Let’s call this story: Whitewash—with self-proclaimed environmentalists wearing the black hats.
Competing essays in academic journals illustrate the difference between journalism and propaganda
In 2022 and 2023, two papers analyzing the intersection of genetic engineering and disinformation were published. The first, written by independent journalists and researchers, documented a disturbing pattern of misreporting on the science of crop biotechnology. It was followed shortly thereafter by a sharp-edged rebuke by crop biotechnology critics. Neither of the essays were published in very high-impact journals and neither were widely reported on social media, at least initially. But they have since emerged as analytical templates that illustrate how crop biotechnology critics attempt to undermine the global consensus that GM and gene editing technology and the chemicals used in tandem are safe, effective and sustainable.
For the first time, the public was given an opportunity to see under the hood of how advocacy groups manipulate public opinion to support their vested (and often scientifically corrupt) interests, a process which is otherwise hidden from scrutiny. The controversy that boiled to the surface as a result of the publication of the competing articles has directed a high beam on the extreme conflicts of interest (and lack of transparency over those conflicts) exhibited by activist scientists and the four junk, yet influential, science journals and/or publications that they have come to control.
In November 2022, the academic journal GM Crops and Food carried an analysis by Mark Lynas and Joan Conrow, both then with the Bryce Institute’s Alliance for Science, and Jordan Adams, a statistical analyst with Cision Global Insights, a research organization that is often contracted to assess media-related data. Lynas and Conrow are veteran science literacy advocates, embracing the global consensus that genetically modified crops are safe — a view held by nearly 300 independent science agencies globally (with no known institutional dissenters).
The authors were concerned about the ongoing campaigns by anti-biotechnology advocacy groups to twist the science facts on GM crops and food. Criticism of course is always fair game but misrepresenting data, a common practice among anti-GMO groups, is worth calling out, as misleading tropes are often spread throughout the media on the internet. They surveyed articles from top English-language media around the world over a two year period, from January to January, 2019 to 2021, identifying 535 articles:
Overall, about 9% of the articles published on GMOs from 2019–2021 that we reviewed contained misinformation, while 91% were factually accurate. In terms of readership, the articles we rated as factually accurate had a potential readership of 4.8 billion, while those containing misinformation had a reach of 256 million. In percentage terms, misinformation was therefore about 5% of our total readership.
The proportion of misinformation globally on genetically modified crops that they found might seem small — 9%. But as the authors noted, these were findings in what were supposed to be high quality news venues. They reviewed the degree of mis-reporting on other controversial topics such as climate change, vaccines and COVID-19, and found that the 9% was considerably higher than misinformation on those subjects. One of the key findings: the prevalence of “skeptical statements by self-proclaimed experts denying the existence of scientific consensus on GMO safety,” adding that “there will always be bona fide experts available to be groomed as effective media performers who can give the impression that ‘the experts disagree’”.
Misleading 50/50 reporting on established science
The GM Crops and Food article suggests an important question: Who are the ‘science-denying experts’ who appear again and again in popular articles challenging the science consensus that crops grown using genetic engineering are as safe (or safer) than conventional or organic alternatives? How have they gained enough prominence that (usually careless or lazy) supposedly experienced, critical-thinking reporters seek them out for ‘balancing’ or critical views on GMO crop safety?
The use of sand-bagging experts is a major challenge when reporting on controversial stories. It raises the prospect of ‘false balance’ — the penchant for journalists to include in a report ‘the other side’ when the evidence is not evenly on each side. There are not two equal sides to whether climate change is in part human induced (although the impact of climate change is fair game for debate). Often, presenting issues as “he said/she said” distorts the debate, elevating the views of extremists. Yet, the 50/50 mistake shows up all the time in reports on GMO issues, especially in reports written by inexperienced or deliberately biased writers (on many websites, particularly those overseen by GMO-rejecting environmental groups, there is often not even a pretense of weighing the evidence).
In the case of GM crop safety, citing the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the consensus among scientists on GM crop safety is actually higher (89% vs. 88%) than the consensus belief that humans are a key driver of rising temperatures.
Environmental Sciences Europe
What does this have to do with anti-GMO crusaders? Shortly after the publication of Lynas et al., the anti-GMO industry advanced their attack response. Writing in Environmental Sciences Europe (ESEU), GMO critics Michael Antoniou [funded by UK Sustainable Food Trust], Claire Robinson [founder of GM Watch, an organic industry-backed ‘hit’ site], Irina Castro [research funded by the Alternative Food Networks to Environmental Justice] and Angelika Hilbeck attempted to make their case that there is in fact no consensus on the safety of biotech crops. Antoniou et al. represent a Who’s Who of organic funded crop biotechnology critics, none of whom have any credible standing in the broader scientific community.
ESEU is one of four key publications (the others are Environmental Health, Environmental Health Perspectives, and the ‘news’ site Environmental Health News) known for publishing advocacy articles and papers critical of the science consensus on agricultural biotechnology and crop chemicals that would be summarily rejected by reputable journals. They also are known for publishing junk science, and are a repository for advocacy articles generated by the notorious Ramazzini Institute (read more about them here), the Bologna-based “scientific institute” which conducts what reputable scientists regard as dubious, hazard-based (as opposed to risk-based) studies that always show “links” between agricultural chemicals and health that mainstream science seems to miss.
What do these activist-scientists cite as ‘proof’ that the entire science establishment is corrupted and misguided for concluding that GM crops are productive and safe? They ignore the globally-respected health and science organizations that have issued summary reports and statements in support of the safety of GM crops (exactly zero global agencies who have concluded differently). Rather, they link to … themselves! Specifically, to a 2015 diatribe (published in, you guessed it, Environmental Sciences Europe), co-authored by Antoniou, Hilbeck and 13 notorious anti-GM technology campaigners (including the well known Indian philosopher Vandana Shiva, notorious for her counseling Sri Lanka’s bankrupting decision to ban GM crops and crop chemicals). These are notorious dissenters who cannot get their version of ‘science’ published in respectable and responsible mainstream journals.
Let’s take a deeper dive into the world of anti-GMO faux academic-like publications that carry the water for Séralini, Antonoiou, Hilbeck and compatriots. Environmental Sciences Europe—published by the Springer Nature family of journals — became open access in 2011. While it insists it has a rigorous peer review process, the paper acceptance rate is reportedly 100 percent. It’s a predatory journal—anyone can buy their way into print if they are willing to pay outrageous fees. With organic funding behind them, Séralini et al. have no problem finding backers to get their propaganda circulated.
The selection of Environmental Sciences Europe to present their case was not haphazard. ESEU has been a venue favored by anti-biotechnology activists. In the science world, it’s known as a junk, pay for play, predatory journal. What does that mean? It means for a fee, and without serious peer review, they will publish just about any junk paper, regardless of the authors’ known (and always undisclosed) conflicts of interests and biases. It’s a depository for papers that no reputable journal would publish. Among its frequent contributors: Gilles-Éric Séralini, the notorious French researcher whose 2012 paper claiming that GMO glyphosate-resistant corn caused cancer in lab rats was reprinted in this venue after its humiliating retraction. The fiasco is notoriously known as the Séralini Affair. Now widely-regarded as a fringe, untrustworthy scientist, the organic-industry funded French biologist remains a regular ESEU contributor.
The journal also frequently publishes ‘research’ by a Who’s Who of anti-GMO critics, notably Fiorella Belpoggi, the Ramazzini institute’s head of research, notorious for her anti-GMO activism; Philip Landrigan, head of the tort-industry funded Heartland Health Research Alliance, which produces studies-on-order ‘documenting’ the dangerous of crop chemicals for ambitious litigators trying to score billion-dollar glyphosate-cancer settlements. (Most recently, Landrigan co-authored an American Association of Pediatrics Clinical Report claiming that GMO crops posed ‘unknown’ dangers to vulnerable children and pregnant women that was widely panned by journalists and scientists, from Mother Jones to globally respected physicians and geneticists; and by Christopher Portier, a scientist turned anti-glyphosate expert witness who notoriously manipulated the final draft of the controversial International Agency for Research on Cancer’s 2015 monograph that labeled glyphosate a “probable” carcinogen, the jet fuel for the anti-crop biotechnology/anti-pesticide activist scientist crowd for a decade.
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Environmental Health
Most notoriously, in January 2023, Environmental Health hosted a bizarre polemic co-signed by 48 environmental consultants and scientists attacking the US Environmental Protection Agency for what it claimed are its lax, industry-influenced standards in regulating the ‘dangerous proliferation’ of “environmental pollutants.” The authors zeroed in on the herbicide glyphosate, which has been a focal point of critics since IARC issued its much-contested monograph in 2015. They chided the EPA for assessing glyphosate as non-carcinogenic, claiming that the agency relied on “industry-conducted studies.” [Ironically, the same authors, in the same article, proposed that chemical manufacturers should be financially responsible for providing risk/hazard data about chemicals; you can’t have it both ways.]
In contrast, they cite IARC, which in 2015 published the still-controversial monograph claiming that there was sufficient evidence in animals that glyphosate was carcinogenic and limited evidence of its carcinogenicity in humans. That finding has become the central rallying document for anti-chemical crusaders, including the 48 EH co-authors. While highlighting IARC’s finding, they ignore the recent conclusions of not only the EPA, but of 23 other research reports on glyphosate risk, all of which have rejected IARC’s claim that glyphosate is a human carcinogen. Most recently, in summer 2023, the independent European Union reviewed literally thousands of studies (IARC reviewed 36 that it carefully cherry-picked), including IARC’s claims. The EU re-registered its use for another 10 years, releasing an 11,000 page report documenting its decision process. Here is a chart which summarizes the findings of every major global agency that has examined the evidence on glyphosate. [Click here for a downloadable .pdf version of this infographic.]
IARC is not only a lone wolf in its hazard findings, it has been accused of fraud by scientists whose data it used to reach its suspect conclusions. Keith Solomon, a University of Guelph professor emeritus and a globally recognized authority on pesticides, said IARC misrepresented his research, considered the most critical data in the IARC monograph. IARC wrote that Solomon’s study of rural Colombians who were exposed to Roundup found high levels of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in workers. That’s “totally wrong”, he said. “They [IARC] stated there was evidence of genotoxicity and they quoted [our] paper to support that statement,” Solomon said. “There’s no evidence that glyphosate is genotoxic.”
Equally unsettling, the Environmental Health diatribe by the gang of 48 ignored a key finding by IARC, one overlooked by activist environmentalists who misportray the consensus science. In its final monograph, IARC concluded that its hazard judgment did not extend to concerns about micro-traces of glyphosate in our diet (there are more than 30,000 chemicals that can be found in urine systems, with almost none posing any serious health threats), IARC found no known link between trace dietary glyphosate exposure and cancer.
In sum, there have been 23 independent reviews of glyphosate in the past two decades by respected institutions, including in the US, Europe, Australia, Canada and Japan. They reviewed thousands of peer-reviewed studies. Yet EH ignored the consensus to publish a screed by 48-ethically compromised researchers accusing the EPA and the entire global science establishment as being in the bag for industry. That’s whitewashing the facts.
Environmental Health Perspectives
Published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, EHP is affiliated with the US National Institutes of Health. For many years, it had solid reputation as an independent, fact-based agency on the issue of agricultural chemicals. That changed under the guidance of Linda Birnbaum, who was NIEHS director from 2009-2019. Birnbaum was and remains a contentious and controversial public scientist.
Birnbaum is noted for her embrace of the notion that certain chemicals can disrupt the endocrine system at doses well below what peer-reviewed science suggests is possible, a theory known as the endocrine disruption hypothesis. Its central thesis: the bedrock notion of toxicology, that the ‘dose makes the poison’, is wrong. The radical application of endocrine disruption theory has enabled activist scientists to make all kinds of allegations about the alleged dangers of one chemical or another without having to provide evidence based on dose thresholds — a convenient way to circumvent mainstream science when the goal is to ban a chemical and the evidence is non-existent. Unable to find evidence using established research protocols that certain chemicals were dangerously toxic to humans, activist scientists began claiming that often unmeasurable low doses of chemicals could be potentially more harmful than high doses. Such claims were investigated and dismissed by mainstream toxicologists but a coterie of activist scientists, many supported by NIEHS grants funded by Birnbaum’s graces kept this unscientific notion alive for years.
Under Birnbaum’s guidance, the government spent tens of billions of dollars trying to verify claims by anti-chemical activists that the plasticizer Bisphenol-A (BPA) is carcinogenic despite the fact that the dosage levels of BPA were infinitesimally low. The Birnbaum-led campaign emerged as the centerpiece of the environmental activist movement from 2008-2012, much as glyphosate hysteria dominates today. Activist scientists generated paper after paper claiming, without hard evidence, that micro-traces of BPA found in our urine pose a serious health hazard. Tort lawyers recruited activist scientists to testify in massive tort liability suits claiming children and pregnant women were being irreparably harmed. The parallel today, with glyphosate replacing BPA as the activist and tort lawyer bogeyman, is stunning—and disturbing.
The Birnbaum-funded anti-BPA hysteria bubble burst in the fall of 2014. Food and Drug Administration experts from across the agency, specializing in toxicology, analytical chemistry, endocrinology, epidemiology, and other fields, completed a four-year review of more than 300 scientific studies. The FDA reaffirmed the global consensus that the low levels of BPA that we encounter in our daily life presents no serious health hazards. The agency did not find any information in the evaluated studies to prompt a revision of FDA’s 2008 safety assessment that BPA is safe in food contact materials.
To this day, Birnbaum rejects the science consensus. Many of the BPA scare scientists, their work largely discredited, were co-authors of the EH article, as they’ve turned their efforts from trying to discredit BPA towards attacking glyphosate. Birnbaum left the NIEHS in 2019, but continued her activist work, often contributing her name to dubious papers. She was one of the 48 co-authors on the Environmental Health article endorsing the shoddy research protocols of IARC and challenging the findings of 23 independent global agencies. She has become a favorite among what mainstream scientists refer to as the ‘crazy academic left’ — environmental activist researchers and campaigners who make a living testifying before government agencies and at tort proceedings (for which they are handsomely paid) attacking environmental and crop chemicals.
Environmental Health News
While not a peer-reviewed journal, this propaganda site, designed to look like a news outlet (and indeed, early in its history, under different leadership, it did play it straight and was on occasion a reliable resource on health issues), is now a free-for-all for all things critical of GM crops and agricultural chemicals, and a pro-organic cheering section. It was founded by John Peterson Myers, who made his reputation by helping make “endocrine disruption” a media-popular term. He’s been a gold mine for litigators. Myers and economist Charles Benbrook have co-published several articles on anti-GMO/pesticide campaigns, specifically targeting glyphosate while Benbrook was an undisclosed consultant for Wisner-Baum, the Church of Scientology-linked law firm that employed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as co-counsel in its successful lawsuit on glyphosate and cancer.
Kennedy’s own group, Children’s Health Defense, lists Environmental Health News as one of its sources, and has published dozens of EHN propaganda reports. It’s funded almost entirely by litigation ‘dark money’. Its 2022 federal 990 form lists donations of about $2 million, but does not disclose sources. Its annual report does not provide any information on funding.
Judge the accuracy of reporting by the desperation of critics
Footnote this article. When the next searing report comes out challenging the consensus safety findings of GM food and crop chemicals, check out the authors and venues they write in. The same names and journals will come up again and again. Let’s hope journalists don’t continue to be fooled by these anti-crusaders. As Kevin Folta, professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida, has written about these science disinformation specialists:
They contend that ‘labeling evidence and knowledge that contest (sic) dominant paradigm…as misinformation…disregards…history of science.’ But they disregard the fact that some paradigms are so well established that they cannot be flipped, and are the reflections of fundamental truths backed by mountains of independent data. What is really sad is that Antoniou et al. suggest that ‘inaccurate information can in the long term undermine public trust in science,’ which has been the goal of anti-GMO efforts for decades. Poorly designed experiments, deliberately missing controls, over interpretation of results, use of high doses never encountered to induce responses, and irreproducibility have been the hallmarks of the anti-GMO movement with the goal of undermining public trust in science.
It’s time to end the whitewash by anti-biotechnology crusaders among scientists and government officials, formers and current, who are irreparably damaging the public and the environment.
Andrew Porterfield is a senior correspondent for the Genetic Literacy Project. He is a writer and editor, and has worked with numerous academic institutions, companies and non-profits in the life sciences. BIO. Follow him on X @AMPorterfield
Jon Entine is the Executive Director of the Genetic Literacy Project and a life-long journalist with 20 major journalism awards. Follow him on X @JonEntine
