historically speaking. (Score:3)
The USA has always had megacorps that were willing to attack scientists in order to keep on poisoning the people of the USA.
See, for example, how Kehoe [nih.gov], Kettering [theglobalrealm.com] and Midgely [uh.edu] (working for GM, DuPont and the Ethyl Corporation) attacked the reputations and careers of whistle-blowing scientists (like Patterson [wikipedia.org], Landrigan [wikipedia.org] and Needleman [wikipedia.org]) in order to hide the horrific effects of lead poisoning. The high toxicity of lead was known in the 19th century, and well quantified by the mid-1930s, but hidden from the US public until the 1970s by a concerted corporate disinformation campaign.
In just the last century, we increased our exposure to lead in the environment by 625 times [who.int] and the effects are going to last for several more generations at least. This poisoning of generations of children, with literally many millions of victims, was done to maximize corporate profits for America's ruling class. And in today's political climate - with Reagan corporatist Obama actually considered to be left-wing or even socialist - you can expect this sort of behavior will continue.
leave it to the experts (Score:2)
I do not have the expertise to make a reasoned judgement here, and I'm gonna assume most of you don't either. When media tries to do science, it's a dangerous thing. It could go either way, with cigarette companies paying doctors to promote their products, and rogue doctors raising doubt in things like vaccines.
There does seem to be some institutional failure in place---Why does it sound like all the studies on Atrazine are funded by Syngenta? On the one hand, companies should be the ones to pay the bill fo
Re: (Score:2)
How much did the regulations enforced by the Mines and Minerals Service do to prevent the British Petroleum disaster in the gulf?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
How much did the regulations not enforced by the Mines and Minerals Service do to not prevent the British Petroleum disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?
Re:Oh, come on. (Score:5, Insightful)
How much did the habit of fining the shareholders of a company for the criminal actions of the companies executives do to prevent the British Petroleum disaster in the gulf? You can bet your bottom dollar if they started sending corporate executives to jail for life when their decisions illegally kill people a whole bunch of disasters would be avoided. Time to stop fining the shareholders and start holding the psychopathic killer executives responsible for their actions.
Re:Oh, come on. (Score:4, Informative)
That is funny because it is so inaccurate;
1. Hayes is not a government scientist. In fact the EPA disagrees with him completely.
2. The fight is not against regulation but against statements being put out by Hayes
3. The environmental lobby has nothing to do with it. Hayes's quest for fame by bringing down a big corp might be.
Re:Oh, come on. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once they start writing memos like "investigate his wife" it's probably not about fame anymore. If it was me it would be about making sure that whoever drafted that memo doesn't get a chance to work again without adult supervision.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, (s)he's working with adult supervision as we speak and was working with one when writing that memo. World of adults is full of vindictive, utterly unethical assholes.
Re: (Score:2)
You knew what I meant so why bother with the "correction"? Same reason I got modded down on six completely unrelated posts, some from several days before, just after I had annoyed you last time? I suggest you try acting like an adult yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
Would you mind defining "responsible adult"? Because it seems that in the modern world, the most celebrated adults are the ones that are least "responsible" in the actual meaning of the world - taking responsibility for their actions.
Instead nowadays we celebrate those who successfully push the responsibility on others while taking benefits to themselves.
Re:Oh, come on. (Score:4, Insightful)
Timeline:
Company has a pesticide, second in use only to Monsanto's roundup.
Concerns begin to grow about the chemicals effect
Scientist is hired by company to join panel of scientists evaluating chemical
Scientist notes that frogs are being born hermaphroditic, or with multiple (excess) malformes testes.
Scientist begins to feel uncofortable, held back, and pressured at company
Scientist leaves, returns to university lab, and replicates experiment, getting same results
Scientists presents findings to company again
Company disputes findings as flawed, by using flawed arguments
Scientist is warned to be paranoid because giant companies with billions in revenue have no problem squashing annoying bugs (pun intended)
Company begins smear campaign against inconvenient scientist, buying search terms, following him, harassing him
EPA holds hearings
17+ studies are presented.
12 from the company, all show no effect on frogs
Scientist presents his fidnings, showing effects on frogs
Other independent scientists present findings, corroborating the scientists findings
Company settles class lawsuit, where details about its smear campaign come out
Sorry, there's more here than just someone trying to get famous.
Essentially ANY STUDY done by a company with a financial stake in the result, showing the outcome the comapny favors must be considered suspect.
Logically, it isnt automatically (100% certainty) invalid...but historically they have consistently been invalid more often than not,as companies attempt to buy out the scientists and fund fraudulent studies. Tobacco is the most famous example.
And btw, when the hearings were over? The EPA proposed further study must be done...and told the company with a finanical stake in the outcome to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
There are lots of statements in that post with absolutely no documents corroborating it. Why should I believe anything you write without references.
Essentially ANY STUDY done by a company with a financial stake in the result, showing the outcome the comapny favors must be considered suspect.
Sure, which is why you have those studies peer reviewed by independent scientists.
And btw, when the hearings were over? The EPA proposed further study must be done...
Every new chemical has long term studies.
Exacty (Score:2)
Corporations should have the right to spew as much toxic pesticide into the environment as they want.
Re:Oh, come on. (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought I was being obviously over-the-top, but Poe's Law strikes again; it's impossible to satirize people who actually think that way.
How can you tell, anymore?.... (Score:3)
I thought I was being obviously over-the-top,...
Unfortunately, you did not get TO the top, much less 'over the top'.
No insult meant for you, that is just the sorry state of reality. It's appalling, but true.
I myself was tempted to reply to your earlier comment, thinking you were serious. I'm glad I decided not to bother.
Re: (Score:2)
No insult meant for you, that is just the sorry state of reality. It's appalling, but true.
Yeah, I know. [sigh]
Re: (Score:2)
But there do exist people with so radical of thoughts that it would be impossible to satirize them in the same way.
Re: (Score:2)
Fortunately, the humorists have temporarily achieved the upper hand. It is an unfortunate side effect of the moderation system where 'Funny' points don't give you extra karma leading to well meaning moderators to attach a different mod type to to the post.
That's fine. We know that. I just wonder what happens when a Slashdot naive person looks at these posts and gets a well, different, view of us.
Re:Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:5, Interesting)
Go for it! Or ignore it. Your call. If they're not breaking the law, what are you going to do?
Using corporate resources specifically to attempt to attack or discredit the character, or interfere with the business of an individual should be made actionable.
Damage by a corporation to an individual's peace of mind should be assigned statutory damages based on the greater of $10 Milliion, and 5 to 10% of the perpetrating company's annual revenues.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
> Damage by a corporation to an individual's peace of mind should be assigned statutory damages based on the
> greater of $10 Milliion, and 5 to 10% of the perpetrating company's annual revenues.
I had to work late last week - I missed EastEnders. Where's my yacht?
Re:Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:5, Insightful)
damages based on the greater of $10 Milliion, and 5 to 10% of the perpetrating company's annual revenues.
We'll have shell companies created with zero revenue acting as harassing entities. So if you find them out and sue and win, you'll get no damages, other than the $10,000,000 awarded, and they'll just close the doors if it looks like that would happen.
Re:Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:5, Informative)
We'll have shell companies created with zero revenue acting as harassing entities. So if you find them out and sue and win, you'll get no damages
It's called a company intentionally undercapitalized, and it's a cause of action for the judge to pierce the corporate veil, and hold the company's shareholder's liable in proportion to their percentage of beneficial ownership, AND base the 5 to 10% penalty on the owners' assets.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It may be construed differently if you form a company with the intent that it does something that will cause it to lose a lawsuit. You are deliberately incurring a liability you can't cover. That is quite distinct from the more usual case where the liability was unexpected.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, you might find the insurance company coming after you then. They don't pay if you intended to incur the liability when you bought the insurance.
Expecting to get away with insurance fraud is not something a judge will consider to be good faith.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You insure where liability is possible but not deliberate. If you drive a car, there is a possibility of an unplanned liability. That is perfectly fine. But if you decide to trench someone's yard and get caught your insurance won't pay and a judge WILL find you responsible for the property damage.
If you insure an old car explicitly so you can go trench a few yards, you might find yourself facing a few charges.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That's because Trump has spent a lot of money on his "Platinum Douche Card." Hypocrisy has it's privileges.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget all of the hard work he put into being born extremely wealthy in the first place. That's a pretty significant accomplishment.
Re: Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing stopping you from borrowing for other reasons, using the cash to pay off loans, then bankrupting youself out of the new debt. That would be the appropriate civil disobediance for the non-dischargeable loans.
Re: (Score:3)
US tax payers aren't on the hook for most of the loans that students have. It's not just government loans that are "protected".
No..... however... the banks did award the students lower interest rates, than they might otherwise would have; if these loans could be discharged in bankruptcy. In many cases the US government did guarantee these loans or subsidize a portion.
Personally: I think instead of guaranteeing loans, the government should set a statutory limit to the highest rate of interest that ba
Re: Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:5, Insightful)
Since bankruptcies are public record, they will show up on a background check, and a number of the negative consequences can be lifelong.
They don't seem to have hurt those with 5+, like Donald Trump and others.
Personally I think that there should be a return of the WPA. How many city halls were built under that, giving jobs to people that needed/wanted them, and gave us results around for almost 100 years? Instead, our modern idea of a bailout is to pay a private company to do something they would have done anyway. Paying a real estate developer to build a building, or paying a telco to pay cables. That's not stimulus, that's welfare for the rich.
Want to saddle a student with a lifetime of debt? Give them a job, so they at least have a chance to pay it off.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because welfare for people is socialism and welfare for corporations is free market.
Re: (Score:2)
I know the CCC was more popular at the time then the WPA due to
the WPA doing some "artsy" projects. I guess it was the marketing...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:4, Insightful)
The merger of government and corporate power is fascism per Mussolini, and
I'd say he might know a thing or two about it while he was around.
We have not had a free market in the US for a very long time if at all.
The monopolies and cartels crush any competition they consider a real threat
if they do not sell out a price considered reasonable by the Robber Barons.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
US tax payers aren't on the hook for most of the loans that students have. It's not just government loans that are "protected". "Smart" students would get as many of those credit cards offered like candy they can, advance or buy stuff to sell (gift cards, iTunes cards), and declare bankruptcy the moment they graduate.
There's nothing stopping you from borrowing for other reasons, using the cash to pay off loans, then bankrupting youself out of the new debt. That would be the appropriate civil disobediance for the non-dischargeable loans.
Uhm, everything you had just described is an open and shut case of fraud, pure and simple.
Civil disobedience? Hope you like jail time...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
pointing them all to Democrats, when it was the Republicans who removed the dischargability
Both Centrist parties strongly support the indenture of students from working- and middle-class families.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Yes, they were (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong. People think write-offs are some magical thing that makes you richer. This is a fallacy.
Writing off bad debt doesn't give you a tax benefit. It just means you don't pay taxes on that money you never got back.
It's always better (financially) to make money and pay taxes on it than not to make the money in the first place. It's like any expense.
Spoken as a small business owner.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think he should have run amok and killed them, for the benefit of all mankind. He found an evil monster who poisons people and they tried to destroy him. He's obligated to kill them, as far as I'm concerned, and you're all obligated to help him now that you're aware.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, post some kind of logic to back up your position. Should we also make it "actionable" to attempt to discredit a company by an individual?
No. We're talking specifically about abuse by a corporate entity, or by an entity paying multiple other people to assist in the act of maliciously attempting to discredit. Companies already have plenty of highly-effective legal avenues to retaliate against an individual.
How about one individual against another?
If one of the individuals is highly resource
Re: (Score:2)
That is already actionable without need for any new laws.
Re: (Score:2)
If you once get past the shock of being attacked without a good reason, it feels good to fight back. You know that your opponents have consciously taken up the role of the bad buy, and you're fighting the good fight.
I've only had that feeling twice in my whole life, but it's seriously cool.
Re:Sounds like he was enjoying himself! (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on what you risk losing by fighting or risk losing by not fighting, so you need to pick your fights. I've seen a couple times colleagues got into some fight for more personal reasons or feelings. It is sad to see things go downhill when they make a mistake when too concerned with feeling good instead of the big picture, or because they mistakenly made the assumption " your opponents have consciously taken up the role of the bad buy." Even if their original science still stands solid, the opponents try to make the fight about other things, and now have some actual ammo to fight with once the scientist is caught saying the wrong thing or making things personal. Even if the opponents have made dozens of mistakes and the majority of their attacks are not scientific in nature, it is an asymmetric fight that expects the scientist to not make a single mistake.
Doesn't have to be a big corporation either, it can be a single person with a pet theory and too much free time, or some small company that is trying to defend a borderline scam. I guess it might depend on your field, but I've never had research that runs afoul of big corporate interests, but have had to deal with the obsession of a couple crackpots, and legal issues from a one person business selling a single (non-functioning...) product.
Re: (Score:2)
Whereas my experiences were with opponents blatant enough that even the victims knew that it wasn't their fault.
The one in the public record was an employer which we and the Ministry of Labour forced into receivership for non-payment of wages. As it happens, the original investors were able to take the company out of receivership and turn it around under new management.
Other cases are more problematic, but when you have nothing to lose and the other person announces their name is Snidely Whiplash, it
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely, go for it, make it public,write all the newsclowns with a form letter, make a video and plaster it all over youtube and every other service, send editorials to all the big papers, especially call in the local media so your home town gets a clue. Be controversial, dont pull punches, go for the throat, do everything in language accessable by all. Continue to hammer them like Snowden, in fact copy his methods as closely as possible and ride his wave, just look at his popularity. Show the public the
So you are saying (Score:2)
that some of the world's most eminent mathematicians and scientists are crackpots simply because they have been from Berkeley. No wonder you post as an Anonymous Coward.
Re:The guy is crazy (Score:5, Informative)
In 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its independent Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) examined all available studies on atrazine and concluded that "atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development based on a review of laboratory and field studies."
Yeah, except... from TFA:
By that point, there were seventy-five published studies on the subject, but the E.P.A. excluded the majority of them from consideration, because they did not meet the requirements for quality that the agency had set in 2003. The conclusion was based largely on a set of studies funded by Syngenta and led by Werner Kloas, a professor of endocrinology at Humboldt University, in Berlin. One of the co-authors was Alan Hosmer, a Syngenta scientist whose job, according to a 2004 performance evaluation, included "atrazine defence" and "influencing EPA."
After the hearing, two of the independent experts who had served on the E.P.A.'s scientific advisory panel, along with fifteen other scientists, wrote a paper (not yet published) complaining that the agency had repeatedly ignored the panel's recommendations and that it placed "human health and the environment at the mercy of industry." "The EPA works with industry to set up the methodology for such studies with the outcome often that industry is the only institution that can afford to conduct the research," they wrote. The Kloas study was the most comprehensive of its kind: its researchers had been scrutinized by an outside auditor, and their raw data turned over to the E.P.A. But the scientists wrote that one set of studies on a single species was "not a sufficient edifice on which to build a regulary assessment." Citing a paper by Hayes, who had done an analysis of sixteen atrazine studies, they wrote that "the single best predictor of whether or not the herbicide atrazine had a significant effect in a study was the funding source."
Re:The guy is crazy (Score:5, Informative)
You might be interested in Last Call at The Oasis: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20... [imdb.com]
It streams on Netflix.
Hayes was one of the interviewees in that documentary. He shows off some of the mutant frogs too.
Re:The guy is crazy (Score:5, Informative)
In 2013, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and its independent Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) examined all available studies on atrazine and concluded that "atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian gonadal development based on a review of laboratory and field studies."
It's called regulatory capture motha f**kers.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you fucking kidding me? Are you a shill or just stupid?
How a reputable company responds. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you fucking kidding me? Are you a shill or just stupid?
Neither. I am guesing (s)he is an IP lawyer. Used to thinking about how the company can get its way within the bounds of the law rather than asking whether things like investigating a scientist's wife in the hope of discrediting his research should be permissible in a civilized society. Maybe she does have a bias--maybe she got dumped by your company's CEO. But there's a big difference between *knowing* she has a bias and trying to cook one up.
The company's POV may be valid, but not all of the actions it intended in support of them--whether legal or not--are moral.
The real issue is that any reputable company in response to science that is bad for their products should be saying "this science showed that maybe there's a problem here, we'd better make sure we're not hurting our customers or their neighbors, let's do some research and legitimately see what the deal is." Resorting to discrediting the other guy should only come up, maybe, when and if you've established that his research is wrong, that the product is safe, that the guy's data is wrong, and that he's basically a crackpot. Unfortunately economic incentives make most people feel free to allow their product to poison or even murder despite the science. (See, e.g., cigarettes.) This is actually a good reason for broad diversification--the smaller a percentage of revenue is dependent on one product, the more willing a company is to do the right thing when one product proves unsafe.
The knee jerk reaction... (Score:2)
There are the good few (companies) that spoil it for the rotten masses, but they are so rare as to seldom garner a mention.
I would expect that a good company would immediately fire the author of this snivelling little shit strategy, not implement it.
Re:Being a scientist does not mean he is right. (Score:4, Interesting)
The knee jerk reaction of "big companies bad, individuals good" is not always accurate.
But it's more likely true than not.
Re: (Score:2)
It was already 10 February in Australia when you posted this, you insensitive clod.
Re:How do we fight back against Beta? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
"Go Big Red! Smash State!"
Rah-rah.
Don't forget to register for your sophomore semester next year.
Re: (Score:2)
and yet, corporations can be owned by people, and other corporations.
actually, I think it is the latter, that engenders a whole lot of mischief and should be disallowed.