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Monsanto’s Sway Over Research Is Seen in Disclosed Emails

4 pointsby alphonsegastonalmost 8 years ago

1 comment

arca_voragoalmost 8 years ago
They also enforce that sway with a massive internet PR arm as well, which does a good job burying stories like this. Personally, what I find more interesting than the particulars of this story itself, is the web of connections they use to accomplish these types of goals. For example, I really like the show &quot;Uncommon Knowledge&quot; from the Hoover Institute, but I have noticed a trend of their fellows being used like Mr. Miller allowed himself to be. If I remember correctly one of my favorite conspiracy theorist authors was a Hoover fellow, Antony Sutton, who was forced out after writing &quot;National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union&quot; which really ruffled some feathers, and it makes one think about how much think tanks are being used to promote agendas vs actually providing unbiased policy analysis.<p>On a related note, while I was a sysadmin in genetics, I came to understand just how weak and unreliable the scientific publishing community is. Peer-review != good science, but that&#x27;s how the journals present themselves. Quite often I stumbled on obviously bad science, mostly by academics&#x2F;scientists trying to pad their resumes. Usually with comments along the lines of &quot;I&#x27;ve been published 1k+ times!&quot;. As if that had any bearing on the quality of their work. I think, in this case, instead of jumping on the anti-monsanto bandwagon (which having worked in the industry I&#x27;m still ready to do!), in this case the real solution is to fix scientific publishing, because things like this are happening in every single industry, not just bigag.<p>For example, I think a potential solution, besides making the journals completely free and open, would be to finance centers that test reproducibility, randomly or targeting specific examples such as the paper referenced.