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Entine

Daily update ⋅ March 10, 2026

Microplastics as a blueprint for health scares: How the "panic pipeline" of activists and ...

Genetic Literacy Project

Jon Entine is the executive director of the Science Literacy Project/Genetic Literacy Project. Henry I. Miller is a physician and molecular ...

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Video: John Stossel and GLP's Jon Entine on the faux bee-apocalypse—How ...

Genetic Literacy Project

“We're not facing a honeybee or insect apocalypse as so many activists claim and the media misreports,” says Jon Entine of the Genetic Literacy ...

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Viewpoint: Captured by agroecology ideologues — The Conversation fans advocacy group propaganda challenging glyphosate safety

Jon Entine, Kevin Folta | July 23, 2024

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It is frustrating to read blatantly false science information online, but it’s a fact of our time. For years, we’ve at least we’ve had bulwarks, such as the online “The Conversation,” which bills itself as “an independent, nonprofit platform for informed commentary and analysis written by university faculty and researchers”.

Independent it may be, but informed? Unfortunately, its standards are slipping. There are increasing examples of advocacy campaigners hijacking the site to promote ideological perspectives that collide with scientific consensus.

It’s most recent science distortion: yet another article claiming that the world’s most widely-used weedkiller, glyphosate, poses a cancer-causing danger, affecting human health and the environment.

There may be media controversy over this issue, and there have been billions of dollars in court filings that make that claim, but the mainstream science community has long since reached a consensus: As Health Canada stated in its assessment of glyphosate:

No pesticide regulatory agency in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer to humans

But such unanimity among independent regulatory and oversight organizations has not deterred environmental activists from misreporting the science; that’s what they do. Disconcerting, however, is when guardians of science — which The Conversation claims to be — abuse their public trust by feeding the disinformation slurry.

Follow the latest news and policy debates on sustainable agriculture, biomedicine, and other ‘disruptive’ innovations. Subscribe to our newsletter.

Advocacy academicians twist consensus science

The latest and most egregious misreporting on the science of glyphosate was circulated by The Conversation on July 10: “Mexico’s planned glyphosate ban helped show how agroecology can lead the way forward”.

It should be noted from the start that the three co-authors are sociologists, with one having expertise in agricultural economics. None has any training in even basic science, let alone toxicology. Keep that in mind, because many of their assumptions and proclamations, while memes in the advocacy community, are thoroughly rejected by the overwhelming majority of experts in the study of chemical toxicity.

Let’s deconstruct The Conversation article point-by-point.

The title itself is misleading, as the article had little to do with the amorphous subject of agroecology. Instead, it mounts a full-scale attack on the well-beaten glyphosate piñata. It claimed that the herbicide, used in conjunction with some genetically engineered crops, can cause cancer and pose serious environmental risks. Neither claims are accurate, according to consensus science or the results of continued rigorous regulatory evaluations which continually show no special risk at occupational or dietary exposures.

The sub-title is equally egregious: “Weed killers like glyphosate are highly toxic to both humans and our ecosystems.” There are no data to support this contention, nor do they cite or link to any consensus research supporting these toxicity claims. Glyphosate is toxic to plants, yes. It’s designed to kill weeds. It kills plants by inhibiting an enzyme required for metabolism that animals do not have. It poses limited toxicity to humans, in stark contrast to the authors’ claims. But in the case of glyphosate, toxicity does not equate with human health or ecological danger. Here is a chart that illustrates the comparative toxicity of glyphosate with more than a dozen other substances. It’s less toxic than coffee and about as toxic as copper sulfate, a fungicide widely used without restrictions by agroecology enthusiasts.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer’s problematic ‘hazard’ ratings

The authors base their assertion (presented falsely as accepted science science) on one agency report, which it misrepresents. In 2015, a sub-agency of the United Nations — International Agency for Research on Cancer — issued a monograph classifying glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen.” IARC’s conclusion, in opposition to conclusions of every other independent chemical risk agency in the world, has become the ‘go-to’ citation for every advocacy group advancing the belief that glyphosate poses serious human health hazards.

IARC’s methodology and findings in evaluating glyphosate are challenged by every regulatory agency in every industrialized country. But for illustration’s sake, let’s them at face value. IARC has established various hazard categories.

How dangerous is glyphosate? IARC lists the herbicide in the same hazard category as working the night shift or eating food cooked at high temperatures. It’s considered as “dangerous” as eating a hamburger. What does IARC consider far more dangerous and possibly cancer-causing than glyphosate? Drinking wine or beer. Eating bacon or salted fish. Taking birth control pills.

So, even if we take IARC’s conclusions at face value — again, not one chemical oversight agency in the world agrees with its assessment — then why aren’t these activist academicians campaigning for the shutting down of every McDonald’s in Mexico and the banning of Modelo and tequila?

Let’s dive deeper into the weeds (so to speak) of the glyphosate safety debate. Most of the thousands of exculpatory studies on glyphosate involve only in-lab research. What does real-world data reveal?

There is one state-of-the-art analysis that IARC conspicuously and controversially ignored: the U.S. government’s 25-year, ongoing longitudinal Agricultural Health Study which tracked glyphosate use and cancer incidence among 54,000 American farmers and applicators.

AHS re-examined its data in 2018 in the wake of IARC’s report, evaluating and dismissing the rogue agency’s findings. “No association was apparent between glyphosate and any solid tumors or lymphoid malignancies.”

The AHS study de-linking activist claims that glyphosate causes cancer is in line with the 24 glyphosate assessments that have been issued over the past two decades. Not one has concluded that glyphosate poses a cancer hazard at occupational or dietary exposures.

glyphosatedangersinfographic genetic literacy project june scaled

Click here for a downloadable .pdf version of this infographic

An independent review comparing IARC’s findings with the global consensus, published in 2018, concluded this:

The IARC classification of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen was the result of a flawed and incomplete evaluation of the very rodent cancer studies that IARC relied upon. Although the Working Group concluded that there was sufficient evidence that glyphosate was an animal carcinogen, a proper summary of the rodent studies relied upon by IARC would not even support the conclusion that there is limited evidence that glyphosate is an animal carcinogen.

A key point needs to be reinforced: The widely-panned IARC monograph on glyphosate focused only on petri dish and animal studies; it did not even address occupational exposure although the monograph has been widely misrepresented to claim that. In reaching its conclusion, IARC examined more than 300 in vitro studies; only a tiny subset showed evidence of cytotoxicity. In every case, in every study cited by IARC, the exposure levels were at crazy-high doses that far exceed real-life exposure.

At no point in IARC’s flawed monograph does it endorse the claim by these three rogue social scientists (claims repeated endlessly by ‘faux journalists’ funded by tort lawyers whose business model is suing Bayer) that it poses a dietary risk to humans at the extremely low levels that it is found in food. In sum, no agency in the world, including IARC, concludes that micro-traces of glyphosate (in the parts per billion/trillion) residue present in some food products pose health dangers.

What other evidence do the authors invoke to support their targeting of glyphosate? The authors reach back eight years to an opinion piece published by a suite of authors in Environmental Sciences Europe. The journal has published dozens of less-than-credible papers that align with the precautionary European policy that restricts GE crops. ESE is most notorious for republishing, without peer review, the retracted 2012 paper by French activist scientist Gilles-Éric Séralini, which claimed, falsely, that GMO corn consumption caused many massive tumors in rats.

Glyphosate and the environment

The authors casually assert as accepted wisdom that glyphosate poses serious environmental dangers. The ‘evidence’ they cite is both selective and erroneously framed.

The weedkiller, also sold under the trademark Roundup, often has been referred to as a “miracle herbicide” or a “once in a lifetime” weedkiller because it is so effective and targeted, with little evidence of deleterious environmental impact. Glyphosate is a systemic herbicide, meaning it is absorbed by the plant and translocated throughout its tissues, leading to the death of the entire plant, including its roots. This makes it highly effective in controlling tough and resilient weeds.

Glyphosate binds tightly to soil particles and is poorly taken up by roots, which means it is less likely to affect subsequent crops, making it safer for crop rotation and other agricultural practices. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency and the University of Cambridge, glyphosate breaks down relatively quickly in the environment, primarily through microbial degradation. Its half-life in soil is relatively short, averaging about 30 days in temperate climates. This rapid degradation reduces the likelihood of long-term environmental accumulation and minimizes potential harm to non-target organisms and ecosystems.

The EPA has conducted a comprehensive environmental risk assessment, including evaluations of glyphosate’s effects on terrestrial and aquatic organisms, concluding that when used according to label instructions, the weedkiller poses no significant risks to non-target species, including endangered and threatened species. The European Commission renewed glyphosate’s approval just last December, citing no critical areas of health or environmental concern that would prevent its continued use.

In sum, studies have shown that glyphosate-resistant crops are more sustainable than alternative weed removal systems, including those promoted by agro-ecologists, as their use contributes to reduced soil erosion and improved soil health by facilitating no-till and low-till farming practices, which are beneficial for the environment.

Glyphosate poses no unique danger to bees or birds

The Mexican authors also falsely claim that glyphosate “threatens honeybee populations”. It needs to be stated that glyphosate is not an insecticide but an herbicide. It targets the shikimate pathway, a biochemical pathway crucial for the synthesis of certain amino acids in plants and some microorganisms. Animals, including honeybees, do not possess this pathway, so glyphosate does not directly affect them in the same way it affects plants.

Under typical field conditions, honeybees are not likely to encounter harmful levels of glyphosate. The herbicide is usually applied to crops and weeds rather than directly to flowering plants that bees forage on. Moreover, glyphosate tends to degrade relatively quickly in the environment, further reducing the potential for exposure to harmful levels.

The authors’ erroneous claim is based entirely on two laboratory and high-dose field studies (e.g. Farina et al, 2019, Abraham et al., 2018) that have been widely criticized by the entomology community. The studies did not replicate real-world conditions; rather the scientists fed bees glyphosate in sugar water and/or using doses that could never be found in realistic settings.

Studies have consistently reaffirmed that glyphosate has low acute toxicity. Regulatory bodies such as the EPA, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and Health Canada conclude that when used properly, glyphosate does not pose a threat to honeybee health. EFSA’s review specifically considered the potential for exposure and found that the risk to honeybees is low.

The authors do mention that glyphosate destroys wildflowers, certainly a source of bee foraging, but so does any other weedkiller or plows used by many agroecology-focused farmers. Bottom line: if we’re going to grow crops we must manage weeds, and glyphosate poses less harm to the agricultural ecosystem than alternatives.

The scholarship of the article hits a low with the claim that glyphosate “has been found to kill birds and soil microorganisms.” Its source? A link to an article on The Ecology Center website, with thirty-year-old links.

False claim of glyphosate bans

The three authors state that “some governments have restricted or even banned glyphosate application.” Its source? A link to an Agence France–Presse article that directly contradicts their claim. The 2023 AFP article noted that the EU just re-authorized the use of glyphosate for a decade; Brazil concluded no risk to human health; and Colombia and El Salvador reversed their bans and now authorize the use of glyphosate. Vietnam is the only country in Asia that currently ban its use. Sri Lanka reversed its 2021 ban which contributed to a disastrous collapse of its farm economy. Mexico’s proposed ban was reversed.

This article is academic gaslighting, and represents gross misconduct in misrepresenting a citation. Most regulatory bodies are not in favor of bans or restrictions on glyphosate. A few EU countries placed restrictions on its use in the wake of the hysteria over the since-retracted Séralini paper, bowing to pressure from environmental activist groups, but none formally bans it.

The authors conclude by writing “Banning glyphosate is an essential step in protecting the health of humans and our ecosystems,” an opinion in contrast to the synopsis of the link they provided.

Selling agroecology

The authors clearly have two intentions: Discrediting glyphosate, which they use as a strawman stand-in for conventional agriculture, and promoting agroecology, the rebranded moniker for organic farming.

While most of the rest of the world rushes to embrace agricultural gene editing and the use of advanced chemistry as part of a sustainable, integrated weed management approach, the authors present a romantic vision of a citrus farm in the Veracruz region of Mexico that eschews technology.

The authors claim that a group of farmers are abandoning glyphosate, substituting cover crops and weed whackers. Mexico’s National Research Council has apparently supplied money for thousands of (massively polluting) weed whackers and 38 agroecology technicians. Government-sponsored agents visited over 10,000 farms, “sharing information about the potential dangers of glyphosate and the viability of agroecological alternatives.”

The article included a photo of a citrus farm that has implemented these practices. It is hardly weed free. While the cover crops look good in the row middles, the trees are inundated with weedy overgrowth. Those weed whackers just aren’t cutting it.

The Conversation picturing weed control on a citrus farm

This account, if true, is as scandalous as it is a rebuff of science. Government grants are being used to poison the well, scaring farmers away from scientifically advanced farming techniques, and supplanting those methods with alternative production schemes that have no track record of success. That’s a high-stakes gamble with people’s livelihoods based on limited evidence.

The social science researchers note that a recent presidential decree supports atypically large investment into agroecological research, which aims to scale up adoption nationwide. That’s great. If these grants produce evidence that revised practices can make farming more profitable, or as profitable with fewer environmental impacts, then that would be quite a victory for Mexican farmers.

That’s how science should work. If the evidence is solid, farmers adopt change. Farmers know what works in their fields. Big shifts in practices come only after several seasons of evaluating the impact on productivity and cost. Nothing is more annoying to a farmer than an academic egghead landing on their soil and telling them they are doing it wrong. On the other hand, a partnership that improves a farmer’s bottom line based on evidence is a great use of government and academic resources.

Reflections

The Conversation is considered credible because of its pool of authors —supposedly independent-thinking academics. That gives its articles a special patina of legitimacy, as there is an implicit expectation of scholarship, objectivity, appropriate citation, and adherence to evidence.

Publishing poor-quality journalism under the guise of scholarship compromises its integrity and denigrates all academics who write under its banner. This polemic is rife with poor scholarship and citation bias. It pitches its points without providing evidence, instead misrepresenting the scientific consensus on the safety of a widely used, well-studied herbicide. It provides platitudes and anecdotes that agroecological methods are superior —without evidence. It fails farmers and consumers by glibly ignoring the fact that farmers welcome change in production based on evidence, and its effect on cost vs. profit.

This article’s misrepresentation of basic facts about the science of weed control and the impact of herbicides on human and environmental health is not an anomaly. In contrast to its stated commitment to “academic rigor”, The Conversation has posted at least three other articles echoing factually false, tired, advocacy group and tort lawyer claims about the world’s most used and one of the safest herbicides, glyphosate (here, here, here),

Featuring sloppy scholarship irreparably damages a valuable public resource. The repercussions of this article and similar diatribes under the guise of encouraging ‘public debate’ go far beyond this one news source. It causes the public to question the value of alleged experts. And it damages science communication and trust in expertise.

How did The Conversation allow this to be posted? Are there no fact-checkers? What next? Vaccines are deadly and COVID-19 was a hoax?

Kevin M. Folta is a professor, keynote speaker, and podcast host. Follow Professor Folta on X @kevinfolta

Jon Entine, founder and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is an Emmy-winning investigative TV News producer and author of seven books, including three on genetics. Please follow him on X at @JonEntine

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Disaster interrupted: Which farming system better preserves insect populations: Organic or conventional? - Genetic Literacy Project

a three-year run of fragmentary Armageddon-like studies had primed the journalism pumps and settled the media framing about the future of the global insect population: modern agriculture was steering us toward catastrophe.

But scientists remained queasy about what they increasingly came to believe was a simplistic narrative. None of the studies reaching ‘disaster conclusions’ was comprehensive. All were steeped in assumptions that could radically skew the data. Most of the world’s insect population centers were not even studied. And the declines were far from uniform. In some localities, there were reports of increases in overall insect population, and some types of insects are increasing in abundance across the world.

Which brings us to the 2020 meta-study of 166 long-term surveys by Roel van Klink at the German Center for Integrative Biology and his team of 30 scientists. For the first time, scientists had a full platter of studies, covering much of the world. Here was data that might answer questions that by now had turned highly ideological.

Roel van Klink

The few journalists who picked up on the study’s release noted the finding that insect declines were far less than reported in the smaller-scale studies, and indeed, no catastrophe was imminent. In fact, freshwater insects like mayflies and dragonflies actually have increased over the years, they found, and insect declines in the US, especially in Midwest agricultural areas, began leveling off at the turn of the century.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a real and significant problem, as van Klink took pains to point out—he called the situation “awfully alarming.” But the difference between a “hair on fire” apocalypse and a serious problem is that there is time to get a better understanding of the causes and, hopefully, make rational decisions to constructively address them.

And it was precisely on the question of causation that the new study fundamentally challenged the “accepted narrative” that modern agriculture and the overuse of pesticides are driving the observed declines.

Effects of modern agriculture

Van Klink’s finding that “crop cover,” which is the phrase he uses to describe farmland, is correlated with increases in insect populations runs directly contrary to the speculations—more often than not presented as fact—that modern farming, especially the use of GMOs and pesticides, is the problem.

The second bugaboo, climate change, also didn’t appear on the suspect list; there was simply no correlation, positive or negative. The primary driver was urbanization, most likely due to the destruction of natural habitat as swamps are drained, rivers channelized, woodlands cleared and land is paved over for housing developments, roadways and shopping malls.

We found moderate evidence for a negative relationship between terrestrial insect abundance trends and landscape-scale urbanization, potentially explained by habitat loss and light and/or chemical pollution associated with urbanization. By contrast, insect abundance trends were positively associated with crop cover at the local (but not landscape) scale in both realms. Specifically, in the terrestrial realm, temporal trends became less negative with increasing crop cover …

Of course, the positive association between agriculture and insect population increases applies to existing fields, not forest or natural grassland cleared for cultivation. As van Klink has pointed out in interviews, the conversion of land to accommodate more farming would also destroy habitat.

But that is exactly the point if sustainability is the key: using technology to boost yields on existing cropland—growing more food on less land—is the most important action we can take to protect habitat and biodiversity.

And that’s what’s been happening. In a 2013 paper titled “Peak Farmland and the Prospect for Land Sparing,” three scholars at Rockefeller University calculated that global increases in crop yields as the result of advanced technologies, including genetic engineering, meant it took about one-third the amount of land in 2010 to grow the same amount of food as in 1961.

The graphs below, taken from the paper, highlight an event that has since been replicated around the world: after World War II total agricultural production, which until then had been largely circumscribed by the amount of land under cultivation, began a steep ascent as farming entered the modern era.....

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Protecting honeybees and wild bees from neonicotinoid pesticides? As ... - Genetic Literacy Project

Genetic Literacy Project

As environmentalists and politicians lobby for bans, science takes a backseat. Andrew Porterfield, Jon Entine | August 2, 2023.

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Bonus Eventus jay byrne

July 13, 2023, 23:25 GMT

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IARC exposed

Genetic Literacy Project

Genetic Literacy Project publishes untold story on multi-billion-dollar influence network corrupting courts and public health regulations

GLP’s investigation reviews conflicts of interest among key players including the WHO’s IARC, the Ramazzini Institute, U.S. Right to Know, and the Heartland Health Research Alliance.”— Jon EntineCINCINNATI , OH, USA, July 13, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ --

The Genetic Literacy Project publishes untold story on multi-billion-dollar influence network that has corrupted global regulatory systems linked to fear profiteering by the mass tort industry, activists, and fringe political interests.

GLP Editor, Jon Entine, reviews the anticipated formal release of competing assessments by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) on the world’s most popular artificial sweetener, aspartame. These conflicting reports on whether the product may cause cancer provide a case study and behind-the-scenes look at the negative public health and societal costs associated with flawed media interpretations of risk versus hazard assessments exploited by special interests.

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GLP’s investigation reviews undisclosed conflicts of interest among key players including the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), non-profit research groups like the Ramazzini Institute, activist organizations like U.S. Right to Know, and litigator-funded front groups like the Heartland Health Research Alliance.

Entine further exposes abuses by the fast-growing U.S. mass tort litigation industry and third-party class action financing interestsin manipulating public opinion, overwhelming courts, and undermining public trust in sound science and government regulatory systems designed to protect public interests and health on issues ranging from food additives to GMOs and pesticides.

See the full report here:

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2023/07/13/aspartame-spins-the-25-billion-wheel-of-mis-fortune-how-the-environmental-activist-tort-lawyer-money-machine-manipulates-journalists-misleads-policymakers-and-scares-the-public/

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https://usrtk.org/pesticides/jay-byrne-meet-the-man-behind-the-monsanto-pr-machine/

2 2019 stacy rtk

Monsanto’s former Director of Corporate Communications Jay Byrne, president of the public relations firm v-Fluence, is a key player in the covert propaganda and lobbying campaigns of the world’s largest agrichemical companies. Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know, posted in the UCSF Chemical Industry Documents Archive, reveal a range of deceptive tactics Byrne and other industry allies are using to promote and defend GMO foods and pesticides.

The examples here showcase some of the ways companies are moving their messaging into the public arena from behind the cover of neutral-sounding front groups, government helpers and academics who appear to be independent as they work with corporations or their PR consultants.

Clients: top agrichemical, agribusiness and drug companies

Byrne’s client list has included a range of the largest agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies and business groups, including the American Chemistry Council, Syngenta, AstraZeneca, Monsanto, Pfizer, the American Farm Bureau, National Corn Growers Association, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Rohm & Haas and the pesticide industry trade group CropLife.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which promotes genetically engineered “Golden Rice,” is also a client. Byrne played a role in PR efforts to attack Greenpeace and other critics of the GMO rice. See also the UCSF chemical industry documents library for many documents involving IRRI.

Cooked up academic front group to attack Monsanto critics

A key strategy of the agrichemical industry, as the New York Times reported, is to deploy “white hat” professors to fight the industry’s PR and lobbying battles from behind the cover of the “gloss of impartiality and weight of authority that come with a professor’s pedigree.”

In March 2010, Byrne and University of Illinois Professor Bruce Chassydiscussed setting up a front group called “Academics Review” that could attract donations from corporations while appearing to be independent. Byrne compared the idea to the Center for Consumer Freedom (a front group run by infamous corporate propaganda front-man Rick Berman), which “has cashed in on this to the extreme; and I think we have a much better concept.” Byrne described an “‘opportunities’ list with targets” they could go after. Byrne wrote to Dr. Chassy:

100 Fastest Times By Country or Ancestry

East and North Africans do not (yet) dominate women’s middle- and long-distance events, but Mr. Entine says this is only because African societies have kept women out of sports. As more African women start competing, whites and Asians will be squeezed out.

Champion sprinter Frankie Fredericks of Namibia prepares to lose.

Blacks didn’t always crush whites in sports, of course, but this was because many American sports were segregated, blacks got little training, and Africa was a primitive wilderness. Even so, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. Not since the 1950s has a white ball player had the most steals in a season, and it has been 40 years since a white man, Armin Hary of Germany, held the world record in the 100 meters.

Needless to say, it is not just American sports teams that are now larded with blacks. Only two percent of the population of Britain is black, but 20 percent of its pro soccer players are. A track meet between the Canadian and American national teams would settle only the question of who has the fastest Africans.

Physical Differences

What are the physiological correlates of black athletic superiority? Mr. Entine writes that as long ago as 1939, Eleanor Metheny of Iowa State University looked into sports biology and found that blacks had longer arms and legs, a shorter trunk, narrower hips, and heavier bones than whites. Hundreds of studies have since confirmed and supplemented her findings. We now know that West African blacks have more muscle, less fat, hands relatively longer than forearms, and feet relatively longer than lower legs (which are relatively longer than thighs). They have higher serum testosterone levels, which increases muscle mass and aggressiveness, and smaller chest and lung capacities, which is why they wear out at longer distances. Heavy bones and less fat explain why so many blacks are “sinkers” in the pool, and low lung capacity is a problem in swimming events as it is in long-distance running.

West African blacks have a larger percentage of what is called fast-twitch fiber in their muscles, which is what the body needs for explosive bursts of speed. It also helps blacks jump. The best whites can jump straight up 50 percent of their height; blacks can go over 60 percent.

East African blacks have a larger lung capacity than whites and process oxygen more efficiently. They do not suffer as much from lactic acid buildup in their muscles and are therefore less susceptible to fatigue. They naturally have the slim build of good distance runners.

Mr. Entine writes that blacks respond to athletic training more quickly than whites and require less of it. Sprinter Carl Lewis worked out only eight hours a week when he was training for the 1984 Olympics; whites may work out nearly that much in a day. East Africans can reportedly take months off from training but quickly regain top form.

This sort of thing is fascinating and entirely to the point, but there is not that much of it in Taboo. Mr. Entine could have made his case in about 100 pages. The rest of the book is taken up with stories about Kipchoge Keino and other famous Kalenjins, stories about the Communist sports factories, and a long, wandering history of race and American sports. This may be interesting to sports fans, but the chart on the previous page is worth a hundred stories about Jesse Owens and Michael Jordan. The early heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson, who snarled over prostrate white opponents and carried on publicly with white women, was a colorful figure, and very few people know professional football was (re)integrated with no fanfare the year before Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers in 1947 — but so what? Mr. Entine seems to be trying to parry charges of “racism” with sympathetic accounts of black sportsmen who fought segregation.

Still, he has assembled the necessary facts and they all hang together. What we know about racial differences in biology conforms perfectly with what we see on the playing field and in the swimming pool. So what’s the problem? Why can’t the country admit what everyone knows and make it official? The problem — and the answer to the question in the book’s subtitle — is that honesty about athletics could lead to honesty about intelligence. This is why we have near-universal dishonesty, which leads to all sorts of nuttiness. Mr. Entine quotes Bob Herbert of the New York Times, that praising blacks for athletic ability is “a genteel way to say nigger.” An early pre-publication story about Taboo in the Times, quotes a black who says scientific investigation of athletic ability is an “underhanded way” of saying that blacks are “closer to beast … than they are to the rest of humanity” and it quotes a white as saying, “Didn’t we hear all this in Germany in 1936?” Mr. Entine has collected many examples of this sort of non-thinking.

Sadly for the egalitarians, the evidence for racial differences in intelligence is far more systematic, far more carefully studied, and much better understood than the evidence for athletic differences. Everyone knows this, which is why everyone pretends so diligently and hysterically not to.

Mr. Entine knows it, too, but tries not to show it. He has laced the book with anti-racist pieties, calls the Pioneer Fund “a magnet for white supremacists,” sneers at Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, and writes happily that the 1938 rematch victory of heavyweight Joe Louis over the German Max Schmel-ing “was a knockout blow to the smug Nazis and their legion of Aryan-supremacist sympathizers around the world.” He even stoops to what can only be called disingenuousness: The book’s “only real message,” he writes, is that “for all our differences, we are far, far more similar.” That is not the book’s real message; it is a transparent sop to the censorship commissars.

However, despite all the jabber about “racism,” Mr. Entine is careful never to deny the possibility of intelligence differences. He even writes sentences like: “The evolutionary crucible has left population groups with distinct physiques, musculature, testosterone levels, metabolic efficiency, reaction time, and a slew of other characteristics.” (emphasis added) He even writes that black babies are born after a shorter gestation period and mature more quickly than white babies. He knows, all right.

Some day Americans will start saying what they really think about race. If they can’t yet talk about intelligence let them at least begin with sports. May Taboo sell and sell.

• • • BACK TO TOP • • •

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Maarit Tiirikainen, PhD

maarit@cc.hawaii.edu | (808) 440-4570 | Genomics and Bioinformatics Shared Resource

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with the notable exception of a research project in Hawai’i, scientists tend to shy away from exploring the population genetics angle, almost certainly fearful of stirring the embers of ‘race science’. “It is really mind boggling why Africa is doing so well, while in US and UK, the people of African ancestry are doing so poorly,” Maarit Tiirikainen, a cancer and bioinformatics researcher at the University of Hawai’i Cancer Center, told us in an email.

Dr. Tiirikainen is a lead researcher in a joint project at the University of Hawai’i and LifeDNA in what some believe is a controversial undertaking considering the taboos on race research. They are attempting to identify “those that are most vulnerable to the current and future SARS attacks and COVID based on their genetics.”

...At the end of March, 2020, when much was still to be learned about the science of COVID-19, the co-authors of this article—the Genetic Literacy Project’s Jon Entine and contributing science journalist Patrick Whittle—discussed some of the potential reasons in the article “What’s ‘race’ got to do with it?” Following discussions with many experts, we decided not to reflexively exclude genetic explanations, which are a taboo subject. Rather, we examined the panoply of likely causes, rejecting the a priori Western prejudice that often excludes evidence that might be linked to population-level genetics and group differences for fear of “racializing” the analysis. We are obviously aware that skin color is not a recognized science-based population concept. Given the racist history of biological beliefs about human differences, addressing the fact of ancestrally-based genetic differences must be pursued carefully.

Why even discuss possible genetic factors? Because biases among researchers and public policy officials could undermine the development and deployment of treatments and antiviral vaccines for all of us, but particularly for more vulnerable populations in Africa and in the African diaspora. Blacks and other racial minorities in the US, Latin America, and the UK are more likely to suffer chronic health problems. For example, in the US, blacks are more than 50 percent likelier to report having poor health as compared to whites, and more than two-thirds of black adult women are overweight. Developing therapies for at-risk populations is critical. Those with genetic resistance to infection or who may be genetically protected in some degree from developing symptoms could help scientists develop treatments for all. Lives are at stake.

So let’s dip into these murky waters. Could our ancestry, which defines our genetic make-up, play a role in susceptibility to COVID or other viruses?

821 gmail

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pmw@patrickmichaelwhittle.com

Patrick Michael Whittle is a freelance journalist and writer, originally from the North Island of New Zealand.

After many years living and working in such exotic locations as Oman, the UAE, Kazakhstan, southern China, and Oswaldtwistle in northern England, he is now based in Wellington, New Zealand.

In addition to working as a print journalist and sub-editor, he has been a tour guide, a dock worker driving 50-tonne ‘straddles’, and a teacher/lecturer (at schools, universities and at a zoo school), and was a volunteer firefighter during the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes.

Academically, he has graduate and post-graduate qualifications in linguistics, education, journalism, and philosophy, and has published in a number of academic journals.

More recently, he has written popular science and opinion pieces for New Zealand media publications and international websites (such as the Genetic Literacy Project), as well as editing a monthly start-up newspaper, The Senior Citizen.

Having co-written (with Dr Doug Campbell of the University of Canterbury) an academic text on ethics, conservation and genetic technology in 2017, he is now writing his first novel, a speculative fiction thriller, centred on the concept of species de-extinction.

Away from writing, he is a keen off-road runner, cycle tourer and tramper.

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Blame Human Evolution for Corporate Jargon. Blame human evolution for corporate jargon and thick academic prose

Genetic Literacy Project, 14/07/2020.

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How a Bird and a Virus Remind Us of the Value of Science. How a rare bird and the coronavirus remind us that our safety depends on science

Genetic Literacy Project, 09/06/2020.

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Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’ is Both Deeply Disturbing and More Relevant Than Ever. Viewpoint: Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’ is both deeply disturbing and more relevant than ever

Genetic Literacy Project, 13/03/2020.

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Fighting Climate Change with Gene Editing. Can we slash cows' methane production?

Genetic Literacy Project, 11/12/2019.

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What is or isn't Natural? Explaining the debate over GMOS and what is or isn't natural through the genetics of chickens

Genetic Literacy Project, 07/09/2019.

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Languages and Genetics. How languages and genetics explain our origins and evolution

Genetic Literacy Project, 12/03/2019.

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Spider Genetics. What spider genetics can tell us about evolutionary relationships and cut-throat competition

Genetic Literacy Project, 05/03/2019.

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Genetics and Race. How do we have this awkward conversation

Genetic Literacy Project, 13/02/2019.

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Germs, Genes and Inequality. How germs and ancient migrations help explain our world of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’

Genetic Literacy Project, 29/01/2019.

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A History of Bull. Learning about modern genetics through the long-extinct aurochs

Genetic Literacy Project, 22/01/2019.

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An Evolutionary Itch. What martyred Thomas Becket and his holy lice can teach us about evolution

Genetic Literacy Project, 11/12/2018.

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A Genetic Horror Story. How Frankenstein and 200 years of horror stories have haunted the biotechnology revolution

Genetic Literacy Project, 30/10/2018.

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Genes, Crime and Violence. The many faces of MAOA, the so-called ‘warrior gene’

Genetic Literacy Project, 09/10/2018.

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National Identity. The near-inconceivable depth of Aboriginal Australians’ connection to the land

Genetic Literacy Project, 11/09/2018.

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Meerkats. Zoo cutie not quite as cute as we think

The Christchurch Press, 21/11/2016.

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Battle of the Sexes. Katipo faces challenges from Australian and South African spider relatives

The Christchurch Press, 31/10/2016.

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Genetic Rescue. Bringing extinct animals back to life

The Christchurch Press, 17/10/2016.

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What are the Implications? Dunedin Study's genetic research crucial for action on social inequalities

The Christchurch Press, 19/12/2016.

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“Gene Editing” Cutting-edge technology

19/12/2016.

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NZ guy ntbcw

Patrick Whittle

Reporter at Associated Press

Portland, Maine, United States500+ connections

Columbia University in the City of New York

Working in this community has been an absolute pleasure and privilege. https://lnkd.in/dr5Adys

Liked by Patrick Whittle

Experience

Associated Press Graphic

Reporter

Associated Press

Mar 2014 - Present7 years 6 months

Portland, Maine Area

Newsday Graphic

reporter

Newsday

Nov 2007 - Mar 20146 years 5 months

Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune Graphic

reporter

Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune

Dec 2003 - Nov 20074 years

New Haven Register Graphic

reporter

New Haven Register

Jun 2000 - Aug 20022 years 3 months

Education

Columbia University in the City of New York 2002 - 2003

Marist College

1996 - 2000

Groups

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Technology Industry Association

Recommendations received

“Patrick is an excellent writer and extremely sharp. His stories, not just the ones about Long Beach, are both informative and fun to read. He's a tremendous reporter and a really good guy.”

Koch Industries / George Mason University Foundation

Charles Koch, CEO of the petrochemical conglomerate Koch Industries, gave over $100 million to 361 college campuses from 2005 to 2014, according to a Greenpeace analysis of IRS filings. The George Mason University Foundation, which received $45.5 million, was by far the largest beneficiary of this largesse.

Students at GMU raised concerns about Koch funding in a 2014 letter to the GMU president, noting that the university has been “criticized as being a subsidiary of Koch Industries.” In response to a public records request for information about Koch funding, the students “were told that all financial donations are funneled through the GMU Foundation, which does not have to respond to our FOIA request as a distinct private entity.”

The GMU Foundation funded STATS sister organization CMPA $220,990 in 2012, and $75,670 in 2013, according to tax records. In those years CMPA also helped finance STATS. In 2012, STATS reported a $203,611 loan from CMPA that “due to inadequate funding” has “not been reimbursed.” In 2013, STATS reported a loan from CMPA for $163,914.

Tax records for 2014 show no loans between the groups or donations from GMU Foundation. CMPA’s 2014 tax filingshows compensation of $97,512 for Butterworth and $173,100 for Jon Entine, a longtime public relations operative with deep ties to the chemical industry, who runs the Genetic Literacy Project, an agrichemical industry front group.

Wholly Independent?

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desmog

June 5, 2013

:{The Statistical Assessment Service's Jon Entine (STATS Senior fellow and Executive Director of the Genetic Literacy Project) is a signatory toCenter for Industrial Progress' letter titled, “:{Don’t Divest:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}:, Educate—An Open Letter to American Universities.” [22]}:

In the letter, Alex Epstein and several other notable climate change deniers, including Peter Ferrara, J. Scott Armstrong, Steve Goreham, S. Fred Singer, David Schnare, Richard Lindzen, and Matt Ridley, proclaim that they are “proud to stand in favor of fossil fuels.” [22]

The “undersigned scientists, philosophers, energy experts, and economists” of the letter ask for a “more rigorous education on energy and environmental issues,” and “are willing to debate anytime, anywhere to defend what [they] believe is right.” [22]

April, 2008

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https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Genetic_Literacy_Project

GLP Executive Director Jon Entine is a former journalist. The Huffington Post released Entine's emails with Kevin Folta where they discussed funding from Monsanto and ways to discredit GMO critics. Folta was later discovered to be acting as a third party scientist for Monsanto.^[13] When Folta's emails became public, showing he was being funded by Monsanto, he contacted Keith Kloor to preemptively release the emails, "but selectively." After Kloor wrote the story for Nature, he then warned Jon Entine of the Genetic Literacy Project: "You and I should also talk," Keith Kloor wrote to Jon Entine. "You are in the emails."^[13]

The website for the Genetic Literacy Project also has several pages where Rebecca Goldin is called "Research Director for the Genetic Literacy Project and Director of Research for the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) at George Mason University," adding, "She holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Mathematics, and a B.A., cum laude from Harvard University."^[14][15]

Archived pages of the website for Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) carry an emblem for the Genetic Literacy Project in the upper left corner.^[16]

One of the Genetic Literacy Project's writers is Stephan Neidenbach.

Contact Information

Genetic Literacy Project/ CMPA/STATS
933 N. Kenmore St., Suite 405
Arlington, VA 22201

Rebecca Goldin was the director of research at both Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) and the Genetic Literacy Project and Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences at George Mason University, who is now affliated with Sense About Science USA.^[1] She joined STATS in September 2004.^[2] In a review of a book written by STATS authors, Salon noted that it was filled with "disingenuous maneuvers”. The review added, "It’s clear that while the authors are good at looking up articles in Lexis-Nexis, they aren’t playing straight with their readers . . . Their analyses and conclusions inevitably stack up in favor of the view that there are few environmental problems that less government spending won’t fix and that social dilemmas like racial discrimination are figments of overactive imagination. A fair review of the state of science journalism is always welcome, but this cleverly disguised example of corporate propaganda isn’t it."^[3] In the New York Review of Books, Michael Massing wrote "the Center for Media and Public Affairs was set up with conservative foundation money in the mid-1980s as part of a growing effort by the right to portray the American press as liberal and out of touch with mainstream America."^[4]

Reporters with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Statistical Assessment Service was a stealth defender of the chemical industry that did not disclose funders and was associated with Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) which had contracted with tobacco companies.^[5] The Genetic Literacy Project has been noted for its attacks on reporters and for hosting conferences secretly funded by industry to promote GMO agriculture and the safety of glyphosate.^[6]

In an investigation of Sense About Science USA, Liza Gross with The Intercept wrote, "Sense About Science does not always disclose when its sources on controversial matters are scientists with ties to the industries under examination."^[7] Gross continued, "And the group is known to take positions that buck scientific consensus or dismiss emerging evidence of harm. When journalists rightly ask who sponsors research into the risks of, say, asbestos, or synthetic chemicals, they’d be well advised to question the evidence Sense About Science presents in these debates as well."^[8]

Work for the Statistical Assessment Service

Goldin edited The Statistical Assessment Service webpage devoted to undermining the science linking sodas with obesity while attacking the benefits of taxing soda.^[9] Research from UCLA has found a direct link between soda and obesity.^[10] NPR has reported that the World Health Organization urged countries to tax sodas. Dr. Douglas Bettcher, director of the WHO's Department for the Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases, says that "consumption of free sugars, including products like sugary drinks, is a major factor in the global increase of people suffering from obesity and diabetes." Blecher stated, "If governments tax products like sugary drinks, they can reduce suffering and save lives. They can also cut healthcare costs and increase revenues to invest in health services."^[11] Researchers at UCLA later confirmed the importance of a soda tax, writing, "Educating people to drink fewer sugar-sweetened beverages only works to a point. After that, taxation on an unhealthy product — along with putting those taxes toward public health programs — would help far more.”^[12]

Writing for the Statistical Assessment Service Goldin critiqued a story by ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein on opoids. The story also appeared in the Washington Post.^[13] Goldin wrote, “the non-profit investigative journalism outfit ProPublica decided to lambast prescription opioid use and administration with a shocking but misleading statistic. ‘The news about narcotic painkillers is increasingly dire,’ said ProPublica. ‘Overdoses now kill nearly 15,000 people a year — more than heroin and cocaine combined.’” Goldin also criticized CDC’s director, Dr. Thomas Frieden for stating that America is “awash” in opioids.^[14] Multiple media outlets later reported how payments to drug makers helped to fuel the opioid crisis.^[15][16] Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, later announced it would stop marketing opioids to doctors.^[17]

Research Director for the Genetic Literacy Project

At an archived page of the Genetic Literacy Project^[18] and on several pages where she contributed, Goldin is cited as the Research Director for the Genetic Literacy Project and Director of Research for the Statistical Assessment Service.^[19][20]

The Genetic Literacy Project is operated by Jon Entine to promote GMOs. Bloomberg and The Progressive have reported that lawyers suing Monsanto state in court documents that companies funnel money to the Genetic Literacy Project in order to "shame scientists and highlight information helpful to Monsanto and other chemical producers.” ^[21][22] In a report that examined corporate attacks on science, Congress found that to discredit the World Health Organization (WHO), Monsanto "turned to industry trade groups, such as CropLife and industry front groups, such as Genetic Literacy Project and Academics Review as platforms of support for industry spokespersons."^[23]

Other Information

An August 2008 biographical note stated that "this fall, I am involved with running on a conference on Menopause and the Media, joint with the Hormone Foundation".^[1]

Dr. Goldin was the 2007 recipient of the American Women in Mathematics (AWM) Michler award in 2007 for outstanding young women mathematicians.^[24] In August of 2008 she delivered the Falconer Lecture, the keynote address, at AWM’s annual conference in Madison Wisconsin. In 2008 Dr. Goldin was elected to the Council of the American Mathematical Society and serves on it Science and Policy Committee.^[1]

Articles and resources

U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Science, Space & Technology: "Spinning Science & Silencing Scientists: A Case Study in How the Chemical Industry Attempts to Influence Science"^[25]

Desmog Blog, page on Statistical Assessment Service^[26]

Trevor Butterworth and Sense About Science Spin Science for Industry^[27]

References

Jon Entine and Genetic Literacy Project are Monsanto Trolls

As the founder and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project (GLP), Jon Entine bills himself as an objective authority on science even though his contribution to the field centers on attacking scientists, journalists, and others at the behest of the corporations that pay him.

Demonstrative of this cozy relationship is a 2015 Monsanto PR plan that identified Genetic Literacy Project as one of its “industry partners.” Monsanto planned to engage GLP and numerous other similarly affiliated “independent” third parties to “protect the reputation” of Roundup and “orchestrate outcry” about the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) conclusions about glyphosate. In 2015, IARC performed an exhaustive scientific review on glyphosate and concluded the chemical is a “probable human carcinogen.”

As of today, GLP has posted over 280 articles about IARC. Some of these articles include personal attacks concerning the scientists who served on the IARC Working Group tasked with evaluating glyphosate, calling them “frauds,”“liars,” and “greed-driven.”

Tax records show that the Council for Biotechnology Information (CBI), a chemical industry trade group, paid Ketchum public relations firm more than $11 million from 2013-2016 to run GMO Answers, a website where consumers purportedly get straight answers from “independent experts” about genetically engineered foods.

A CBI / Ketchum document unearthed in the Roundup litigation lists Jon Entine, Bruce Chassy, Kevin Folta and others as“target authors.” Entine was to rebut the review, ‘GMO Myths and Truths’ by Dr. Michael Antoniou, which asserted, “Roundup has never been tested or assessed for long-term safety for regulatory purposes but independent studies show it is highly toxic to animals and humans.”

Monsanto (now Bayer) was and is a member of CBI and provides funding to GMO Answers. According to the website, the independent experts on GMO Answers “are not paid by GMO Answers to answer questions.”

The notion that “experts” like Entine were not paid for their contributions to GMO Answers runs counter to an internal email from Monsanto’s Eric Sachs. Sachs worked on a plan for Monsanto and other companies to support an “Academic Review” (a similar website where pro-industry academic Bruce Chassy and others could respond to and attack the work of those critical of GMOs). In the email, Sachs wrote: “From my perspective, the problem is one of expert engagement and that could be solved by paying some experts to provide responses…The key will be keeping Monsanto in the background so as not to harm the credibility of the information.”

In 2014 and 2015, Entine partnered with Chassy and Folta to organize industry-funded conferences at the University of Florida and UC Davis “to train scientists and journalists to frame the debate over GMOs and the toxicity of glyphosate,” as Paul Thacker reported in The Progressive.

Paul D. Thacker

@thackerpd

1/6 Emails on behind the scenes maneuvering by #Monsanto consultants and third party groups. First, @KarlHvM of @biofortified emails Agbiochatter complaining about @tomphilpott of @MotherJones and #FOIA https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6382789-Karl-Von-Mogel-Complaining.html …

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Litigation documents show that Chassy and other pro-industry experts like him aren’t known for pulling any punches in the framing of the GMO / glyphosate debate. To the contrary, his inflammatory language discussing the pro-industry side of the debate is downright abusive.

In one document, Chassy likens reporting from a journalist discussing health risks associated with GMOs to “playing Whack-a-mole at the carnival.” He tells Daniel Goldstein, a Monsanto executive, “[w]e’ll be working on this too. Isn’t freedom of speech wonderful?”

In another email, Chassy discusses the Open Letter to Monsanto from Moms Across America, a non-profit organization critical of Monsanto and Roundup. “That’s your enemy,” Chassy says to another academic and Goldstein. “Beat the shit out of them and put them on the defensive and you won’t have this problem.”

By Baum Hedlund|September 10th, 2019|Blog, Monsanto Roundup News

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https://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/anti-gmo-group-sues-ucd-over-public-records-requests/

2016

a national nonprofit group is suing UC Davis to comply with requests for public records related to the university’s work on genetically modified organisms, pesticides and its relationship with the agrichemical industry.

Gary Ruskin, co-founder and co-director of U.S. Right to Know said, “We are conducting this investigation of the food and agrichemical industries in an effort to improve the food we eat and the health of all Americans.”

Since Jan. 28, 2015, U.S. Right to Know has filed 17 public-records requests with UCD, the group said in a statement, “but the university has provided a total of merely 751 pages in response to all of these requests, while similar requests at other universities have yielded thousands of pages each.”

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday in the Yolo County Superior Court against the Regents of the University of California.

A specific issue that Ruskin is concerned with involves Jon Entine, listed on UCD’s World Food Center as a “senior fellow.”

In March of 2015, U.S. Right to Know filed a request with UC Office of the President asking for all correspondences to or from Entine to any staff of 19 organizations, including Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont and Dow.

In March of this year, Ruskin wrote a letter to UCD Chancellor Linda Katehi asking that she and the university reveal the sources of funding for Entine’s work with the Genetic Literacy Project, the UC Davis Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, and its parent unit, the UC Davis World Food Center.”

On April 7, Josette Lewis, associate director of the World Food Center, responded to Ruskin on behalf of Katehi saying, “The World Food Center has not accepted any industry funding to support IFAL, Mr. Entine, or the Genetic Literacy Project.”

She further stated that Entine serves in a non-compensated role as a senior fellow.

UCD has not provided an estimate of when it will fill the remainder of the PRA requests, according to U.S. Right to Know’s statement. “It originally estimated production of documents in April 2015.It has completed only one response — regarding the soda industry — but none of the 16 requests related to the agrichemical industry.”

UCD spokeswoman Dana Topousis said on Friday, “As is our normal practice, we have been working diligently on U.S. Right to Know PRA requests, in addition to responding to a higher volume of other PRA requests over the last year.”

A copy of the complaint is available at http://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/UCDaviscomplaint.pdf

—Reach Tanya Perez at tperez@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8082. Follow her on Twitter at @EnterpriseTanya

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Jon Entine

Cincinnati, Ohio500+ connections

About

Jon Entine is founder and executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, an independent foundation-funded web hub that examines the intersection of media and policy on human and agricultural biotechnology issues. He is a former senior fellow at the World Food Center Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy at the University of California-Davis, focusing on science policy and risk management. He was a longtime consultant on corporate responsibility though his company ESG MediaMetrics, where he helped produce sustainability reports for corporations. He has written more than 1,000 articles and columns, and was a long-time columnist for British-based Ethical Corporation (author of "The Contrarian" column), Huffington Post, Forbes, Slate and Science 2.0. He is the author/editor of seven books, including "Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture"; "Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health"; and "Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing". Past best sellers include "Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of The Chosen People" and "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It" which was based on an award winning documentary that Jon wrote and produced with Tom Brokaw at NBC News, "Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction." Before becoming a writer, Jon spent 19 years with ABC, CBS, and NBC News as a writer, producer and executive, producing more than 400 video stories and winning 20 major awards including two Emmys and a National Press Club Award.

Specialties: biotechnology, agricultural policy, media bias, public policy research, reputation management, crisis management, sustainability, ethics, energy extraction, chemicals, NGOs, transparency.

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Experience

Genetic Literacy Project

Executive Director

Genetic Literacy Project

Dec 2011 – Present8 years 1 month

University of California Davis Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy

Senior Fellow

University of California Davis Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy

Oct 2014 – Present5 years 3 months

Davis, CA

Genetic Literacy Project

Founder and Executive Director

Genetic Literacy Project

Dec 2010 – Present9 years 1 month

Washington, DC

American Enterprise Institute

Visting Fellow

American Enterprise Institute

Nov 2002 – Present17 years 2 months

Washington, DC

Publications

Let Them Eat Precaution: How politics is undermining the genetic revolution in agriculture

AEI PressJanuary 1, 2006

Authors from the United States and the United Kingdom deconstruct the controversies of agriculturalbiotechnology and offer solutions to the current impasse.

Rants and recriminations

“Critics,” wrote Reuters, “argue that IARC shouldn’t have allowed him to be involved in the assessment of glyphosate.”Remarkable detail: the news agency—which declined to respond to Le Monde— meanwhile quoted three scientists who castigate the institution, without ever mentioning that all three are widely known to be industry consultants. But who are these nameless “critics”? In reality, the criticism of IARC can be traced back to the blog of David Zaruk, a former lobbyist for the chemical industry, who has worked at some point for the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller.

In Brusssels, where he is based, Zaruk is infamous for his penchant for insults (the authors of this article have been his targets several times). He was the first to protest against Portier’s conflicts of interest, which he considers undermine IARC’s opinion. And he has persistently flayed the American scientist in the course of no less than twenty long posts around the topic of glyphosate – not to mention his tweets.

Professor Portier is described successively as an “activist”, a “rat”, a “demon”, a “weed”, a “mercenary”, and even a “little shit”, who “wormed his way” into the fruit that is IARC. To him, the agency is like a “scab”, and “the more” he “pick[s] at it”, “the more pus [he sees] coming out” because IARC is “infected by its hubris,” and “infected by politicised activist science” and “infected by anti-industry bias.”

Zaruk says he has had “three contacts” with Monsanto but denies he has been remunerated for his writing. “I did not receive a penny for my blogs on glyphosate,” he stated in an email to Le Monde. In April 2017, he published again a diatribe against NGOs, Christopher Portier and several journalists, which he illustrated with a photograph of Nazis burning books on the Opernplatz in Berlin in 1933.

Zaruk’s ramblings could have been easily checked and invalidated. But the prestigious guarantee of a Reuters’ article gave the go-ahead to their wide dissemination. Within a few weeks, the accusations of conflicts of interest were transmitted and quoted in The Times of London, the daily The Australian, and in the U.S. in National Review and The Hill under the signature of Bruce Chassy, an emeritus professor of the University of Illinois funded by Monsanto—as confidential documents obtained by the association US Right to Know (USRTK) in September 2015 have shown.

Conflicts of interests

Zaruk’s “work” was also cited in Forbes magazine in an op-ed signed by a biologist affiliated with the Hoover Institution, a think tank close to the Republican party. His name appears in declassified archives of the tobacco industry. At that time, this man would offer to write columns or land media appearances to “communicat[e on] risks and science”. Rates between $5,000 and $15,000.

The attacks of the Brussels blogger were also echoed by well-known propaganda websites, such as the American Council on Science and Health and the Genetic Literacy Project. Fed by PR people linked to the pesticides and biotechnology industries, the latter published an article about Christopher Portier and IARC signed by Andrew Porterfield, who describes himself quite simply as a “communications consultant for the biotechnology industry.”

And what about the suggestion that Portier faces conflicts of interest? Did the Environmental Defense Fund—through him—weigh in in favor of IARC’s decision to classify glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen”? “Because he had a link to this organization, Portier had the status of ‘invited specialist’,” explains Kathryn Guyton, IARC’s scientist in charge of Monograph 112. This means that he was consulted by the working group but didn’t contribute to the decision to classify the chemical in one category or the other. Real conflicts of interest however exist—but elsewhere.

In May 2016, while the press and the blogosphere were all out in relaying suspicions of malpractice at IARC, it was the turn of another group of UN experts to release their opinion. The Joint Meeting on Pesticides Residues (JMPR), a joint WHO and UN Food and Agriculture (FAO) organization group that rules on risks related to food (and not to exposure via inhalation, skin contact, etc) cleared glyphosate.

Almost one year earlier, a coalition of NGOs had warned WHO about conflicts of interest in the JMPR. Three of its members collaborate with the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), a scientific lobby organization financed by major agribusiness, biotechnologies and chemical industries—from Mars to Bayer and from Kellogg to Monsanto.

Serious allegations

Toxicologist Alan Boobis (Imperial College, United Kingdom) was serving as copresident of JMPR but also chair of ILSI’s board of trustees. Angelo Moretto (University of Milano, Italy) was rapporteur in the JMPR while acting as an industry consultant and member of the board of trustees of a structure created by ILSI. Vicky Dellarco, also a member of JMPR, was an industry consultant and a member of various ILSI working groups.

JMPR experts are supposedly subjected to the same independence rules—among the strictest in the world—as those applied at IARC, namely the WHO rules. Because it can alter the credibility of the institution and its decisions, an apparent conflict of interest is as serious as an actual conflict of interest. However, questioned by Le Monde, the WHO confirms that “no expert was deemed to have had a conflict of interest preventing their participation in the JMPR.”

This answer left Hilal Elver and Baskut Tuncak dissatisfied; they are respectively the Special UN Rapporteur on right to food and theSpecial UN Rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes.

“We respectfully call upon WHO to explain how exactly it came to the conclusion that the experts’ ties to industry did not present an apparent or potential conflict of interest under its own rules” is how these two experts reacted when questioned by Le Monde. “Strong, clear and transparent processes for conflicts of interest are essential for the integrity of the system” they said before “encouraging” the organizations of the United Nations to “review” them.

These two experts wrote in their report on the right to food that some “serious claims” exist “of scientists being ‘bought’ to re-state industry talking points.” The report, which was handed over to the United Nations Human Rights Council in March 2017, also underlined that: “The pesticide industry’s efforts… have obstructed reforms and paralyzed global pesticide restrictions globally.” Throwing discredit on IARC, its working group experts and the quality of the scientific work accomplished—these “efforts” are of strategic importance, even vital necessity, to Monsanto.

Court cases underway in the United States

Close on Monsanto’s heels are several U.S. law firms representing victims or relatives of victims who have died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL), a rare cancer that affects white blood cells which they attribute to exposure to glyphosate. For their lawyers, IARC’s Monograph 112 constitutes an essential piece of evidence. For Monsanto, Monograph 112 could weigh heavily on the final verdicts. According to legal documents, the amount of damages and other payments in the U.S. could well amount to billions of dollars for the 800 plaintiffs—a number that will “probably” rise to 2,000 by the end of the year, according to Timothy Litzenburg, a lawyer at The Miller

Firm. Confidential memos, spreadsheets and internal briefs: all in all, ten million pages taken from the boxes in Monsanto’s archives and from entrails of its PCs. This is the amount of documents that the company has been forced to hand over to the court to date. In the U.S., a procedure called “discovery” allows this kind of raid on the adversary’s paperwork.

From the mass of scanned documents, released drip by drip, that are the “Monsanto Papers”, the multinational’s response plan emerges. Take this “confidential” PowerPoint document dated March 11, 2015, with slides that develop a strategy of influence in the form of “Scientific Projects.” Among other ideas, a “comprehensive evaluation of carcinogenic potential” of glyphosate by “credible scientists,” and “possibly via Expert Panel Concept” is mentioned. That will be done.

In September 2016, a series of six articles appeared in the scientific journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology. They exonerated glyphosate. But, as the publication was openly “sponsored and supported” by Monsanto, would anything other than this have been possible?

The authors were the sixteen members of the “glyphosate experts panel” to whom Monsanto confided the task to “review the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) monograph on glyphosate.”

Their recruitment was delegated toIntertek, a consultancy specialized in the production of scientific material for companies facing regulatory or legal difficulties related to their products. Monsanto and its allies also called on the services of Exponent and Gradient, two other firms engaged in the business of “product defense.”

“Glyphosate task force”

The crisis management PowerPoint also envisaged the publication of an article about IARC itself: “How it was formed, how it functions, hasn’t evolved over time, they are archaic and not needed now.” The scientist who was suggested as a possible author has published nothing on the issue so far.

However, an article that perfectly matches the hostile specifications was published in a minor journal in October 2016. IARC’s system of classification has “become outmoded” and “serve[s] neither science nor society,” wrote the 10 authors. “This is how eating processed meat can fall into the same category as sulfur mustard gas.” IARC’s approach, they said, is at the origin of “health scares, unnecessary economic costs, loss of beneficial products, adoption of strategies with greater health costs, and the diversion of public funds into unnecessary research.”

It was a very unusual tone for a scientific journal. This is perhaps because Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology is a special kind of publication. Not only does its editorial board include numerous industry players and consultants but also its editor in chief, Gio Gori, is a well-known figure in the history of the tobacco industry.

Owned by the powerful scientific publishing group Elsevier, this is the official journal of a supposedly scholarly society, the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology & Pharmacology (ISRTP). No significant information about the society is available on its website and neither Gori nor ISRTP nor Elsevier responded to questions from Le Monde. It has therefore not even been possible to identify anyone in charge – let alone its sources of funding. However, last time ISRTP published its sponsors, in 2008, the list of six included Monsanto.

As to the 10 authors of the article, some of them have worked or are currently working for the Swiss group Syngenta, a member of the “glyphosate task force” of the industrial players selling glyphosate products. Some are private consultants. Others are academic scientists and take part in the activities of the scientific lobbying organization, ILSI. Among them are Samuel Cohen, professor of oncology at the university of Nebraska, Alan Boobis, co-president of JMPR, and Angelo Moretto, rapporteur of the same JMPR.

“Shock tactics”

These three scientists pursued the trail. A few months later, they published on the propaganda website called the Genetic Literacy Project, which had relayed the personal attacks against Christopher Portier, a text claiming that IARC “should be abolished.”

The agency was accused of fuelling “chemophobia” among the public. If it is not reformed, they wrote, IARC “should be relegated to the regulatory museum where it belongs, along with other historical artifacts, such as the Model T Ford, the biplane, and the rotary dial telephone.”

In scientific circles, convention holds that the author of the first draft of a text takes responsibility for any modifications up until the very last corrections. Which one of the authors wrote these two texts—published by the scientific journal and on the Genetic Literacy Project website? “I can’t remember,” replied Alan Boobis when asked by Le Monde, explaining “it was a whole process,” and that the writing had “undergone quite a lot of refinement over the year.”

This is “a bit of shock tactic,” acknowledged Boobis. Asked why the article was published on this website, Boobis admitted that the Genetic Literacy Project was not famous for its rigour, but explained that the text was refused by a scientific journal. Their arguments are identical to those of Monsanto and their allies. “This is a very odd position that we’ve reached that any association with industry whatsoever is regarded immediately as an indication of bias, corruption, confounding, distortion or whatever,” answered Boobis.

Is the “abolition” of IARC what Monsanto wants? The corporation did not wish to answer Le Monde’s questions.

https://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-industrys-master-messenger/

see 2016 version below:

Posted on July 18, 2017 by Gary Ruskin

Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a central player in Monsanto and the agrichemical industry’s public relations efforts to promote genetically engineered foods and pesticides and discredit critics. Entine portrays himself as a science journalist and an objective authority on issues important to the chemical industry. But the evidence shows that he is actually a longtime public relations operative with deep ties to the chemical industry, including undisclosed industry funding. His work features the defense of GMOs, pesticides, industrial chemicals, the oil industry, fracking and nuclear power.

Ties to Monsanto

Entine’s former PR firm promised to “address an unfilled frustration voiced by corporations.”

Entine founded ESG MediaMetrics, a communications firm whose clients included Monsanto and the VinylInstitute.

A Le Monde investigation into Monsanto’s “war on science” in June 2017 describes the Genetic Literacy Project as “a propaganda site” and a key player in Monsanto’s communication and lobbying networks.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys suing Monsanto over glyphosate cancer concerns stated in a May 2017 brief that:

“Monsanto quietly funnels money to ‘think tanks’ such as the “Genetic Literacy Project” and the “American Council on Science and Health,” organizations intended to shame scientists and highlight information helpful to Monsanto and other chemical producers.

The evidence suggests that Genetic Literacy Project and Entine work closely with the agrichemical industry in hidden collaborations, and sometimes in ways that involve undisclosed funding.

According to emails obtained by US Right to Know, GLP published a series of pro-GMO papers written by professors that were assigned and promoted by Monsanto, with no disclosure of the corporation’s role:

The Boston Globe reported, Monsanto suggested the topic and headline for a professor’s paper “then connected the professor with a marketing company to pump it out over the Internet as part of Monsanto’s strategy to win over the public and lawmakers.”
In a September 2014 email, Monsanto executive Eric Sachs wrote to a professor with “proposed edits on your brief on the costs of regulations,” and told him “the primary outlet” for publishing the papers and “building a merchandising plan” with the public relations firm CMA would be Entine’s Genetic Literacy Project.

In 2014 and 2015, Genetic Literacy Project partnered with a Monsanto-backed group, Academics Review, to sponsor the Biotechnology Literacy Project “Boot Camps,” a series of conferences designed to teach scientists how to “best engage the GMO debate with a skeptical public.” Reporters were told the funding for the 2015 BLP Boot Camp at UC Davis came from UC Davis, USDA, state money, and the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)— in fact, the industry group appears to have provided all the funding, as Paul Thacker reported in 2017. (See section on Entine’s funding for more.)

Entine was also linked to three pro-GMO journalists – Keith Kloor, Washington Post food columnist Tamar Haspel and New York Times reporter Amy Harmon – in FOIA documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know.

In a December 2013 email, Entine offered to take the lead on setting up a conference call with Monsanto and PR surrogates to discuss a documentary film idea.

Ties to Syngenta

The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a corporate front group funded in part by the agrichemical company Syngenta, published Entine’s 2011 book, “Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health.” The book defends atrazine, a pesticide manufactured by Syngenta.

A 2012 Mother Jones article about Entine describes the circumstances leading up to the publication of the book. The article, by Tom Philpott, is based in part on internal company documents, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, describing Syngenta’s PR efforts to get third-party allies to spin media coverageof atrazine.

In one email from 2009, ACSH staff asked Syngenta for an additional $100,000 – “separate and distinct from general operating support Syngenta has been so generously providing over the years” – to produce an atrazine-friendly paper and “consumer-friendly booklet” to help educate media and scientists.

ACSH’s announcement for Entine’s book:

“The American Council on Science and Health is pleased to announce a new book and companion friendly, abbreviated position paper … authored by Jon Entine, a scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and highly regarded science journalist … ACSH compiled this resource book and position to educate legislators, industry, media, consumers and parents on the actual risks of chemical exposure and use in everyday products.”

Entine denied any relationship with Syngenta and told Philpott he had “no idea” Syngenta was funding ACSH.

Attacks on Syngenta Critics

In a 2014 New Yorker article, based on internal Syngenta documents, Rachel Aviv revealed how Syngenta’s public relations team plotted to “discredit” UC Berkeley Professor Tyrone Hayes, whose research suggests that the herbicide atrazine is associated with birth defects. In emails, Syngenta employees discussed a psychological profile of Hayes and searched for ways to “exploit Hayes’ faults/problems.”

A month later, Entine wrote an attack piece in Forbes describing Aviv’s story as a “botch puff piece” and calling Hayes “almost completely discredited.” Entine’s primary source was a “summary analysis” by University of Illinois Professor Emeritus Bruce Chassy, posted on Academics Review. Academics Review, which also partners with Entine to promote GMOs, claimed to be an independent group started by independent scientists, but emailsobtained by USRTK establish that Academics Review was set up with the help of Monsanto as a front group to attack people and groups who raise concerns about GMOs and pesticides.

The Murky Funding Trail to Entine and the Genetic Literacy Project

Entine’s funding history is complex and opaque, but tax documents and his own disclosures reveal a pattern of funding from anonymous sources and right-wing foundations that push deregulation and climate science denial, as well as undisclosed funding from the biotechnology industry.

Inaccurate, ever-changing “transparency” note

The “financial transparency” note on the Genetic Literacy Project website is inaccurate, changes often and at times contradicts itself.

As of July 18, 2017, the funding note claimed Genetic Literacy Project was housed under a nonprofit called Science Literacy Project, and received funding from the Templeton, Searle and Winkler foundations and the Center for Food Integrity (a food industry front-group with ties to Monsanto).

Three months earlier, in March 2017, GLP disclosed a $5,000 “pass through” for the Biotech Literacy Boot Camp from “Academics Review Charitable Association,” which appears not to exist. That group is apparently AcademicsReview.org, a front group closely affiliated with Monsanto. The disclosure said the money came from BIO, the biotechnology industry trade association. A September 2016 disclosure note reported $27,000 in “pass through” funds from Academics Review Charitable Association for the boot camps, but did not mention BIO.

The Academics Review partnership was removed from the GLP disclosure altogether after Paul Thacker reported on July 11 2017, that BIO had paid Academics Review over $300,000 for boot camps in 2014 and 2015 at UC Davis and the University of Florida that were co-sponsored by GLP. Industry appeared to be the only funder but Entine and his partner told journalists and scientists that the boot camps were partly funded by university and government sources.

The new funding note also misleadingly describes GLP as independent of the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) and GMU, and does not disclose that STATS and its sister group CMPA paid Entine over a half million dollars between 2012-2016. In 2012, Entine claimed that he derived the bulk of his income from the Genetic Literacy Project, according to reporting by Tom Philpott.

In March 2016, Genetic Literacy Project made no financial disclosures at all and tried to distance itself from STATS. In 2012, the Genetic Literacy Project claimed it was affiliated with STATS.

Center for Media and Public Affairs/George Mason University

For the year ending June 2016, according to tax records, Entine received $173,100 for his work as “director” at Center for Media and Public Affairs, a group based at George Mason University and founded by GMU Professor Robert Lichter.

CMPA was paid by Phillip Morris in the 1990s to deflect concerns about tobacco, according to documents in the UCSF Tobacco Industry Library.

CMPA does not disclose its funders but has received funding from George Mason University Foundation — the leading recipient of donations affiliated with Charles Koch and Koch Industries. GMUF also received $5.3 million from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund between 2011-13, according to the Guardian. These funds channel money from anonymous donors including corporations to campaigns and academics who push industry interests, as Greenpeace demonstrated in an undercover investigation.

STATS – key player in chemical industry defense efforts

CMPA’s sister group, also founded by Lichter and based at GMU, is Statistical Assessment Services (STATS). According to its IRS forms, STATS paid Entine $140,600 in 2012/2013 and $152,500 in 2013/2014 for his work as a “research consultant,” and $173,100 as “director” for the year ending June 2015. The tax records show that Entine received a total of $639,300 from STATS or CMPA between 2012-2016

CMPA has loaned money to STATS – a $203,611 loan in 2012 and a $163,914 loan in 2013, which “due to inadequate funding” has “not been reimbursed.” In those years, George Mason University Foundation gave CMPA grants in the amount of $220,900 in 2012 and $75,670 in 2013. GMU Foundation does not disclose the source of its funds.

Reporting in The Intercept, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Atlantic and Consumer Reports portray STATS as a key player in the chemical industry’s PR efforts to defend its toxic products.

Biotechnology industry funding

The GMO-industry trade group, BIO, paid a total of $340,000 to fund Biotech Literacy Boot Camps at the University of Florida in 2014 and UC Davis in 2015 that were co-sponsored by the Genetic Literacy Project and Academics Review, which boot camp materials described as “an independent nonprofit organization.” In fact, Academics Review was set up as a front group with the help of a Monsanto executive who promised to find funding for Academics Review “while keeping Monsanto in the background so as not to harm the credibility of the information,” according to emails obtained by US Right to Know.

The BLP Boot Camps were described as a “communication skills training” for scientists and journalists to help reframe the food safety and GMO debate, and promised to provide scientists with the “tools and support resources necessary to effectively engage the media and appear as experts in legislative and local government hearings, and other policy making and related outreach opportunities.”

Faculty at the first first boot camp included representatives from the agrichemical industry, food industry front groups and trade groups, and pro-GMO academics including University of Florida Professor Kevin Folta, and University of Illinois Professor Emeritus Bruce Chassy, both of whom have accepted undisclosed funding from Monsanto and promote the GMOs and pesticides that Monsanto sales rely upon. Washington Post food columnist Tamar Haspel, who also accepts money from agribusiness interests, was the journalist on faculty.

Climate science denier funders

Major supporters of STATS and Entine’s group Genetic Literacy Project also include right-wing foundations – primarily Scaife Foundation, Searle Freedom Trust and Templeton Foundation – that are leading funders of climate science denial, according to a 2013 Drexel University study.

See USRTK investigation: Climate Science Denial Network Funds Toxic Chemical Propaganda.

Attacks on Critics of ExxonMobil

Entine attacked Harvard professor Naomi Oreskes, co-author of Merchants of Doubt, as “a populist Luddite, the intellectual Rottweiler of in-your-face, environmentalism, unduly wary of modern technology.”

Entine attacked Columbia Journalism School Dean Steve Coll and journalist Susanne Rust for their series reporting that Exxon knew for years that climate change was real but hid the science to keep revenues flowing.

In a follow-up attack, Entine accused Rust of having a “journalistic history” that raises “ethical and science questions.” He cited as evidence Rust’s award-winning investigative series on BPA that was short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize. The BPA reporting, he wrote, was “dead wrong.” He didn’t mention that the series outed his former group STATS as a “major player in the public relations effort to discredit concerns about BPA.”

Chemical Industry Defense Guy

For many years, Entine has been a prominent defender of chemical industry interests, following the industry playbook: he defends the chemicals as safe; argues against regulation; and attacks science, scientists journalists and others raising concerns.

Defending Neonicotinoids

Growing scientific evidence suggests that neonicotinoids, the most widely used class of pesticides, are a key factor in bee die-offs. The European Union has restricted neonics due to concerns about impact on bees.

Entine:

Argues that neonics are not key driver of bee deaths (American Enterprise Institute).

Attacked a Harvard professor’s study on bee Colony Collapse Disorder (American Enterprise Institute).

Claimed neonics may actually help bee health (American Enterprise Institute and Forbes).

Accused European politicians of trying to kill bees by restricting neonics (Forbes).

Defending Phthalates

In August of 2012, Entine defended vinyl plastic backpacks that were found to be exposing children to phthalates.

Entine wrote: “Few chemicals on the market today have undergone as much scientific scrutiny as phthalate esters” (Forbes). He didn’t mention that a significant body of scientific evidence compiled over two decades links phthalate exposures to abnormal reproductive development in baby boys.

Entine criticized an NBC reporter for “shoddy journalism” for raising questions about the safety of phthalates (Forbes).

Entine’s communications firm, ESG MediaMetrics, had the Vinyl Institute as a client. However, Entine did not disclose that in his Forbes articles on phthalates.

Defending Fracking

Entine defends hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), the pumping of high-pressure chemical-laced water into the ground to crack shale and extract natural gas. As in his many other messaging campaigns, Entine blasts science and scientists who raise concerns, framing them as “activists,” while making sweeping and indefensible statements about “scrupulous” science conducted over many years that defend its safety.

For example, Entine claimed: “From a scientific perspective, no reason exists to even suspect unknown health or environmental issues will turn up” from fracking (New York Post).

Entine also:

Accused New York Times reporters of misleading children about the potential environmental dangers of fracking (Forbes).

Attacked two Cornell University scientists for their study suggesting that fracking operations leak methane (Forbes).

Attacked the Park Foundation, claiming that it has “almost single-handedly derailed shale-gas development in methane-rich New York State, and put its imprint on public opinion and policy decisions around the country.” (Philanthropy Roundtable)

Defending BPA

Entine writes in defense of the chemical bisphenol A (BPA), despite a large body of scientific evidence raising concerns about its endocrine disrupting potential and other health problems associated with it. Canada declared the chemical to be toxic in 2010, and the EU banned BPA in baby bottles in 2011.

Entine:

Attacked “a small but determined group of university researchers, activist NGOs and journalists” raising concerns about BPA (Forbes).

Tells women who can’t get pregnant not to blame it on plastics (Forbes).

Challenged scientists linking BPA to heart disease (Forbes).

Defending Nuclear Power

Entine:

Criticized Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes for pointing out the economic and environmental risks of nuclear power (Huffington Post).

Claims that nuclear power plants are environmentally benign and that “Nothing as bad as Chernobyl is likely to occur in the West” (Jon Entine).

Argued that Germany is “taking a gamble” by transitioning away from nuclear power (Ethical Corporation)

Fellowships

Entine was an unpaid fellow at the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University (GMU) from 2011-2014. Entine is also a former senior fellow at the UC Davis World Food Center’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, which does not disclose its donors, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a DC think tank funded in part by corporate and dark money contributions.

See also, Greenpeace Polluter Watch page on Jon Entine and “the hidden story of the Genetic Literacy Project.”

Food For Thought, Hall of Shame, Our Investigations Amy Harmon, Bruce Chassy, Chemophobia, Genetic Literacy Project, Jon Entine, Keith Kloor, Kevin Folta, Monsanto, Syngenta, Tamar Haspel

https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MDLLetNothingGomotion.pdf

Monsanto’s claimed concerns for this litigation leaving the bounds of this

courtroom are belied by its own activities day in, day out. This Motion was prompted by

Monsanto waiving its own confidentiality designations to place Dr. Heydens’ litigationdeposition-transcript

quotes on its own public-consumption website.

A careful look at

even the documents attached to motions practice thus far in this case so far elucidates

the Monsanto tort defense strategy; work furiously outside the courtroom to produce

carefully-timed “literature” and regulatory decisions that might aid in litigation defense.

Monsanto even started the aptly-named “Let Nothing Go” program to leave nothing, not

even facebook comments, unanswered; through a series of third parties, it employs

individuals who appear to have no connection to the industry, who in turn post positive

comments on news articles and Facebook posts, defending Monsanto, its chemicals, and

GMOs.

Monsanto quietly funnels money to “think tanks” such as the “Genetic Literacy

Project” and the “American Council on Science and Health,” organizations intended to

shame scientists and highlight information helpful to Monsanto and other chemical

producers. Recent headlines from the GLP include:

? “WHO’s IARC cancer hazard agency: Can it be reformed or should it be

abolished?” (April 18, 2017);

1 This topic is covered at length in the David Heering deposition; Plaintiffs will not clog the Court’s workload with

collaterally-related transcripts – Monsanto also insists that almost that entire deposition is “confidential,” but will

gladly provide to the Court on request.

Case 3:16-md-02741-VC Document 246-2 Filed 04/20/17 Page 2 of 5

? “Is the US Unwittingly Funding Anti-Agriculture and anti-Monsanto

Conspiracy Theories?” (April 13, 2017), and, richly, in the context of recent

motions and controversy:

? “EPA Deserves Some Respect.” (March 27, 2017)

Recent articles from the ironically-named “American Council on Science and Health”

include:

? “Glyphosate: NYT’s Danny Hakim is Lying to You.” (March 15, 2017)

? “IARC has Threatened us” (April 26, 2017)

? “IARC’s Ruling on Glyphosate Ignores the Science” (March 23, 2015)

The Court, and certainly the attorneys here, will recall similar “institutes” and “academies”

funded by the tobacco industry in the past. Neither GLP nor ACSH list Monsanto as

donors/supporters; but Monsanto cannot deny it funds them.

More to the point of the instant litigation, phased discovery, and experts in this

case, Christopher Portier, disclosed consulting expert for the Plaintiffs in this litigation,

“invited specialist” to the IARC working group on glyphosate, and featured speaker at this

Court’s recent Science Day, is already the target of a Monsanto “hatchet job”, again run

through several intermediaries. See Exhibit 1,

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/06/29/built-success-nigerian-football-players-benefit-vastly-genes-culture-brains/

---

https://joanconrow.net/about/

I have more than 35 years of experience in journalism and multimedia communications, covering agriculture, politics, land use planning, conservation, native species protection, natural resource management, environmental law, Hawaiian culture, and travel, among many other topics. I have reported in India, the Western Pacific, and the US, with nearly three decades in Hawaii. I currently am a Visiting Fellow and managing editor at the Cornell Alliance for Science.

My professional services include all kinds of writing, reporting, interviewing, editing, scripting, video production, communications project management, blog and website content development, and multimedia asset planning. I specialize in international agriculture and crop/livestock biotechnology.

The Cornell Alliance for Science is an initiative based at Cornell University, a non-profit institution.

The Cornell Alliance for Science has no affiliation with any biotechnology industry organizations. In the interest of transparency, all of the funding organizations, along with the total amounts accepted, are listed below and is updated regularly:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation $5.6 M

The Winkler Family Foundation $10,000

American Endowment Foundation $5,000

Ian Gazard $5,000

Mr. John Hilliard $3,000

The Triad Foundation $2,500

John Hilliard $2,000

John Crary $1,000

Peter Davies $1000

Surveillant LLC / John Friedrich Behringer $1,000

Professor Larry P. Walker $1,000

2/17 bs

https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2017/03/01/bias-new-york-times-truth-hard-reporting-bees-neonicotinoid-pesticides/

...

It’s a powerful message, one that the public and the media should reflect upon—including the leadership at the Times itself. Whether a journalist presents a story in good faith but wrongly can be a matter of healthy debate. But increasingly, a more troubling ethical line is being crossed: some writers choose to arrange facts, or even invent them, in ways that erase nuances to advance a storyline arrived at before independent reporting even commences. That leaves editors as the public’s last bastion of integrity. But to fulfill their responsibility, editors need to be aware of their own biases, or they risk crossing over from being guardians of the truth to creators of biased or even fake news.

Which brings us to the New York Times’ coverage of food and farming issues, most recently its reporting of what has come to be known in recent years as “beemageddon”— concerns that one of nature’s most important pollinators, the bee, faces a precarious future.

Are bees facing extinction as many environmental advocacy groups and some scientists claim? Are neonicotinoid pesticides the key reason behind their health problems, as many activists, and the Times, suggest?

Times’ Michael Pollan on presenting only one side of complex issues

Covering food and modern farming has not been the Times strong point. Journalist and foodie MIchael Pollan’s articles on the virtues of organic food and the dangers of ‘industrialized agriculture’ have been a Times’ staple since the early 2000s. In 2013, he bragged in a video interview with a fellow activist that he long has exploited the willingness of his editors to forego traditional vetting because they share his anti-industry perspective. View the video here:

...

BS? punked?

http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/gary-ruskin-and-jon-entine-tangle-over-the-gmo-corporate-connection/

4/16

Corporate Crime Reporter,

please give us a call at 202.468.8868 or write to us at:

russellmokhiber@gmail.com

or at:

Corporate Crime Reporter

1209 National Press Building

Washington, D.C. 20045

Jon Entine is senior fellow at the University of California Davis Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy.

Entine is also a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

He runs the Genetic Literacy Project — which is a project of a non profit he heads called the Science Literacy Project.

Now comes Gary Ruskin of US Right to Know in Oakland, California.

Ruskin says that Entine has a long history of defending corporate interests — chemical, nuclear, pesticides, GMO and fracking.

In March 2015, Ruskin filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with UC Davis asking for any correspondence between Entine and a string of corporate interests, including Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF,Dow, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

UC Davis has yet to produce the documents Ruskin requested.

Ruskin’s lawyer, Jessica Krupke of Sandler Reiff in Washington, D.C., sent a letter to UC Davis calling the year long delay “unreasonable.”

“Our client has instructed us that, if your office continues to disregard the requirements of the law by failing to provide an estimate of the date of production and by unreasonably delaying the production itself, we are to pursue all available legal remedies to obtain the disclosure of public records to which our client is entitled,” Krupke wrote.

Ruskin wrote earlier this month to UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi asking her “reveal the sources of UC Davis funding for Jon Entine, the Genetic Literacy Project, the UC Davis Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, and its parent unit, the UC Davis World Food Center.”

“We are concerned that UC Davis may be acting as a financial conduit to enable corporations to direct third-party public relations attacks against targeted academics, individuals and institutions.” Ruskin wrote. “There is a significant body of evidence that Entine acts as a chemical industry public relations operative. Perhaps you are aware that he has written dozens of articles defending corporate interests, and attacking a range of targets whose work criticizes or detracts from the profit interests of the chemical and fossil fuel industries. Most recently, the Columbia Journalism School, as well as academics at Harvard and UC Berkeley, were his focus for attack. Alongside his role as senior fellow at the UC Davis Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, Entine is also executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, which regularly attacks activists, journalists and scientists who raise concerns about the health and environmental risks of genetically engineered foods and pesticides.”

Entine says Ruskin is engaged in a “juvenile witch hunt.”

“The irony is that the Genetic Literacy Project receives 97% of its funding — the rest via the Internet/PayPay — from non partisan, independent foundations with no connection to the debate over GMOs, while Gary Ruskin’s US Right to Know gets $274,500 from the Organic Consumers Association, a fringe, anti-science group with huge influence in the organic community and throughout the web which benefits directly from scaring people about food and farming,” Entine told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “So while the Science Literacy Project/GLP is 100% funded by non-partisan 501(c)(3) foundations and individuals, Ruskin is a paid arm of one of the most extremist anti-science organizations in the US whose members directly benefit from the scare he can create around independent science.”

“And here’s the Alice in Wonderland world we live in,” Entine said. “We have a dramatic new technology called genetic engineering. It’s not risk free because nothing is. Research is expensive so governments are not in a position to take the lead on it, plus they are crappy at doing that anyway. Corporations pursue research in this, costing hundreds of millions in investments.”

“Reasonable regulations in place start getting distorted by anti-technology activists even though thirty years of research has shown an almost perfect record of safety and compliance. New tighter restrictions are put in place. Smaller corporations drop out of development because it’s too expensive. Now anti-technology activists complain GE has been taken over by large corporations, which are bad, so must be opposed, because they could control food supply. Governments begin developing smaller projects such as GE eggplant and wilt resistant banana and vitamin enhanced rice, with no corporate connections. They are condemned as Trojan Horses for Big Biotech. The food researchers develop inexpensive ways to tweak individual genes to stop browning in potatoes, apples and mushrooms. They are condemned as tools of the devil. Then a small company develops a sterile mosquito which would help prevent a Zika crisis, including in the US, and the same brainiacs believe it should be stopped, because it’s part of a larger plot of corporate takeover of the world.”

When did Entine start the Genetic Literacy Project?

“In 2011,” Entine says. “But I couldn’t get money directly. I had to go through a receiving foundation. I went through the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS) and asked if they would act as the receiving foundation for the money for it. They said — if you pay us eight percent or ten percent for operational costs, I forget what it was. I said — sure. So, that’s what I did. STATS doesn’t exist anymore, by the way.”

“Now it’s the Science Literacy Project — that’s the 501(c)(3). Under that is the Genetic Literacy Project and the Genetic Expert News Service.”

Who funds the Science Literacy Project?

“Money came in last year from the Templeton Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust, and the Winkler Family Trust.”

You have pro-GMO groups like yourself —

“I’m not a pro-GMO group,” Entine says. “How could you look at my site and even pretend to use those words? Sixty percent of what we talk about is human genetics. Why would you call that a pro-GMO group? Anyone who looks at it and comes to the conclusion that it’s a pro-GMO group can’t even add one plus one. We spent sixty percent of our resources or more on human genetic related issues. That’s been a large part of our focus and the focus of two of my books.”

“It’s a website about human genetics that does exactly what it says it does. It tries to look at human and agricultural genetics from a science point of view. It’s not a pro-GMO group. If bad things happen with GMOs — which I don’t believe exist as as concept — we write about it. We will carry articles by Gary Ruskin. It’s not like Gary Ruskin carries articles by me.”

You have posted articles by Gary Ruskin on your web site?

“We have printed articles by plenty of people who are pro-GMO on our web site. If Gary Ruskin could get an article in a major publication other than his own vanity site, we would print it. We do not print people from their vanity sites. And we do not print from NGO activist sites. If he is going to write an attack from an organic funded organization like USRTK, no I’m not going to print it. But if he has an article in Time magazine — we put up articles by Terry Gillam — who now works for Gary Ruskin — we have articles by her all the time.”

In his letter to UC Davis, Ruskin says that “there is a significant body of evidence that Entine acts as a chemical industry public relations operative.”

“There is no body of evidence,” Entine says.

Ruskin says Entine “has written dozens of articles defending corporate interests and attacking a range of targets.”

“I don’t believe that’s an accurate description of what we do. We report on the news. If a genetically modified mushroom happens to be safe and we report it — in Gary Ruskin’s eyes, that’s pro-GMO propaganda. In 98 percent of the world’s eyes, that’s science.”

You wrote a column March 1 in the New York Post that attacked the Columbia Journalism School. You argued that the school “smeared Exxon.”

“I’ll stand by the words that I wrote.”

Ruskin goes to public universities and seeks emails of people he considers to be corporate advocates and seeks their connections to corporations.

“I know exactly what Ruskin wants to do. His very first FOIA was directed at me. I know exactly what he wants to do.”

Is he going to find any evidence of UC Davis connections to corporate interests?Ruskin is saying that he is “concerned that UC Davis may be acting as a financial conduit to enable corporations to direct third-party public relations attacks against targeted academics, individuals and institutions.”

“He can say that all he wants, but there is no evidence to support it,” Entine said.

There have been other universities where he has found connections between the academics and the corporations.

“Gary Ruskin has a pathetically jaded view of what it means to have an interconnected world where corporations and universities and journalists act together. All I can say is that I don’t take any corporate money. The Genetic Literacy Project doesn’t take any corporate money. Our records are open.UC Davis got no corporate money funnelled from them to me. Ruskin has gone after me for a year and a half and done hundreds of Freedom of Information requests. And he hasn’t laid a hand on me. There is not one scintilla of evidence. It is all innuendo.”

Are you paid by UC Davis?

“No.”

What if there are corporate connections with the UC Davis Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy and the UC Davis World Food Center. Let’s say Ruskin uncovers corporate money going to those entities.

“Corporations have a right to be involved,” Entine said. “We are talking about land grant universities, universities required by the state constitution to be involved with the organization that improves agriculture. UC Davis and Oklahoma State and Iowa and Nebraska and others would be violating state law if they were not involved in many ways, financially and others, with corporations. They are required to be involved. That’s all I’ll say about it. This is silly. This sounds like a juvenile witch hunt by someone who is obsessed with corporations. Corporations do good things and corporations do bad things. Gary Ruskin does good things and bad things.”

“There is no there there.”

Have you debated anti-GMO people in public debates?

“Yes, at a New York Times food conference last October. I debated a guy from a natural products company.”

You are willing to debate someone like Michael Hansen of Consumers Union?

“Yes. He’s an ideologue. He’s not a serious person.”

You say they are ideologues. They say you are a corporate —

“They have no evidence of that. They are creating that out of the people I support.”

“I’m a science journalist. I have no corporate ties. GLP has no corporate funding. No one has found any. There is none. They can make all these accusations they want. They can say I’m bought and sold. They don’t have the evidence. It’s not there. We stand by the science. I’ve offered space on the GLP site.”

You have never taken money from corporate funders?

“When I give a speech, I do.”

Funding of your groups?

“No.”

Give me some recent speeches you have given and how much they have paid you?

“No. I’ve been paid at modest levels. I’ve spoken at the Australian National Press Club.”

What about corporate speeches?

“I have never given a speech for a corporation.”

What about industry groups?

“I have given speeches for various industries.”

Give us one example?

“I’m not playing that game with you.”

“I’m a skeptical guy who doesn’t take anybody at face value. I’ve been involved in trying to change the world in a positive way. I see people like Gary Ruskin and Michael Hansen as dangerous people. They are on the wrong side of goodness. They will hurt people. People will look back and see them as the ultra-reactionary right of this period of time, the ones who are so ideological and paranoid about technological progress that they are willing to subvert potential innovations purely on the speculation that corporations are somehow poised to take over the world.”

For the complete q/a format Interview with Jon Entine, see 30 Corporate Crime Reporter 17(12), April 25, 2016, [print edition only.]

entine ny post

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Killing drilling with farcical ‘science’

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The academic face of the anti-fracking movement — Cornell marine ecologist Robert Howarth — increasingly looks like he’s willing to turn science into farce. Last spring, the once-obscure professor became...

NY greens’ anti-drilling baloney

January 3, 2012 | 5:00am

Not long ago, environmental groups were heralding natural gas as a “bridge fuel to a more climate-friendly energy supply.” Today, New York “progressives” are leading the charge to demonize it...

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TABLOID

http://nypost.com/2016/03/01/how-the-columbia-journalism-school-smeared-exxon/

When the Columbia Journalism School set up a project in 2014 to generate articles on energy and the environment, was its real agenda to exploit ExxonMobil’s reputation as a climate-change villain?

The fellowship project culminated last fall in an LA Times series that accused the world’s largest oil company of downplaying the risks of climate change. InsideClimateNews, an aggressive online site known for its doomsday environmentalism, posted a nearly identical article, tapping Columbia’s research.

The stories paint a dark picture of the oil-industry icon, charging it with a cover-up that echoes the tobacco industry’s denial of health problems from cigarettes.

“Exxon,” the authors say, “made a strategic decision . . . to publicly emphasize doubt and uncertainty regarding climate change science even as its internal research embraced the growing scientific consensus.”

Exxon, the series claimed, had known for years that climate change was real — but hid the science to keep revenues flowing.

The Columbia fellows drew blood. In New York, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman— citing the reports — announced a probe into whether Exxon misled shareholders. Just last week, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli demanded the Securities and Exchange Commission force the company to provide “an annual assessment of the impact on its business of public climate change policies.”

In DC, too, some Democratic congressmen asked the Justice Department to launch a probe into a possible “conspiracy between Shell, ExxonMobil and potentially other companies in the fossil fuel industry.”

Yet the team’s approach appears to be biased and unprofessional. For one thing, it started with the preconceived belief that oil companies are malfeasant for not embracing costly, scientifically dubious amelioration policies.

Columbia’s swerve into advocacy journalism may have its roots in the 2013 appointment of Steve Coll as journalism-school dean. Coll is known for his polemic, “Private Empire: ExxonMobil and Power,” which led to his appointment. Months later, Columbia bestowed a Pulitzer on InsideClimateNews. Coll soon hatched the Energy and Environmental Reporting Project, partnering with the Exxon-loathing group.

He also recruited Susanne Rust, a decorated but controversial reporter known for journalism advocacy, most recently with California Watch. Columbia hid the source of the project’s funding: a number of ideologically oriented foundations.

In December, Exxon fired off a letter to Columbia President Lee Bollinger, noting that the fellows had “cherry-picked — and distorted — statements attributed to various company employees to wrongly suggest definitive conclusions about the risk of climate change were reached decades ago by company researchers.”

CJR itself questioned the project’s ethics: Schools are “increasingly producing professional journalism projects, often drawing funds from outside groups to help support the work,” wrote CJR. It challenged the “balance in what subjects get reported, as well as appropriate disclosure of the outside funders and their political leanings.”

The funders? A Who’s Who of anti-fossil-fuel groups: Energy Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Rockefeller Family Fund, Lorana Sullivan Foundation, Tellus Mater Foundation and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which also supports the J-school.

Is ExxonMobil a climate-denier — as the series insinuated? Not at all. The company has publicly acknowledged that human-induced climate change is real. In 2007 Chief Executive Rex Tillerson stated: “The risks to society and ecosystems from climate change could prove to be significant.”

But while consensus exists on warming, there is no consensus on how to address it. In a 2004 newspaper advertorial,Exxon said: “Scientific uncertainties continue to limit our ability to make objective, quantitative determinations regarding the human role in recent climate change or the degree and consequences of future change.”

That’s mainstream: Opinions are mixed as to whether humans can meaningfully slow climate trends, and whether diverting trillions is worth the trade-offs.

The Columbia project serves as a warning: A premier university hires an activist to run its J-school. It partners with an activist online Web site to target an energy company previously savaged by its new dean in his book. The effort is funded by foundations whose role as fossil-fuel critics was hidden from readers. In the end, the journalists themselves wind up playing defense.

The series is a finalist for Harvard’s Goldsmith award and is a favorite for a Columbia-awarded Pulitzer. Such prizes would tarnish those schools and the journalism profession that relies on them as ethical barometers.

Jon Entine, founder of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a senior fellow at the University of California-Davis.

bloomberg:

Monsanto Co.’s undisclosed recruitment of scientists from Harvard University, Cornell University and three other schools to write about the benefits of plant biotechnology is drawing fire from opponents.

The company’s role isn’t noted in the series of articles published in December by the Genetic Literacy Project, a nonprofit group that says its mission is “to disentangle science from ideology.” The group said that such a disclosure isn’t necessary because the the company didn’t pay the authors and wasn’t involved in writing or editing the articles.

Monsanto says it’s in regular contact with public-sector scientists as it tries to “elevate” public dialog on genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit group funded by the Organic Consumers Association that obtained e-mails under the Freedom of Information Act, says correspondence revealing Monsanto’s actions shows the “corporate control of science and how compliant some academics are.”

The articles have become the latest flashpoint in an information war being waged over plant biotechnology by its supporters, who sometimes have corporate funding, and its opponents, some of whom are funded by the fast-growing organic food industry. The challenge for the pro-GMO lobby is the yawning gulf between scientific consensus and public perception. A Pew Research Center poll in January found 88 percent of scientists believed GMOs to be “generally safe” versus 37 percent of U.S. adults. That gap was the widest among 13 questions asked by Pew, surpassing divides on climate change and evolution.

Monsanto E-mail

The articles in question appeared on the Genetic Literacy Project’s website in a series called “GMO - Beyond the Science.”Eric Sachs, who leads Monsanto’s scientific outreach, wrote to eight scientists to pen a series of briefs aimed at influencing “public policy, GM crop regulation and consumer acceptance.” Five of them obliged.

“I need to step aside so I don’t compromise the project,” Sachs said in an Aug. 8, 2013, e-mail obtained by U.S. Right to Know. He suggested specific topics for each scientist before turning the project over toCMA Consulting, a public relations firm paid by Monsanto.

“I am keenly aware that your independence and reputations must be protected,” Sachs wrote.

Political Lobbying

“It says something that Monsanto can’t defend the safety of their own products, that they have to resort to hiring a PR consultant and get academics to spin the science,” said Scott Faber, a Washington-based lobbyist at theEnvironmental Working Group and executive director of Just Label It, which advocates for mandatory labels identifying GMO foods.

St. Louis-based Monsanto has been at the center of the GMO debate ever since it first commercialized modified crop seeds in 1996. The company operates a sophisticated public relations operation, and while it carries out behind-the-scenes political lobbying, it also responds to critics on its website and on blogs. Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley has defended GMOs both on Twitter and in public debates.

Monsanto routinely exchanges information with dozens of public-sector scientists and flags ideas, said Charla Lord, a company spokeswoman. While the scientists sometimes co-operate, Monsanto’s suggestions often are ignored or rejected, she said.

Public Dialog

“Our goal is to elevate the public dialog and public policy discussion from its over-emphasis on perceived risks toward a broader understanding of the societal benefits of GM crops and needed improvement in policies,” Lord said in an e-mail. “There is a lot of misinformation generated by groups who are opposed to agriculture and biotechnology.”

Once the topic of the articles was identified, the academics alone were responsible for the content, said Jim Fallon, a vice president at CMA, the PR firm working with Monsanto. John Entine, the executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, also defended the handling of the articles.

Sharing Knowledge

“I got independent articles written by independent professors,” Entine said Tuesday by phone. “I ended up working with the professors to edit their pieces and I had total control over the final product. There is nothing to disclose.”

Two of the authors, Peter W.B. Phillips, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, and David Shaw, chief research officer at Mississippi State University, didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Calestous Juma, a professor at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, said in an interview he contributed a paper entitled “Global Risks of Rejecting Agricultural Biotechnology” to the project because it’s a topic he’s studied, written about and spoken on for decades. Juma said his main requirement is that the publications he writes for must be freely available to the public. Disclosing Monsanto’s role is a matter for the publication, he said. Juma’s Monsanto connection was previously reported by the Boston Globe.

“It’s part of my mission as a public scholar to share knowledge,” Juma said in an interview, a point also made by another two authors of the series articles. Anthony Shelton, an entomologist and professor at Cornell,said he stands by and takes full ownership of what he wrote. “I strongly support openness and transparency,” he said in an e-mail.

‘Rabid Activism’

University of Florida Professor Kevin Folta said he agreed to write “Anti-GMO Activism and Its Impact on Food Security” because communicating science to the public is his job. Folta said he has no problem were the Genetic Literacy Project to disclose Monsanto’s role in the series. And he lamented what he called the “rabid activism and religion” of an organic movement that vilifies scientists who support plant biotechnology.

Folta has faced public criticism since the New York Times, citing other e-mails provided by U.S. Right to Know, reported last month about his communications with Monsanto and a $25,000 donation to the science communication program he runs. Folta said in an interview he wasn’t the recipient of the money and didn’t benefit financially. The university donated the $25,000 to charity following the Times story, he said.

“It makes me really sad because I just want technology to help people,” Folta said. “I don’t even care about these companies. I want people to understand the science.”

played up nyer gmo michael specter

2/16 overview

http://usrtk.org/hall-of-shame/jon-entine-the-chemical-industrys-master-messenger/

Entine is highly active in current chemical industry policy debates. He portrays himself as a science journalist, an objective authority on issues important to the chemical industry. But the evidence shows that he is actually a longtime public relations operative with deep ties to the chemical industry. His work features the defense of GMOs, pesticides, industrial chemicals, fracking and nuclear power.

Ties to Monsanto

Entine founded ESG MediaMetrics, a “sustainability” communications firm whose clients included Monsanto and the Vinyl Institute.

Entine is executive director of Genetic Literacy Project (GLP), which promotes GMOs and pesticides. It states that it is “funded by grants from non-partisan foundations” but does not disclose which ones, nor whether it receives funding from corporations, trade associations or other agrichemical industry interests.

In 2014, Entine and the Genetic Literacy Project partnered with a Monsanto-backed group, Academics Review, to sponsor the Biotechnology Literacy Project “boot camp” to teach scientists how to “best engage the GMO debate with a skeptical public.”

Faculty at the first boot camp included representatives from GMO manufacturers, food industry front groups and trade groups, and pro-GMO academics including University of Florida Professor Kevin Folta, and University of Illinois Professor Emeritus Bruce Chassy, both of whom have accepted undisclosed funding from Monsanto and promote the GMOs and pesticides that Monsanto sales rely upon.

The boot camp’s agenda notes that “independent scientists, who the public holds in great esteem, can play a unique role in reframing the food safety and GMO debate” and that the camp will provide scientists with the “tools and support resources necessary to effectively engage the media and appear as experts in legislative and local government hearings, and other policy making and related outreach opportunities.”

Entine conducted a similar boot camp to reframe the GMO debate for journalists and scientists in 2015.

Ties to Syngenta

From a 2011 ACSH press release announcing Entine’s book:

Entine denied any relationship with Syngenta and told Philpott he had “no idea” Syngenta was funding ACSH.

Attacks on Syngenta Critics

Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know reveal that Monsanto and a former Monsanto public relations executive helped Chassy to establish Academics Review as a website and platform to criticize individuals, organizations and others who raise questions about GMOs or pesticides.

A year before the New Yorker story, Entine used his Forbes platform to attack Hayes and defend Syngenta. Entine described “competing narratives” about why Hayes lost funding to continue researching atrazine. Entine’s narrative casts Hayes as the “activist scientist with a long history of discredited studies” against “one of the most scrutinized chemicals in history” that was unjustly banned in Europe. Hayes is, in fact, a full professor in the integrative biology department of UC Berkeley, one of the most prestigious public universities in the world.

The Murky Funding Trail to Entine and the Genetic Literacy Project

According to an email he sent to Philpott in 2012, Entine derives the bulk of his income from the Genetic Literacy Project:

“To hear Entine tell it, his defenses of atrazine and other pesticides are entirely pro bono and driven by his own initiative. He told me he gets “almost all” of his income from the Genetic Literacy Project, which, he added, is funded by what he called the Templeton and Searle foundations. The project is housed at the Statistical Assessment Service program at George Mason University, where Entine is a fellow. Though Entine would not specify which Searle trust funded the GLP, the Searle Freedom Trust’s 2010 tax form lists a $154,000 grant to STATS for a “Gene Policy and Science Literacy Project,” which sounds an awful lot like Entine’s.”

The Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, disclosed in its IRS annual form 990s that it paid Entine for his work as a “research consultant” $140,600 in 2012, and $152,500 in 2013.

STATS is “funded by a grant from the Searle Freedom Trust and a donation from the American Statistical Association,” according to its website. STATS declares on its IRS form 990 that it is a sister organization of the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that is not transparent about its funding. According to its most recent (2012) IRS Form 990, CMPA gave a $203,611 loan to STATS, which “due to inadequate funding” has “not been reimbursed.”

In a 2009 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about chemical industry lobbyingSuzanne Rustand Meg Kissinger described STATS:

“STATS claims to be independent and nonpartisan. But a review of its financial reports shows it is a branch of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. That group was paid by the tobacco industry to monitor news stories about the dangers of tobacco.”

The Center for Media and Public Affairs also receives grants from the George Mason University Foundation. For example, the GMU Foundation disclosed in its IRS form 990s that it gave to CMPA a $75,670 grant in 2013, and a $220,900 grant in 2012.

Charles Koch is a major funder of various GMU projects, according to a recent Greenpeace analysis of IRS filings from Koch’s nonprofit foundations. Koch spent $109.7 million on 361 campuses from 2005-2014. The GMU Foundation was the top recipient with $45.5 million, followed by two other GMU programs.

According to PR Watch, despite repeated attempts by students to obtain information about the grants, George Mason University refuses to comply because it has housed the grants under the private GMU Foundation instead of the university itself to prevent disclosures about their source.

According to the Guardian, from 2011-13, the GMU Foundation received $5.3 million from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund – two groups that Mother Jones called the “dark-money ATM of the conservative movement.”

Entine is a senior research fellow at GMU’s Center for Health & Risk Communication, and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a DC think tank funded in part by corporate and dark money contributions.

Entine is a senior fellow at the UC Davis World Food Center’s Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy (IFAL). Donations to the World Food Center are not publicly disclosed. The World Food Center’s founding director is Roger Beachy, who was also founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, MO, which has close ties to Monsanto, and offices across the street from Monsanto.

Public Relations for the Agrichemical Industry

Entine is a central figure in agrichemical industry public relations efforts. The Genetic Literacy Project cross-promotes many industry-affiliated pro-GMO messengers and regularly attacks organizations and people who raise concerns about the health and environmental risks of GMOs and pesticides.

In 2014, GLP published a series of pro-GMO papers that were assigned to professors by a Monsanto executive. The Monsanto connection was not disclosed in the papers but was revealed in emails obtained via state Freedom of Information Act request by U.S. Right to Know.

In one case, reported in the Boston Globe, the Monsanto executive suggested to Harvard Professor Calestous Juma that he write a paper about how GMOs are needed to feed Africa:

“Monsanto not only suggested the topic to professor Calestous Juma. It went so far as to provide a summary of what the paper could say and a suggested headline. The company then connected the professor with a marketing company to pump it out over the Internet as part of Monsanto’s strategy to win over the public and lawmakers, according to e-mails obtained through a public records request.”

GLP published Professor Juma’s paper along with five other pro-GMO papers written by professors and assigned by Monsanto.

Entine told a Bloomberg reporter that he worked with the professors to edit their papers. “I had total control over the final product,” Entine said.

Entine was also linked to three pro-GMO journalists – Keith Kloor, Washington Post food columnist Tamar Haspel and New York Times reporter Amy Harmon — whose names turned up in FOIA documents obtained by U.S. Right to Know.

Chemical Industry Defense Guy

Entine has been a prominent defender of chemical industry interests, following the industry playbook: he defends the chemicals as safe; argues against regulation; and attacks science, scientists and others raising concerns.

Defending Neonicotinoids

Entine:

Argues that neonics are not key driver of bee deaths (American Enterprise Institute).

Attacked a Harvard professor’s study on bee Colony Collapse Disorder (American Enterprise Institute).

Claimed neonics may actually help bee health (American Enterprise Institute and Forbes).

Accused European politicians of trying to kill bees by restricting neonics (Forbes).

Defending Phthalates

In August of 2012, Entine defended vinyl plastic backpacks that were found to be exposing children to phthalates.

Entine wrote: “Few chemicals on the market today have undergone as much scientific scrutiny as phthalate esters” (Forbes). He didn’t mention that a significant body of scientific evidence compiled over two decades links phthalate exposures to abnormal reproductive development in baby boys.

Entine criticized an NBC reporter for “shoddy journalism” for raising questions about the safety of phthalates (Forbes).

Entine’s communications firm, ESG MediaMetrics, had the Vinyl Institute as a client. However, Entine did not disclose that in his Forbes articles on phthalates.

Defending Fracking

For example, Entine claimed: “From a scientific perspective, no reason exists to even suspect unknown health or environmental issues will turn up” from fracking (New York Post).

Entine also:

Accused New York Times reporters of misleading children about the potential environmental dangers of fracking (Forbes).

Attacked two Cornell University scientists for their study suggesting that fracking operations leak methane (Forbes).

Attacked the Park Foundation, claiming that it has “almost single-handedly derailed shale-gas development in methane-rich New York State, and put its imprint on public opinion and policy decisions around the country.” (Philanthropy Roundtable)

Defending BPA

Entine:

Attacked “a small but determined group of university researchers, activist NGOs and journalists” raising concerns about BPA (Forbes).

Tells women who can’t get pregnant not to blame it on plastics (Forbes).

Challenged scientists linking BPA to heart disease (Forbes).

Defending Nuclear Power

Entine:

Criticized Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes for pointing out the economic and environmental risks of nuclear power (Huffington Post).

Claims that nuclear power plants are environmentally benign and that “Nothing as bad as Chernobyl is likely to occur in the West” (Jon Entine).

Argued that Germany is “taking a gamble” by transitioning away from nuclear power (Ethical Corporation).

Food For Thought, Hall of Shame, Our Investigations

RTK:

Jon Entine, a leading chemical industry PR operative who has written dozens of articles defending corporate interests, today attacked the Columbia University’s Journalism School, stating that it “smeared Exxon,” engaged in “advocacy journalism,” and hired “an activist” to run the Journalism School.

In response, consumer group U.S. Right to Know called on Entine to reveal in full detail his funding and ties to the industries he defends in his writing.

“Who is funding Jon Entine and the Genetic Literacy Project?” asked Gary Ruskin, co-director of U.S. Right to Know. “Will Jon Entine disclose his funders? If not, what is he hiding?”

In his New York Post article today, Entine attacks award-winning journalist Susanne Rust, who is an investigative editor at the Columbia Journalism School. Entine fails to mention that Rust and co-author Meg Kissinger exposed undisclosed industry ties of Entine’s group STATS in a 2009 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, which reported that “STATS claims to be independent and nonpartisan. But a review of its financial reports shows it is a branch of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. That group was paid by the tobacco industry to monitor news stories about the dangers of tobacco.”

The Genetic Literacy Project previously declared that it is “affiliated with the non-profit Statistical Assessment Service (STATS).” However, the Genetic Literacy Project has removed the reference to STATS from its website. Entine’s New York Post byline previously referred to him as “a senior fellow at STATS,” and Entine has referred to STATS as “the organization that houses the Genetic Literacy Project, where I work.”

Entine is executive director of the agrichemical industry front group Genetic Literacy Project, a group with unknown funding that regularly attacks activists, journalists and scientists who raise concerns about the health and environmental risks of genetically engineered foods and pesticides.

Entine’s New York Post article is his second recent foray into the arena of climate politics, defending oil companies and attacking climate change heroes. On February 1, Entine penned an attack on Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes, co-author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

Entine is an influential spokesman for the agrichemical industry. FOIA requests by U.S. Right to Know revealed Entine’s ties to New York Times reporter Amy Harmon, Washington Post food columnist Tamar Haspel, and pro-GMO journalist Keith Kloor.

In 2012, Entine claimed he had “no idea” that Syngenta was funding the organization (American Council on Science and Health) that published his book defending Syngenta’s herbicide, atrazine, according to reporting by Tom Philpott in Mother Jones.

Entine has made a career of defending the chemical, pesticide, fossil fuel and nuclear power industries. For more background on Jon Entine, read U.S. Right to Know’s fact sheet about him.

U.S. Right to Know is a nonprofit organization that investigates the risks associated with the corporate food system, and the food industry’s practices and influence on public policy. We promote the free market principle of transparency – in the marketplace and in politics – as crucial to building a better, healthier food system.

Consumer Group USRTK Calls on Jon Entine to Reveal Funding, Ties to Industries He Defends

Posted on March 2, 2016 by Gary Ruskin

News Release

For Immediate Release: Wednesday, March 2, 2016

For More Information Contact: Gary Ruskin (415) 944-7350

In response, consumer group U.S. Right to Know called on Entine to reveal in full detail his funding and ties to the industries he defends in his writing.

“Who is funding Jon Entine and the Genetic Literacy Project?” asked Gary Ruskin, co-director of U.S. Right to Know. “Will Jon Entine disclose his funders? If not, what is he hiding?”

Entine has made a career of defending the chemical, pesticide, fossil fuel and nuclear power industries. For more background on Jon Entine, read U.S. Right to Know’s fact sheet about him.

-30-

News Releases, Our Investigations

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uses ucd in his huffpo sci col:

Genetic Literacy Project (GLP) has been accused of unethical journalistic practices after it published personal information about individuals opposed to genetically modified food and changed the text of an article without the author’s permission.

GLP is an organization that heavily promotes genetic engineering of foods and attacks critics of the technology.

http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/05/genetic-literacy-project-crosses-ethical-line/

Posting Personal Information “Way Below” Ethical Line

GLP has posted phone numbers, email and home addresses and other personal information about GMO critics. According to David Murphy, executive director of Food Democracy Now, GLP posted the phone number and email and home addresses of Don Huber, Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology at Purdue University. Murphy contacted GLP asking them to remove the information, which they did, but shortly after GLP posted Murphy’s cell phone number and home address.

“It’s one thing to have a public disagreement with highly trained scientists and activists on a controversial subject like GMO safety, but publishing personal information, home addresses and cell phone numbers, is a new low, even for Monsanto’s smear merchant,” Murphy said. “Does Monsanto really want us publishing their CEO and top scientists like Robb Fraley’s home addresses? One wonders what they really have to hide if they’re willing to employ such slimeball tactics against their critics.”

GLP has also posted personal information about other GMO critics such as Mike Adams, publisher of Natural News; Vani Hari, a.k.a. the Food Babe; Henry Rowlands, publisher of Sustainable Pulse; Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology; and others. GLP even went so far as to post information about the value of Smith’s house.

Carey Gillam, research director at U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) and a former veteran senior journalist with Reuters news service, said the practice of publishing personal identifying information such as phone numbers and addresses, was clearly an unethical practice.

“We here at USRTK are intentionally not posting the emails we’ve obtained that include that kind of information because we think it is below the ethical bar. Way below,” Gillam said.

Crossed an Ethical Line

In November, pro-GMO journalist Keith Kloor accused GLP of altering his article, “The Story Behind the Story,” without his permission. The article, which was posted on his website, http://www.keithkloor.com, focuses on science writer Brooke Borel’s Buzzfeed profile of University of Florida scientist Kevin Folta, who was hosting a podcast using a fake identity.

GLP reposted a segment of Kloor’s article on their website with a different headline, “Did Brooke Borel cross ethical line in criticizing Kevin Folta GMO parody site?”

Kloor objected to GLP’s posting the article without his permission and changing the headline and text. In a blog, Kloor wrote: “It’s bad enough that a website built on the aggregated work of journalists takes something that belongs to you without asking for permission. It’s outrageous when the website truncates your text in ways that change the meaning of what you wrote, which is also what Genetic Literacy is guilty of doing with respect to my post. It’s infuriating and unforgivable when the person who stole your text puts his own flatly wrong headline above it … That’s crossing an ethical line.”

On a personal note, GLP has also changed the headlines of articles I’ve written that they’ve posted on their website. One headline they changed contained text that was meant to be derogatory to me.

Other authors also criticized GLP’s journalistic practices on Twitter. These included Borel, Helena Bottemiller Evich, a journalist with Politico, Anastasia Bodnar, policy director at the pro-GMO website Biofortified.org and Julie Kelly, a pro-GMO food writer, among others. The authors objected to GLP changing the headlines and text of articles, listing authors as GLP contributing writers when they aren’t and putting author bylines with paraphrased articles.

On Twitter, GLP Executive Director Jon Entine tried to assure the authors that GLP has been responsive “to every concern.” But Kloor responded sarcastically to that claim, asking Entine if he really wrote that “with a straight face.”

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The Real Cost Of Mandatory GMO Labeling

Posted: 12/23/2015 9:55 am EST Updated: 12/23/2015 9:59 am EST

Co-authored by Bruce Chassy and Jon Entine

This is Part II of a III part series. Part I: "Although Some GMO Sympathizers Embrace Mandatory Labeling, It's A Disaster In Waiting", is readable here.

Proponents of mandatory labeling often claim that it's a no brainer.

Jon Entine is founder and director of the independent grant-funded Genetic Literacy Project, and a senior fellow at the World Food Center Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy at the University of California-Davis. He has been a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute since 2002.

Entine writes for academic and popular publications around the world and is a frequent television and radio commentator on business issues, including CNN, MSNBC, Al Jazeera, Fox Business, NPR, and BBC. He has written and edited seven books, including two on population genetics and two on agriculture.

Before launching his consulting and writing career, Entine spent 19 years as a network television news producer, winning more than twenty awards including Emmys for specials on the reform movements in China and the Soviet Union. He has produced news magazine programs at ABC News and CBS News, an entertainment special for NBC on the Miss America Pageant, and was Tom Brokaw’s long-time producer at NBC News, where he was also the executive-in-charge of documentaries.

In 1989, Brokaw and Entine collaborated to write and produce Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction, named Best International Sports Film of 1989). It led to his best-selling book, Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We are Afraid to Talk About It (Public Affairs, 2000), which was reissued in 2007.

Entine graduated from Trinity College (Hartford) in 1974 with a degree in philosophy and earned a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in Journalism at the University of Michigan in 1981-1982. He is on the board of Sense About Science-US and the Jewish Community Relations Council in Cincinnati, where he resides.

Show full bio

Entries by Jon Entine

Chipotle's Sustainability Hypocrisy Could Eclipse Its Food Poisoning Fiasco

(0) Comments | Posted December 23, 2015 | 9:56 AM

Add Pennsylvania to the list of Chipotle poisoning outbreak states.

Co-author: Andrew Porterfield

The number of recent food poisoning cases linked to the fast-food restaurant soared this week to more than 500 with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcing 6 additional cases in four more...

Read Post

The Real Cost Of Mandatory GMO Labeling

(29) Comments | Posted December 23, 2015 | 9:55 AM

Co-authored by Bruce Chassy and Jon Entine

This is Part II of a III part series. Part I: "Although Some GMO Sympathizers Embrace Mandatory Labeling, It's A Disaster In Waiting", is readable here.

Proponents of mandatory labeling often claim that it's a no brainer.

Read Post

Although Some GMO Sympathizers Embrace Mandatory Labeling, It's A Disaster In Waiting

(11) Comments | Posted December 22, 2015 | 4:19 PM

Co-authored by Bruce Chassy and Jon Entine

GMO labeling issue will be coming to a head in 2016 on a number of fronts:

Vermont's mandatory labeling bill, which is being appealed, is set to go into effect in July.

Congress is debating whether to supercede the Vermont law...

Anti-GMO Groups Pledge Legal Action to Block FDA Approval of GMO Salmon

(3) Comments | Posted November 19, 2015 | 3:59 PM

The first genetically engineered animal approved for consumption could be on your dinner table within two years if anti-GMO groups do not succeed in their attempts to block it.

After languishing in regulatory purgatory for almost 20 years, an Atlantic salmon whose genes have been tweaked to grow twice as...

Read Post

As Gary Hirshberg Emerges as Face of Anti-GMO Labeling Movement, Science Takes a Hit

(21) Comments | Posted July 30, 2015 | 5:01 PM

Co-Author: Bruce Chassy, professor Emeritus of Food Safety and Nutritional Sciences from the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

For years, the leadership faces of the anti-GMO community and the mandatory labeling movement--and make no mistake they are one and...

Read Post

Will Über-Athletes Undermine the Future of Sports?

(1) Comments | Posted July 15, 2015 | 4:43 PM

Could athletic enhancement revolutionize--or undermine--competitive athletics?

It is sport's doomsday scenario: a new generation of bioengineered performance-enhancing agents that can transform also-rans into gold medalists. Imagine athletes injecting artificial genes right into their muscles--a virtually undetectable act that would give them the sinewy muscles of a cougar, or endurance like...

Read Post

The Story of the Birds and the Bees: The Neonic Catastrophe That Never Was

(12) Comments | Posted July 15, 2015 | 2:57 PM

Like the fictional parents in the edgy comedy show South Park who blame Canada for all of their woes, environmentals often coalesce around an issue and then come up with a simple but sometimes simplistic narrative to anchor their advocacy.

We've seen that with fracking, which is often blamed for...

Read Post

Anatomy Of A Smear Attack on GMO Supporting Scientists

(40) Comments | Posted April 1, 2015 | 1:59 PM

This post was co-written with Val Giddings

Recently on the Huffington Post we came across a disturbing article - an attack by Jeffrey Smith on two respected university professors who apply a critical eye to the claims made by various advocates alleging dangers to human health linked to...

Read Post

Were Ancient Mystics Onto Something? Review Of Norman Doidge's "The Brain's Way of Healing"

(1) Comments | Posted April 1, 2015 | 12:49 PM

Review by Judith Glaser and Jon Entine of Norman Doidge's The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity

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