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RfC: Coverage of Roundup Cancer Case

[edit]
VERSION B
There is strong consensus to expand coverage of the Roundup cancer case in the article. Of the four proposed versions, a plurality of editors preferred version B, stating that it is most descriptive and sufficiently neutral. Some editors believed that version B constitutes undue weight, but version B still garnered the highest level of support. — Newslinger talk 21:58, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should coverage of the recent Roundup cancer case be expanded? If so, which option do you prefer? petrarchan47คุก 04:05, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Note The proposed text has changed as a result of the first day of comments. Those who have commented thus far have been alerted. If this action runs afoul of the guidelines, please feel free to revert. petrarchan47คุก 05:54, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Present text

On August 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury in a superior court, awarded Dewayne Johnson $289 million dollars in damages for linking his terminal cancer (Non-Hodgkin lymphoma) to RoundUp weedkiller.

to

Proposed text

A: On August 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury in a superior court, awarded Dewayne Johnson a total of $289 million for linking his terminal cancer (Non-Hodgkin lymphoma) to Roundup weedkiller; $39 million was awarded for past and future damages, and $250 million in punitive damages. Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos said Monsanto "acted with malice, oppression or fraud".[1] The company plans on appealing the verdict on the ground that the judge should have barred the scientific evidence presented by the Johnson's attorneys.[2]

Or

B: In March 2017, 40 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit at the Alameda County Superior Court, a branch of the California Superior Court, asking for damages caused by the company’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, and demanding a jury trial.[3] On August 10, 2018, Monsanto lost the first decided case. Dewayne Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, was awarded $289 million dollars in damages after a jury in San Francisco found that Monsanto had failed to adequately warn consumers of cancer risks posed by the herbicide.[4] During closing arguments Johnson's attorney argued that "Monsanto made a choice to not put a cancer warning on the label".[5] The company plans on appealing the verdict on the ground that the judge should have barred the scientific evidence presented by the Johnson's attorneys.[6][7].

Or

  • Versions crafted after additional RfC discussion (added Sept. 25):
C: On August 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury in a superior court awarded groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson a total of $289 million for linking his terminal cancer (Non-Hodgkin lymphoma) to Roundup weedkiller; $39 million was awarded for past and future damages, and $250 million in punitive damages. Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos said Monsanto "acted with malice, oppression or fraud".[1] The company plans on appealing the verdict,[8] and issued a statement saying in part that "glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer."[9][10]

Or

D: On August 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury in a superior court awarded groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson a total of $289 million for alleging his terminal cancer (Non-Hodgkin lymphoma) was linked to Roundup weedkiller.[1][11] The company plans on appealing the verdict,[12] and issued a statement saying in part that "Today's decision does not change the fact that . . . glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer."[13][14] There is a scientific consensus that there is no evidence of carcinogenicity for labeled uses of glyphosate herbicides.[15][16]

Related discussions:

Note: This discussion has been included in the WP:WikiProject Agriculture. 17:55, 19 September 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

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I'll resubmit iVote once proposals are finalized. petrarchan47คุก 21:10, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Indicates competence. Roxy, in the middle. wooF 14:01, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Seems like non-controversial additional details. NickCT (talk) 12:54, 17 September 2018 (UTC) Changing my initial vote cause the proposal seems to have changed. New vote below. NickCT (talk) 15:53, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose including judge's extra commentary. The scientific consensus is very clear on glyphosate and its formulations as detailed just below the current text version in that labeled use is not a significant health risk and that glyphosate formulations are not considered carcinogenic[1] as well as at the respective herbicide articles. Science is not metered out by courts, and they can generally be unreliable in detailed scientific topics. This court case is ultimately implying the plaintiff was harmed by normal use of the product, so that puts the court case in WP:FRINGE territory, especially when you dig into further background on the IARC stuff that helped spur the case.
We already have mention of the court case as would be expected of noteworthy events even if they are fringe, but including the judge's commentary gets into WP:UNDUE territory since the whole premise of the case was that Monsanto did stuff that led to the product causing his cancer and health issues. It would be one thing if other sources were discussing the judge's comments in a fringe context, but we normally don't include such statements as a standalone. In short, we already have enough mention of the case as had been regularly discussed on the related talk pages before this edit was introduced. To do more gets into trouble with our fringe-related policies and guidelines, which is why the edit had to be removed in the first place. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:52, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Just a note the above comment was before changes to the RfC proposals, but the meat of my comments still remain. WP:FRINGE stuff needs to be put in that context if it is going to be included. I'm ok having the bit about Monsanto/Bayer appealing, but you generally don't want a tit-for-tat display when the science is clear. The problem is saying more than that the case happened without appropriate critique policies and guidelines require on this. The new A above is a slight improvement, though does not address the fringe issues, and B is even worse. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:46, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - Well-sourced, non-controversial, concisely-presented additional facts about a non-trivial event in Monsanto's history. --Tsavage (talk) 15:12, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • The Minor4th version (below) is an improvement, adding some basic information, without expanding into Monsanto legal cases territory. The second proposed version (above) is similar, but perhaps not as cleanly summarized (Johnson's attorney quoted?). Adding: "The company plans on appealing the verdict on the ground that the judge should have barred the scientific evidence presented by the Johnson's attorneys." to the original proposed version (above) would also be an improvement that I support. --Tsavage (talk) 06:25, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Let me know if I misunderstood your suggestion, otherwise I believe Option A has your support now? petrarchan47คุก 08:56, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I support A or B (with or without the Johnson's attorney quote), which is not necessary for this article, as, in B, what the case was about is already described in the previous sentence. B provides more information, while remaining a concise summary. More detail can go into Monsanto legal cases. --Tsavage (talk) 15:41, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
UPDATED: Support A or B (preferably without the Johnson's attorney quote) or C (without the "more than 800", which is struck in current version). --Tsavage (talk) 00:11, 21 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Petra and others. In addition, I strongly believe that the added information here: "Add consensus text on carcinogenicity" [2] should be removed. I've never seen something of this sort done in WP in all the time that I've worked on corporation articles. It appears that FRINGE is being used for an explanation as to why WP would step in to refute the decision of a U.S. jury in their decision and the judge's comments. This addition to our article just reminds me too much of the present administration's advise that we ignore our justice department and go along with their version of facts. IMO, if anything we should rather be including the major reason for the jury decision which was not the fact that they believed as fact that Monsanto's RoundUp caused this man's cancer but that Monsanto secretly and illegally manipulated the facts about the safety of their product. And yet our article step's in to defend Monsanto.Gandydancer (talk) 16:04, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment only the USA today source uses the quote from the judge, so it is certainly up for debate whether this should be included as opposed to other wording. Did the supporters notice that? The difficulty here is that this is one legal case in Monsanto's history, so it is difficult to decide which details should or should not be included here to summarise it. If we do include extra information, then we should at very least mention that Monsanto are planning to appeal as well e.g. [3] [4]. SmartSE (talk) 16:38, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support (B) - well-sourced, important info for readers. Atsme✍🏻📧 16:51, 17 September 2018 (UTC) added "B" 16:33, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, but with caveats. First of all, I think it is entirely appropriate to include what the judge said, with attribution. It is directly relevant to Monsanto, and it is a major and noteworthy milestone in the history of the company and its place in society. But, it should be sourced to the USA Today source, only, because that's the only source listed above that actually contains the quote, as SmartSE correctly pointed out. And, the paragraph must include the fact that Monsanto plans an appeal, per NPOV, as SmartSE also said. In addition, there is a quote from Scott Partridge that is near the end of both the NPR and NBC sources above, that refers to "more than 800 scientific studies and reviews". It is important to include some of that quote as well. I heard another NPR report (I can look for it if editors want) in which the reporter pointed out that the court decision was about corporate conduct rather than about toxicology, and it is important that WP present that accurately: the judge evaluating Monsanto's corporate conduct, and at the same time courts do not determine science. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:26, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Here is that other NPR story: [5]. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Now that I have that source in front of me, rather than going by memory of something I heard on the radio, I want to clarify my earlier remark. Reporter Dan Charles didn't exactly say that the court decision was only about corporate conduct; I somewhat misremembered that. Rather, he said that the jurors agreed with the plaintiff's claim that Roundup had caused cancer, but that this was part of a phenomenon that "sometimes happens in these jury trials when you're confronted with a real, suffering human being", and then he went on to draw a distinction between that and "there's another thing going on, which is quite interesting. Basically, the plaintiffs put Monsanto on trial". --Tryptofish (talk) 18:59, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Courtesy ping@Tryptofish: since I am banned from your talk page. Proposed text has changed. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience. petrarchan47คุก 06:08, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I think that A is a step in the right direction. Strong Oppose to B, as being too verbose, badly written, and not balanced. I guess I'll have to propose a version C below. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:15, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That source helps illustrate part of the problem we're having here. What I'm trying to navigate here is that the court case is ultimately awarding damages to the plaintiff for their cancer whether it's the jury saying they did weigh health evidence or were solely basing it somehow on corporate conduct. At the end of the day, that's foraying into the realm of science and contradicting a scientific consensus, so we are left in a position of having a noteworthy case, but needing more appropriate sources in order to include more detail about it. I'm still looking for sources for that, but it's a lot to sort through. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:46, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Definitely needs to be added to this article and probably other related articles. I have been looking for a place where this might be expanded in more detail - perhaps on the Monsanto legal cases page (which needs to be cleaned up). I would tweak the wording a bit so that it more broadly represents the various reliable sources. I'll make a proposal in the discussion section.Minor4th 22:08, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I just tweaked the wording on the Monsanto legal cases article, and something like this might work here:
In March 2017, 40 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in the Alameda County Superior Court, a branch of the California Superior Court, against Monsanto alleging damages related to certain forms of cancer caused by Monsanto's Roundup product. On August 10, 2018, Dewayne Johnson won the first jury case against Monsanto based on a causal link between Roundup and Johnson's non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The jury awarded Johnson $289 million in actual and punitive damages against Monsanto, and found that Monsanto acted maliciously by failing to warn consumers of cancer risks posed by the herbicide. Monsanto plans to appeal the verdict based on a claim that the judge improperly admitted scientific evidence presented on behalf of Johnson.
Diff: [6] Minor4th 22:54, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Partial support The breakdown of compensatory and punitive damages seems important, but the rest of it reads as legal jargon serving only to pile on. I'd be more supportive of different language highlighting facts that might have led the jury to award punitive damages. Plus some of the more notable commentary. R2 File:Droid small icon.tiff (bleep) 23:02, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I support the proposed paragraph by Minor4th as it is well-written and provides an excellent summary of the case. The cited sources provide additional information for readers/researchers. Atsme✍🏻📧 00:08, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Adding - I support the new text but I think it needs to more closely represent what the cited source states; i.e., that the lawsuit alleged that the “company’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, caused his cancer”. Atsme✍🏻📧 06:43, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Petrarchan47 - proposed text: In March 2017, 40 plaintiffs filed a lawsuit at the Alameda County Superior Court, a branch of the California Superior Court, asking for damages caused by the company’s glyphosate-based weed-killers, including Roundup, and demanding a jury trial.[1] On August 10, 2018, Monsanto lost the first decided case. Dewayne Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, was awarded $289 million dollars in damages after a jury in San Francisco found that Monsanto had failed to adequately warn consumers of cancer risks posed by the herbicide.[2] During closing arguments Johnson's attorney argued that "Monsanto made a choice to not put a cancer warning on the label".[3] The company plans on appealing the verdict on the ground that the judge should have barred the scientific evidence presented by the Johnson's attorneys.[4][5]. Atsme✍🏻📧 07:37, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Much appreciated. petrarchan47คุก 08:57, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The outcome of the trial caused their stocks to lose more than 10% ($10 billion). That seems pretty significant to me. Gandydancer (talk) 18:05, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Actually it's down farther than that. Look at these two sources: graph and Roundu. petrarchan47คุก 20:49, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Mercy me, @Smartse: just deleted the whole section for Roundup at Bayer article. Well, here is the information our readers won't see. Diff Nothing to see here folks. @Gandydancer: petrarchan47คุก 21:14, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I struck my comment, it's was simply moved to a new section. petrarchan47คุก 21:32, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Gandydancer: - Have you read WP:RECENTISM? Yes 10bn sounds like a lot of money, but Monsanto has a very long history of stock price fluctuations. We probably aren't going to mention them all. NickCT (talk) 14:36, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I'm with NickCT but something more succinct would be fine. e.g.In August 2018, a jury awarded a claimant $289 million for linking his terminal cancer (Non-Hodgkin lymphoma) to Roundup weedkiller; $39 million was awarded for past and future damages, and $250 million in punitive damages. The judge said Monsanto "acted with malice, oppression or fraud".[1] The company plans on appealing the verdict on the ground that the judge should have barred the scientific evidence presented by the Johnson's attorneys.[2]
The last sentence isn't supported by the reference though and IMO is misleading since the objection isn't that they presented scientific evidence but that it was cherry-picked to support the case. e.g. from Reuters Monsanto said the plaintiff’s experts should have been excluded because although they mainly cited respected, peer-reviewed studies, they inappropriately cherry-picked results and used unreliable methods to support the position that glysophate causes cancer in humans. SmartSE (talk) 16:55, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - this is the first settled case filed by 40 plaintiffs, it ended with a substantial award to the plaintiff, and it was covered in multiple RS. I think it's safe to consider the statements of fact about the case very much DUE. It's a legal case that was settled a month ago so see Wikipedia:Recentism#Recentism_as_a_positive. When the appeal happens, which may take years, the article can simply be updated to reflect the outcome. Atsme✍🏻📧 17:19, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Atsme: There is no way that we can currently judge now whether it is due or not. It could lead to the collapse of Bayer/Monsanto or it could be overturned on appeal, but at the moment we have sources from a very limited time period in Monsanto's history. Obviously it has been in the news and nobody is disputing that it should be included in some form, but given there is a separate article for legal cases involving Monsanto, any information here should be less detailed and summarise the content in the main article. SmartSE (talk) 20:00, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If you'd like to make a proposed version, it's not too late to include it. petrarchan47คุก 21:10, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I said earlier, I more or less support A, and I strongly oppose B. I think that this RfC may be becoming a mess (I thought it started out as being about whether or not to include the comment from the judge), but nonetheless I feel like the best thing I can offer is to complicate it further by proposing Version C, which of course I support the most:
C: On August 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury in a superior court awarded groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson a total of $289 million for linking his terminal cancer (Non-Hodgkin lymphoma) to Roundup weedkiller; $39 million was awarded for past and future damages, and $250 million in punitive damages. Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos said Monsanto "acted with malice, oppression or fraud".[1] The company plans on appealing the verdict,[2] and issued a statement saying in part that "Today's decision does not change the fact that... more than 800 scientific studies and reviews... support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer."[3][4]
This way, we present the important statement by the judge, but also present the other side, while being accurate as to both the corporate conduct and the scientific facts, without getting too verbose. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:38, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Tryptofish: I agree that sums up both sides nicely, but is there any reason to include details like the precise date and the plantiff's and judge's names? It's unnecessary in my opinion. Also, should we mention somehow that it was occupational exposure as opposed to through diet? SmartSE (talk) 20:00, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. If we quote the judge, we should name her, and I think it's reasonable to name the plaintiff who has been at the center of the whole case. The date is encyclopedic, so I'd probably keep all of that in. By the way, all I did was copy that part from Version A. But you are right about the exposure, so I'll correct that now before anyone else comments (I hope). --Tryptofish (talk) 20:12, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Scientific facts coming from the manufacturer of the product, especially considering what we know about Monsanto's deceptive practices, might need to be countered.
Consider: The 800 studies are just window dressing. They have nothing to do with cancer. They focus, for example, on whether the substance can trigger eye or skin irritation. There are only around 20 studies on the issue of cancer. And almost all of them show a risk. But Monsanto always refers to the 800 studies because it allows them to better divert attention. Der Speigel petrarchan47คุก 21:10, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That Der Speigel quote is the scientific opinion of a journalist. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:05, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Tryptofish - my thoughts are pretty basic - WP:WEIGHT should go to statements of fact in the judgment per RS, not to opinions after the fact because it tends to shift the weight from statements of fact to opinion which is UNDUE. I agree that the science needs to be included, but it belongs in the glyphosate and/or Roundup articles themselves, not in the findings of fact in the judgment of this particular case. Atsme✍🏻📧 21:56, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
By that reasoning, we should not include the comment from the judge, because that also was a statement of opinion. The name of this page is Monsanto. It is appropriate to include what Monsanto says. Using scientific content in another part of the page as a rebuttal to what it says in this section is WP:SYNTH, but quoting the actual response is not. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:02, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My final comment - if the judge's after-the-fact comment affected the final outcome, then we include it but it obviously did not per the judgment. Perhaps one of our legal scholars will weigh-in here. If the science had no bearing on the outcome of the lawsuit, then it is undue with regards to the outcome of the actual case - we should not re-litigate the outcome or make excuses for it. I'll end by saying I'm happy to let consensus decide. Atsme✍🏻📧 23:25, 18 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies, but the goalposts keep moving - so I'll extend my apologies for having to add to my final comment. I agree for the most part with proposal C by Tryptofish but with the caveat that we not include Monsanto's quote of 800 studies because of the issues Petrar brought to light regarding the variations in focus. We should definitely include Monsanto's denial of a link between glyphosate and cancer, as well as their intent to appeal and maybe brief mention that they often cite studies that have found the active ingredient in Roundup to be safe (per the NBC article) without the quote. Atsme✍🏻📧 01:52, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly what I now think. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:03, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
...[Monsanto] issued a statement saying in part that "Today's decision does not change the fact that more than 800 scientific studies and reviews... support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer." - This post-trial company statement goes beyond a succinct summary of the completed trial itself. An intention to appeal is noted (although a filed appeal would be more relevant in this summary context). Beyond that, detail about the company's opinion about the trial outcome belongs in Monsanto legal cases, which is a Monsanto company page created specifically for details like an opinion questioning a jury finding. --Tsavage (talk) 15:00, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Tsavage: The appeal was filed just today. How would you suggest adding this to Option 1? petrarchan47คุก 18:02, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Court case briefly described > outcome noted > significant punitive damages aspect briefly explained > appeal filed, briefly explained. It's what all the versions contain, just add the basic facts of the appeal. This should be a short note - a paragraph - with further details in Monsanto legal cases - that page was created to keep unnecessary detail creep like what's happening here out of this main article. --Tsavage (talk) 14:52, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I thought about this "800" thing, and decided to see whether I could get more information about it. And guess what: it looks like both "sides" are probably wrong. I did a PubMed search for "glyphosate cancer": [7], and there were 81 returns. That's not really an exact number because it doesn't identify only the studies that support Monsanto's position, but the reality is probably a little more than the 20 "on the issue of" claimed in Der Speigel. But it's obviously way, way less than 800, so I am persuaded to agree with other editors that we should not repeat the number stated by Monsanto. Given the constantly changing variety of proposals, I have taken the liberty of striking through part of Proposal C, so as to remove the "800" part. But I'm not removing the quote entirely. My strike-through changes it to "Today's decision does not change the fact that... scientific studies... support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer." I feel rather strongly that, on the one hand, if we are to add anything new about this, we should indeed add the quote from the judge (for the reasons I already stated), but we also need to do more than just say that Monsanto plans an appeal. Look: once you take out the dubious number, the statement is scientifically and factually true, and the NPR source I talked about earlier makes it clear that an NPOV treatment of the verdict needs to indicate that what the jury concluded is not what the science has shown (so this isn't OR on my part), and furthermore a page about Monsanto should include something of the reason stated by Monsanto for the appeal. What would be OR would be for editors to decide that we don't like Monsanto so we don't want to quote their stated reasons for the appeal. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:03, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Sticking to the facts - brief case description (who sued who for what), outcome, brief explanation of significantly large punitive component (eg: judge quote), appeal with basis as filed - is all that's necessary here as a summary. The fact of the trial outcome is not us creating a bias, there is no reason to "balance" that outcome with a post-trial statement of opinion about glyphosate safety (especially since Roundup, not glyphosate, was the issue...confusing) - a detailed explanation of the case can be developed in Monsanto legal cases. --Tsavage (talk) 14:52, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree in principle that the legal cases page is the place for more detail, but I also think that there is still an editorial judgment to be made as to how much detail to have here. I could see further shortening the appeal reason to: The company plans on appealing the verdict, and issued a statement saying in part that "glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer." --Tryptofish (talk) 17:52, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
It sounds like that further shortening is seen by other editors as a good idea, so I'm making that further strike-through in Version C. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:32, 21 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - changing proposed versions doesn't work very well - We should comment on a single fixed version and let that take its course. It would seem more efficient to comment on a dozen straightforward, incremental RfCs than a single one where things keep changing. --Tsavage (talk) 15:13, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - Tsavage, it appears consensus so far supports inclusion, and I'm thinking that we can work out the wording locally using the A-B-C options as a guide. If we can't reach an agreement locally, then we can simply call another RfC. Atsme✍🏻📧 16:19, 19 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Given how much things have changed, the RfC seems pretty premature considering content and versions weren't really hashed out enough. Local consensus indeed seems like the better route at this point. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:43, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I'm happy with any of the 3 proposed versions, without the 800 studies quote from Monsanto. -Furicorn (talk) 09:17, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Additional comment. As I mentioned above before the changes to new versions, WP:FRINGE needs to be satisfied with this court case since it ultimately is awarding someone damages for their health issue that contradicts the scientific consensus that glyphosate-based products are not a carcinogenic risk. Here's a modified version based roughly on C:
On August 10, 2018, a San Francisco jury in a superior court awarded groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson a total of $289 million for alleging his terminal cancer (Non-Hodgkin lymphoma) was linked to Roundup weedkiller.[1][2] The company plans on appealing the verdict,[3] and issued a statement saying in part that "Today's decision does not change the fact that... scientific studies ... support the fact that glyphosate does not cause cancer, and did not cause Mr. Johnson's cancer."[4][5] There is a scientific consensus that there is no evidence of carcinogenicity for labeled uses of glyphosate herbicides.[6][7]
This may also change depending on any comments received but it seems like this RfC needs to be treated as normal discussion rather than a formal RfC at this point. I added in a Snopes source that gives a decent overview. I removed the judge's quote since the case decision is ultimately a WP:FRINGE statement. I haven't found source putting that quote in proper context to satisfy the fringe guideline yet, but I'm open to including that if one is found. The award and the reasoning (linked to cancer) is what is needed for describing the court case since that's what most sources focus on, and the Snopes source at least covers some of the caveats needed to satisfy FRINGE for what remains. Most sources give this level of detail, so that seems most WP:DUE.
The split in the total amount really isn't needed either, but it shouldn't be a big deal either way. This also ropes in the scientific consensus statement previously agreed upon for other articles in a single sentence with wikilinks so we can remove the larger paragraph below the text in question (though we may need to discuss having such a sentence appear more prominently rather than buried in the future depending on layout changes). There's going to always be some tit-for-tat with someone appealing a verdict, but bringing the consensus statement in the same paragraph helps temper that a bit so as not to give an appearance of WP:GEVAL. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:43, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have a couple of reasons for not liking that version. First, I do want to include the quote from the judge. Second, I think any statement about scientific consensus here needs to be a quote from Monsanto's appeal rationale, because otherwise we are editorializing on the jury verdict in Wikipedia's voice. I'm ambivalent about WP:ALLEGED here. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:58, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
On your first point, the misconduct, etc. claim is tied directly to claiming a cancer link, so it becomes superfluous. I know some folks want to include it, but we need more than just a single source singling it out. What we really need here is a source detailing the decision in how the cancer link and misconduct were argued to get to that level of detail, but secondary sources currently do not go to that level of depth. I imagine we'll get that in the future, which is why I've advocated for keeping this fairly concise until then due to the interplay between WP:DEADLINE and WP:RECENTISM for expanding unfolding topics.
The fringe issue is what complicates things on your second point here. It is a notable case, but the case is also not WP:MEDRS and is contradicting the consensus. Normally if there's a claim that goes against the scientific consensus, we have to state what the science says broadly without having it comment directly on the case if sources haven't mentioned it yet. That's what we're left with until MEDRS sources comment on the case, so it's a parallel with WP:PARITY. Without the last sentence, the next paragraph on consensus would still remain, but then we're left with the dangling issue of the tit-for-tat issue in that paragraph.
On alleged, this is a case where such language is ok. This is not a scientific body, MEDRS, etc. so some sort of qualifier is needed that doesn't convey scientific authority in order to mention it. I'm not picky on words that do that, so I'm open to suggestions there. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:24, 20 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Tryptofish in that it's not our job to editorialize. We also shouldn't debate the science or Monsanto's beliefs - we simply report the results of the case per the cited sources. Atsme✍🏻📧 05:34, 21 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think anyone has been talking about editorializing here, just following our policies and guidelines when WP:FRINGE material comes up. That gets dealt with at WP:FRINGELEVEL, and also explicitly at WP:FDESC that we put it in appropriate context. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:44, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support B - summoned by bot. I think B presents the info fairly and in a balanced way. I'd just change the last sentence a bit to say: The company planned to appeal the verdict on the grounds that the judge should have barred the scientific evidence presented by the Johnson's attorneys.TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 18:50, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support both versions, A or B. I prefer version B because it is more neutral. JimRenge (talk) 15:56, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support A and B, preferring B because it's more descriptive. Oppose C because the company's quotation can and should be paraphrased, and D because of framing. Daß Wölf 23:03, 25 September 2018 (UTC) (arrived via WP:RFC/A)[reply]
  • Support the briefest version A. All detail go into the Monsanto legal cases. Staszek Lem (talk) 21:02, 3 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support B. He was not awarded the damages for "linking" or for "alleging", but for as compensation for his disease. (I agree with others that the court probably got it wrong; but that's why it awarded the damages.) Incidentally, it's "non-Hodgkin" not "Non-Hodgkin" – I see this has already been corrected in the article. Maproom (talk) 06:54, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support D but C is OK I don't much mind which one you choose. My first choice would be D, but C is OK too. JonRichfield (talk) 07:36, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support something, probably A/B/C (bot summon). This is a significant event in Monsanto's history, and is well referenced, so it has to be covered. However, here we have to choose between reporting only what the sources say (versions A, B and C, essentially the same to my eyes), which leaves the reader with the impression that courts proved Roundup causes cancer, and adding a "by the way, this is bullshit" disclaimer linking to actual cancer studies (D). WP:V requires us to go with the former. That is an article about the company, not about Roundup toxicity, and as long as we do not say in Wikipedia voice that Roundup causes cancer (or "is linked" or whatever) WP:MEDRS does not apply, so we go by general topic sources. TigraanClick here to contact me 09:03, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Tigraan, just a clarification, but are you saying the latter (i.e., the scientific consensus that glyphosate is not carcinogenic), is not verifiable? I guess I'm a little confused by that statement. The reason I proposed at least some mention of the consensus in the paragraph was that WP:FRINGE is clear that we don't let views opposing a consensus stand on their own without putting them in appropriate context. The content in question is medical, and we don't disregard how we handle fringe scientific material based on which article it is in. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:10, 10 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Kingofaces43: Scientific consensus is clear and verifiable, and that is what should (and does) go in places like Genetically_modified_food_controversies#Health.
However, the article here is about the company Monsanto, and a lawsuit they lost. (That is not in itself about scientific/medical information and hence does not involve MEDRS right off the bat.) What you call "appropriate context" would be textbook WP:SYNTH, barring RS describing both the lawsuit and the state of science. Do I regret that (AFAICT) sources do not exist? Yes. (I also regret that, in general, main press articles about anything scientific are abysmal, but that does not remove their RS status.) However that is not worth changing how we operate. To take an over-the-top example, and sorry if that is 'splaining about SYNTH: currently crystal healing states Alleged successes of crystal healing can be attributed to the placebo effect.. I am fairly sure I can find a MEDRS-compliant source saying that the placebo effect does not cure cancer. Yet if I were to change the sentence to Alleged successes of crystal healing can be attributed to the placebo effect, although the latter cannot cure cancer., that is technically true but is carefully designed to give the misleading impression that cancer can be cured by crystal healing (or at least sow doubt). The point is that it is very easy to pick RS to put together a stupid narrative, so we shouldn't do SYNTH, end of story. TigraanClick here to contact me 09:23, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'll keep this brief since it isn't thread discussion, but what you're suggesting violates WP:GEVAL policy (which is partly there because people frequently stumble over SYNTH questions in these types of discussions of fringe topics). The whole premise of the case is that Roundup caused the plaintiff's cancer, and that contradicts the scientific consensus. Per that policy, we either need to omit it, or else put it in proper context. This being the Monsanto page doesn't change our policies and guidelines on such matters. If a court somewhere ruled that human caused climate change isn't happening, we'd treat it much the same for going against scientific consensus. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:44, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The header above does say "discussion" though, not "survey"...? I am not sure we understand each other. It is pretty much uncontroversial and shown in every source that the court verdict was based on a certain premise X. The fact we should be describing is "verdict was reached based on argument X". What you are proposing is to include discussion of whether X is actually true or not, when such discussion is absent from sources; of course, if we discuss it, we should not give false balance to ideas without scientific support, but I say we should not include it at all. If I were to propose a new wording (which I will not) I would try to turn the sentence in the best way possible to make clear that "roundup causes cancer" is the court's opinion, not the scientific community's or Wikipedia, but I would not include a "by the way it's wrong" disclaimer.
FWIW the paragraph opening the subsection that is ended by the Dwayne Johnson case already makes a good job of explaining the science consensus: Monsanto has faced controversy in the United States over claims that its herbicide products might be carcinogens. (...) The consensus among national pesticide regulatory agencies and scientific organizations is that labeled uses of glyphosate have demonstrated no evidence of human carcinogenicity.[211][212] (...). I doubt we should rehash it at every paragraph, any more than we should put disclaimers in film plots about how radiation does not give you superpowers. TigraanClick here to contact me 17:33, 11 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Williams 2000 ghostwriting controversy

[edit]

I added a sentence to the article about Monsanto being accused of ghostwriting the Williams et at 2000 paper (regarding the safety of glyphosate), as this is discussed in several reliable sources about Monsanto, and recently an academic paper was published focusing on this specific incident of ghostwriting.[8] The addition was reverted by KoA. Do any other editors have an opinion on whether or not this should be included in the article? Nosferattus (talk) 21:33, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the supposed conflict of interest of Leemon McHenry, I've replaced that citation with a different one to address KoA's concern. Nosferattus (talk) 21:36, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nosferattus, we've already talked about 1RR, so you should have been plenty aware that this edit would be in violation, so please undo that. Adding in yet another organic industry source with Gillam is just pointy at this time. KoA (talk) 21:47, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Making 1 (partial) revert is not a violation of WP:1RR. Regardless, I'd like to hear what other editors have to say on the matter, both regarding WP:DUE and the sourcing. Nosferattus (talk) 21:59, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nosferattus, this is not optional. You've been repeatedly told the expectations of 1RR and there's no way around it. You can't restore text you already tried to insert once. This was specifically discussed at WP:GAMING 1RR at ArbCom. You need to get consensus for the edit first. KoA (talk) 22:08, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And now I see you are canvassing your friends to the discussion. Somehow I'm not surprised. Nosferattus (talk) 22:38, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If KoA were to canvass his friends, he probably would have canvassed me, which he didn't. I checked his user contributions, and I don't see him canvassing anyone else either. Nosferattus, between making that WP:NPA violation and what strikes me, too, as a 1RR violation, I'm going to ask you to please be more careful.
That said, I'm fine with adding content about misconduct by Monsanto, so long as the sourcing really is reliable and independent. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:33, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed the sentence for now to be diplomatic, but I hope we can have a good faith discussion about the merits of including it. Nosferattus (talk) 02:33, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks so much for doing that, I appreciate it. I'm in favor of including the content in some form, but for me, the issue is having consensus on how to source it. Let's discuss what would be the best source(s) for that. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:53, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here are the sources I've used so far:

  • Kaurov, Alexander A.; Oreskes, Naomi (1 September 2025). "The afterlife of a ghost-written paper: How corporate authorship shaped two decades of glyphosate safety discourse". Environmental Science & Policy. 171 104160. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104160.
  • Gillam, Carey (2021). The Monsanto Papers: Seadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man's Search for Justice. Washington, D. C.: Island Press. pp. 72–88. ISBN 1642830569.
  • McHenry, Leemon B. (1 August 2018). "The Monsanto Papers: Poisoning the scientific well". International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine. 29 (3–4): 193–205. doi:10.3233/JRS-180028.

The first source is about this specific incident of ghostwriting and its continued impact, so I think it's probably the most relevant source. The Gillam book presents the most information about this specific incident, but I'm sure KoA will object strenuously since Gillam is a Monsanto bogeyman.[9] The McHenry paper discusses this incident in the context of others, but doesn't devote a lot of space to it. McHenry is a professor and bioethicist, but since he was hired as an expert consultant in Monsanto-related litigation, KoA claims he has a conflict of interest, which frankly doesn't make much sense to me. If he was a party to the litigation, yes, but how does serving as an expert witness create a conflict of interest? Hyperbolic statements like claiming he "has financial ties" to anti-Monsanto groups are just as conspiratorial as the junk spread by anti-GMO wingnuts. Regardless, I'm fine with just using the first source, if that's what folks prefer. There are also other sources we could cite, but these are probably the most relevant ones. Most others just mention it in passing. Nosferattus (talk) 03:03, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

First, I want to say that I've worked with KoA for a long time, and I consider him to be ethical in his editing here, so there's no need to treat this as a WP:USTHEM kind of thing. My gut reaction is that it would be sufficient to use Kaurov and Oreskes as a single source, and perhaps leave it at that. I recognize Naomi Oreskes' name as someone I would regard as a reliable source. I don't want to make a firm decision until I hear from KoA and any other interested editors, but at least tentatively, that's where I'm at with it now. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:17, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm glad KoA is diligently defending Wikipedia against anti-GMO misinformation (which ironically I'm on the same side as them on). I don't normally edit articles related to pesticides or GMO, but after reading the Signpost article about the Kaurov and Oreskes article, I was also motivated to remove misinformation from Wikipedia, namely the ghostwritten Williams paper. My attempt was reverted and all of my arguments dismissed as anti-Monsanto propaganda. KoA left a wall of text on my talk page, started going off the deep-end talking about how everyone is in the pocket of the organics lobby, and even complained about me at the Fringe theories noticeboard. What should have been an easy fix to protect Wikipedia's reputation turned into a ridiculous battleground over a single source that wasn't even needed for the article. Since I don't know KoA, and Monsanto isn't exactly known for its above-board PR work, I have to admit it was hard to assume good faith and I was also guilty of creating a battleground. If you say KoA is a good faith, trustworthy editor, I accept that and will put down the stick. It's unfortunate though that such over-eager defense against anti-GMO wingnuts is harming Wikipedia's reputation as an unbiased and trustworthy source (per the Signpost article). My only horse in this race is the same horse KoA is riding: defending Wikipedia against misinformation, so I hope next time we're on the same side. Nosferattus (talk) 22:46, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't know until just now that this was in the Signpost, but I guess that helps explain the recent uptick in interest. In my opinion, the best way to protect Wikipedia's reputation is to do as best as each of us can to stay true to our content and neutrality policies, rather than to worry uncritically over external criticism or the opinions of two Signpost contributors. (I do pay attention to external criticism, but I don't automatically take it on face value.) I've been involved in editing this topic area since a very long time ago, and I was the filing editor in the ArbCom GMO case, as well as the primary author of the community-selected language at WP:GMORFC, so I've been around these arguments for a long time. I try to see both sides, every time a new concern comes up, but I'm also quite tired of the debates about it. Putting down the stick sounds to me like a good idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It feels interesting to me that the most relevant sources to speak on this particular incident specifically are those with either well known FRINGE pushing stances (such as Gillam) or those with known COIs. If there isn't anyone without any connection to anti-GMO groups or overall FRINGE scientific stances commenting on this in specific, I feel like WP:DUE comes into play, even if we're just talking about a single sentence. SilverserenC 22:02, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I want to be careful about that, too. But the Kaurov and Oreskes source looks OK to me in that regard. Of course, if I'm missing something, I would welcome being corrected. But in that paper, the only self-reported interest by the two authors is support from the Rockefeller Family Fund, and Oreskes has very solid academic credentials. They write in part: "Corporate ghost-writing is a form of scientific fraud: a paper is falsely presented as the work of people other than its actual authors. When such papers circulate, they undermine the integrity of scientific research and policy decisions based wholly or in part on that research." That strikes me as a big deal, and worth a single sentence here. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That Oreskes paper was specifically one of the ones being discussed over here, where I found some issues with it. Namely, that it doesn't seem to actually be about the ghostwriting subject at all and doesn't address the validity of the claim itself, just uses it to discuss broader citation usage of the article in the years since. Additionally, the background opening to the paper is concerning, as it makes several claims very much in the anti-GMO fringe pushing wheelhouse, including supporting statements about the IARC paper and its long since debunked claim of genotoxicity (where the author of that paper IARC used for that conclusion directly called them out for misusing his paper and making a conclusion that was completely opposite of what it found). So, that doesn't fill me with confidence about Oreskes or that paper in specific. SilverserenC 22:17, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that information. I haven't been watching that page, and didn't know about that discussion. I said I'd welcome being corrected, and now I think I'm corrected. I'm now changing my view to being reluctant to have anything on this page about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:25, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Oreskes paper doesn't support statements about genotoxicity. It cites the findings of the IARC paper as background information about how the safety of glyphosate has been a subject of significant scientific debate. That's the same thing we do here on Wikipedia. Regardless, don't you think this over-eager defense against anti-GMO wingnuts is harming Wikipedia's reputation as a reliable source of information? Monsanto said they ghostwrote the paper, and no amount of hand-waiving or PR is going to put that cat back in the bag. Of course the anti-GMO circus has jumped on it, but also the reputation of the paper is now garbage regardless. If we are truly a neutral source on the matter, we should be reporting on it, not bending over backwards to hide it, like doing our own assessment of every source's level of pro- or anti-GMO sentiment. This sentence isn't even about GMO, it's about ghostwriting. If we were talking about Mother Jones or Fox News, I would understand, but Silver seren and KoA are splitting hairs about academic journal articles while simultaneously saying the Williams paper shouldn't be criticized because it hasn't (yet) been retracted. Isn't that a pretty glaring double standard? Nosferattus (talk) 23:23, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see it as a double standard to hold all the potential sources to a high standard. I'm not seeing anyone objecting to all criticism of the Williams paper, just to criticism that does not meet our editorial standards. And applying those standards is not what I would see as splitting hairs. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:32, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, there's a lot to sort through before even talking about content, so it might be good to have a summary of what is at issue on this topic, if only for Signpost readers jumping into the topic.
First, this topic has been discussed for nearly 10 years by many of us who have edited the topic for that long or longer. The existing section on this page is a result of that discussion, so I think it needs to be made clear that it is mentioned when WP:DUE. With that said, mention of the Williams paper did not get consensus for inclusion as ghostwriting in those discussions, and a lot of it circles around DUE as Silverseren mentioned.
When it comes to the basic facts of events, there were 3 things that happened when it comes to the ghostwriting discussion:
  1. A review article was published in 2000 by Williams et al. In it, Monsanto employees such as William Heydens and others were listed in the acknowledgements for providing support. The paper to date has not been retracted in the nearly 10 years this topic has been discussed.
  2. During glyphosate litigation, lawyers for the lawfirm Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman released select Monsanto emails obtained in their court case.[10] As an editorial note for anyone that has worked on the GMO topic or remembers Climategate, such sources are already very primary, but we also know as editors we need to extremely careful about how context of such emails can be portrayed by adversarial parties. The excerpt from that email that mostly comes up is this quote mostly focusing on a different paper, If we went full-bore, involving experts from all major areas (Epi, Tox, Genetox, MOA, Exposure – not sure who we’d get), we could be pushing $250K or maybe even more. A less expensive/more palatable approach might be to involve experts only for the areas of contention, epidemiology and possibly MOA (depending on what comes out of the IARC meeting), and we ghost-write the Exposure and Tox & Genetox sections. An option would be to add Greim and Kier or Kirkland to have their names on the publication, but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak. Recall this is how we handled Williams Kroes & Munro, 2000." There is only this last offhand mention of the Williams paper.
  3. Monsanto makes a statement in response including sworn testimony (also a primary non-independent source).[11] Main excerpt: Although 15 years later Dr. Heydens referred to such fully acknowledged contributions as ghostwriting, he described his actual role in the Williams et al paper under oath as follows: "I made some minor editorial contributions to that 2000 paper that do not mount to the level of a substantial contribution or an intellectual contribution and, thus, I was only recognized in the acknowledgements and not as an author, and that was appropriate for the situation." He further clarified, "It was things like editing relatively minor things, editing for formatting, just for clarity, really just for overall readability to make it easier for people to read in a more organized fashion."
  4. Williams' university checks into the claims of ghostwriting and finds no evidence of it.[12]
That's really all we have on this, though there's already a lot to navigate. For those not familiar with academic publishing, you can contribute to a paper/experiment and not be included as an author. If you do things like very minor contributions (i.e., a quick review of text and content), then you usually get listed in the acknowledgements, but do not get full authorship. That is not ghostwriting. I personally don't like seeing an interested party contribute to a paper with otherwise independent authors like that, but that's far from the ethical breach being claimed here. Usually you need to be the one developing the main aspects of a review like this to get to that authorship-level. So when we look at these four items, there is a hierarchy of evidence quality. We have the Williams paper itself, the university investigation, and Heydens' under oath testimony (in that order of evidence quality). While primary, the last source is a bit stronger for at least discussion since it's under oath, but I'm not aware of any sources discussing perjury for those statements.
All three sources point to Heydens simply being listed in the acknowledgements for minor assistance and not an act we could call ghostwriting as editors or IRL. The context of the email provided by the lawfirm does not match up with stronger sources either. We can only speculate why in part because the only source that really even touches on this is #3, the Monsanto statement, alludes to Heydens calling fully acknowledged contributions "ghostwriting" being wrong or loose with terminology.
So we're basically left with sources indicating Heydens was acknowledged in the paper as would be expected for the level of contributions stated. That's largely why this accusation hasn't been considered WP:DUE. If Heydens did write the article, that would be ghostwriting, but we need actual reliable sourcing that it happened. Journal retraction, perjury for Heydens, or especially the university investigation all would have pointed out the next details if that had occurred, but instead they contradict the idea. If there was anything of that sort in sourcing describing additional events demonstrating ghostwriting, then we could be over the threshold for including content describing it as such. The email that has a single small sentence off-handedly referring to this paper though is not that level of evidence in part due to standalone ambiguity of a super primary source, but moreso that examinations of the actual events that took place haven't come up with evidence.
That's where I get extremely cautious about being loose with claims of ghostwriting in terms of WP:BLP because we are implicating both Williams and Heydens of being involved in ghostwriting. Those that know me know I'm super allergic to even the appearance of WP:CRYBLP to the point that my threshold for mentioning BLP issues is high, so I don't say that lightly either. When we have a reasonable suspicion that an accusation doesn't match with known facts (and facts have the potential to change), we have to be extremely careful in considering how we mention it not only in talk discussion, but especially when it comes to content. KoA (talk) 14:30, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The above are the main events that happened, and there really hasn't been new details since. There had been a push through the litigation lawfirm or the organic industry to publicize the story of "The Monsanto Papers", ghostwriting, etc., but when it comes to the Williams paper, actual mention been sparse. That's where Nosferattus' edits in recent content come up. Three sources were primarily put into the article recently (and we're discussing here per WP:ONUS:
  1. Gillam, Carey (2021). The Monsanto Papers: Seadly Secrets, Corporate Corruption, and One Man's Search for Justice. Washington, D. C.: Island Press. pp. 72–88. ISBN 1642830569.
  2. McHenry, Leemon B. (1 August 2018). "The Monsanto Papers: Poisoning the scientific well". International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine. 29 (3–4): 193–205. doi:10.3233/JRS-180028.
  3. Kaurov, Alexander A.; Oreskes, Naomi (1 September 2025). "The afterlife of a ghost-written paper: How corporate authorship shaped two decades of glyphosate safety discourse". Environmental Science & Policy. 171 104160. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104160.
The first is by Carey Gillam, who has held titles such as Research Director of USRTK.[13] There is a very clear conflict of interest in that source when it comes to the organic industry that we don't need to spend much time on since it goes back into a lot of the anti-GMO/glyphosate stuff the organization has been involved in, but the short of it is that we wouldn't be citing uncritically the research director of Monsanto/Bayer, and we sure wouldn't for one of their competitors either.
The second is from Leemon McHenry. In the conflict of interest section in that paper is very clear that he has a close working relationship with the Baum lawfirm (glyphosate litigation lawfirm mentioned above) for over 20 years The author has been a research consultant to the law firm Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman since 2003, during which time he has investigated nine cases of scientific misconduct involving ghostwriting. Ironically, lawyers from the lawfirm are also listed in the acknowledgements on this paper, similar to the Williams paper. Either way, that's a cut and dry COI, and we've removed sources much closer to the borderline due to COI in the past in these articles whether it was Monsanto or other organizations.
The third is Kaurov and Oreskes review. This doesn't have the conflict of interest issue and looks ok just at that first initial check as Tryptofish mentioned. There has been some grumbling in WP:PARITY sources recently about Oreskes as they stepped into the GMO/pesticide discussion (i..e, they were well known for good work on dealing with climate change denial, but caveats about a scientist stepping outside their area of expertise). That isn't worth the time of more discussion here, but just wanted to acknowledge it.
The challenge for us here though is that #3 doesn't go into any additional detail on the Williams paper events than what we already have. The simply cite the Monsanto email listed in #2 in my previous post and then just run with the premise of calling it ghostwriting while going into additional analysis of how the paper was used. @Silver seren when into some detail on this already above. We don't get anything additional we can use to really call the paper ghostwritten. That's especially the case when we look at evidence quality (WP:DUE, not WP:RS) where the university investigation that would have looked into actual events found no evidence of ghostwriting. If the review had actually been summarizing new details such as additional evidence of ghostwriting, that would be one thing, but instead we're just left with this one off-handed email comment that contradicts other sources being mentioned without covering the other details of the timeline. On the specific topic of the actual events at play with the paper, that article is just too superficial to move the needle for us on additional content.
This controversy has been jumping around talk pages lately, so hopefully that helps to summarize things. If there gets to be new information that does actually show ghostwriting occurred I'd be in favor of some kind of inclusion, but current evidence just doesn't reach that threshold. We're basically at the same point we've been over the last 10 years where at least for this study (not others), we just don't have enough in actual facts for DUE mention yet. That could change, but we need really good summary sourcing at this point that could address the university investigation or lack of retraction rather than off-handed mention. KoA (talk) 14:30, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your arguments don't hold water. If Heydens' "ghostwriting" just means "fully acknowledged contributions", why does he describe it as "have their names on the publication, but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names" in the same email? That definitely sounds like ghostwriting to me. And why does John Acquavella (a former Monsanto employee) write to Heydens' in a separate email regarding another glyphosphate paper "We call that ghost writing and it is unethical... I can’t be part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication."[14] The argument that the quotation is taken out of context also doesn't hold water. I've read the entire email thread that the quote is a part of and nothing suggests that Heydens intends anything other than ghostwriting. In the context of other email threads from Heydens about the "expert panel" report, it is even more clear that Monsanto used ghostwriting to try to influence regulation. The more context you have, the more clear it is that Williams 2000 was ghostwritten. Also we have the fact that Monsanto gave the authors of Williams 2000 gifts according to other emails (which is discussed in Gillam 2021 and I've read the emails). Regarding your third point, I find it unlikely that Heydens himself ghostwrote the article. Where are the sworn denials from Donna Farmer, Marian Bleeke, Stephen Wratten, and Katherine Carr? At the very least, Williams 2000 was heavily influenced by Monsanto (which is being generous). If your standard for evaluating sources is that they have to be completely independent (per your comments regarding McHenry), how is Williams 2000 a reliable source? Either Williams 2000 and McHenry 2018 are both independent, or they are both not independent and shouldn't be used on Wikipedia. You can't have it both ways. Nosferattus (talk) 15:00, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Remember we are discussing specific content here on the Williams paper, not other areas you brought up (which are already included in the article anyways), so please be careful about focusing on the content at hand. If you want to accuse Farmer, Bleeke, etc. in content of ghostwriting when you ask for sworn denials, then that needs sourcing. I'm not aware of any sources even discussing them in this controversy in that light though, so it's not clear in terms of content discussion why they are being brought up. So far really only Haydens has come up related to this paper. KoA (talk) 16:10, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They are Monsanto employees listed in the acknowledgements of Williams 2000. Nosferattus (talk) 16:21, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I admit Gillam is a biased source, but I still don't see how McHenry has a significant conflict of interest. How does McHenry benefit from accusing Monsanto of ghostwriting? He's not a party to the litigation. At best, he might get another gig consulting for Baum, but that's a pretty minor conflict of interest, IMO. I also don't see how it's a problem that the lawyers are listed in the acknowledgements. No one has objected to Monsanto employees being listed in acknowledgements, so why would we object to this? And finally, there's Kaurov and Oreskes, the source that brought me here in the first place. I've already addressed Silver seren's argument above, which I thought was very weak. KoA's argument is more convincing (that it doesn't have enough discussion of the actual ghostwriting to convey DUE weight), but I think the fact that it is discussed in other sources overcomes that weakness. I'll add some more sources for evaluation... Nosferattus (talk) 01:47, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some more sources to evaluate:

  • Cornwall, Warren. "Update: After quick review, medical school says no evidence Monsanto ghostwrote professor's paper". Science. Retrieved 14 October 2025. - This source is completely about the accusations surrounding Williams 2000 and subsequent responses. Last time I checked, Science is considered a reliable source.
  • Matheson, Alastair (6 December 2024). "The "Monsanto papers" and the nature of ghostwriting and related practices in contemporary peer review scientific literature". Accountability in Research. 31 (8): 1152–1181. doi:10.1080/08989621.2023.2234819. - This paper goes into great detail about Williams 2000, and provides additional details I hadn't seen elsewhere. According to this paper, Douglas Bryant wrote the first draft of the Williams 2000 paper and then it was worked on by half-a-dozen Monsanto employees (which did NOT include Heydens). The paper also includes a revealing quote from Heydens: "I'll strangle Kroes or Williams if they ask for any re-writes!". (Kroes and Williams are the credited authors.)

Let me know what you think of these additional sources. Nosferattus (talk) 02:51, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We've already been discussing the ScienceInsider source most of this discussion, and you're very well aware from previous discussion the Alastair source also has a major conflict of interest directly declared in the paper, In 2018 I was paid by lawyers taking action against Monsanto to review selected e-mails relating to the company’s alleged ghostwriting. To bring that one up yet again as if it never happened is not helpful. KoA (talk) 14:50, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What previous discussion are you talking about? I've never mentioned the Alastair source previously, nor have you mentioned it previously that I know of. Nor have we discussed the ScienceInsider source. You just cited it once when talking about the university review. Is anything wrong with it? It seems like it would be a great source for the sentence and you seem to consider it reliable enough to cite it yourself in discussion. You were saying that we should have a source that covers more than just the emails. Both of these sources do that. They also add more DUE weight to the subject. Nosferattus (talk) 18:10, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A suggestion

[edit]

How about citing the Science News article to say that they were accused of ghostwriting, but the authors denied it and the university investigation found no evidence of it? I think everyone agrees that an accusation was made, but this avoids the use of the dubious sources used previously. SmartSE (talk) 18:52, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the last paragraph of that source, they cite Sheldon Krimsky, who was the subject of a great deal of debate in the GMO RfC, and who was a very non-neutral figure. Also that source does a lot of quoting of other critics, so I'm not sure that citing it to say merely that the accusation was denied would be representing the source in its entirety. On the one hand, I like the idea of presenting the information in a way that makes clear that the accusations were denied, and the university found no evidence. But on the other hand, when we have so many commenters who still express suspicions after the university response, it feels to me like a WP:DUE issue to say there was an accusation, the authors denied it, the university refuted it, but the accusations continue. In the end, it's a point-counterpoint about something that, without substantiation, risks being a BLP violation. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That more or less summarizes my view on it too. This source was around way back when this first came up, and it was determined that mention of the accusations in any fashion didn't really pass WP:DUE. When it comes to the events that occurred, we're basically sitting unchanged in terms of sourcing since then, so I'd be good with sticking with the decision to leave it out. KoA (talk) 21:47, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Both the Oreskes paper and the Matheson paper are new, so it is not accurate to say we are "sitting unchanged in terms of sourcing since then". This ghostwriting accusation is covered in multiple books, academic papers, and mainstream media. It easily passes WP:DUE, IMO. Nosferattus (talk) 17:51, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Those sources really aren't under consideration here for content, and you're aware of the issues with them. No need to keep bringing them up (or repeat why they have issues). KoA (talk) 22:34, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, so we might need to include something else too? So long as it is from RS and attributed, it's not going to be a BLP violation. There are plenty of other sources that mention the allegation e.g. CNN, CBC and NPR so I can't see how it would be undue to include. The coverage is far more extensive than many topics currently included in the article. We should discuss the controversy, not just ignore it and I'm trying to find some common ground with Nosferattus. RE previous discussions, I can't see anything about these sources here, apart from Talk:Monsanto/Archive_6#How_do_editors_plan_to_handle_the_ghostwriting_problem?, but that is about whether we should disregard the original sources, not how the article should discuss allegations of ghostwriting. SmartSE (talk) 09:22, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I support Smartse's initial wording, citing to Science News and the Kaurov Oreskes source. The statement is accurate and based on RS refs. A one sentence mention of a widely covered possible ghost writing incident is not undue. Stating that the accusations are ongoing is not necessary unless those ongoing accusations are coming from mainstream journalists or multiple academic sources.Dialectric (talk) 13:15, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm against citing Oreskes as it is a piece of primary research and has had zero citations so far, making it UNDUE to include at the moment (that's not my only concern, but that's most important). SmartSE (talk) 14:18, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It was literally just published. Are we not going to cite current research because it's too new? WP:UNDUE is about weighing viewpoints based on references, not weighing references based on citations. Nosferattus (talk) 17:28, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that the CNN, CBC, and NPR sources are the best ones to cite, as they are all reliable news sources that are independent of any advocacy. I also want us to be very precise about the wording of the potential single sentence, because those three sources all agree that the "evidence" comes entirely from some emails released by the law firm, and where Monsanto counter-claims that nothing bad actually happened, the law firm was apparently selective in what they released. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:24, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've now spend some time carefully going through those three sources, focusing particularly on what they say about the issue of ghostwriting in the 2000 and 2015 papers about carcinogenicity. The CBC source goes into a lot of detail about Monsanto's hiring of a company called Intertek to find sympathetic scientists, and that this may have led to non-Monsanto employees coauthoring other papers with a bias that was not disclosed at the time, but this seems to me to be distinct from the specific process of ghostwriting. CNN and NPR both discuss an EPA employee who may have been cooperating with Monsanto, but that also seems separate from the writing of the two papers. What it really comes down to is that all three sources agree that there are emails in which persons working at Monsanto said that it would be a good idea for Monsanto to ghostwrite the papers, in emails written before the papers were written. All three sources say that Monsanto denies that the ghostwriting was actually followed through on. The closest I can find is where the CBC says that people at Monsanto were given copies of an early draft, and of a near-final draft, and made suggestions that did not change any of the final conclusions. As far as I can tell, all three sources treat "ghostwriting" as something that they attribute to quotes from people in the story. I think that's what we have, to work with. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:21, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The emails discussed in the CNN and CBC articles were written after Williams 2000, not before. They describe Williams 2000 as having already been ghostwritten, not that it would be a good idea to ghostwrite it (which was in regard to the 2015 paper). I hope your mischaracterization is just an honest oversight. Nosferattus (talk) 17:02, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I went back and checked what the sources (CNN, CBC, NPR) say, and I'm pretty sure that what I said was what the sources said. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:42, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in the process of writing the suggestion that I will propose below. In reading carefully through the source material, which I have to say is difficult reading, I have come to realize that I said some things just above that were incorrect, and I have struck them. I apologize for my error. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We already have the first paragraph of Monsanto#Accusations of ghostwriting, so I guess a question I have is what more we would add to that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was just typing up a thought similar to what you just added.
My question would be what would need to be added relative to what's already in Monsanto#Accusations_of_ghostwriting taking into account what we cover the ghostwriting/influence topic overall vs. just the Williams paper as the focus of this discussion? A lot of those sources sort of pass over the Williams paper like the NPR source only giving a short paragraph about the paper while dedicating most space to other things we cover in this section. I think the problem we're running into is what we ran into about 10 years ago and why the current section was settled on. There just wasn't much focus on the Williams paper in sources comparatively, so it's a question of what is the DUE threshold for inclusion already, but then you also get into the complications you mentioned above in just sorting through the facts of the matter too before even creating content on it.
At least for me, it appears we already do cover the major topics in this section covered by sources already, so that's why this was never added. If even a single sentence was added on Williams, I do wonder if we're putting our thumbs on the scale in terms of DUE to insert it, but setting that aside, I'm also wrestling with how to word an accurate single sentence given all the issues discussed so far and especially WP:BLP when it comes to Williams. It's one thing to look at the totality of sources for DUE, but we also have to navigate WP:SYNTH when it comes to generating content too. I'm not saying absolutely no on adding a sentence, but usually when we're spinning our wheels this much (and generating so much talk text hyper-focusing on something), that's often a sign the sources aren't helping out much for a clear and accurate content addition that demonstrates it reaches the encyclopedic threshold. KoA (talk) 23:24, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any BLP issue with acknowledging that accusations have been made. Even Williams' own employer acknowledged this by conducting a review. If you're worried about SYNTH, perhaps you could suggest some wording. And I don't agree that this is already covered in the article. Our current ghostwriting section is specifically about papers from 2015 and 2016, not about a systematic practice of ghostwriting (which is discussed in most of the sources mentioned) or anything about Williams 2000. Nosferattus (talk) 17:17, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I also don't see any BLP issue with a brief mention of the accusation given the multiple RS refs covering this and the employer review. If we can't agree on the degree to which BLP does or does not apply, I can raise this issue at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard and request additional input.Dialectric (talk) 17:46, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we want to avoid any possibility of SYNTH, we could be more specific about the accusations: "According to an internal Monsanto email and researchers such as Naomi Oreskes, Leemon McHenry, Alexander A. Kaurov, Alastair Matheson, and Carey Gillam, Monsanto ghostwrote an influential 2000 review defending the safety of glyphosate. Monsanto has denied the allegations." Nosferattus (talk) 18:28, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I support this language. I've followed this entire thread. --David Tornheim (talk) 19:51, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As I noted above, we already have language on the page that says: A review of glyphosate's carcinogenic potential by four independent expert panels, with a comparison to the IARC assessment, was published in September 2016. Using emails released in August 2017 by plaintiffs' lawyers who are suing Monsanto, Bloomberg Business Week reported that "Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts." A Monsanto spokesperson responded that Monsanto had provided only non-substantive cosmetic copyediting. That's been there for a long time. So if I understand correctly, this is a proposal to append: According to an internal Monsanto email and researchers such as Naomi Oreskes, Leemon McHenry, Alexander A. Kaurov, Alastair Matheson, and Carey Gillam, Monsanto ghostwrote an influential 2000 review defending the safety of glyphosate. Monsanto has denied the allegations. I don't mind adding another sentence about 2000, but I don't think the proposed language flows well from what would come before it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:49, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It would probably be best to list them in chronological order, so Williams 2000 first, followed by Miller 2015, followed by the 2016 expert panel review. It would be nice to tie them all together with an introductory sentence about the Monsanto Papers (as all three cases stem from that document release), but that's probably opening up too much of a can of worms. Nosferattus (talk) 18:48, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unless someone else objects, that's something I think we can work with. My inclination would be to cite CNN, CBC, and NPR, along with Bloomberg. I would also prefer to just state things as facts (without, obviously, going beyond what the sources say), instead of attributing things to the long list of names in the proposed edit above, unless we add another verbatim quote. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The first question is whether that's really WP:DUE since we know from other sourcing that the ghostwriting claims were not substantiated and would run counter to a lot of the source/event wading through we did above. To have a statement that X said Y, Z denies it, would run into WP:GEVAL or tit-for-tat territory given the context here.
For sourcing (and lower hanging fruit) though, how would that list of names (primarily from major COI authors) be sourced? NPR, etc. don't really mention those names, especially in the context of just the Williams paper. I thought that proposed text was a non-starter when I first saw it partly because it had no sources, but also because trying to source that specific text without getting into synth issues seems difficult at best. KoA (talk) 15:16, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:GEVAL is almost entirely about WP:FRINGE theories giving examples like "the Earth is flat, that the Knights Templar possessed the Holy Grail, that the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax". The ghostwriting claims are in multiple scholarly journals. Is that the case with the other actual fringe theories? Can you provide an overwhelming majority of similar quality articles that say that the claims have no merit? --David Tornheim (talk) 16:15, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
GEVAL is policy part of WP:NPOV and isn't a guideline like WP:FRINGE. The point here is that we don't do tit-for-tat and are careful where we might unduly legitimize viewpoints by going with X said, Y said formats. If mention was DUE, then we would need to include proper context as GEVAL and other parts of the policy mentions. The challenges in doing that were discussed quite a bit earlier. KoA (talk) 16:24, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, KoA, I said that I thought we could work with this unless someone else objects, and I guess you object. I agree with you that we should not have that long list of names, as I said above. But I'm OK with indicating that this was a series of events instead of something that happened once. I'm trying to find a solution that is NPOV. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:54, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not seeing a legitimate objection. There is no "tit-for-tat" policy or guideline to my knowledge. Attribution is policy WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV + guideline WP:INTEXT if you are calling the allegations an opinion rather than proven fact. Providing the view of the accused is standard in journalism. So I understand the desire to include Monsanto's assertion that the allegations are unfounded. GEVAL is irrelevant as I explained above--this is not Fringe. What legitimate objection are you seeing to including the text? --David Tornheim (talk) 23:11, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
David, I think you misunderstand me. I'm not objecting, just observing that KoA did. I'm in favor of including the chronological account, just without the long list of names. I don't see attribution as needed, except for the quote from Bloomberg. We can include the 2000 paper, cited to CNN, CBC, and NPR, followed by the 2016 paper, cited to Bloomberg, using the Bloomberg quote about 2016 to cover it all, and then have Monsanto's rebuttal. That's what I'm trying to say. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:28, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Tryptofish: Thanks for the explanation. Could you provide the exact version you are proposing, including the cites that would go with it? Possibly put it in another sub-section and we can discuss it? This thread might be hard for others to follow. --David Tornheim (talk) 00:43, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea. I'm about to logout for the night now, so I'll do that tomorrow, which will also give others a chance to say if they disagree with me, and why. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:48, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:DUE is policy and very legitimate. Again, the background behind that with the tit-for-tat approach has been discussed plenty above when it comes to accusations of ghostwriting here. We already know that accusations of ghostwriting are shaky at best and can't be presented as you mention because of the other background that has been discussed earlier. It's far from the simple and can become and IRL version of casting aspersions if it isn't handled with care.
We'll see what Tryptofish has in mind, but after all the navigating that's been done up to this point on talk, I am seriously concerned about what has been proposed recently. KoA (talk) 01:09, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I unexpectedly got swamped with some real-life stuff today, so it turns out that I'm going to need another day or so to get this posted, but I very much intend to do it, and I'd rather do it right than do it fast. KoA, I hope that you know that I will act in good faith and try to be NPOV (and DUE). --Tryptofish (talk) 23:34, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding sources, it is fine to cite sources such as McHenry and Matheson if they are attributed (per WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV and WP:INTEXT). Matheson has in-depth discussion of the Williams 2000 case specifically, including discussion of several emails related to the paper and analysis of whether Monsanto's actions truly constitute "ghostwriting" in the case of Williams 2000 or not. This source and the Science article probably cover nearly everything that is known about the Williams 2000 case specifically. Arguments like WP:GEVAL and "tit-for-tat" assume that the accusations against Monsanto are the "minority" POV. However, in this case, it is actually Monsanto's denial that is the minority POV. Monsanto is the only party that has stated they did not ghostwrite the paper. All other sources are either neutral (most news media, New York Medical College) or have stated that Monsanto ghostwrote it (Oreskes, McHenry, Kaurov, Matheson, Gillam, Burtscher-Schaden, Seralini, Douzelet, etc.). Some of these sources have varying levels of bias, COI, and trustworthiness, but so does Monsanto. When it comes to things like the safety of glyphosate, there is a clear FRINGE issue. However, that is not the case here. The mainstream and most prevalent POV is that Monsanto ghostwrote the paper. If GEVAL and "tit-for-tat" should apply to anything, it should be Monsanto's denial, IMO. Nosferattus (talk) 19:09, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here's another source that discusses the Williams 2000 case specifically:

  • Burtscher-Schaden, Helmut (2017). The Glyphosate Files: Smoke and Mirrors in the Pesticide Approvals Process. Wien: Kremayr & Scheriau Verlag. ISBN 978-3218011006.

Burtscher-Schaden is a biochemist for Global 2000 (Austria) [de] so they are clearly anti-Monsanto, but it's still a source for the purposes of establishing WP:DUE. Frankly there's enough sourcing to create an entire article just about the Monsanto Files, but that would be a disaster as it would just become a POVFORK. Nosferattus (talk) 19:16, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed revision

[edit]

Thanks, everyone, for being patient with me. This was more difficult than I expected, but I felt it was more important to get it right, than to get it fast.

The idea is that we would revise Monsanto#Accusations of ghostwriting, first paragraph. There would be no change to the second paragraph. Below, on the left, I show the current version, and on the right, the suggested revision.

Current text:

A review of glyphosate's carcinogenic potential by four independent expert panels, with a comparison to the IARC assessment, was published in September 2016. Using emails released in August 2017 by plaintiffs' lawyers who are suing Monsanto, Bloomberg Business Week reported that "Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts." A Monsanto spokesperson responded that Monsanto had provided only non-substantive cosmetic copyediting.[1]

  1. ^ "Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews". Bloomberg.com. August 9, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
Proposed revision:

In 2000, three scientists not working at Monsanto published an evaluation of the safety in humans of glyphosate and Roundup.[1] Subsequently, a review of glyphosate's carcinogenic potential by four independent expert panels, with a comparison to the IARC assessment, was published in 2016.[2] The latter paper was co-written by panels of academic authors, some of whom were recruited by a Canadian company hired by Monsanto.[3] Both papers concluded that glyphosate was safe.[3][4][5] Based upon emails released in August 2017 by plaintiffs' lawyers who were suing Monsanto, Bloomberg Business Week reported that "Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts." A Monsanto spokesperson responded that Monsanto had provided only non-substantive cosmetic copyediting that did not alter the studies' conclusions.[6][3][4][5] The university of the lead author of the papers also made a determination in that there was "no evidence" of ghostwriting.[7]

  1. ^ Williams, Gary M.; Kroes, Robert; Munro, Ian C. (April 2000). "Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans". Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. 31 (2): 117–165.
  2. ^ Williams, Gary M.; et al. (September 28, 2016). "A review of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate by four independent expert panels and comparison to the IARC assessment". Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 46 (sup1): 3–20.
  3. ^ a b c Shochat, Gil; Fournier, Sylvie (March 12, 2019). "Court documents reveal Monsanto's efforts to fight glyphosate's 'severe stigma'". CBC News. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  4. ^ a b Yan, Holly (May 16, 2017). "Patients: Roundup gave us cancer as EPA official helped the company". CNN. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  5. ^ a b Charles, Dan (March 15, 2017). "Emails Reveal Monsanto's Tactics To Defend Glyphosate Against Cancer Fears". NPR. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  6. ^ "Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews". Bloomberg.com. August 9, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
  7. ^ Cornwall, Warren (March 23, 2017). "Update: After quick review, medical school says no evidence Monsanto ghostwrote professor's paper". Science Insider. Retrieved October 24, 2025.

--Tryptofish (talk) 23:09, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Tryptofish this looks great to me. SmartSE (talk) 09:55, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good place to start. I think the last sentence should be modified to reflect that the school's investigation covered only or focused on the 2000 paper - the article doesn't say they looked at ghostwriting/plagiarism concerns with Williams' contribution to the 2016 expert panel review.Dialectric (talk) 15:59, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, both of you. I looked very carefully at that source for the last sentence, and I'm not sure how to word the change Dialectric suggests. The source says: "The statement came one day after ScienceInsider reported that New York Medical College (NYMC) in Valhalla, New York, would examine a researcher who, according to internal documents released last week by a federal court in California, put his name on a 2000 paper partially ghostwritten by employees at Monsanto, the giant agricultural chemicals company based in St. Louis, Missouri." The court documents purportedly showed ghostwriting in the 2000 paper, and plans to ghostwrite the 2016 paper. So the source is saying that the "internal documents" claimed this happened in 2000 (without saying that the documents also showed it happened in 2016, which might perhaps be considered speculative, so the source doesn't say it), but isn't saying there that the university investigation only looked at 2000. The source also says: "At issue is a 2000 paper published in... ". An yet, the university investigation was in 2017, and there is nothing in the source that actually says that the university never looked at the 2016 paper. I cannot tell from the source whether "at issue" is intended to mean that the university investigation was only about 2000, or to mean that 2000 is when the "issue" began. After all, it would be strange to conduct an investigation in 2017 that didn't look at 2016, so I would want explicit sourcing in order to claim that. I want to be careful about not saying something that isn't really in the source. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:25, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The sentence about Williams 2000 at the beginning isn't tied into the rest of the paragraph except for the statement that it also found glyphosate safe. There is nothing in the paragraph that addresses the ghostwriting concerns about the Williams 2000 paper, which is the entire topic at hand. There needs to be some sort of statement about there being a ghostwriting issue for both Williams 2000 and the 2016 review. The quote from the Bloomberg article only addresses ghostwriting in the 2016 review. Nosferattus (talk) 02:00, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed on all points. As I state below, it is better to have two paragraphs as with Nosferattus's first proposal rather than putting it all lumped together and making in confusing as to which studies are being talked about in the various sentences. As far as I can tell these are *separate* allegations applied to different studies with different responses to the various allegations. --David Tornheim (talk) 03:49, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm just catching up, but it was my assumption too that the university investigation was only commenting on the 2000 study, but I can see now where it could be referring to also the 2016 study. It's not super clear though in that regard. This goes back to the overall problem with sources though that none are particularly in-depth on details, and that makes it extremely challenging to both craft accurate content and establish WP:DUE. Maybe part of the confusion is that most of the discussion so far was focused just on the 2000 Williams study, but I see now the proposals are taking a wider scope, so we're chewing on a lot now. That's not a heads or tails of anything at this point, but I just wanted to comment on the Science Insider source first before other things. KoA (talk) 15:31, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a new suggestion for the text that is more straightforward:

Monsanto was accused of ghostwriting an influential 2000 review defending the safety of glyphosate.[1][2] Monsanto has denied the accusations and the university of the lead author of the paper made a determination that there was "no evidence" of ghostwriting.[1]

A subsequent review of glyphosate's carcinogenic potential by four independent expert panels, with a comparison to the IARC assessment, was published in September 2016.[3] Using emails released in August 2017 by plaintiffs' lawyers who are suing Monsanto, Bloomberg Business Week reported that "Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts." A Monsanto spokesperson responded that Monsanto had provided only non-substantive cosmetic copyediting.[4]

  1. ^ a b Cornwall, Warren (March 23, 2017). "Update: After quick review, medical school says no evidence Monsanto ghostwrote professor's paper". Science Insider. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  2. ^ Kaurov, Alexander A.; Oreskes, Naomi (1 September 2025). "The afterlife of a ghost-written paper: How corporate authorship shaped two decades of glyphosate safety discourse". Environmental Science & Policy. 171: 104160. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104160.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link)
  3. ^ Williams, Gary M.; et al. (September 28, 2016). "A review of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate by four independent expert panels and comparison to the IARC assessment". Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 46 (sup1): 3–20.
  4. ^ "Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews". Bloomberg.com. August 9, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.

We could also take a completely different tack and start the section with a discussion of the Monsanto emails:

In 2017, internal Monsanto emails were unsealed by a federal court suggesting that Monsanto ghostwrote two reviews defending the safety of glyphosate.[1][2][3] The first review, published in 2000, evaluated the safety of glyphosate and Roundup in humans.[4] The second review, published in 2016, was an assessment of glyphosate's carcinogenic potential by four independent expert panels, with a comparison to the IARC assessment.[5] The latter paper was co-written by panels of academic authors, some of whom were recruited by a Canadian company hired by Monsanto.[6] According to Bloomberg Business Week, "Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts." A Monsanto spokesperson responded that Monsanto had provided only non-substantive cosmetic copyediting that did not alter the studies' conclusions.[7][6][2][3] The university of the lead author of both papers made a determination that there was "no evidence" of ghostwriting.[1]

  1. ^ a b Cornwall, Warren (March 23, 2017). "Update: After quick review, medical school says no evidence Monsanto ghostwrote professor's paper". Science Insider. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  2. ^ a b Yan, Holly (May 16, 2017). "Patients: Roundup gave us cancer as EPA official helped the company". CNN. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  3. ^ a b Charles, Dan (March 15, 2017). "Emails Reveal Monsanto's Tactics To Defend Glyphosate Against Cancer Fears". NPR. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  4. ^ Williams, Gary M.; Kroes, Robert; Munro, Ian C. (April 2000). "Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans". Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. 31 (2): 117–165.
  5. ^ Williams, Gary M.; et al. (September 28, 2016). "A review of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate by four independent expert panels and comparison to the IARC assessment". Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 46 (sup1): 3–20.
  6. ^ a b Shochat, Gil; Fournier, Sylvie (March 12, 2019). "Court documents reveal Monsanto's efforts to fight glyphosate's 'severe stigma'". CBC News. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  7. ^ "Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews". Bloomberg.com. August 9, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.

Thoughts? Nosferattus (talk) 03:12, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The first looks good. Much better than trying to tie them all up in one big paragraph. --David Tornheim (talk) 03:39, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think we have already discussed the sourcing problems in the first, and I don't think that I could support it. I'm much more receptive to the second, because it works off of what I had written, but seeks to do a better job of tying everything together, and I don't think the paragraph is too long. As I see it, the main issue is how to word the first sentence in that second version. The wording about "unsealed" makes it sound like the court made a determination about the released materials, so I think it would be better to go back to the language about "Based upon emails released in August 2017 by plaintiffs' lawyers who were suing Monsanto...". The fact that the court permitted the release of the emails does not change the fact that it was the plaintiff's lawyers who did so. Also, the reviews did not "defend"; they were scientific assessments. And I think we have to be very careful about saying "suggesting that Monsanto ghostwrote" in Wikipedia's voice. I gave a lot of thought to constructing a sentence similar to that when I wrote the draft I posted, and I came to the conclusion at that time that there was no NPOV way I could do it. That's a big part of why I found writing this difficult. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Emails released in August 2017 by plaintiffs' lawyers who were suing Monsanto included comments by Monsanto employees appearing to discuss ghostwriting of two reviews about the safety of glyphosate.[1][2][3][4] The first review, published in 2000, evaluated the safety of glyphosate and Roundup in humans.[5] The second review, published in 2016, was an assessment of glyphosate's carcinogenic potential by four independent expert panels, with a comparison to the IARC assessment.[6] The latter paper was co-written by panels of academic authors, some of whom were recruited by a Canadian company hired by Monsanto.[2] According to Bloomberg Business Week, "Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts." A Monsanto spokesperson responded that Monsanto had provided only non-substantive cosmetic copyediting that did not alter the studies' conclusions.[7][2][3][4] The university of the lead author of both papers made a determination that there was "no evidence" of ghostwriting.[1]

  1. ^ a b Cornwall, Warren (March 23, 2017). "Update: After quick review, medical school says no evidence Monsanto ghostwrote professor's paper". Science Insider. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c Shochat, Gil; Fournier, Sylvie (March 12, 2019). "Court documents reveal Monsanto's efforts to fight glyphosate's 'severe stigma'". CBC News. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  3. ^ a b Yan, Holly (May 16, 2017). "Patients: Roundup gave us cancer as EPA official helped the company". CNN. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  4. ^ a b Charles, Dan (March 15, 2017). "Emails Reveal Monsanto's Tactics To Defend Glyphosate Against Cancer Fears". NPR. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  5. ^ Williams, Gary M.; Kroes, Robert; Munro, Ian C. (April 2000). "Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans". Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. 31 (2): 117–165.
  6. ^ Williams, Gary M.; et al. (September 28, 2016). "A review of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate by four independent expert panels and comparison to the IARC assessment". Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 46 (sup1): 3–20.
  7. ^ "Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews". Bloomberg.com. August 9, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
That's what I could come up with now. I can support something like that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That tortured first sentence is confusing. It makes it sound like the lawyers were emailing Monsanto employees about ghostwriting. How about Internal Monsanto emails released in 2017 as part of a lawsuit against the company revealed comments by Monsanto employees appearing to discuss ghostwriting of two reviews about the safety of glyphosate. And if you want to remove "defending" (which is the wording used in the NPR and CBC sources), we'll need to re-add a sentence about the fact that both reviews found glyphosphate to be safe. Otherwise the paragraph doesn't really have any point. Personally, I prefer to just say "defending" as it's more concise, to the point, and is the wording used in the sources. The Williams 2016 paper is very clearly written as a defense. The abstract describes it as a "critique of the evidence in light of IARC's assessment." Williams 2000 is less so, but "parts of this assessment address specific concerns that have been raised by special interest groups." So I don't think saying the papers "defend the safety of glyphosate" is misleading or problematic. Nosferattus (talk) 04:57, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I can appreciate that you found that sentence to be tortured, that's fair. Although I also think that your proposed change still needs some work to be clearer. I feel like, for a start, I would want to change "revealed" → "contained", as more neutral. I feel like saying that the emails were "released" prompts the question of "who" did the releasing, and I still think we have to make it clear that it was the lawyers, not just some kind of release that came out of nowhere. I'm not sure how to find wording that would satisfy both you and me, though. About re-adding that both studies found it safe, I agree. Perhaps, as an alternative to a full sentence, just change "two reviews about the safety of glyphosate" to "two reviews that concluded that glyphosate is safe". As for "defending", let's just agree to disagree. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:21, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really understand why we're not just following the wording of the sources. All the sources except for Bloomberg just say the emails were "released" or "unsealed". It doesn't make any difference who released them. Adding the lawyers just makes a confusingly complicated sentence more complicated. Regarding "defending", I'm getting the distinct impression that only wording which favors Monsanto and dissemulates any impression of wrongdoing (no matter how stilted or different from what the sources say) will be accepted. That doesn't seem in line with WP:NPOV. I'm fine with agreeing to disagree, but I would love to hear opinions from others. Nosferattus (talk) 00:06, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm trying to be NPOV, not to present a pro-Monsanto POV. It makes a huge difference who released the emails. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:11, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How does it make any difference who released the emails? And if it makes a "huge difference", why does only one source mention it? Really, I want to understand your reasoning here. Nosferattus (talk) 02:24, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Although I don't think it makes a "huge difference", I do believe the release of documents and emails resulting from the lawsuit discovery is probably relevant and interesting to the reader--as is the motivation for Monsanto to help produce, finance, and influence "independent" studies and scientific panels to counter the IARC determination which would hurt Monsanto profits. These facts and the parties' involvement help tell the story of human motivation and action. Whereas the factual safety findings of the studies doesn't actually seem as relevant to whether they were or were not ghostwritten or unduly influenced by Monsanto.
Also, the release of the emails is not the end of the story. Those emails and other similar documents produced in discovery showing Monsanto's involvement in the studies may have influenced the outcome of the lawsuit. The emails certainly caused enough interest that numerous articles resulted, including in scholarly journals, and resulted in the investigation at the university, etc. My point is just because they were released in the lawsuit doesn't limit their interest to the court case alone--academia took an interest as well. As long as we say what happens as a result of the release in NPOV, I see it as helpful to mention how their release came about.
I intend to more carefully review all the RS presented here and from searching Google Scholar (possibly also JSTOR + the Wikilibrary) on articles that come up from a search of "Monsanto ghostwriting".
I am puzzled why we would be quoting Bloomberg News' allegations of ghostwriting, when we have publications by scholars in scholarly journals that can more effectively communicate what experts think. IHMO Mainstream media seems less reliable than scholarly publications in discussing science (or most subjects other than current events) per WP:RS.
In agreement with Nosferattus, I believe Tryptofish's versions are not NPOV. From my reading of the RS they do not present in DUE proportion the major opinions. (I will continue reviewing the RS). Tryptofish's versions IMHO focus more on the defense of Monsanto's behavior, when so many of the sources bring to attention the problems with Monsanto's involvement in influencing the writing of those studies. This is the reason the section is in article in the first place, and
Tryptofish's versions tend to make it sound like Monsanto is falsely or unfairly accused, which is not what I read in the RS. --David Tornheim (talk) 04:07, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe it's better to just ignore Nosferatus' comment on favoring Monsanto given that this is a Contentious Topic, but because it is a CT, all I have to say is wow, this is descending to pre-arbcom levels. I'm half inclined to say it's better to just table the discussion with that going on again.
Setting that aside, the issues with who released the emails and how they are described (especially by advocacy-style sources) is something that's been discussed plenty already, so you're very obviously following NPOV in trying to navigate that issue Tryptofish. If we start using language like uncovered, unsealed, etc. that advocacy groups use for shock value, that is a WP:POV issue though as it gets into WP:WEASEL word issues. Any text dealing with this does need to mention that a heavily vested party was involved in the email release and portrayal at least. That's at least an idea from the status quo language that would have to remain. While not for content, that also gets into the meta-situation we've discussed where ironically many of the academic sources claiming ghostwriting have financial ties to that same lawfirm. We do have to be careful in text because of that level in involvement, so your sentence on that navigates that idea with respect to the content at hand. KoA (talk) 16:18, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The wording I'm suggesting is from the sources that Tryptofish has been advocating for, not "advocacy groups". CNN, CBC, and NPR are not advocacy groups. These are the sources that say "defending" and "unsealed". These are mainstream news sources that Tryptofish himself says are the best to use. If you think their statements are too POV for Wikipedia, I don't know what sources will satisfy you. Nosferattus (talk) 16:56, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Again Nosferatus, please stop with the editor-painting and stick to content, especially after what I just said about your comments to Tryptofish. We've talked about the expectations of this being a Contentious Topic already.
Remember that this is an encyclopedia, not a news article. News articles tend to be a bit more loose with loaded language and often pick it up from involved advocacy groups, which was the context of my comment. We have to be careful with loaded language regardless of where it comes from, which is definitely what Tryptofish was doing. KoA (talk) 17:10, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The sources all use some variation of 'released','disclosed', or 'unsealed', and do not use 'by plantiff's lawyers'. Consensus will determine how these RS refs are reflected in the article, and there is no "status quo language that would have to remain" without an rfc establishing such language.Dialectric (talk) 18:02, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, let's stick to talking about the content and not theories about how news articles are influenced by advocacy groups. Regarding the content, if we want to avoid any "loaded language", we should just quote the Monsanto email directly (as every source here does): "An option would be to add Greim and Kier or Kirkland to have their names on the publication, but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just sign their names so to speak. Recall this is how we handled Williams Kroes & Munro 2000." That quote is central to the allegations surrounding both papers and we can let the reader make up their own mind about it. Otherwise, we should stick to the wording used by reliable sources. Nosferattus (talk) 18:19, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
About being faithful to sources and about "defending", I looked again at the CBC and NPR sources. The only place where the word "defend" or "defending" appears in either source is in the headline. I suggest that editors familiarize themselves with WP:HEADLINES. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:28, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
About the "release" of the emails: from NPR: "Internal company emails, released as part of a lawsuit against the company, show how Monsanto recruited outside scientists to co-author reports defending the safety of glyphosate, sold under the brand name Roundup... The documents were collected as evidence in a lawsuit that a group of cancer victims have brought against Monsanto in California." NPR isn't saying verbatim that "the emails were released by the attorneys", but NPR is making it clear where the emails came from. From CNN: "After the emails were unsealed in March, Monsanto said in a statement that the 2000 report was not ghostwritten and that Heydens’ email was taken out of context." So was it "the court" or the judge who took it out of context? CNN then quotes a Monsanto spokesperson: "Recently, in the context of personal injury litigation filed against Monsanto, plaintiffs’ attorneys have cherry picked a single email – out of more than 10 million pages of documents produced – to allege that Monsanto scientists ghostwrote...". And we have Bloomberg. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So was it "the court" or the judge who took it out of context? It sounds like you are not that familiar with court proceedings. I have a paralegal degree and 10+ years experience working in law firms. Often "the court" refers to the judge (or magistrate) as in "The court found...". [15].
Very likely the plaintiff propounded a discovery request that included a request for all relevant communications including emails, which is standard in discovery. The other side (Monsanto) produced the documents. Some may have been protected or redacted requiring court review "in camera".[16] Then most likely the plaintiff filed with the court selected documents produced in discovery to make their case, including the controversial email. It seems doubtful in this kind of case--a liability tort--that the court (or a jury) would rule on whether or not Monsanto had ghost-written any studies. (Of course, one could look at all the rulings in the case to determine if that was true or not.) Monsanto is claiming in the quote you provided that "plaintiffs’ attorneys have cherry picked a single email", so clearly in that quote Monsanto is not accusing the judge of anything, but only the plaintiffs’ attorneys. It's pretty clear that the allegation of ghost-writing comes directly from Monsanto executive William F. Heydens. --David Tornheim (talk) 16:24, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
David, I appreciate your insights into legal processes, thanks. (Indeed, if I'm being accused of not being a legal professional, I plead guilty as charged.) In thinking about this, I remembered discussions from years ago, where I and other editors discussed the primary source, from which the secondary sources were able to quote from the released emails, and I'm remembering it as the law firm's website. Please take another look at the CBC source we are discussing now: [17]. You can scroll a few paragraphs in, to where the source has a blue hyperlink to "internal Monsanto documents disclosed in the court case of Dewayne Johnson", and another a bit later to "Heydens writes". Those links are now deadlinks, but if you look to see the url by hovering over them, they go to www.baumhedlundlaw.com. That's the plaintiffs' law firm, and that's who posted the emails online at the time. As to how they got permission to do that, I defer to your greater familiarity with how that works. Anyway, I'm thinking that, assuming we put a greater focus on the EoC findings of scientific conduct, below, the emails from the court case become part of the history of what led to the EoC findings, so what we're discussing here will matter less, I hope. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:27, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we mention the court case / plaintiffs' lawyers that released the documents, we should wikilink the case, Johnson v. Monsanto Co.. And in looking over the various refs discussed here, I see that Critical Reviews in Toxicology published an Expression of Concern regarding the four independent expert panels article that says "original declarations of interest.... did not fully represent the involvement of Monsanto" doi 1 doi 2. I don't think this necessarily needs to be mentioned in the article but is relevant to the current discussion.Dialectric (talk) 22:17, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I agree that we should link the case. As for those expressions of concern, wow, I did not know about them until just now. For me, those are something to take seriously. I actually might be open to including them as cites in some way. I think they don't conclude that the scientific conclusions were incorrect, just that the proper ways of doing things were not followed, so I would want to be clear about that. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:21, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I thought the EOCs had been discussed earlier (I'll try to dig across articles for that) and partly why we have focused on the 2016 study and not the 2000 study in past content, but your description overall seems correct. Part of the DUE issue is that the 2000 study had passing mention, while there were some issues (not necessarily what we can call ghostwriting) with the 2016 paper. KoA (talk) 15:40, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It does seem like there was less attention on Williams 2000 for some reason, but the recent papers by Kaurov, Oreskes, and Matheson have focused more attention on it. I also suspect we will hear more about it once the journal's own investigation concludes. Nosferattus (talk) 16:34, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the reason the EoCs don't mention the 2000 paper is that it was published in a different journal, just as simple as that. But with five later papers as of 2018, more than what we had discussed in this section until now, we clearly have to treat this as about more than just two papers. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:15, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For the moment, I want to ignore the efforts to personalize this discussion, and focus my attention on these expressions of concern from the journal. As I said, this is something that I regard as very significant, and possibly as what I would want to see as a game-changer to whatever we might write. I have no recollection of ever having heard of this until Dialectric very helpfully pointed to it here. This is potentially a very big deal. It's a step or two less than a retraction, but it's a formal and explicit finding by credible scientists of scientific misconduct. There are some things I don't understand, and would appreciate hearing more about. For one, the expressions concern multiple papers, not just the ones we have been discussing here, so is that something more extensive about Monsanto? Also, I would have very much expected that there would be secondary source commentary about this, and I would be puzzled if there isn't any. Has anyone found that? As for any continuing investigation by the journal, the second expression of concern sounded to me like the journal was saying there wouldn't be anything more. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:32, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I quickly found three secondary sources: [18], [19], and [20]. As far as I'm concerned, it's time to trash the draft versions above, all of them, and refocus the revision on this. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:07, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That was my thinking as I was going through comments, but partly because we're kind of repeating past discussions where there wasn't good sourcing on the Williams 2000 study, but it was the 2016 study, etc. that did have problems. I'll admit I'm on limited time to try to go over previous conversations again, but the quick version was that the 2016 study gave us something much more tangible in sourcing and legitimate issues to have content on. If the focus is moreso on the 2016 study or those with an EOC, that's worth tweaking language over if need be. I wouldn't mind shifting gears either since I've just been focusing on the 2000 study until now, but this would be more of a fresh start. KoA (talk) 21:01, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I realize now that the CBC source talks about this, although it does so in such roundabout language that I didn't realize until now that that's what it was referring to. So that's a fourth secondary source. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:15, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hit the button too soon and got edit conflicted. I was going to add that I can't remember if Retraction Watch is a reliable source for wiki-purposes (I use it personally at least), but the Guardian article is by Gillam, so we'd need to avoid that one. Bloomberg is paywalled for me, but from what I can see it should be good. Maybe it would help to make a new section or subsection on this talk page for the refocus. KoA (talk) 21:20, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, Bloomberg is paywalled for me too, so I was hoping someone else would have access. :) Retraction Watch is not listed at either WP:RSPLIST or WP:DEPSOURCES, so I think it's OK. As for the Guardian, that article is co-written by one of their journalists, with Gillam as the second author, so we might want to be OK with it. But if not, there's also another Guardian article by just that journalist, that we could use instead, although it goes into less detail: [21]. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:45, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As for refocus, my current thinking is that we can write about the five papers in the EoC, that include the 2016 multi-panel review. I'm interested in what other editors now think about whether or not we still need to include the 2000 paper. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:52, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm interested in what other editors now think about whether or not we still need to include the 2000 paper. Yes. It's in the WP:RS, so it should be included. This is the reason this discussion started, titled "Williams 2000 ghostwriting controversy". --David Tornheim (talk) 23:25, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I think we could write it as something that started after the 2000 paper, went by way of the emails that became public in the court case, and culminated in the expressions of concern over five subsequent papers (that include the 2016 paper). That sounds reasonable to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:42, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Revision incorporating EoC

[edit]

As above, I'm putting the current language on the page at the left, so people don't have to go looking for it. On the right is a new suggestion, making use of the information about the expressions of concern.

Current text:

A review of glyphosate's carcinogenic potential by four independent expert panels, with a comparison to the IARC assessment, was published in September 2016. Using emails released in August 2017 by plaintiffs' lawyers who are suing Monsanto, Bloomberg Business Week reported that "Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts." A Monsanto spokesperson responded that Monsanto had provided only non-substantive cosmetic copyediting.[1]

  1. ^ "Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews". Bloomberg.com. August 9, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
Proposed revision:

In 2000, three scientists not working at Monsanto published an evaluation of the safety in humans of glyphosate and Roundup, concluding that it posed no health risks.[1] Monsanto internal emails made public in August 2017 during the Johnson v. Monsanto Co. litigation revealed Monsanto personnel referring to undisclosed ghostwriting of that and subsequent papers. A Monsanto spokesperson responded to the email release that Monsanto had provided only non-substantive cosmetic copyediting that did not alter the studies' conclusions.[2][3][4][5] The university of the lead author of the 2000 paper made a determination that there was "no evidence" of ghostwriting.[6]

A review of glyphosate's carcinogenic potential by four independent expert panels, disputing the conclusions of the IARC assessment and finding that glyphosate was unlikely to cause cancer, was published in 2016.[7] That paper was co-written by panels of academic authors, some of whom were recruited by a Canadian company hired by Monsanto.[3] In 2018, the editor-in-chief and publisher of Critical Reviews in Toxicology, where that paper had appeared, published two expressions of concern about that paper, as well as about four related papers that had also been published in that journal in 2016.[8][9][3][10][11] According to the journal:

"After investigation into the completeness of the original declarations of interest provided by the authors, it was found that these did not fully represent the involvement of Monsanto or its employees or contractors in the authorship of the articles. These corrigenda provide additional disclosure as to contributions to the articles, in some places in contradiction to the statements originally supplied. We have not received an adequate explanation as to why the necessary level of transparency was not met on first submission and welcome the opportunity to address this. We regret that these corrections were necessary and thank those who brought this matter to our attention. To the best of our knowledge, the scholarly record is now accurate; however, we recommend that readers take the additional context the corrected disclosures provide into account when reading the articles."[9]

  1. ^ Williams, Gary M.; Kroes, Robert; Munro, Ian C. (April 2000). "Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans". Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. 31 (2): 117–165.
  2. ^ "Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews". Bloomberg.com. August 9, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2017.
  3. ^ a b c Shochat, Gil; Fournier, Sylvie (March 12, 2019). "Court documents reveal Monsanto's efforts to fight glyphosate's 'severe stigma'". CBC News. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  4. ^ Yan, Holly (May 16, 2017). "Patients: Roundup gave us cancer as EPA official helped the company". CNN. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  5. ^ Charles, Dan (March 15, 2017). "Emails Reveal Monsanto's Tactics To Defend Glyphosate Against Cancer Fears". NPR. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  6. ^ Cornwall, Warren (March 23, 2017). "Update: After quick review, medical school says no evidence Monsanto ghostwrote professor's paper". Science Insider. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
  7. ^ Williams, Gary M.; et al. (September 28, 2016). "A review of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate by four independent expert panels and comparison to the IARC assessment". Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 46 (sup1): 3–20.
  8. ^ "Expression of Concern – 26 September 2018". Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 48 (10): 891. September 26, 2018. doi:10.1080/10408444.2018.1522786.
  9. ^ a b "Expression of Concern – 30 November 2018". Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 48 (10): 903. November 30, 2018. doi:10.1080/10408444.2018.1539570.
  10. ^ "Monsanto's Role in Roundup Safety Study is Corrected by Journal". Bloomberg News. September 27, 2018. Retrieved October 31, 2025.
  11. ^ Marcus, Adam (September 27, 2018). "Journal flags papers, saying authors didn't adequately disclose ties to Monsanto". Retraction Watch. Retrieved October 31, 2025.

--Tryptofish (talk) 00:32, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In the interests of moving on from this discussion, I'm fine with the wording proposed by Tryptofish. The quote from the EoC is about as conservative a description of the ghostwriting as I can imagine and I prefer the brevity and directness of the previously used Bloomberg quote. However, I understand the appeal of using the more authoritative EoC statement, so if that's what people want to use, so be it. Note that the investigation of Williams 2000 by the journal editor and publisher is still ongoing (it's a different journal), so I expect we will need to revisit this once that investigation is finished. Nosferattus (talk) 01:58, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I support this wording, though the quote could be shortened to just the 1st sentence of the EoC. The following sentences elaborate on the 1st, but don't substantially change the point. Perhaps the full quote could be included in the ref unless there is some manual-of-style argument against longer quotes in refs.Dialectric (talk) 02:17, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see at least two problems with this. I plan to write more about why this and some of the other versions proposed are lacking. Here are the most glaring problems:
(1) The above proposed version leaves out the key source that started this discussion:
Kaurov, Alexander A.; Oreskes, Naomi (1 September 2025). "The afterlife of a ghost-written paper: How corporate authorship shaped two decades of glyphosate safety discourse". Environmental Science & Policy. 171 104160. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2025.104160.
I believe there are other similar high quality sources that have been omitted.
(2) The above proposed version says, "Monsanto internal emails...appeared to reveal Monsanto personnel discussing undisclosed ghostwriting of that paper and others." They did not "appear" to discuss ghostwriting, the one email *did* unequivocally discuss ghostwriting. Quoting from this source used above:
Monsanto officials had learned in advance of IARC's 2015 decision, and considered responses aimed at quickly pushing back against the agency's findings, according to emails among company executives. Several options involved seeking to publish papers in scientific journals buttressing the company's contention that the chemical didn't pose a health risk to people. That included sponsoring a wide-ranging paper that, according to an email from one company executive, could cost more than $250,000 to produce.
In one email, William Heydens, a Monsanto executive, weighed in on that option, suggesting Monsanto could cut costs by recruiting experts in some areas, but then "ghost write" parts of the paper. "An option would be to add Greim and Kier or Kirkland to have their names on the publication, but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just sign their names so to speak. Recall this is how we handled Williams Kroes & Munro 2000," Heydens wrote in an email. (See p. 203 of this PDF.)
[Emphasis added.]
The email from the Monsanto executive says and we ghost-write the Exposure Tox & Genetox sections. No Scare quotes around ghost-write in the original email.
So Monsanto did not simply "appear" to discuss ghostwriting. They did discuss ghostwriting.
In the version above, the seriousness of what this email reveals is omitted and downplayed, and it instead makes it sound like it is impossible for any reader of the email to know exactly whether ghostwriting was discussed. I have more confidence in our Wikipedia's readers.
--David Tornheim (talk) 04:40, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
David Tornheim references a Monsanto employee email quote "and we ghost-write the Exposure Tox & Genetox sections". This quote is covered in RS sources - the Kaurov and Oreskes paper discussed here, and Courthouse News. Dialectric (talk) 17:56, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, both of you. Based on that feedback, I changed "appeared to reveal" to "revealed". I was uncertain how to word that, but I'm fine with making that change, now that I've heard what others think. Just by way of explanation, I had been hesitant to say it outright because I feel like the emails are weak as evidence, when we have the much-firmer evidence of the EoCs. But, given that the EoCs settle the issue (at least in my mind), I'm less inclined to worry about that.
As for shortening the blockquote from the EoC, that could be worth discussing. My thinking is that once we start leaving parts of it out, there arise issues of changing the intended meaning. I kind of prefer to quote it in full, but I'm happy to discuss that.
As for adding the Kaurov Oreskes source, I have low enthusiasm for two reasons. First, multiple editors raised concerns about it earlier in this discussion. Second, I'm not aware of anything additional we would want to add, based on that source, so it just becomes a matter of having one more inline cite. I feel like there are, if anything, too many sources that I cited (a result of dealing with disputed content), so I don't much like the idea of adding one more just to have it in the citations list. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:22, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The main objection to using the Kaurov & Oreskes paper seemed to be that the paper was more about the influence of Williams 2000 rather than the ghostwriting specifically. Perhaps we could add a concluding sentence like "These papers have been cited as a prominent example of how the chemical industry attempts to influence science." and cite it to Kaurov & Oreskes and maybe [22]. Nosferattus (talk) 04:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Congressional reports are not reliable sources. One of the problems with that Kaurov paper though is that it did run with the premise of ghostwriting while providing even less details about the events than sources we're discussing here. The viewpoint of that paper isn't particularly WP:DUE, especially when actual investigations into the paper determined there wasn't ghostwriting. The 2016 study on the other hand has much more straightforward sourcing on the subject of ethical issues that there isn't really a reason to cite the Kaurov paper for something generic like that anyways. KoA (talk) 05:38, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to comment at more length below, and there are a bunch of things I'm not sure about, but one thing I'm convinced of is that I don't want to include the Kaurov paper, and I don't want to make this section of the page into a broad statement about how the chemical industry does anything. If there is going to be Wikipedia content about broad trends in what the chemical industry does, that should be at pages about that industry, not appended onto a specific situation covered here. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:35, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wish I had been online earlier this weekend, but that change actually became problematic from a WP:POV perspective. We know from previous discussion that it was not that clear cut for the Williams 2000 paper with respect to the email, so "appeared" was more appropriate if we're describing that. The change was suggested because they were talking about ghostwriting in the email. The language being used here is saying that paper was ghostwritten, which is a different thing, and is what is disputed by other sources.
If we're only referring to the 2016 paper, then the language would not be quite at issue. KoA (talk) 05:49, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the second paragraph (and third for the quote) looks good on the 2016 study, especially using the EOCs as an anchor for the authorship and company involvement issues. The only thing is that the article with Gillam would need to be dropped as an extreme conflict of interest source, especially since the source really isn't even needed. Also, I did manage to get a (sort of) non-paywalled looked at the Bloomberg article, and it should work well as a supplement to the EoCs. Splitting up comments a bit here to hopefully deal with the two pieces better. KoA (talk) 03:56, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Seeing the paragraphs in your draft though makes for a really interesting illustration that actually multiplies my concern that we'd want to err towards leaving the 2000 study out. The 2016 study has EoCs, yet the 2000 study does not have anything at that level. In the years this topic has been discussed, many editors have brought up needing something from the journal like a retraction (or EOC) to make this pass the DUE threshold. Instead, it does look like an undue weight issue when we basically give equal space (excluding quoted content at least) to both instances given the sourcing differences. That's not to criticize your attempt at getting something on paper, but it's one of the navigational challenges we're dealt here and has been ever present in discussions of what's been due on the Williams paper for nearly a decade. I'd say we actually have more reason to leave that one out seeing this draft, but instead have justification to focus on other areas like the 2016 study.
Looking at the text itself of the first paragraph as if it would be included though, one thing I'm seeing is the sort of tit-for-tat language in A Monsanto spokesperson responded. . . That makes it look like a stereotypical situation where X accused company Y of Z, company Y put out a release saying Z didn't happen. There was discussion earlier that this wasn't quite the same case. Instead, there was testimony under oath as part of the case: Although 15 years later Dr. Heydens referred to such fully acknowledged contributions as ghostwriting, he described his actual role in the Williams et al paper under oath as follows: "I made some minor editorial contributions to that 2000 paper that do not mount to the level of a substantial contribution or an intellectual contribution and, thus, I was only recognized in the acknowledgements and not as an author, and that was appropriate for the situation." He further clarified, "It was things like editing relatively minor things, editing for formatting, just for clarity, really just for overall readability to make it easier for people to read in a more organized fashion."[23]
While I'm just as wary of statements from Monsanto as the lawfirm, there's two things going on:
  1. One is that there's testimony under oath on this means we'd have to be a bit more careful in how we describe Monsanto statements, especially since there's no indication that there was perjury, etc. I had some [Talk:Monsanto#Williams_2000_ghostwriting_controversy extensive comments] above on Oct. 13 on that as a roadmap for navigating the events. I imagine the litigants would have said something about that beyond just making the accusation if that weren't the case and we would have gotten that level of focus from sources on the topic. That's just for representing Monsanto at least and is more minor compared to the next thing.
  2. If someone did make minor contributions not rising to authorship level, that is correct that they should normally be listed in the acknowledgements, and it's what your supposed to do in order for it to not be ghostwriting or other unethical publishing. If Heydens was telling the truth in court, then it's a pretty clear cut situation where we can't allude to it as ghostwriting for the 2000 study, and other sources are corroborating that. If he was lying to the court, then we'd need sources on that, especially in terms of WP:BLP. Instead we have nothing from the court case substantiating ghostwriting beyond an accusation on top of the lack of journal retraction, EoC, etc. mentioned above. My main concern here is that we're alluding to a study as ghostwriting that actually did acknowledge those in question when we assess WP:DUE.
Tryptofish, I know you've been moving from not including Williams at all to just including a single sentence to now your current proposal. There's a bit of a catch-22 situation here where if the ghostwriting claim isn't treated as undue for inclusion on Williams, then the other option I'm looking at is to expand the context even more in the paragraph. That then becomes more of a due weight issue it would overtake the 2016 study mention all for what news sources generally treated a small footnote compared to other details. Those are the headwinds I'm looking at when trying to craft content on this at least. I have some potential ideas, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on navigating this first. KoA (talk) 05:24, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, there's a lot to deal with here. As for hearing my thoughts first, I'll start by venting that I'd really rather be working on something else, not this. I'm tempted to ask, semi-facetiously, that you and David T. work together to hash out your differences, and then bring something back to the rest of us. And I'll say, entirely seriously, to everyone here that we need to work together and not have everyone holding out for their personal sense of what is perfect.
Now, to get more serious and specific. Starting with the Levin and Gillam article in the Guardian, I included that because I wanted to see whether you would object. I have three thoughts about how to go with this. (1) I don't think it's a problem. Levin is a journalist and a reliable source. Anything Gillam contributed to the source that might be suspect, my proposed text does not include, so removing the source from the ones we cite would just be a matter of excluding Gillam as an author, not of changing anything of substance beyond that. (2) As I noted above, there's also another Guardian article by Levin alone, that briefly mentions the importance of the EoCs: [24]. We could substitute that source instead. On the plus side, it omits Gillam, and on the minus side, it doesn't contain as much about the EoC – a tradeoff. (3) Perhaps we could just delete that source, and move on. I don't think it's necessary, but I'm leaning towards that as the easiest path to take.
As for the broader issue of the 2000 paper and what the emails do or do not tell us, what I really think is going on is that the emails do tell us, very clearly, that Monsanto people talked about ghostwriting there – and the emails tell us nothing about whether or not that "talk" reflected actually doing any ghostwriting. Maybe they did ghostwriting and talked about it in the emails. Or maybe they were just talking inaccurately – but for us to decide between those two things would be original research, and when we look to sources, it's in the eye of the beholder which biased source one wants to believe. (That sworn statement in court actually strikes me as the best sourcing yet, although that might make the first paragraph even longer.) And yet – there's no getting around the fact that, for some activists, those emails have taken on a life of their own, and it would be "off" for Wikipedia to act like the emails never happened as part of the historical record. Do we say the emails "revealed Monsanto personnel discussing" ghostwriting (the version I have above)? Or do we say the emails "appeared to reveal Monsanto personnel discussing" (what I had previously, and changed)? Should we say the emails "appeared to reveal Monsanto personnel admitting"? They demonstrably discussed, and appeared to admit, but then again, saying appeared to admit comes close to innuendo. At this point, I'm running kind of dry of ideas as to what will get consensus here. I'll toss out the idea of changing "Monsanto internal emails made public in August 2017 during the Johnson v. Monsanto Co. litigation revealed Monsanto personnel discussing undisclosed ghostwriting of that paper and others" to "Monsanto internal emails made public in August 2017 during the Johnson v. Monsanto Co. litigation led to years of controversy over whether employees had engaged in undisclosed ghostwriting of that paper and others" (with the sources following the next sentence applying). This stuff is why I don't like any of the email or court case-related stuff as sources, while feeling like the EoCs are the kinds of sources we need. If there are better solutions, I'm open to them. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:17, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've been on very limited time early this week, so I've been a bit slow responding, but I'm in a similar boat as you. I don't really want to still be spending even more time on this, but in my case I feel like it's pretty clear that the horse is dead and nothing has really changed since all the other times we've discussed at least the Williams 2000 paper. Why spend our time on that when we can focus on the 2016 stuff and EoCs instead? I'm still trying to work with the proposed content too though and definitely already am going with things I'd consider not perfect.
To be clear though, the distinction I'm focusing on is that we have to be extremely careful about how the Williams 2000 paper is mentioned if at all. I don't have any opposition to mentioning the 2016 study, emails related to that, or others in the EoC. We get into trouble when we try to mix the two content-wise, and it's just gotten unweildy talk-wise to juggle both (and I've see comments directed at me below for trying to deal with the volumes we've had to cover already). I'd actually rather see the EoCs lead the content more, and focusing on those studies actually gives us something more concrete to work on. What I'd like to do later this week is post the draft proposal I've had going that starts with the 2016 study to help show what I'm getting at. In short though, the emails definitely can be discussed, if we focus it on the 2016 study first, that gives us better footing to potentially build content off of (including if Williams 2000 was mentioned). I think I might have something pretty workable for the emails topic at least, I just need to get past the busy part of work this week.
My alternative approach is working on what you have proposed related to Williams 2000. If I'm looking at that angle instead, then I think we'd want to describe the study as having acknowledged Monsanto employees for contributions. This is afterall not a case where the industry involvement was omitted outright. When it comes to court-related stuff, I'm like you too where I don't like to deal with that, but if we're including a statement of their point of view anyways (and making it clear it's not in Wiki's voice), then I'm a bit more apt to use the court testimony news sources highlighted for us and saying something like "X testified". That's from the content perspective. From our meta-discussion here of what's DUE, when you mentioned but for us to decide between those two things, I wasn't saying we'd be deciding, but we know there is uncertainty enough about the ghostwriting claim we can't be so definitive in content. Shift the primary focus to the 2016 paper even just initially and that diffuses a few of these roadblocks, I can suggest some potential tweaks to your proposal in that light too, but I want to work on the 2016 focused proposal first since that might clear the path more. KoA (talk) 04:14, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I guess one thing to do with the first paragraph is to leave the sentence about the emails as is, but delete the sentence after it, about the Monsanto spokesperson, moving the sources from the deleted second sentence to the end of the one remaining sentence. Then add a new sentence in place of the deleted one, cited to the source about the sworn testimony. It could summarize what he said in the quotes from that testimony. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We don't need a bunch of weasel words when discussing the emails. First, it's undisputed that the emails discuss ghostwriting the papers. Even Monsanto hasn't disputed that (they just dispute whether or not the papers were actually ghostwritten). Second, every source says that in some way or another. Tryptofish's currently proposed wording is accurate and NPOV regarding the emails. Regarding Heydens' testimony, that's completely irrelevant. Heydens' deposition also says that Douglas Bryant (who is not a listed author) wrote the first draft of the Williams 2000 paper and then it was worked on by Monsanto employees Donna Farmer, Bill Heydens, Kathy Carr, Marian Bleeke, Bill Graham, Mike McKee and Steve Wratten, in addition to the credited authors.[25][26] So his testimony that he only made minor editorial contributions is probably true. That doesn't mean that the paper wasn't ghostwritten. Regardless, we're definitely getting into original research territory here. We need to stick to the sources! We are not lawyers or detectives. KoA's statement that "we have nothing from the court case substantiating ghostwriting" is totally irrelevant and not even accurate. Also KoA's statement that "actual investigations into the paper determined there wasn't ghostwriting" isn't true either. Failing to find evidence is very different than determining there wasn't ghostwriting. But we don't need to substantiate or unsubstantiate whether the papers were ghostwritten. We just report what the reliable sources say. This is Wikipedia 101 here. The emails discussed ghostwriting the articles. That's the entire reason there is a controversy, it's what the sources say, and it's DUE. I'm willing to compromise on citing Kaurov & Oreskes and on quoting the emails, but I'm not interested in confusing our readers with unnecessary obfuscation or cherry-picking quotes from Heydens' deposition that make it sound like Monsanto had no substantive involvement (when his full testimony actually says the opposite). Nosferattus (talk) 02:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Agree on most points. Thanks for saving me the time.
We don't need a bunch of weasel words when discussing the emails. Agree.
First, it's undisputed that the emails discuss ghostwriting the papers. Agree.
Even Monsanto hasn't disputed that (they just dispute whether or not the papers were actually ghostwritten). Agree.
Second, every source says that in some way or another. The key sources like Kaurov/Oreskes mentioned in the Signpost article--which spurred this discussion--certainly do.
Tryptofish's currently proposed wording is accurate and NPOV regarding the emails. No. It's too weak. It should quote the key reliable source (Kaurov/Oreskes) highlights:
Litigation in 2017 revealed that Monsanto ghost-wrote an influential 2000 review defending the safety of glyphosate.
The Signpost does a much better job:
This study[1] by Alexander A. Kaurov and Naomi Oreskes examines the circulation of a 2000 study[supp 1] on the safety and risk profile of glyphosate (WKM2000), a component of the herbicide Roundup. The authors describe the paper as ghostwritten due to the fact that it "was crafted by Monsanto" (the company that produced Roundup), adding that "the paper has not been retracted and continues to be cited". The authors of WKM2000 indeed disclosed Monsanto funding in the paper, following scientific standards.
Regarding Heydens' testimony, that's completely irrelevant... because it is WP:OR. Indeed.
We need to stick to the sources! Indeed.
I'm willing to compromise on citing Kaurov & Oreskes I see no reason to omit it. To the best of my knowledge, every editor here considers Naomi Oreskes and the key source of Kaurov/Oreskes as a reliable source, including Tryptofish and KoA:
Tryptofish: My gut reaction is that it would be sufficient to use Kaurov and Oreskes as a single source, and perhaps leave it at that. I recognize Naomi Oreskes' name as someone I would regard as a reliable source. [27]
KoA: The third is Kaurov and Oreskes review. This doesn't have the conflict of interest issue and looks ok just at that first initial check as Tryptofish mentioned. [28]
Despite walls of text, when it comes down to it, I still have not heard any valid reason to omit this key source prominently mentioned in The Signpost.
--David Tornheim (talk) 13:14, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If we're going to use a quote from Heydens' testimony about Williams 2000, here's a much more relevant one: "Douglas Bryant is uh... he's the... I don't know exactly... I don't remember exactly, uh, what his title was, but he was, uh, on this project, he was what I'll just refer to for lack of a better term I will call the science writer. So his job was to uh, to take all the deliberations of the expert scientists, the three scientists, uh, put those together, their evaluations, and their conclusions and then put that into a first draft document which would be subsequently reviewed."[29] This is one of the quotes that Alastair Matheson cites for his conclusion that Williams 2000 was ghostwritten.[30] To be clear, I think citing quotes from Heydens' testimony is both UNDUE and cherry-picking, but I want to dispel this notion that Heydens' testimony somehow absolves Monsanto. Nosferattus (talk) 03:59, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't reviewed that quote or source yet. I do agree that Heydens' testimony is both UNDUE and cherry-picking with regard to the quote KoA pulled from the Monsanto blog post. Monsanto is certainly not an independent source on this.
I agree that some of the analysis above in this long thread with regard to whether these papers were or were not ghostwritten by comparing with the quotes provided from Monsanto along with other speculations, assumptions, and various claims about what defines the boundary between ghostwriting and not ghostwriting falls into WP:OR.
Instead we report what the WP:RS says.
I was about to say that before Nosferattus was kind enough to point it out.
--David Tornheim (talk) 04:20, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Tryptofish, thank you for your work on the most recent version. I support this version. I don't see anyone arguing strongly for including the Gillam Guardian article ref, and the sourcing is sufficient without it. David, while I agree that we have not seen a strong, policy-based argument for excluding the Kaurov/Oreskes ref, inclusion or exclusion of a single source is secondary to getting the article text accurate. I suggest we focus on getting the article text updated first; afterwards, we can have a more focused discussion on Kaurov/Oreskes or other sources. Is there text in Tryptofish's latest version that you think needs to be changed? I agree with Nosferattus' points in their nov 4 comment above - Heydens' deposition is a distraction and in no way challenges the current proposed text.Dialectric (talk) 14:02, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Before replying at greater length, I want to note that I just changed "discussing" to "referring to": [31]. This may be subtle distinction, but I think it's more precise to reflect what I think all editors here agree about: it's beyond doubt that Monsanto employees made reference to ghostwriting in the emails, but we have conflicting information about the extent to which they actually did it. "Discussing" doesn't actually mean that they were discussing something that had actually happened, but it sort-of sounds that way, whereas "referring to" is more agnostic about it.
I also deleted the Levin and Gillam source: [32]. We don't need it, and like Dialectric, I don't see anyone arguing strongly in favor of including it. So removing it removes one small bit of dispute. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:27, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Dialectric, thank you very much for helping move this discussion towards WP:Consensus. I appreciate that very much. I also want to thank Nosferattus for recognizing that my suggested wording is NPOV and accurate. I appreciate that, too.
Seeing additional information about the sworn testimony, I've completely changed my mind about its usefulness as a source that refutes the "significant ghostwriting" claim, and I'm no longer in favor of including anything about the sworn testimony on this page.
Now taking everything together, it's my opinion that it's time to wrap up this discussion, and implement the current version of the proposed revision. I'm not interested in what the Signpost piece said. If the editors who wrote that piece want to come to this talk page, there is nothing stopping them. About quoting me on Oreskes, I later said that I had changed my mind, so that quote clearly does not reflect my current view as stated clearly above. I really don't think that any further arguing about the content is going to get us any closer to consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:43, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mentioned in an earlier comment I'm working on some changes, so I'll get that up hopefully on Thursday or by Friday. Whether that gets closer to consensus I don't know, but better to get it out there even if this all just results in no consensus. Easier to show than tell at least.
I did want to mention though that I'm not seeing any sourcing commenting on the testimony that we can use here. We already know the Alastair Matheson is a highly conflicted source, so I'm not sure why Nosferattus keeps mentioning it. As for the Monsanto testimony quote, David's context about my mentioning it is off-base. That testimony was mentioned because news articles[33] did mention it as Monsanto's statement and that we were discussing content on what Monsanto actually did say as a party in the dispute. I don't know of anyone here considering using Monsanto as an independent source, so I'm really cautious about comments like that when I've been trying to deal with nuanced subject matter. KoA (talk) 04:42, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hi! Sorry, I wasn't aware that this was actively discussed until @David Tornheim left a comment on Signpost. I'm trying to wrap my head around the recent discussion, and looking at the proposed changes asap. Also looking forward to @KoA's suggested edits. E mln e (talk) 20:01, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
About that Signpost comment, this is what David posted: [34], and this is what I said in response: [35]. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:27, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
KoA, I hope that this will not get dragged out any longer than it needs to be. I think the issue of us including the testimony is a dead horse. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:31, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I should be able to get things posted later in the morning on Thursday from the looks of it (finally getting in from a long day). My concern when I brought the testimony stuff up yesterday was the sudden shift in recent discussion. That's especially when what seemed to be the focus of the recent conversation were conflicted sources like Alastair. The testimony isn't a sticking point for content though. It is an issue when it comes to assessing WP:DUE here, but it may be possible to bypass that too with what I'm working on. Theoretically in the proposal I'm working on, even the Monsanto spokesperson sentence could be dropped, though if we're keeping that, I don't see why we wouldn't use the sourced testimony that news sources highlighted instead if we're going to mention their perspective. Again, possibly moot.
What you just described happening at Signpost is concerning, though at this point I'd rather push through and get content done though rather than addressing that stuff, so that's where my energy is going tomorrow. KoA (talk) 04:11, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note: I just changed "of that paper and others" to "of that and subsequent papers", to make clearer that the emails were also referring to later papers besides the 2000 paper: [36]. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:06, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

EoC refocus

[edit]

Here's my updated proposal, though I should be clear this is first steps looking at what should be core content that I think everyone would agree should be included, then move on to secondary content (like Williams 2000) to keep it in bit sized chunks. In short, not talking about adding additional topics for a second just to get the 2016 stuff nailed down first. From a WP:MEDRS/WP:SCIRS perspective, we need to let the EoC's lead and inform the content, so that means starting with the 2016 studies and fleshing the issues with those out since it felt like that had been sidelined. That also helps us avoid crossing wires on the Williams 2000 study because I was finding cases where there was confounding of comments made about the 2016 studies with that. One example is the Monsanto spokesperson quote in Tryptofish's proposal where it would belong in this 2016 content, not in the paragraph in that proposal. I left that out, though if we're being thorough, it is normal to have minimal statements from those accused of something, so I'm not opposed to inclusion either. Core content first, then I'll make an updated one with proposed secondary items (including pulling more from Tryptofish's proposal above).

In 2018, the editor-in-chief and publisher of Critical Reviews in Toxicology published an expression of concern about five papers on the safety of glyphosate published as a supplement in the journal during 2016 because they "did not fully represent the involvement of Monsanto or its employees or contractors in the authorship of the articles."[1][2][3] The authors later had to provide corrigendum to include additional acknowledgements and disclosures as a result of the investigation.[4][5] According to the journal:

"These corrigenda provide additional disclosure as to contributions to the articles, in some places in contradiction to the statements originally supplied. We have not received an adequate explanation as to why the necessary level of transparency was not met on first submission and welcome the opportunity to address this. We regret that these corrections were necessary and thank those who brought this matter to our attention. To the best of our knowledge, the scholarly record is now accurate; however, we recommend that readers take the additional context the corrected disclosures provide into account when reading the articles."[2]

Initial disclosures in the journal articles indicated Monsanto paid a consulting firm to organize a supplement in the journal, including an expert review panel, saying "no Monsanto employees or attorneys reviewed manuscripts submitted to the journal."[5] Monsanto emails obtained in court documents showed that at least one Monsanto employee had made comments on four of the articles in the supplement.[3][6] Other internal emails discussed organizing an expert panel to conduct a review of existing studies, including Monsanto employee Bill Heydens suggesting if the company should ghostwrite a study, "we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing and they would just edit & sign their names so to speak."[7][8][5]

  1. ^ "Expression of Concern – 26 September 2018". Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 48 (10): 891. September 26, 2018. doi:10.1080/10408444.2018.1522786.
  2. ^ a b "Expression of Concern – 30 November 2018". Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 48 (10): 903. November 30, 2018. doi:10.1080/10408444.2018.1539570.
  3. ^ a b Marcus, Adam (September 27, 2018). "Journal flags papers, saying authors didn't adequately disclose ties to Monsanto". Retraction Watch. Retrieved October 31, 2025.
  4. ^
  5. ^ a b c Shochat, Gil; Fournier, Sylvie (March 12, 2019). "Court documents reveal Monsanto's efforts to fight glyphosate's 'severe stigma'". CBC News. Retrieved October 24, 2025. All the authors would eventually sign a correction stating that Monsanto reviewed a preliminary and final draft of their review article that criticized the IARC assessment. They also admitted in the journal in 2018 that Monsanto provided a "regulatory history overview" that was not disclosed. The authors apologized for any "errors or omissions."
  6. ^ "Monsanto Was Its Own Ghostwriter for Some Safety Reviews". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  7. ^ Gonzales, Richard (13 May 2019). "California Jury Awards $2 Billion To Couple In Roundup Weed Killer Cancer Trial". NPR. NPR. Retrieved 6 November 2025.
  8. ^ "Monsanto's Role in Roundup Safety Study is Corrected by Journal". Bloomberg News. September 27, 2018. Retrieved October 31, 2025.

KoA (talk) 21:46, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's a decent overview of some of the details, but where is the big picture? What were the papers about? Why was Monsanto involved in the papers to begin with? There's no context here, but maybe that would be part of the other "chunks"? Nosferattus (talk) 22:38, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm having a lot of ambivalence. On the plus side, I can see some value in "leading" with the EoCs, instead of approaching it chronologically. On the minus side, this feels to me like prolonging the process of discussion, for what may be very little added value. I cannot really see a way to say "yes" or "no", when this is presented as just part of the proposal, with other, potentially more difficult, parts yet to come: if we think this looks promising now, what happens if the next reveal takes a turn for the worse? I think we either need to see a finished proposal, or skip it. For what we have so far, I'm not wild about the focus on the corrigenda, which, as presented, don't add much to readers' understanding. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:10, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, about your argument that the Monsanto spokesperson should not be cited in the context of the 2000 paper, please note that the version above says "that paper and others", and puts "studies'" in the plural. I well-know that it's difficult, using available sources, to keep wording strictly in chronological order, but then again, I feel like the last paragraph of your proposal above also goes back and forth somewhat. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:24, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
seconding Tryptofish's 'we either need to see a finished proposal, or skip it.' This version contains no mention of glyphosate or roundup in the article text and reads as incomplete.Dialectric (talk) 14:49, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is essentially the finished proposal for the 2016 studies and EoCs minus a few tweaks I'll make shortly based on comments here like adding glyphosate. I'm open to suggestions on the corrigendum subject though. It is a huge deal that the authors had to publish those errata and honestly something I thought most editors here would have been more receptive about. We could pull from a new source for a bit more of an example, but I was trying to keep it to the point and focused on the main sources from the EoCs.
The value though is in addressing or sidestepping most of the issues that have come up on this talk page and elsewhere, and those issues are what have been prolonging discussion. This is meant to cut through those roadblocks and get it done. When we go chronologically, we end up burying the seriousness of the EoCs and those five 2016 studies. The intent here is to get the easy and arguably more important part done first for forward progress. If editors can't agree on how to present the EoC content (the focus of this talk section), we don't really have any business trying to juggle the Williams 2000 content in a joint proposal. That's also logistically harder to juggle both at once as we've seen already, but my other concern is that the meta-discussions here have overshadowed what sources have highlighted as the more serious issue in the EoCs (hence the refocus title).
I'll post the separate proposal on Williams 2000 in a bit, but Tryptofish, where specifically are you seeing that quote on the spokesperson? Every source I've been seeing with language like that has been talking about the 2016 review as "that paper" in addition to the other papers in the EoC, not Williams 2000. KoA (talk) 17:58, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that the spokesperson was responding to the release of the emails and the ensuing controversy, and the emails also referred back to the 2000 paper, along with referring to the 2016 papers. I've just made a revision in the version I had suggested, to clarify that.
I'm going to wait until you post a finished proposal, because I think you are entitled to that and it's only fair. But I think you have to either complete that promptly or withdraw this. You are now hearing this from multiple editors, and not just from me. Looking at this entire discussion, starting at the top, I've been posting successive versions, trying to respond to feedback each time, for what feels like a very long time. What you are doing here seems like going back to the beginning, and risks taking a similarly long time to get back to where we already were, and I'm just not seeing any added value in doing it. For me, an added source of anxiety is that, with each passing day, there is a continuing risk of some new drama emerging unexpectedly. So I really want to implement a consensus version, and move on. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:18, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, that proposal is finished as this is on the EoC, so it's not clear why anyone is saying it's incomplete. Williams 2000 is not a subject of the EoC. What we add about Williams 2000 doesn't affect this content, which is why I used it as a low-hanging fruit starting point in addition to the sources giving it the most weight. Your version did have issues, I'm working with those here so we can get consensus. There are some pieces like Based upon emails released in August 2017 by plaintiffs' lawyers who were suing Monsanto, Bloomberg Business Week reported that "Monsanto scientists were heavily involved in organizing, reviewing, and editing drafts submitted by the outside experts." that I'm not entirely opposed to switching out for in the EoC content paragraph, but I was trying to keep it bare-bones first to focus on the EoC.
I have to say though that I've felt exactly the same as you. After your proposal above, it felt like we were setting aside a lot of talk discussion and starting from the beginning and having to rehash a lot yet again. It's been stressful with this feeling like it's pre-GMO arbcom all over again. Still, I was going through the text and sourcing carefully to make sure things could stick even in your version. The problem I brought up here is that when I looked through your sources on the spokesperson comment, I could not find the context you are mentioning. Everything I'm seeing is pointing to them discussing the 2016 papers. I don't want to see all this work scuttled, so that's why I'm bringing it up now. It's possible I missed something in a longer article (which is why I asked for exactly where you pulled it from), but I did see a very legitimate issue in confounding the EoC content and the 2000 paper.
With Williams 2000 being independent of the EoCs, the only "hook" we have is mention of the emails. I'm cautious about mentioning Williams 2000 without a retraction, EoC, etc. to the point I have called it WP:UNDUE, but I'm still keeping your text in the proposal by adding on after my last sentence above:
In the emails, Heydens also discussed ghostwriting when referring to a past glyphosate study published in 2000 where Monsanto employees were listed in the acknowledgements. The university of the lead author of the papers made a determination in that there was "no evidence" of ghostwriting.[1][2]
  1. ^ Williams, Gary M.; Kroes, Robert; Munro, Ian C. (April 2000). "Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans". Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. 31 (2): 117–165. doi:10.1006/rtph.1999.1371.
  2. ^ Cornwall, Warren (March 23, 2017). "Update: After quick review, medical school says no evidence Monsanto ghostwrote professor's paper". Science Insider. Retrieved October 24, 2025.
That uses your language while removing the spokesperson comment (some did ask for this earlier) and also keeps it short and to the point relative to the weightier 2016 studies issues. Functionally it's saying the same thing as you proposed on the 2000 study without getting into the issues of us crossing the wires too much on the separate subjects. It also gives a degree of separation so the 2016 content can be worked on even more if need be at a later time. We can mention Monsanto's response if needed for this one, but I'd rather just let the university investigation take on that role so we don't have to go into the court case testimony we discussed earlier. I'm really trying to thread the needle through a lot of things here to get content that can stick. These two sections of content are written as what should be an acceptable baseline for everyone based on all the discussion so far of barring any small tweaks or adjustments. It is structured so it's easier to add material later if needed, but I also think we're at the point patience has run low, so it's better to get something out that works and take a breather. KoA (talk) 20:54, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like I'm not really understanding you, sorry, and perhaps you are not understanding me. I don't feel like what you have here is really compatible with (the most recent version of) what I have proposed. If anyone else wants to make a case supporting your suggestions, I'm happy to listen, but absent that, I don't see you as having consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:17, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This was meant to be the simple solution to issues that came up after looking through your proposal while updating the focus on the 2016 EoC. Maybe it will help to illustrate things if you can say where exactly you are taking the spokesperson comment from in your first paragraph among those sources used?
I did not see any of those comments referring to the 2000 paper and were instead focusing on the 2016 papers, so I'm super cautious about it as a WP:SYNTH issue (and I'm saying that as inadvertent). When the next sentence goes into the university investigation on Williams 2000, we're jumping between subjects from the looks of it right now. All I'm saying is that if we have clearer and careful delineation between the 2016 EoC content and Williams 2000, we're good to go.
I also had my proposal have the EoCs lead the content not just in terms of chronology, but weight, both because of the seriousness of that, but also that so much of the focus of the news sources are on the 2016 studies with Williams 2000 as a secondary piece. We're mirroring the sources a bit better that way. With your proposal, we kind of end up locking in content on both subjects if we went ahead with it. At least structurally with mine, I could expand more about the 2016 EoCs later if I wanted without touching on consensus language for the others. KoA (talk) 22:12, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you look at the side-by-side of the current page language and the most recent version of proposed changes, you can see that the sentence about the Monsanto spokesperson comes from what is currently on the page. I simply carried it over to the proposed new version, with a bit of word-smithing. I'm not seeing a problem there. The proposed new language starts with the emails controversy, saying that the emails referred to the 2000 paper as well as to papers in 2016, and the Monsanto spokesperson statement is then presented as a response to that. Putting it another way, the first sentence of the first paragraph is about Williams 2000. But starting in the second sentence, the focus goes to emails released in 2017, and what happened after that release. Again, I feel like you are proposing a solution to a problem that does not exist, perhaps because you are assuming that the entire first paragraph is supposed to be exclusively about 2000.
I'll readily admit that it is difficult to write about this, given the source material we have to work with. Other editors have insisted that we mention the 2000 paper explicitly, because the emails controversy goes back to that paper and then continues with subsequent papers. So there won't be consensus to leave the 2000 paper out.
But I'm not finding your solution to be any simpler than what we have already. As important as it is to emphasize the EoCs, it doesn't help readers understand the subject by starting the text by talking about them. Readers coming to this for the first time will naturally want to know: why did these EoCs come about? To present the EoCs, then circle back to explain why they were issued, is confusing. So is talking about corrigenda. And I don't see the value in the way that you do a lot of quoting from the emails. I think your version is very far from being mainspace-ready, and would need an awful lot of revising before it would be at the same state of readiness as the version that has near-consensus after many rounds of discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:43, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Look, if another editor wants to say that I'm wrong and KoA's version is better, I'll certainly reevaluate my position. But absent that, we may just have to agree to disagree. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:50, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have to start by saying this is going to be my last comment here for the foreseeable future, so do as you will. I'm just exhausted by navigating the content carefully too, and it's because I've been vetting everything carefully that I spoke up so that we don't end up in a no consensus situation. That's on top off all the other side stuff has been going on, especially while trying to avoid needing to ask for help at AE and just push through on content instead. I've just run out of time IRL for this, and the ArbCom restrictions/previous sanctions were supposed to insulate the topic from what happened. I just don't think this talk page is an effective state for content discussion anymore, and to be clear, that's not saying anything about your contributions here.
With that said, I know you are stressed too, so use this as you will as a guidepost for modifying your proposal. Tl;dr. If I were going to make just a bare minimum change to your proposal, move the spokesperson sentence (or drop it) to the 2016 paragraph. That's the minimum, but then ideally then do the same for the "Monsanto internal emails" sentence and switch the order of the two paragraphs with a bridge like I did to move to the 2000 content In the emails, Heydens also discussed ghostwriting. . .. That's a really simple way of threading the needle on this and keeps the door open better for expanding the EoC content at a later date. I'm not going to argue for other streamlining of text I left out earlier.
More details are included in the collapsed content behind the tl;dr comment. KoA (talk) 04:08, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For whatever it may be worth, I promise that I have read and carefully considered all of what you posted here, including the collapsed part. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth as well with the new retraction mentioned in the section below, that source does change things. Now the order of mentioning Williams 2000 first does work with it having a retraction in hand. KoA (talk) 16:54, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I genuinely appreciate that. I want to emphasize here that editors who have sometimes been unfairly characterized as pushing a pro-Monsanto POV have, in fact, been entirely willing to include prominent criticism of Monsanto once we had what we regard as sufficient sourcing. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:16, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Williams 2000 retracted

[edit]

@KoA, Tryptofish, Dialectric, and David Tornheim: Williams 2000 has finally been retracted.[38] Nosferattus (talk) 15:18, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Kudos to you, Nosferattus, for finding this information. I fully agree with changing the page to reflect this new information, and I actually made an edit after yours, in which I made the language we use even stronger. This is, in my opinion, a definitive outcome, in terms of scientific integrity (or the lack thereof).
One thing about the edit I made, that I'd like you or other editors to check me on. I added 2025 as the date of the retraction, based on my understanding that the retraction has just come out recently. But I could not find a date on the retraction itself, so I just want to make sure that this really happened in 2025. Thanks again. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:36, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it definitely happened this year, as there was no retraction notice there when we were debating this earlier. Also the Kaurov & Oreskes paper from September says that the paper hasn't been retracted. Nosferattus (talk) 02:02, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Kaurov & Oreskes paper has been online since July. There is normally another DOI published for a retraction e.g. doi:10.1016/j.yrtph.2025.105981 in the January 2026 edition of the same journal. I had a look through all the recent issues but couldn't see anything, so presumably is in the works. It hasn't been picked up by retraction watch yet either, so I presume it has only just been retracted. SmartSE (talk) 12:07, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Le Monde reports [39] and states it was retracted 28 November @Nosferattus Katzrockso (talk) 01:54, 4 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Retraction Watch published a story about it today [40]. The retraction was specifically precipitated by Kaurov and Oreskes's paper and their subsequent letter to the editor; They also wrote to the editors of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology to formally request the paper’s retraction. The editor's comments are very interesting, stating that the retraction "could have been done as early as 2017". Also contains a statement from Bayer on the matter. Katzrockso (talk) 01:58, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Smartse: I removed the Williams 2000 ghostwriting responses from Monsanto and NYMC since they are moot at this point and it seemed like excessive detail now that the case is finally settled. Do you think they are still important enough to include? These ghostwriting paragraphs are getting a bit lengthy. Nosferattus (talk) 16:34, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When updating, I prefer to keep the existing content where possible, as it is still reliably sourced content. This was/is Monsanto's position for many years and while the paper being retracted is a clear line, it is still relevant to include their POV. SmartSE (talk) 20:45, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm OK with restoring the response from Monsanto. However, I think that perhaps we should remove the sentence about the investigation by the university of the lead author. The sourcing for that describes the investigation as a "quick" one, and we now have strong sourcing to indicate that the university got it wrong. In my opinion, this ends up just being embarrassing for the university, and it only confuses the text for our readers. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:28, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That seems like a decent compromise to me. Nosferattus (talk) 02:48, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes fair point. I've removed it. SmartSE (talk) 21:31, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's what we really needed all along for sourcing rather than the months of discussion on this with lower quality sourcing. This would have been a good time to start content discussion and probably have something drafted up in a matter of days, but that's mostly moot now. Hopefully that acts as a good example of why we normally wait for sourcing like this, especially when it comes to WP:CRYSTALBALL.
The one caution I have in recent small change from the WP:BLP perspective is this recent change of the header from Allegations of ghostwriting to just saying Ghostwriting. We didn't actually gain any new knowledge on what transpired in 2000 unfortunately in that regard (aside from the paper itself being retracted), so we're not really in a position to move away from alleged at this point. There's a line between the issues with the study and us saying ghostwriting without the qualifier. The old section header threads the needle pretty simply on policy issues we have to navigate there. News sources being discussed here also are careful to use similar language on alleged, etc., so I'm not so sure the change can have consensus here. Other than that, the original language works. KoA (talk) 15:34, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@KoA I read the previous discussion and saw many editors such as @David Tornheim arguing for the inclusion of the article. There has also been a new development, in that the Kaurov & Oreskes paper is mentioned in every article about the retraction. That the paper and its the authors were the direct antecedent, in addition to its high quality, is a strong reason to include the article.
Can you elaborate on how BLP applies here? Katzrockso (talk) 16:00, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, there's been months-long discussions over that Kaurov paper in multiple talk pages, and consensus was that it was not needed. Yes, some editors wanted to include it and pushed for it, and others did not see the need for it. I'm not pinging any one of those per WP:CANVASS. The point is though that people are exhausted over that topic, and we already reached a resolution that did not include it. Resurrecting that only a month after that discussion concluded really isn't going to shed any additional light. The the retraction itself does not mention the paper at all, and the retraction really is the focus here. News sources like Retraction Watch mention other supplemental details, but not all those are going to be included.
As for BLP, that's just a matter of being careful on our end as we don't assert wrongdoing in Wiki-voice unless it meets a high threshold (see WP:BLPPUBLIC for examples). Here we can't outright say there was ghostwriting directly when it comes to Williams, but there were definitely unaddressed concerns by the journal that reached the level of retraction (and I want to be clear I'm not understating those concerns). The retraction didn't confirm there was ghostwriting though in part because of a lack of response by Williams, and that's a nuance we have to navigate. If the journal was able to confirm it, then it's easier for us to refer to the Williams paper as just ghostwriting. The seriousness of the retraction and us calling it ghostwriting are slightly different topics. This is for an entire section and not just the Williams paper though, so that language also let's us generalize things to include both cases of confirmed ghostwriting and instances where we have to stick to alleged qualifiers a bit tighter.
Just to be clear, this is all to say that the current version should have us at a rough baseline of what should be included for now, including the recent retraction. I got here a little late this week, but it looks like other editors had mostly settled on other relevant details, so hopefully we're at a point the topic can rest a bit. If someone really wants to add more details, I'd give it a WP:RECENTISM check in a couple months before adding (in addition to giving this talk page a break). Especially if new major details do come out later, that can be dealt with then, but right now it looks like we should have stable content finally. KoA (talk) 16:51, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Several thoughts. I'm ambivalent about the section header. On the one hand, I'm receptive to being cautious about making accusations of ghostwriting in Wikipedia's voice. But on the other hand, when we are quoting the retraction statement verbatim as saying "lack of authorial independence" and "misrepresentation of contributions", I think we are out of the realm of this being merely an accusation.
About the Kaurov paper, please count me as one of the "exhausted" editors, and I don't think we need to include it. If the retraction statement from the journal had cited Kaurov explicitly, then I might want to include that as being the reasoning. I see that the Retraction Watch source says that the journal editor acted after receiving a letter from Kaurov and Oreskes, and that's not nothing, but it seems to me that "the story" here is the retraction itself, not Kaurov and Oreskes, who could be argued as simply being the latest in a long line of critics, rather than as people who fundamentally changed our understanding of what happened.
Now my biggest concern at the moment is the change of language, from what had been The paper, in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, was retracted on November 28, 2025 by the editor-in-chief, citing..., to The paper was retracted on November 28, 2025 following a lack of response by Gary M. Williams, the last surviving author of the paper, to concerns of the editor-in-chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. The unaddressed concerns cited.... What that accomplishes is adding the information of (1) Williams' name, (2) the fact that he is now the only surviving author, and (3) that he did not provide a response. That's more information, but I think it makes things worse, from a WP:BLP perspective. As I see it, this is the real BLP issue, not the section header. Not responding can be due to any number of things, and it's the absence of an action, rather than an action. (In context, it sounds like Williams may now be elderly.) And yet the wording makes it sound like this is an important part of what happened. I think in this case, less is more, and we should go back to the language we had before. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:38, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So I think I'm on a fairly parallel track as you in your second paragraph at least in how I started looking at this. The key thing here is grounding ourselves on what the retraction itself says. The quotes you mention about authorial independence, etc. was a good approach for the text. The only piece I was seeing that seemed missing was how the retraction came about: 1. Journal raises serious concerns to the last remaining author, 2. No response from Williams, 3. Journal retracts the article because those concerns were not addressed. The question was how to put that into text hopefully with just a minor addition so the topic could rest.
Had Williams of responded, two main things could have happened. Williams could have provided clarification that showed ghostwriting, etc. did not occur, or the journal could have confirmed those issues did occur. Neither of those happened though. Instead because of the lack of response (and one is expected respond when there are serious accusations like this), the journal basically said that serious concerns were raised, and because they were not addressed, they had to retract the paper. The journal is very careful in most of their language to highlight both the lack of response and uncertainty on the individual concerns, so removing language to make it seem like this isn't an important detail. We don't need to get into why there was no response for examples like you highlighted as the journal just plainly stated that was an overarching important detail in the retraction. It unfortunately becomes another threading the needle situation (I wish it weren't) rather than a straightforward one with regards to academic publishing, but that's why I'm being super careful about BLP here. Had the journal been able to confirm some of those issues, we'd have an easier time here as editors in terms of moving beyond saying it's an accusation.
So for the content you mention in 1-3, the only thing I really started off with was that there was not a response from the author(s) and why the journal said that was important. That's the only key detail I was mostly focused on needing. KoA (talk) 20:24, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, a lot of what we are now discussing here is about "how the retraction came about". One way of looking at that is that it was because Williams did not reply. Another is that it was because Kaurov and Oreskes sent the editor-in-chief a letter. And at this point, I think you can see where I'm about to go with this. As I see it, the real reason it came about was because of that letter, and there was going to be some sort of action taken by the editor-in-chief no matter what Williams did or did not do. Another editor has already reverted you, removing the stuff about Williams, and I agree with that edit. We can only speculate about why Williams did not reply and about how things might or might not have been different depending on whether he did. We don't have reliable sourcing about that, and we probably never will. The fact that the retraction statement is careful to specify that no response was received is because the statement is being appropriately careful and precise; it implies that there was, of course, a possibility for a response to have rebutted the criticism, but we have no reliable sourcing to indicate what would have happened in that alternative universe. What we have, definitively, is the retraction statement saying what it does, and it's straightforward about authorial non-independence and misrepresentation. They didn't retract it because there was a possibility of ghostwriting. It was because it was likely enough to take the extraordinary step of retraction. That's reliably sourced, and I don't accept that we should borderline-violate BLP in order to complicate that fact. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:00, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see where you're going with the line of thought you started with, but that shouldn't be relevant here. The retraction makes no mention of Kaurov and Orsekes, so when we're trying to focus on what the actual retraction says, we only need to focus on what the source says. We don't need to speculate about why Williams didn't reply either, only that it was a major contributor to why the paper was retracted. That's not my opinion, that's per the journal editor. I'm trying to be really careful we don't misrepresent the journal editor by glossing over that aspect of the issue our run ourselves into trouble with BLP on Williams. That's why I've been sticking with this issue a bit in the last two days because I don't want to see the existing new content scuttled because of this issue in the use of the source. I was hoping a high quality source like this would have made discussion easier on nailing down the key details.
I mentioned the scenarios above not to speculate, but highlight the three main bins retraction assessments fall under: 1. Major issues are confirmed or likely = retract. 2. Major concerns are not adequately addressed (or at all) = retract. 3. Concerns found not to be valid = no action. Any retraction is serious, but 2 happens because of the uncertainty it causes rather than confirmation of issues, which is worse than 1 in some ways. The journal is pretty clear this is a case of 2 in their statements, while I'm concerned that people inadvertently jumping on it being 1 can misrepresent what happened. It's not a matter of how likely misconduct was at that point in the process, but what degree of uncertainty is generated. That also means I'm coming at this from the perspective that the seriousness of this portion inadvertently ending up downplayed right now. I just want to make sure we get this right so issues don't propagate down the line. I guess to bring things to an end point, I'm just not seeing how reflecting the statements by the journal itself that Williams did not respond and inadequately/unaddressed issues led to the retraction are an issue, while I'm running into policy and guideline issues trying to navigate leaving it out. KoA (talk) 01:13, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wrote two separate replies to this, only for both to be deleted before I could send them earlier, but alas I will try to rewrite it again:
I disagree that BLP prevents us from writing that the section header "Ghostwritten" for several reasons:
1) The older version of the text, before the individual name of Williams was added (as noted by Tryptofish), did not accuse any living person of engaging in wrongdoing. Indeed, it only names the paper as ghostwritten and does not attribute this misconduct to any particular person, so it is very unclear how BLP is supposed to apply here at all.
2) There is no "crime" here that occurred ('researcher misconduct' at best might amount to something that is a crime, but there is no accusation that the behavior here rose to that level nor any logical connection that it does), so BLPCRIME cannot apply. You appeal to WP:PUBLICFIGURE, which once again speaks about BLP, and there is no BLP content here. In addition, I disagree that PUBLICFIGURE would even imply
3) There is even the bigger issue that "allegations" might be non-neutral (MOS:ACCUSE) and non-concordant with other discussions of similar academic misconduct on Wikipedia, which usually uses the term "controversy" (see Doris Kearns Goodwin#Plagiarism controversies, Stephen E. Ambrose#Plagiarism, where it becomes unclear if we can take on assumption that this class of header titles violate any BLP policy).
The former is my interpretation of BLP, but I am completely open to being wrong as this is a policy I am admittedly less familiar with than others (largely for interest, as I am rarely interested in writing about living people in most contexts), but perfectly willing to ask at e.g. WP:BLPN to clarify.
I will have to wait to reply to the rest until later Katzrockso (talk) 23:29, 5 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. 1- the paper is ghostwritten, and doesn't have to name names. 2- Ghostwriting is not a crime. 3- The paper was retracted, that to me is case closed. It's now unreliable. Andre🚐 02:52, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with that, and I think that it's clear that we have proper sourcing to remove "allegations". I have made that edit. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:43, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As for the Kaurov & Oreskes article, I strongly think that some mention of how exactly people came to the determination that the paper was ghostwritten and how it was retracted is important. As noted in the Retraction Watch and Le Monde articles: Their request “was actually the first time a complaint came to my desk directly,” and Why, given that these documents were made public by the press in 2017, did it take eight years for the article in question to be retracted?. I think the reader might question why there was this 8 year gap between the release of the emails in 2017 and the retraction in 2025. I certainly would, reading the section as is:

Monsanto internal emails made public in August 2017 during the Johnson v. Monsanto Co. litigation revealed Monsanto personnel referring to undisclosed ghostwriting of that and subsequent papers. A Monsanto spokesperson responded to the email release that Monsanto had provided only non-substantive cosmetic copyediting that did not alter the studies' conclusions. The paper was retracted on November 28, 2025. where the editor-in-chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology cited "lack of authorial independence", "misrepresentation of contributions", "questions of financial compensation", and a variety of concerns over whether the conclusions presented were adequately supported by the scientific data.

The Chemical and Engineering News article also makes this clear [41] But RTP acted only after Alexander Kaurov, an astrophysicist at the Victoria University of Wellington, and Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University, reported the issues to the journal.
Similar in Washington Post; Alexander Kaurov and Naomi Oreskes, who requested the retraction, published research in September that found the paper is in the top 0.1 percent of cited academic literature on glyphosate.
At a minimum I'd at least prefer we mention that the retraction came at the behest of Kaurov and Oreskes's intentional request for retraction, so it isn't inexplicable why there is such a gap between the emails and the retraction. As for the "months-long discussions over that Kaurov paper in multiple talk pages", I am well-aware of this, having read the discussions several times. I concur with David's comment that Despite walls of text, when it comes down to it, I still have not heard any valid reason to omit this key source prominently mentioned in The Signpost. I'm sure you are aware that WP:CCC. Katzrockso (talk) 09:20, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I tend to agree with Katzrockso. It doesn't matter whether we think Oreskes and Kaurov are reliable for facts (but I think they are). The fact that their work led to the retraction is notable, encyclopedic, and DUE as a proportion of relevant sourcing relative to the topic. We can attribute everything to them since it is undoubtedly controversial and disputed, but that doesn't mean exclusion, it means attribution. There is no policy-abiding argument to entirely exclude them and none has been articulated in light of the changing circumstances (the retraction) which means that the prior consensus has reason to be revisited, and it seems it HAS changed along with the circumstances. If we must formalize that consensus we may, but I submit that KoA is simply out of step with the present consensus and should take a step back. Andre🚐 22:54, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I'm increasingly willing to entertain this, but I want to get it right. First, KoA and I have been working in this contentious topic area since the Jurassic period, and I want all editors to cut one another some slack. This stuff isn't as easy as it looks. As I see it, we have to parse out what is WP:DUE and what isn't. As I just said to KoA above, a lot of what we are now discussing is about how the retraction came about. Maybe that includes the lack of response from Williams, but I've said above that I think that would be too much to include. I'm ambivalent about the role of the letter, but I'm OK with including something, if we craft it thoughtfully.
Kaurov is an astrophysicist, and Oreskes is an historian of science. Neither is an authority on herbicides or on human toxicology. They criticized Wikipedia in their article, but that should not influence our decision here. We have very reliable sourcing that their letter was the primary reason the editor-in-chief decided to look into this. We also have very reliable sourcing that this was a new editor-in-chief, not the chief editor who had been there for about a quarter century since the paper was first published. (Did the previous editor get letters? No way for us to know.) How should we balance the importance of the letter against the importance of the change in editorship?
We can cite the significance of the letter to the sources we currently have. What exactly would we cite to Kaurov and Oreskes' paper? We don't need more sources for the allegations of ghostwriting that came in the wake of the email release. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:25, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As I noted below, we should prefer academic sources rather than newspaper reports from journalists. A historian of science like Oreskes is 99 times out of 100 a better source for information about scientific publishing than a news journalist.
How should we balance the importance of the letter against the importance of the change in editorship? By following what the reliable secondary sources say about the causes of the retraction, not conducting original research into why the article was retracted (i.e. attributing it to the change in editor-in-chief or lack of response from Williams). Your original research may very well be right, but it does not belong in Wikipedia's text. Katzrockso (talk) 00:27, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand why we are exclusively relying on newspaper reports about the ghostwriting when there is high-quality academic sources on the subject. Wikipedia prioritizes "academic and peer-reviewed publications" over newspapers and no compelling objections to the Kaurov and Oreskes source have been presented. Indeed, I would expect the exact best source would be published academic work from historians of science.
Some justifications to exclude said source in the past included It [the Williams et al. paper] is respectably published, not withdrawn or even subject to an expression of concern. and I'm against citing Oreskes as it is a piece of primary research and has had zero citations so far, making it UNDUE to include at the moment, both of which are no longer meaningful accurate. I think in light of the recent retraction, there is substantial reason to reconsider whatever previous consensus there may have been on the question of including this source (as you have noted). Katzrockso (talk) 23:17, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Most of what you mention is already addressed in my earlier reply above to Tryptofish. The reality is that the caution about BLP and accusations of wrongdoing do not go away by just removing Williams name. Otherwise it becomes a sort of double-speak situation saying the authors aren't accused of anything because we didn't name them outright (even though we do either way). You also mention MOS:ACCUSE, but it outright states, alleged and accused are appropriate when wrongdoing is asserted but undetermined. Either way, the body of the text navigates/bypasses the accusation topic just fine, and it's only the section header's recent change that ran into it. I don't really see any strong reason to spend more time on the header subject either since it's not central to summarizing the retraction itself, and the section header is not defined on just this Williams paper discussion like I mentioned earlier. We're kind of getting into the weeds spending time on the header.
What you mention later on though are news sources, not the WP:MEDRS quality source (the retraction) being focused on here. As mentioned above, the retraction is highlighting the important details for us already. I'll echo Tryptofish's comment above on the Kaurov paper. It's just not mentioned in the retraction as being important here. The litigation however is mentioned in the retraction, and the content already links up to that. Consensus can change, but in WP:DEADHORSE situations, one really can't expect that horse to realistically move, especially on already taxed volunteer time. In those cases it's better to move on to what can be worked on.
That's why the focus here has just been on what the new retraction source itself adds rather than circling back to topics that already reached an end. The only thing currently missing from the summary based on the retraction's source is what you recently removed on Williams lack of response being a key aspect of the retraction. Other than that, we pretty much have the bases covered on what the retraction itself highlights as WP:DUE. My main concern here is by omitting the lack of response, we're putting our fingers on the scale as editors and disagreeing with the journal itself on a key intertwined reason as to why the paper was retracted. I don't know your background on academic publishing, but unaddressed concerns (besides substantiated ones) are why papers get retracted. I don't think we can get around not including the mention of no response from the authors, so how would you write it? KoA (talk) 23:17, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's simply not reasonable to characterize this as a DEADHORSE since in fact the circumstances have markedly and significantly shifted. That means revisiting. Andre🚐 23:38, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Moving on from the header issue for now, since it is relatively minor in the grander scheme of things and it would be more productive to focus on more significant (textually) changes for now. We can revisit that at a later date.
WP:MEDRS are not required for any of the following:
  • making statements about the nature of scientific publishing
  • the existence of a publication from Kaurov and Oreskes
  • the fact that they wrote a letter expressing concerns about the independence of the paper based on their research into the paper and its influence on scientific discourse
  • the fact that the retraction occurred as a result of their letter
Indeed, we currently include zero MEDRS in this entire section, because we are not making claims about "biomedical information", but about the process of scientific publishing.
As for your argument about the lack of response from Williams, we currently have no reliable sources saying that the reason that the reason the paper was retracted because Williams did not respond to the concerns expressed by the editor. We have reliable sources stating that the proximate cause was the letter to the editor written by Kaurov and Oreskes and more specifically the ultimate cause was the fact that the paper was ghostwritten (has been retracted eight years after documents released in a court case revealed employees of Monsanto, the company that developed the herbicide, wrote the article but were not named as coauthors. from RW, Alexander Kaurov and Naomi Oreskes, who requested the retraction, published research in September that found the paper is in the top 0.1 percent of cited academic literature on glyphosate from WaPo, The disavowal comes 25 years after publication and eight years after thousands of internal Monsanto documents were made public during US court proceedings (the "Monsanto Papers"), revealing that the actual authors of the article were not the listed scientists – Gary M. Williams (New York Medical College), Robert Kroes (Ritox, Utrecht University, Netherlands), and Ian C. Munro (Intertek Cantox, Canada) – but rather Monsanto employees and When asked, van den Berg explained that he was not aware of the situation until the publication, in September, of an article by science researchers Alexander Kaurov (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) and Naomi Oreskes (Harvard University) in the journal from Le Monde).
I'm sure the lack of response from Williams made it a much easier decision for the editor-in-chief, but to suggest that is the reason the paper was retracted is original research and should not be stated in the article in that manner. I suggest that the lack of response from Williams only introduces BLP material into the article when we are trying to avoid this. If we were to write a separate article (as Nosferattus suggested) on 'the Monsanto papers', it would be a warranted fact as we might have a much more detailed timeline. But given that it offers no explanatory role in any of the newspaper articles other than another piece of information, there's no good reason to include it in our short exposition here. Katzrockso (talk) 00:11, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Katzrockso, that's helping highlight a few key misunderstandings. The big thing I'm seeing here is that you're making claims that contradict the journal itself, which violates WP:OR. To then claim that I'm violating OR for reflecting what the journal actually did say also runs into issues with that policy. That's not to point fingers, but to highlight I originally mentioned OR earlier because I was trying to get us to drill down into what the source alone actually did say to avoid inadvertently misrepresenting it. This kind of confusion is why I was trying to get that focus. The journal said what it said, and I made a recent comment above on the seriousness of this kind of retraction. I'm trying to make sure it isn't inadvertently downplayed because of misunderstanding.
Related to that, none of what you're quoting is from the MEDRS retraction article. As a side note, generally, we don't use news sources to comment on the quality of journal/MEDRS sources, but instead rely on other academic sources to do that. Usually if a MEDRS source doesn't mention something that lower-quality sources do, it usually isn't considered WP:DUE. That's why the retraction source made it a lot easier for us to discuss this topic since prior, we didn't have great MEDRS sourcing referring to the Williams paper issues. If you do quote from the actual journal, you're going to find items like This decision has been made after careful consideration of the COPE guidelines and thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the authorship and content of this article and in light of no response having been provided to address the findings. Claiming there are no reliable sources when that language is present throughout the summary-level content of the key source isn't helping with content assessment.
So when you look at the original edit and the source, can you point to what exactly was misleading and how you would have worded it differently based on the retraction source? That's not to get into other sources, but pin down what the issue is with respect to the main source. Otherwise, I pretty much paraphrased right from the journal, Concerns were raised regarding the authorship of this paper, validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of the contributions by the authors and the study sponsor and potential conflicts of interest of the authors. I, the handling (co)Editor-in-Chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, reached out to the sole surviving author Gary M. Williams and sought explanation for the various concerns which have been listed in detail below. We did not receive any response from Prof. Williams. Hence, this article is formally retracted from the journal. . . KoA (talk) 02:28, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I'm curious as to where I made claims that "violate OR" (which in and of itself is not a problem: editors are allowed to conduct original research on talk pages so long as it does not violate other guidelines, original research is not permitted in articlespace) or "contradict the journal itself". Can you clarify?
As a side note, generally, we don't use news sources to comment on the quality of journal/MEDRS sources, but instead rely on other academic sources to do that Taking aside the misunderstandings of MEDRS professed earlier in the paragraph, is this not the best reason to include the Kaurov and Oreskes paper instead of the news article we are currently using? [a sidenote: I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of me providing that collection of quotes, which is in part my fault as I did not organize them in a particularly coherent manner, but we can get into that if necessary]
I don't understand what you are asking me to do, I agree that it is an accurate paraphrase of the content in the journal - and the current version of the article reflects that edit, bar removing the information that multiple editors agree has an issue with BLP. Something be true and verifiable is not a guarantee for inclusion (WP:VNOT) and indeed BLP here weighs against including the name of Williams in the article, as noted by Tryptofish already. My edit was minimal and simply removed the material that falls afoul to BLP. Katzrockso (talk) 04:19, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like this discussion is having difficulty getting to consensus, and I'm going to offer my advice on how to move ahead. It seems to me that the question we are dealing with is how to present what led to the retraction. What we really need is a specific suggestion about what, if anything, we should add to the page. I suggest that editors focus on making a specific proposal, formatted as I did in #Proposed revision, above. Please don't propose anything that has already been on the page and reverted. Focus instead on finding something that will get consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:10, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The aforementioned reasons ("this was already discussed before") to prevent the inclusion of particular material/sourcing should not be considered a robust basis for completely foreclosing a particular change. I hesitate to be accusatory, but I fear that Please don't propose anything that has already been on the page and reverted smells a bit much like WP:STONEWALLING. If I were objecting to a change on baseless grounds (which isn't exactly what's happening here, to be clear), I would hope that my reasoning-free opposition was not the grounds for rejecting a beneficial change to the encyclopedia. The only question that we have not formed a consensus on is the inclusion the Kaurov and Oreskes source, from what I can tell. Katzrockso (talk) 06:33, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was unclear; what I meant was not to propose what had just been reverted in the past few days. No need to accuse me of stonewalling. My main point is that editors should make a proposal of specific text (not just let's include or not include something). --Tryptofish (talk) 00:05, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any issue with the proposed text here [42];

Following a 2025 paper from researchers Alexander Kaurov and Naomi Oreskes that analyzed the influence of the article on scientific discourse, the Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology paper was retracted on November 28, 2025. The editor-in-chief cited "lack of authorial independence", "misrepresentation of contributions", "questions of financial compensation", and a variety of concerns over whether the conclusions presented were adequately supported by the scientific data.

Other than possible slight copyedits for clarity. That something has been reverted is not a irrebuttable reason to avoid implementing that text. Katzrockso (talk) 01:51, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That makes it sound like the editor-in-chief read their paper and then decided to do the retraction, which clearly did not happen. He was reacting to the letter they sent him, not the paper that they published. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:43, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Following researchers Alexander Kaurov and Naomi Oreskes' research that analyzed the influence of the article on scientific discourse, they sent a letter to the editor-in-chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology outlining their concerns with the paper. The paper was later retracted on November 28, 2025, citing "lack of authorial independence", "misrepresentation of contributions", "questions of financial compensation", and a variety of concerns over whether the conclusions presented were adequately supported by the scientific data.

[43] highlights the connection between the paper and their letter; After publishing the paper in September 2025, Kaurov and Oreskes decided the next logical step was to submit a retraction request for the Williams et al paper to RTP, assuming retraction requests had been issued in the past. They hadn’t. Katzrockso (talk) 01:24, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What you just quoted there explains why Kaurov and Oreskes sent the letter, but it doesn't directly relate their paper to the decision to retract. The decision to retract was based on their letter, not on their paper. Please re-read what I already said here: [44], especially the last sentence. I'm friendly to indicating that the letter was the impetus for the retraction, but I want the language we use to be precise. It seems to me that Kaurov and Oreskes are significant here in terms of their letter, but I'm not seeing a valid reason to highlight their research instead. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:45, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I apologize if the previous proposal insinuated that the Kaurov and Oreskes paper was "directly relate[d] ... to the decision to retract". That was my not my intention and the newest proposed addition does not contain such an implication. I agree that "[t]he decision to retract was based on their letter, not on their paper". But they wrote the letter as a result of their research.
As for why we should include their paper, there are many reasons:
1) Wikipedia prefers academic sources over WP:BREAKING news.
2) Wikipedia prefers peer-reviewed research over news reports
3) The Kaurov and Oreskes paper was mentioned in several of the aforementioned breaking news reports about the retraction of the article.
4) Their research into the Williams et al. 2000 is what caused them to write the letter, they didn't just wake up and decide to write a letter asking for its retraction. The letter was the result of their research into the influence of this paper on scientific and popular discourse.
You'll note that my most recent edit omits the fact that they published a paper, but simply refers to the fact of their research into broader influence of this paper, something prominently noted in many contemporary news reports about the retraction. I would suggest we cite their paper, but not mention the paper in the text of the article.
I have seen precisely zero substantive reasons to omit this paper and I will repeat another editors comment Despite walls of text, when it comes down to it, I still have not heard any valid reason to omit this key source prominently mentioned in The Signpost. Katzrockso (talk) 02:50, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, at this point, I'm not hearing any other editors continuing to object to citing the paper, and I was arguing based largely on having seen such objections in the past. But if other editors aren't bothering to object, then I'm going to drop my objection in the interest of settling this and moving on. I think I agree with you that, based on other secondary sources, their paper has had influence and would be reasonable to include. I don't think there is a problem with news sources for what we are using them for here, but I've decided to agree with you about adding Kaurov and Oreskes to the group of cited sources. I'm going to implement a slight variation on your proposed edit now, with a bit of reordering and word-smithing. I hope this is OK. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:55, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's perfectly fine, please make it mesh better or whatever you see fit. I am open to other wordings that reduce the prominence of this source in relation to others or more succinct explanations in the aims of reaching a consensus, but I still strongly believe that its inclusion is warranted.
We can always reevaluate if their paper ends up being a flash in the pan or heavily critiqued or something, but I think the current state of knowledge we have means we should include it. Big part of my reasoning there is that it is the academic source that is the most 'independent' of the topic (i.e. hasn't been funded by organic groups) and by an eminently respected historian of science.
I don't think news sources are bad, I am just saying that we should prefer academic sources absent a very compelling reason otherwise, and when academic sources on a topic exist we should not exclude them in favor of breaking news sources (which lean more towards being WP:PRIMARYSOURCES given that they are temporally closer to the event than peer-reviewed books/academic articles that are more distantly removed). My only comment is I'm not sure we really need as many news articles as we currently have cited on some of the sentences. Perhaps WP:EVENTUALLY we will have an article on this topic itself (e.g. this whole ghostwriting scandal) and we can go into further depth and cite a million newspaper articles, but currently I don't see the need for so many (WP:CITATIONOVERKILL). But that's a much more minor detail that ultimately doesn't matter too much. Katzrockso (talk) 22:15, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, citation overkill was part of my previous concern. But, whatever. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:26, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would suggest cutting either the Science or Le Monde citation, as well as the NPR citation and the Bloomberg citation (short, paywalled and basically entirely about the later publications, not the 2000 paper). We can redistribute citations in the final two sentences another way - i.e. cite the retraction notice in the penultimate sentence.
I will boldly make these changes for now to show what it would look like. Katzrockso (talk) 22:44, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My objection to including Kaurov and Orsekes still stood (even if I couldn't get to a computer in the last couple days). At the end of the day, the retraction source mentions nothing about them, so it is a WP:DUE issue as mentioned earlier. The whole point of this discussion was to focus in on what the retraction actually said. KoA (talk) 08:28, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, we cannot interpret the retraction ourselves, that is the definition of original research. We have to rely on what secondary sources say about/interpret the retraction, e.g. the news articles we have already included about the retraction (e.g. Le Monde, Retraction Watch and others I have cited here).
We can certainly focus on "what the retraction actually said" in the abstract sense of perhaps we think these secondary sources are so erroneous that we should omit them altogether, but we cannot substitute that for an original analysis of the retraction placed into wikivoice or article text.
My argument remains that by omitting the antecedent of the retraction (i.e. Kaurov and Oreskes' letter), we do the reader of the article a disservice in leaving the gap between the emails being published and the retraction unexplained, a question that features prominently in several news articles on the topic. That such a question and explanation should be omitted from our Wikipedia article is unjustified. Katzrockso (talk) 08:47, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Once again, we cannot interpret the retraction ourselves. No one is doing that in-text except when you when you suggested earlier above we selectively omit what the journal said. Remember you were the one claiming that what the editor said didn't exist in sources despite it being directly pointed out to you, and now we're having to wrestle with that in content discussion. This is a secondary WP:MEDRS source. We are supposed to summarize it, and a pretty direct paraphrase is generally what you'd shoot for, especially since what it says (or omits) holds more weight than periphery WP:MEDPOP sources. The core source needs to guide us first rather than what editor preference or thought is.
With that, can you go back to my last Dec. 7 comment and answer the question of last paragraph? I'll include it here just to keep from having to jump back, but I was very direct in what I asked:
So when you look at the original edit and the source, can you point to what exactly was misleading and how you would have worded it differently based on the retraction source? That's not to get into other sources, but pin down what the issue is with respect to the main source. Otherwise, I pretty much paraphrased right from the journal, Concerns were raised regarding the authorship of this paper, validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of the contributions by the authors and the study sponsor and potential conflicts of interest of the authors. I, the handling (co)Editor-in-Chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, reached out to the sole surviving author Gary M. Williams and sought explanation for the various concerns which have been listed in detail below. We did not receive any response from Prof. Williams. Hence, this article is formally retracted from the journal. This decision has been made after careful consideration of the COPE guidelines and thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the authorship and content of this article and in light of no response having been provided to address the findings.
That was asking you to do what Tryptofish already asked about content-building. You didn't really mention how you'd make that edit a more accurate paraphrase of the quote. Instead you mention BLP which wasn't really relevant because Williams was named in the source directly (and is mentioned in the citation anyways). Even if it was relevant, it was already mentioned that the name could be swapped with "author", so that wouldn't have been a good reason for entire removal either. Where do you see the paraphrase as inaccurate when you compare to the quoted source? I was hoping that question would have already led to some forward progress over the few days it took me to get back to a working computer. KoA (talk) 09:59, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to move past the unevidenced insinuations that I made some claim that was 'directly pointed out' as false as to not dignify that characterization of the conversation.

That was asking you to do what Tryptofish already asked about content-building. You didn't really mention how you'd make that edit a more accurate paraphrase of the quote. As I responded then and I will repeat now:

I don't understand what you are asking me to do, I agree that it is an accurate paraphrase of the content in the journal - and the current version of the article reflects that edit, bar removing the information that multiple editors agree has an issue with BLP. Something be true and verifiable is not a guarantee for inclusion (WP:VNOT) and indeed BLP here weighs against including the name of Williams in the article, as noted by Tryptofish already. My edit was minimal and simply removed the material that falls afoul to BLP

We can paraphrase and quote all sorts of different aspects of the retraction notice, or indeed a multitude of different sources. What your question presupposes is that every piece of information in the specific quote you have selected needs to be summarized in the Wikipedia article, which is an unsupported presumption. Where do you see the paraphrase as inaccurate when you compare to the quoted source I suggest you refer to my previous comment once again, where I stated very specifically and in no uncertain words that I agree that it is an accurate paraphrase of the content in the journal. Katzrockso (talk) 10:36, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Katzrockso, part of the problem is you're saying completely contrary things sometimes denying outright that the source even mentions what we're discussing and now saying it was an accurate paraphrase. The latter contradicts your edit summary when you removed the text too as you were implying that that the apparent accurate paraphrase of the journal is misleading. Less patient editors would have just dismissed that as not being able to contribute to WP:CONSENSUS and moved on. It's challenging to engage in consensus-building with that.
So now it boils down to you saying the proposed content was an accurate paraphrase, but you're claiming it's undue to mention the journal's summary reasoning for retraction. The problem is that there's nothing in the source saying it's undue, but instead the editor mentions it as key reason for retraction in their summary, repeatedly. Your argument is a very clear WP:DUE policy violation as well as WP:V when it comes an editor contradicting a source, so that's why we really can't give it traction in assessing consensus here. We're not talking about a tangential side sentence in a source that we'd normally dismiss under WP:ONUS like implied. Right now there's not a grounded WP:PAG reason for removal. I'm concerned that the whole addition on the retraction is in jeopardy at this rate, so that's why I've been working hard to get this problem of omission of what the journal highlights as key details addressed with what should have been a simple tweak rather than this long talk section. There are some ideas I have to break that log-jam, but I'd rather see what others have to say about the quoted material first. KoA (talk) 18:11, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you are going to make these accusations, I ask that you please back them up with diffs so I can attempt to understand what you are referring to. I read this comment and find a characterization of my contribution to this discussion that is entirely at odds with the posts I have made.
You have repeatedly stated (see [45], [46]) that I am "contradicting a source" but have failed to substantiate where and how I have done that. I am kindly asking you, again, as I did this in this comment [47] to specify which comments of mine you are alleging contradict a source. If my comment implied something I do not believe or I said something incorrect, I am more than happy to clarify my statement or correct a factual error I made - I have made mistakes before and am perfectly willing to admit when I am wrong. But it is not fair to assume that my comments here mean I am "not able to contribute to WP:CONSENSUS".
Either way, I would ask that we either focus on content or support characterizations about other editors behavior with evidence to avoid casting aspersions. I am more than happy to continue discussing the merits of any potential change, but it is frustrating to see these unsupported insinuations about my comments here woven throughout more substantive disagreement. Katzrockso (talk) 21:28, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You mention WP:FOC, which please remember is policy that applies to all of us. The main point is that we move on to content discussion, which I've been repeatedly trying to do here while trying to navigate the ideas you've proposed. At this point after referring back to your comment a few times, even with direct reply to that comment, I shouldn't need to quote you, we currently have no reliable sources saying that the reason that the reason the paper was retracted because Williams did not respond to the concerns expressed by the editor. There's no way to get around that such a statement directly contradicts the retraction source, so there was no way to discuss your content idea without bringing up that it misrepresented the source. I don't like being put in that position where content discussion is forced to comment on that.
Based on your recent comment though, the issue of being sourced should be moot now, so if you have questions on the above paragraph that may be better suited for usertalk from an FOC perspective. Instead, my last paragraph in the last comment was partly hoping for confirmation from you. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're claiming it's undue to mention the journal's summary reasoning for retraction (i.e., concerns and lack of response). Is that correct? This is at least helping move the needle on next steps. KoA (talk) 22:56, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will direct my comments on the FOC part to your talk page.
I do not believe that "directly contradicts the retraction source" or is otherwise misrepresentative. I recommend reading WP:PSTS and WP:PRIMARYUSE, where we can understand easily that the retraction notice is indeed a primary source of information about the retraction itself. More secondary sources like the newspaper articles perform the type of analysis/evaluation that allows us to state "the retraction occurred because of reason X" or "the retraction occurred because of reason Y", whereas we cannot state something like that based on the retraction notice itself unless said retraction notice explicitly stated that. On my reading of the retraction notice, I do not see any explicit statements of this form. Perhaps we can interpret the statements in the retraction notice, but this is interpretation that we need secondary sources to provide to avoid WP:OR.
I agree that the statement "Williams did not respond" is supported by the primary source as well as other secondary sources. I think this is indeed an accurate paraphrase of the retraction notice; following a lack of response by Gary M. Williams, the last surviving author of the paper. However, given its juxtaposition within the sentence, it improperly implies the the lack of response from Williams played some vital role within the reason for retraction or that had Williams responded to these concerns, the paper would not have been retracted. As I have explained, this may be entirely true and we can perform all sorts of analyses of the retraction notice to come to that evaluation. But this remains WP:SYNTH as it "impl[ies] a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources". We have several sources that specifically identify the Kaurov and Oreskes letter to the editor as triggering the investigation by the editor into the paper. We do not have any that are analyzing the retraction and claiming it resulted from Williams lack of response.
Given that we do not have any secondary sources that make the implication of your text, in addition to the fact that there is no need to include the name of the surviving author (given that this would only introduce more sensitive BLP information), we need a much stronger rationale to include this information than the fact that the retraction notice itself mentioned it. Katzrockso (talk) 05:21, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ah I see. You're somehow thinking the secondary source (the retraction) is a primary source. That's not how it works. Otherwise, all review articles would be considered primary when they critique another academic source. What the rest boils down to though is that you're running into OR/SYNTH problems in the logic you're trying to apply when the source explicitly states the reasoning you're against including. That gives me enough for next steps at least. KoA (talk) 07:32, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the retraction is a primary source for the information about the retraction. That is not really a negotiable idea. Katzrockso (talk) 08:08, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Katzrockso is correct: a retraction notice is a primary source about the retraction itself. All sources are primary for some things, and the first-ever publication of journal's decision to retract a paper is primary for the fact that the journal decided to retract the paper.
@KoA, see the definition in WP:PRIMARY:
"A secondary source provides thought and reflection based on primary sources, generally at least one step removed from an event. It contains analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of the facts, evidence, concepts, and ideas taken from primary sources. Secondary sources are not necessarily independent sources. They rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them."
Then run down the list:
  • Does this "provides thought and reflection based on primary sources"? No, this is the first-ever publication about the journal's decision to retract this article. Therefore it cannot provide "thought and reflection" based on any kind of prior sources (for the fact of the journal's decision to retract the article).
  • Is this "at least one step removed from an event"? No, the retraction notice is is the event itself! (Again: for statements about the journal's decision to retract the article.)
  • Does it contain "analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis" about the journal's decision to retract the article? No, this is the announcement of the decision itself, not a separate analysis, evaluation, interpretation, or synthesis of thoughts and reflections about the decision.
  • Is this an independent source? No, and while Secondary sources are not necessarily independent sources, they usually are. This isn't: This is the journal's editors announcing the journal editors' own decision about the journal's contents.
  • Does this "rely on primary sources for their material" about the journal's decision to retract the article? No, at the time of publication, this was the first-ever source about the the journal's decision to retract the article. It is the primary source (again: or statements about the journal's decision to retract the article. It could be a secondary source for other content, but not for statements about the journal's decision to retract this article).
  • Does this source make "analytic or evaluative claims about" the decision to retract the article? No, this source is the decision to retract the article; it is not a separate analysis or evaluation of the decision to retract the article.
When this source is cited in support of claims about the journal's decision to retract the article, it is a primary source.
Wikipedia:Primary does not mean bad. This could be a reliable source to support multiple claims. It's just not a secondary source (or an independent one, for that matter).
BTW, if you are looking for a word to explain its value to other editors, you might consider choosing a word like authoritative instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:58, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What's frustrating is that is exactly what I did already in my reply from earlier this week. There was already a working edit that pretty much paraphrases the retraction. That could have been tweaked with suggested edits in talk, and I did ask Katzrockso to address the issues in the comment. So Tryptofish, when you look at the last paragraph in that Dec 7 reply of mine, how would you approach that question of attempting to pretty directly paraphrasing the journal with what I quoted? What's wrong with that original edit or how could it have been improved? I'm just not seeing much that falls out of alignment with the quote. KoA (talk) 08:57, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
KoA, you should recuse yourself from this discussion as you have a clear conflict of interest. The Kaurov & Oreskes paper discusses your repeated citation of the Williams 2000 paper on Wikipedia after it was revealed to be ghostwritten. Since you have a personal stake in whether or not the paper is cited (in order to avoid embarrassment), I think it would be best for you to recuse yourself from discussions that are directly related to that paper. Nosferattus (talk) 20:12, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. KoA should step back and not participate in this or related discussions. Andre🚐 22:37, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't take note of that detail when I read the paper. Nonetheless, I doubt that such inclusion would truly result in embarrassment since it is unlikely that the vast majority of readers would read the entire paper and take note of that small piece of information and subsequently connect it to a different username (it seems KoA uses a different username now than before). However, this might raise the appearance of a conflict of interest, though I am not familiar enough with the WP:COI policy to comment on that. I have seen some editors describe it very broadly. Katzrockso (talk) 22:45, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I feared this was going to happen, and at this point I'm just going to tell the rest of you to work it out. I tend to feel that, after the role of K and O in the retraction, it's now reasonable to cite their paper, but I truly don't care strongly about citing it, one way or the other. I think there's a good case for including the fact that they wrote a letter to the editor-in-chief, so I'd like that to stay in, but I don't care that much about citing their paper. I'm satisfied with the content as it is now. KoA, please let me make a friendly suggestion that you just let it go. It's not worth going to battle over an inline citation.
But I also have something else to say to the rest of you. The claim that KoA has a WP:COI because of avoiding embarrassment is totally absurd. And there has been too much of a history of bogus COI accusations in the GMO topic area for me to let that pass. So if anyone wants to disagree with KoA on the merits, go right ahead. But the next editor who claims that KoA must not participate in this discussion: I am taking you to WP:AE with no further warning. I mean it. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:13, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, the COI claims about "embarrassment" are definitely getting into WP:ASPERSIONS territory and just derails content discussion. I'll briefly clarify on that, but it's not content discussion that really belongs on article talk, so I'm collapsing that bit.
Part of the problem discussion-wise I'm seeing here is that there was a persistent push to put mention of the K & O paper in. That's despite not being mentioned in the retraction at all. Issues were already brought up with it on the talk pages, and that secondary bit about K & O was inserted recently after there was a short period of time when no one spoke against it. Meanwhile, I'd been patiently not reinserting anything that was being discussed in edits I was proposing on the retraction itself above this sub-thread. I had been saying we need to get sorted on what the retraction itself has to say, only to have comments saying what the main source mentioned for primary reasons for retraction is somehow undue. There's a bit of a double-standard there in content building without even getting into the more inflammatory calls to leave above. I think part of the problem is the K & O topic kept getting reinserted into attempts to focus on what the retraction source alone had to say.
When it comes to mentioning the K & O topic itself, that is secondary to accurately describing the retraction source itself. That inclusion doesn't have consensus, but I'm not going to be the one to remove it right now. I really only have time for the retraction source discussion right now in this section. That's not how it should work, but that's all volunteer time really can allow for right now. KoA (talk) 21:39, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was not aware that KoA used a different username previously. I was only referring to Kaurov & Oreskes discussion of "KoA" specifically. What username did KoA edit under previously? Nosferattus (talk) 18:06, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I thought the article said Kingofaces rather than KOA, so I must be misremembering. I read through some very old posts on this talk page before commenting, so I must have imagined that into the Kaurov paper Katzrockso (talk) 20:08, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Not working at Monsanto"

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I'm concerned about this edit, that unilaterally changed what had been the recent consensus language: [48]. My concern is over removing the words "not working at Monsanto". The edit summary says that the cited source, which is the paper itself ([49]), does not substantiate that wording. Huh? There are three authors listed (click "show more" in the source to see their affiliations): Gary Williams of NY Medical College, Robert Kroes of RITOX in The Netherlands, and Ian Munro of Cantox Health Sciences. None of them were working at Monsanto, full stop. And it's relevant to include, because the whole point of the ghostwriting charge is that the paper represented that no one from Monsanto was writing it. Leaving that out makes no sense. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:54, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am sure they were not working at Monsanto and never worked at Monsanto, but the absence of an affiliation is not evidence of this. It would be improper WP:OR and WP:UNDUE information to make such a statement from authorial affiliations on a paper. Including it makes no sense as it makes the entire sentence structure awkward and sound completely unnatural, which is why I removed it, with the note that it can be added in another sentence or elsewhere in the paragraph with a source that substantiates it. We should not be introducing our own commentary when none of the articles that I read thought that this fact was relevant enough to include. This is precisely why Wikipedia relies on secondary sources and not our own interpretations of primary sources (i.e. the authorial affiliations of a paper). Katzrockso (talk) 01:12, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think you don't understand how scientific journals list authorship. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:22, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I understand just fine, thank you. Katzrockso (talk) 01:25, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Then sorry, but I absolutely do not understand your reasoning. The cited source states where those three people worked. All of the secondary sources treat this paper as having been made to appear to have been written by three scientists who were independent of Monsanto – and the ghostwriting evidence, the retraction, and everything, all treat the ghostwriting as having come from Monsanto people who were not listed as authors. To seriously entertain the notion that the three listed authors actually had appointments at Monsanto but were hiding it, which appears nowhere in the sourcing, seems inexplicable to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:32, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How about "not known to be employees or affiliates of Monsanto"? Andre🚐 01:55, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am not entertaining that notion in any meaningful sense, but noting that it is a logical possibility (not stating that it is likely - I certainly believe it to be false). This is why we need to have secondary sources that analyze the authorial affiliations and note this fact for it to be included on Wikipedia. We don't analyze primary sources (authorial affiliations) ourselves, we rely on what secondary sources say about events and summarize that knowledge. None of the news articles I have read about this controversy have mentioned that the authors did not work for Monsanto, let alone placed this fact in such a prominent role as to be the very first sentence of their description of the controversy. That's why I have repeatedly stated that I am not opposed to this fact being mentioned provided a secondary source be provided that establishes it as WP:DUE and that perhaps it shouldn't be mentioned as a relative clause that impedes the flow of the sentence.
Please do not interpret this as me trying to promote or insinuate the idea that they were employed at Monsanto, I don't believe that at all. I was trying to increase the readability of the sentence (it read very unnaturally/awkwardly to me) and improve the compliance to Wikipedia policies.
As for Andre's suggestion, I would oppose that because it implies that there is some sort of basis for believing they were secretly hiding their employment at Monsanto that we haven't yet found. That implication would violate WP:SYNTH just as much as the original text does. We cannot make a conclusion that is "not explicitly stated by any of the sources", which includes the conclusion that they did not work for Monsanto. That is not explicitly stated by any of the sources that I can find. Katzrockso (talk) 02:09, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I, too, think that Andre's suggestion, although well-intentioned, suffers from what it implies. I feel strongly that "not working at Monsanto" is needed because, as I said earlier, it's the necessary context for why this was ghostwriting (as opposed to, for example, a bad paper explicitly written by Monsanto employees).
But I decided to look for other sources, and I think this may break the logjam. We already cite two, that seem to me to confirm that the three authors were not working at Monsanto. From Le Monde: ...revealing that the actual authors of the article were not the listed scientists – Gary M. Williams (New York Medical College), Robert Kroes (Ritox, Utrecht University, Netherlands), and Ian C. Munro (Intertek Cantox, Canada) – but rather Monsanto employees ([50]), and from Retraction Watch: Gary Williams, then a pathologist at New York Medical College in Valhalla, Robert Kroes, a toxicologist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and Ian C. Munro, a toxicologist at Cantox Health Sciences International in Ontario, Canada, were listed as the authors ([51]). The first indicates where the three authors were working and clearly differentiates them from Monsanto employees, and the second joins the first in confirming the affiliations listed on the paper itself. With these two secondary sources, I think we have confirmation that there are two sources that consider the journal listing to be reliable, and that indicate that these three listed authors are not, themselves, the Monsanto employees who did the ghostwriting. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:51, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Retraction Watch source doesn't go as far as I would need it to, but the Le Monde source is better in that it explicitly contrasts the authors with Monsanto employees, rather than simply restating the author affiliations. I did a further search and found "The listed authors of the paper, Gary Williams, Robert Kroes and Ian Munro, were scientists who did not work for Monsanto" [52], which is the precise type of language I was looking for here and helps establish that the information has a much better case for being WP:DUE. I think we this description best fits in the third sentence of the paragraph that talks about Monsanto's response, but I wouldn't be opposed to it earlier. I just really do not like how the previous version flowed grammatically in the sentence; In 2000, three scientists not working at Monsanto published an evaluation of the safety in humans of glyphosate and Roundup reads as bad writing to me, e.g. the way that the relative clause is placed within the sentence. Perhaps because it disconnects the subject ('three scientists') from the verb ('published') so significantly. If you can propose an alternative version that doesn't have these grammatical concerns, I would be supportive and assuage my concerns about the fact that fundamentally I don't think the information is useful to the reader (i.e. most of the other articles do not report this information but I do not think they have omitted any vital information that would impact their readers understanding of the topic - indeed, I think ghostwriting already implies that the figurehead author(s) is a distinct actor from the 'true' author of the article - i.e. Monsanto can't ghostwrite for Monsanto). Katzrockso (talk) 06:51, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Tryptofish I added back the information citing The Guardian source and Le Monde here [53]. I decided to put it in the second sentence, since I think it flows best there. I still don't think it is necessary/WP:DUE/particularly informative for readers but since you have advocated very strongly to include it, I'm OK with including it there. Feel free to propose some alternative wordings/structures, this just seemed to read fairly naturally to me. Katzrockso (talk) 21:34, 12 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks so much! I changed the wording a bit, because I think it reads better this way, but if you'd rather word it differently, I'm happy to discuss it. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:02, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Tryptofish as I mentioned above, I really think the relative clause separating the subject from the verb (i.e. "three scientists [not working at Monsanto] published" - the [] separates three scientists from the verb published) doesn't work very well here and the information doesn't fit contextually very well in the first sentence. In the first sentence, we are explaining the paper and its conclusion, no mention of Monsanto. The second and third sentence we are explaining the background / context of the paper and its connection to Monsanto, which is why the authorial information would fit much better there as we can contrast the fact that they weren't employed at Monsanto with the observation that the emails indicated the paper was nonetheless ghostwritten. I'm open to other wordings that don't force the unnatural phrasing into the first few words of the paragraph. Katzrockso (talk) 04:06, 13 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think we are in "you say to-may-to and I say to-mah-to" territory here. My feelings about which way flows better and preserves context better is the exact opposite of yours. (The first sentence doesn't have to otherwise mention Monsanto, because this page is about Monsanto. Having it in the first sentence gives context about who the "three scientists" who wrote the paper were. Doing it the other way results in something much more wordy, suggesting oddly that there is something unexpected about a spokesperson from Monsanto commenting about a paper written by three non-Monsanto people.) One thing that occurs to me, that might help a little, is to move the inline cites to the end of the sentence, so they don't interrupt it. I'm going to do that right now. Beyond that, if you really feel strongly about it, perhaps other editors here could offer a third opinion. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:05, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
it the other way results in something much more wordy, suggesting oddly that there is something unexpected about a spokesperson from Monsanto commenting about a paper written by three non-Monsanto people Concision is not always better when it leads to bad writing: interrupting subject-verb flow is rarely a good practice in scientific or encyclopedic writing. Even stating the fact in a separate sentence would be superior (i.e. The scientists were not employed by Monsanto.) This accords with both of the sources we are using, which introduce this fact in a separate sentence. Indeed, The Guardian provides the information about the conclusions made by the paper in a separate paragraph than the information about the authors. The Le Monde source is much more similar to the version that I proposed, which specifically contrasts the listed scientists on the paper with the 'actual authors' (i.e. Monsanto employees) [The disavowal comes 25 years after publication and eight years after thousands of internal Monsanto documents were made public during US court proceedings (the "Monsanto Papers"), revealing that the actual authors of the article were not the listed scientists – Gary M. Williams (New York Medical College), Robert Kroes (Ritox, Utrecht University, Netherlands), and Ian C. Munro (Intertek Cantox, Canada) – but rather Monsanto employees] and connects this to the emails. Once again, the sentence about the paper describing its conclusions and publication were in a separate sentence than information about the authorship. I don't know why we shouldn't following the separation/organization that our sources do.
This also goes back to my previous contention that this fact (that they didn't work at Monsanto) is rarely mentioned by articles, meaning it is hardly WP:DUE and does not provide additional useful information to readers [indeed, I think that the clause adds more confusion than clarity - why is it necessary to include this? Were there questions that they were employed by Monsanto? That is what the clause makes me wonder. Placement in another sentence resolves this anxiety, as it contrasts the authorship question with the ghostwriting information rather than retain the tension for longer]. To the extent that we have to include this information, as you are insisting, it should follow the organization/placement that the few sources that mention it do.
Also, I'm not sure what suggestion is being made by the alternative version.
As for moving the citations, that is not a good idea. Having a big mass of citations at the end does not clarify which source is supporting/verifying which portion of the sentence, which makes it more difficult for a reader to select which article to read if they wish to verify a particular statement in the sentence. Two little blue boxes do not interrupt the flow at all, as readers are not reading the little blue boxes but the words in the sentence. Katzrockso (talk) 08:42, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just wanted to leave a note that I saw this source from Carey Gillam had been added. Generally her articles are considered to have a COI (others here have run into that before) because of her heavy involvement in the organic industry, industry competitor, etc. when it comes to pesticide/GMO topics.
That shouldn't affect anything for the content from what I can gather reading this since Le Monde is used, but I'm paywalled at the moment on the Le Monde. A lesser issue there is that the author of that article is involved in the "Monsanto Papers" dispute with awards, etc. for their work on it. Kind of one I'd drift towards a different news article, but I left it for now so it hopefully doesn't upend the above. If there's something dependent on the Gillam article though, that content would need a different source. KoA (talk) 04:16, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The only reason The Guardian source has been added is because it supports the claim about the authorial information, refer to the thread above. If you can find an alternative source that explicitly makes this claim, feel free to change it out. Otherwise, there is no policy issue with using even a biased or non-independent source for uncontroversial claims; reliability exists in a specific context. Katzrockso (talk) 05:01, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Katzrockso, please undo your reinsertion of the source, I already talked to you about ArbCom expectations on your talk page when it comes to continuing to reinsert new content, especially for something as simple as this one. When there was a clear problem with the COI source on the talk page, the course of action isn't to just reinsert it. We're not citing Monsanto for anything, nor are we citing those from the organic industry either, and that was already covered on this talk page. This isn't something to just push ahead on. The Le Monde source already covers the existing text based on your quote above, so that's why I pretty clearly said I was leaving that source even if it had some lesser issues that could have otherwise warranted looking for another source. That was supposed to be a small tweak and move on moment rather than extending this section even more.
I would say though that the source already gives you a different framework to paraphrase. Just list the names and/or their affiliation like the sources do. If for some reason the the COI source is vital to something, that is a red flag if since independent reliable sources should be guiding us, not what we want to include as editors. That's just my suggestion after reading over this, but the existing text should be fine as a default if the Gillam source is removed, which is one of the simplest resolutions currently on this long talk page. KoA (talk) 19:46, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to agree with KoA about removing that source. I didn't recognize the COI issue when I went along with adding it to satisfy the concern about verifying that the scientists didn't work there, but I remember now that there has been a lot of previous discussion about that author. But, as I have said repeatedly, this is such a patently WP:BLUESKY kind of thing, when one takes it in context, that we really should not need any sources beyond the retracted paper itself, to explain who the authors of that paper were affiliated with. We've still got the Le Monde source, and there comes a point where common sense should not be confused with original research. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:47, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have removed the source, pending a later discussion of this topic. I do not agree that the Le Monde source is sufficient, as I explained at length, The Guardian source is necessary to establish a bare minimum of WP:DUEness for this information. That you personally believe this information is important enough to include in Wikipedia is not established by the body of secondary sources on this subject and removing the only source that explicitly describes it because of a supposed COI issue (once again, COI sources are perfectly fine to establish non-controversial facts and there is no policy basis to remove a source for this reason) only highlights that this information is not WP:DUE.
As for KOA's comment, I would say though that the source already gives you a different framework to paraphrase. Just list the names and/or their affiliation like the sources do We have already discussed this issue multiple times and to the extent that we are implying anyone engaged in scientific misconduct/ghostwriting, this would be unnecessary / introduce BLP sensitive content. I would support including the university affiliations if it wouldn't lengthen the text so much for minor information [like e.g. if it were one university] - we are not discussing the authors themselves at length, so I have no clue why we would need to include the lengthy construction "Ritox, New York Medical College, Interek" or even longer to clarify. Katzrockso (talk) 05:02, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
First, I want to say thank you, for the self-revert about that COI paper.
Now about the issue of sourcing for where the three authors worked, I'm going to try to explain my reasoning with the following, which one can think of as A Modest Proposal. I'm afraid that we are going to have to remove all mention of Kaurov and Oreskes from this page. That's because we need, and seem not to have, a reliable secondary source that establishes that the research they did, the research paper they wrote, and the letter they sent to the journal editor, were all done by just those two people, without anyone else contributing. Please understand, I believe that they did the work themselves, and I doubt very much that there were any other, uncredited, contributors. But we need to have sourcing if we are going to credit the two of them with having had such an important influence. I realize that their research paper lists just the two of them as authors. But we need a secondary source to confirm that. It's not enough to have reliable secondary sources saying that they were the authors. We also need a reliable secondary source that says, explicitly, that there were not any other authors who contributed to their research. We cannot give them credit without such a source. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:44, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Your analogy doesn't work for many reasons, but I will list four:
1) I never suggested removing the Williams et al paper because there were no secondary sources suggesting that they were not employed at Monsanto.
2) The basis for excluding this information is that it is not WP:DUE for inclusion based on the fact that it is not mentioned in secondary sources. This objection has not been rebutted, but ignored numerous times, in addition to the reference to WP:VNOT.
3) I am against the inclusion of unnecessary information that would describe Kaurov and Orekses as "not employed at Monsanto" (or whatever other unencyclopedic descriptors) just as much as I am against the inclusion of this unnecessary information. I see no benefit to the reader by the inclusion of this clause and believe it only confuses the reader.
4) You are conflating the absence of verifiable information about the fact that the authors of the Williams et al paper were not employed by Monsanto with the positive statement that they may have been employed by Monsanto. Those are not analogous. Removing verifiable information does not give any credence to the negation of the verifiable information. For example, if I added the clause "Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science", it would not give credence to the idea that Oreskes is not a historian of science to remove that clause. It would simply mean that it was otherwise unsupported or undue. Katzrockso (talk) 23:13, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Part of my use of that explanation was to speak to other editors, not necessarily to change your mind, which increasingly looks like it will not happen. And I think it's pretty obvious what I was seeking to get across.
1) So what? You actually did make an edit removing the language that said that Williams et al. did not work at Monsanto.
2) Nobody rebutted the argument about DUE based on secondary sources? I sure did!
3) I also explained how omitting the information would confuse the reader.
4) I understand perfectly well that your preference for removing the language about them not working at Monsanto was not based on your belief in the positive statement that they actually might have worked there. It was based on your misunderstanding of WP:LIKELY.
I think it's time for you to drop this, and move on. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:10, 17 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My thoughts were already made known above and elsewhere on removing K & O, and I won't rehash any of that (and also having only so much time for all the open threads). Instead Tryptofish, I just wanted to say after reading your Dec. 16 comment (and later), you gave a very through response on a different angle for this conversation, and I do think it at least matches the level of scrutiny Katzrockso has been asking for elsewhere. KoA (talk) 00:44, 18 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the 'three scientists not working at Monsanto' wording is awkward, and that a bracketed [not working at Monsanto] is an odd construction. Better flow would be "three scientists, who were not Monsanto employees, published a review...". While the inclusion may not be strictly necessary, it does help clarify the relationship between listed authors and Monsanto which could be more complex, as it is in the Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories section below.Dialectric (talk) 23:52, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I asked for a third opinion, and I got it. Thanks, and done: [54]. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 14 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just a heads up that Kaurov and Oreskes also submitted a retraction request for Kier & Kirkland 2013 due to alleged ghostwriting by Monsanto.[55] That paper, which examines genotoxicity, doesn't appear to be currently cited on Wikipedia. It's mentioned in some of the other sources about Monsanto ghostwriting, but doesn't seem to be as important as Williams et al. 2000. Nosferattus (talk) 08:29, 11 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Monsanto's involvement with Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories

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While I was poking around RetractionWatch (see above), I came across an article in American Journal of Public Health stating that "One of the most well-documented episodes of scientific manipulation and overt fraud was the scandal involving Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories (IBT) in the 1970s and the chronic toxicity tests it conducted on behalf of Monsanto that ultimately led to the indictment and conviction of employees of IBT and the Monsanto Corporation." As one does, I then came to Wikipedia to learn more about this. But the only mention of IBT in this article is an unexplained link in the See Also section. I did find mention of this case at Monsanto legal cases, but there is no explanation of Monsanto's involvement even though one of the convicted fraudsters was Monsanto's Manager of Toxicology, Paul Wright. According to various sources,[56][57][58] Wright left Monsanto to work for 18 months at IBT in order to oversee its testing of PCBs and triclocarban for Monsanto. After the testing was done, he returned to Monsanto where he acted as a liaison to IBT. According to testimony from other scientists at IBT, Wright was in charge of the studies for Monsanto and had instructed them to falsify their data. After returning to Monsanto, Wright continued to work on Monsanto-related IBT reports and pressured IBT scientists into changing their findings in reports submitted to the FDA. None of this is mentioned here or at Monsanto legal cases. In fact the wording at Monsanto legal cases is quite misleading and makes it sound like IBT acted completely on their own and Monsanto was the victim of their fraud rather than the orchestrator of it. It's strange that a case "regarded by many experts as the most massive scientific scandal in the history of this country"[59] isn't even mentioned in this article. And it's stranger still that its mention at Monsanto legal cases seems written to obfuscate any involvement by Monsanto. At the very least, it needs to be made clear that Paul Wright worked for Monsanto. Otherwise it isn't even clear why the case is listed there. Nosferattus (talk) 23:09, 29 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I encourage you to make the edit(s) to accurately reflect the sources you have, both here and on Monsanto legal cases.Dialectric (talk) 01:02, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. I don't have time to look into the sourcing in detail, but I'm in favor of correcting anything that needs to be corrected. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:39, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I revised the text at Monsanto legal cases to make Monsanto's involvement more clear.[60] I would also support adding text about the case here, although I'm a bit too burned out to currently propose any. Nosferattus (talk) 01:58, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I see that it says that people, including one Monsanto executive, were indicted and convicted of scientific fraud. That strikes me as important enough to include here. Like you, I feel burned out, plus I'm definitely not a lawyer, but I'm unsure whether "scientific fraud" is actually a crime under the law, so I would want that to be pinned down. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:42, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Scientific fraud or misconduct is not inherently a crime - it is possible for a case of misconduct to be completely legal in terms of not violating any criminal or civil codes (e.g. Francesca Gino). So stating in wikivoice that scientific misconduct occurred does not violate WP:BLPCRIME in and of itself unless we are also implying or stating that this scientific misconduct violates a particular legal code. However, since these accusations are very sensitive we should require higher quality evidence to make such a statement in wikivoice.
In this particular case, the scientific misconduct does violate laws because the data/studies were submitted to regulatory agencies for approval of products. I believe the specific charges there were "mail fraud and making false statements to the government" [61]. Note that one of the defendants was granted a mistrial [62] for medical reasons (Joseph C. Calandra), so he was not convicted. Reporting from 1984 indicated that the government chose not to retry the prosecution ([63]) against Calandra so long as the convictions of the other 3 were upheld. This 1985 judgement affirms the lower court's conviction [64], but I didn't find any reporting on it. The case is highly cited as precedent in other legal articles, but I didn't see any coverage in the news.
@Nosferattus, we should definitely clarify somehow that not all the executives at IBT were convicted, because this is a BLP violation. Katzrockso (talk) 04:18, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's true. The wording about the convictions is inaccurate in the case of Calandra. Thanks for fixing that. Also, I'm not sure how accurate it is to say they were all "executives". Please feel free to correct the text further if needed. Nosferattus (talk) 05:52, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
They're referred to as managers and heads in the Chicago Tribune article I linked, perhaps something like "senior staff"? Katzrockso (talk) 06:21, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I changed it from "scientific fraud" per what Katzrockso said above: [65]. That isn't about BLP. It's just about being factually correct. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:12, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's fair enough. I don't think it makes that big a difference, since it very commonly reported as "fraud" (e.g. [66]; "Four scientists are on trial for fraud in a case that has cast doubt on the safety of 200 pesticides and on EPA's monitoring procedures"). It's probably most accurate to view them as committing scientific fraud that violated the laws against "mail fraud and making false statements to the government", but I'm not sure if we need to go into that sort of detail. Katzrockso (talk) 01:02, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]