In our article on how multiple researchers are purchased in order to provided the desired research results, we discuss theoretically how this is done.
Now we have a real life example of how it is done. With the corporate take-over of universities and “private-public partnerships” it is easily done. This is from the book University Inc by Jennifer Washburn. Here is the quote:
Tyrone B Hayes, a biologist at U.C. Berkeley..in the same year that Berkeley signed its $25 million deal with Novartis-Syngenta, Hayes accepted a smaller $100,000 individual grant from Ecorsik Inc, a consulting firm hired by Novartis-Syngenta, to study the side effects of its most popular weed killer, atrazine, on frogs. Although few Americans know the chemical atrazine by name, it happens to be the most heavily applied herbicide in the United States, used on two thirds of the nation’s corn and sorghum acreage, on 90 percent of its sugar cane acreage, and on golf courses and residential lawns. Some 60 to 70 million pounds of the herbicide are applied annually to US crops, and traces of it can be found in streams, waterways, and even rainwater throughout the United States, especially after the planting season.
Hayes’s research quickly turned up disturbing results: Exposure to atrazine appeared to disrupt the sexual development of male frogs, causing their voice boxes to shrink. Worse these males started to develop ovaries and become demasculinized. Atrazine appeared to be one of a family of chemicals konwn as endocrine disruptors that, even in minute traces, can significantly interfere with the hormones that regulate key biological activities, both in wildlife and in humans. Hayes wondered whether this effect explained why fifty eight amphibian species had disappeared or become extinct in the past twenty years, and another ninety-one endangered.
Hayes was sure other scientists would take an interest in his findings. What he didn’t know is that the contract he had signed gave Ecorisk and Syngenta ultimate control over the publication. Ecorisk promptly brought in its Atrazine Endocrine Risk Assessment Panel, a consulting group chaired by Ronald J Kendall, a professor at Texas Tech University, to evaluate and analyze Hayes’s results. As time passed, Hayes grew convinced that the panel’s true purpose was to forestall publication of his research. Hayes eventually had to resign from the process.
The rest of the story continues as Hayes picks up new funding from the World Wildlife Fund among others and publishing his research. The EPA was evaluating atrazine at the time for re-authorization for use as a herbicide in the US.
Aware of the consequences, Syngenta and Ecorisk quickly moved to discredit Hayes’s study. On June 20, 2002, they issued a press release announcing that “three separate studies by university scientists have failed to replicate Hayes’s findings. None of the studies had been published in a peer review journal; all had been underwritten by Syngenta. One study, coauthored by Texas Tech’s James A Carr, Ronald Kendall (head of Ecorisk Consulting Group), and others did eventually find its way into print, in the Journal of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry — where Kendall happened to be an editor. Prior to publication, a quote appeared in a company press release. “As research on this continues, one this is certain. No conclusions can be drawn at this time on atrazine and its proported effects on frogs.”
How independent were these studies? Syngenta told the EPA that the Texas Tech study “was conducted under the direction and auspices of an independent scientific panel.” But as Goldie Blumenstyk, an investigative reporter for the Chronicle of Higher Education, discovered, this statement was highly misleading. The $600,000 contract Texas Tech had signed with Ecorisk stated that all research data and analyses belonged to Ecorisk. Furthermore, any publication of the research required “appropriate review and written permission from Ecorisk.”
Hayes responded with a publication of his own, whereupon critics from Fox News, the Kansas Corn Growers Association, and the Triazine Network challenged the validity of his findings.
Four months after the EPA found sufficient evidence to block the use of atrazine, the EPA issued its final ruling, it reversed course and reapproved atrazine for the use as a week killer in the US. Critics suspect Syngenta’s $6.5 billion in revenues and heavy funding of atrazine “research” distorted the scientific debate. Kendall also sat on the board of the EPA’s scientific advisory panel on atrazine, would have been involved in any final decision on atrizine’s approval.
Dr. Ronald Kendall’s bio.
http://www.tiehh.ttu.edu/ronald_kendall.html
