Talk:Glyphosate

Another recent edit

About: [1] (added by an IP, with a spelling correction by another editor). I think there might be a WP:POV problem with it. What do other editors think? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:05, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

I saw it at a glance while on mobile yesterday and gave the content an initial pass at least. Digging in a bit more after getting back to my desktop, the references seem to check out as ok. The first sentence ref is paywalled, though searching the title will give a full version elsewhere. I tweaked the first sentence a little bit to avoid "lucrative". The second sentence ref is in German, but looks to be a legitimate newspaper RS written by editorial staff. I'm not finding it exactly saying he never disclosed the conflict of interest in the source though, so I've removed that for now (though I don't think it was disclosed on personal perusal of the primary sources).

That leaves the last sentence sourced to Reuters. I had been wrestling on how the source could be used well before these edits too, especially in terms of WP:MEDRS. It helps that we have MEDRS sourced directly contradicting and criticizing the IARC conclusions already, so the Reuters source can fall more into an lay explanatory source categorization within MEDRS, especially since it comments on the problems in the process of the IARC decision as opposed to criticism of the conclusion itself where MEDRS is definitely needed.

I'm making a change to the last sentence after posting this message I think navigates that gray zone in an ok fashion, but I wouldn't be opposed to adding a refimprove tag to have a paired MEDRS source directly cited there as well if there's a good one to compliment the Reuters source or vice versa to make it easier on us. This is tricky though because it's not like a journal where such actions would result in a statement by the journal staff. This is more like criticism of behavioral actions within government organization that's a little more the domain of news sources than the focus of scientific sources. Other scientific bodies would generally focus on refuting the conclusions rather than the committee's editing methods (as opposed to scientific methods that do get criticized), so I'm honestly not sure where we'd expect to find higher quality sourcing on this last sentence content. I'd like to see what other people think too or if text should be changed further. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:30, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

My change to the last sentence ended up being a bit more than I thought while adding in another source, but it tries to take a more documentation approach than some of the editorializing in the previous version. I'm going to let that sit for now, but I'd be open to any tweaks or discussion on it at this point as I try to work on other things for a bit. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:56, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

@Kingofaces43: Thanks for reviewing it. I'm not sure we should be citing Kabat though as forbes.com/sites/ are not under editorial control of Forbes and are generally not considered RS. SmartSE (talk) 10:49, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

I looked into that a little bit when I made this edit where the article definitely shouldn't be attributed to Forbes' opinion. However, Kabat is a an expert when it comes to cancer and epidemiology, so their opinion does meet minimum RS when properly attributed (though really the lowest tier of RS only in specific cases like this), and one could invoke WP:PARITY if needed too. I'd prefer stronger sourcing too, but it's not uncommon to have attributed statements like this either from experts. I don't think anyone can just sign up to be a Forbes contributor though, so it does give Kabat's statements a little more weight compared to an open blog. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:08, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you, for working on this. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:42, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Recent European Parliament report and Beanbrook claims

"However, an independent report mandated by several European Parliament groups alleged that EU regulators based a decision to relicense glysophate-based weedkillers based on an assessment plagiarized from industry reports and subjectively omitting research that would indicate carcinogenicity, thus putting into question the objectivity of the the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment.[96] Similarly, a recent peer-reviewed research paper in comparing the IARC and American EPA assessment concluded that: "in the core tables compiled by EPA and IARC, the EPA relied mostly on registrant-commissioned, unpublished regulatory studies, 99% of which were negative, while IARC relied mostly on peer-reviewed studies of which 70% were positive".[97] Carcinogenicity. partially based on the IARC report, has been quoted as the reason behind a increasing number of glyphosate Roundup bans in countries like France[98], the Netherlands[99] or in states like California[100]."

Regarding this part. It should probably be broken up and moved to a different part of the wiki. However it seems like IARC gets an unfair amount of critique as compared to the EPA or EFSA. Especially the European Parliament report seems valid and important. It basically blasts one key agency in Europe of plagiarism and bias - you can't just ignore it. It's a key EP report!!! This report influenced a massive vote today to strengthen regulations against pesticides. Maruti (talk) 01:15, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

The IARC is critiqued heavily because it falls into WP:FRINGE by opposing the scientific consensus. That is a function of WP:NPOV as well as why we don't give undue weight to claims opposing the consensus. Keep in mind that we also need WP:MEDRS sources, which the Guardian isn't. Not to mention that Benbrook typically isn't a reliable source in this subject either, but is also contradicting the scientific consensus. Kingofaces43 (talk) 03:50, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

There is no consensus. But that's beside the point. You can just not mention the fact that an official European Parliament report criticizes the BfR, which in turn led to a massive for vote on increased oversight over pesticides. The Guardian link can be supplanted for the report itself, so that's no excuse. As to Benbrook - what credentials does Wiki have to decide who is a "credible" source? And who is a reliable source? Industry written reports? Besides the Benbrook paper suggests bias, not critique of assessments. I can agree these should be placed somewhere else in the article, but I can't see how you can ignore factual debates. Maruti (talk) 17:42, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I put a short concise info about the EP report plus about the Benbrook paper in the Government and organization positions section. It won't question the science, but if you list the Guardian article about plagiarism than you must list the EP paper that was mandated BECAUSE of that article. If you don't find Benbrook relevant enough - fine, but given the success he's had in the California trial - best to link him to his Wiki page and people to make up their own minds. Maruti (talk) 18:06, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

That's edit warring, please revert and not restore it until you have demonstrated consensus for it. Geogene (talk) 18:09, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

How can I demonstrate consensus for a report that was mandated by the EP? It's a fact, it happened, it was widely reported and it influenced a key vote yesterday in the EP. You have the Guardian article that started the allegations of plagiarism quoted, so why not the EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT mandated report that was mandated because of that exact Guardian article just below it? The suggested content is:

1. IN EFSA: In January 2019 an independent assessment mandated by several European Parliament groups (Greens / EFA, Socialists & Democrats and European United Left–Nordic Green Left) alleged that the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment report was plagiarized from industry papers and subjectively omitted peer-reviewed research. (link directly to report or better yet to the Guardian article about it that would give the reader some background to it plus the link to the report is in the article). (If some wants the BfR response to these allegations maybe add it?)

As for Benbrook (If you don't think he's relevant here - fine, but the European Parliament paper? C'mon!):

2. In January 2019 Charles Benbrook, (maybe add here that he's an expert in the California case so people know 'he's an involved party'????) published a peer-reviewed research paper comparing the IARC and American EPA assessment and concluded that: "in the core tables compiled by EPA and IARC, the EPA relied mostly on registrant-commissioned, unpublished regulatory studies, 99% of which were negative, while IARC relied mostly on peer-reviewed studies of which 70% were positive". (link to paper) Maruti (talk) 18:29, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

In medical topics, we need WP:MEDRS sources, not newspapers, etc. That means things like review articles. We also generally do not discuss primary sources unless appropriate sources bring them up. When we have something like a scientific consensus on a subject, it's also generally WP:UNDUE to give significant weight to other viewpoints. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:58, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

That is why I suggested this go to Organizations positions. So it's not a discussion about science, but about positions. And under the EFSA you literally already have the whole controversy regarding the BfR assessment and it ends with this: "In September 2017, The Guardian reported that sections of the Renewal Assessment Report prepared by the BfR and used by Efsa were copy-pasted from a study done by Monsanto. Some sections of copy contained small changes such as using British spelling rather than American forms but others were copied word for word, including most of the peer-reviewed papers that were used in the report. The Guardian reported that a "Monsanto spokesperson said that Efsa allowed renewal reports to be written this way because of the large volume of toxicological studies submitted."" I think we can all agree that an independent report, written by academics specializing in their respective fields and mandated by three major European factions is more important than a Guardian article (who BTW makes the same claim but without a rigorous assessment to back it up. What's more the EP assessment is a direct consequence of the Guardian report. Furthermore it played a key role in a very important vote regarding enhancing objectivity and transparency of EFSA assessments (voted yesterday). Can anyone tell me any reason why this should not appear in the Glyphosate article? Please once again - indulge me. This is even a logical next step in the whole story. It's not even a viewpoint. I link the primary source - no good. I linked a Guardian article with a link to the primary source - not good. Because for now it just looks like you don't want this to be part of the article for... Why? Maruti (talk) 00:53, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

If you want maybe we can add some BfR refute of claims, if you think it's undue. It might also be worth noting something about the EP vote to make pesticide approval procedures more transparent and independent based on the whole EFSA controversy. Its on the frickin European Parliament website: https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/press_information/2019/02/european_assessment_of_glyphosate_is_quality_assured_and_independent___industry_reports_are_routinely_part_of_assessment_reports-239502.html

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190115IPR23551/pesticides-meps-propose-blueprint-to-improve-eu-approval-procedure Maruti (talk) 01:04, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

New meta-analysis out today says "raises risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma by 41%"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1383574218300887

"Using the highest exposure groups when available in each study, we report the overall meta-relative risk (meta-RR) of NHL in GBH-exposed individuals was increased by 41% (meta-RR = 1.41, 95% CI, confidence interval: 1.13–1.75)." TimidGuy (talk) 15:23, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

There's already text stating the scientific consensus is that glyphosate does not pose a significant carcinogenic risk at Glyphosate#Cancer. Pretty much every regulatory agency, etc. agrees, and stronger meta-analyses than this new study show no risk too. Other studies on NHL and glyphosate links have been criticized for methodological issues, cherry-picking, confounding, etc. in reviews, so I don't think there's anything that could really be changed in the article based on this new study in terms of WP:DUE. It could be worth fleshing out what other reviews have said with respect to issues in the studies looking at NHL though since it seems to come up often. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:30, 14 February 2019 (UTC)

The deletion of this new research seems strange. If the article passed academic scrutiny, it by definition must provide new evidence that could change scientific opinion. The fact that there swas "scientific consensus" prior to this research does not mean the consensus cannot change once a new research is published. How can a Wikipedia editor be more knowledgeable than the academic reviewers of this paper? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.109.189.248 (talk) 21:33, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

I reverted the edit by 84.109, because it was sourced to an announcement from the university website, which is tantamount to a press release. I do realize that, just above, TimidGuy links to the actual journal article, and that the article is a meta-analysis. This has nothing to do with what Wikipedia editors know (and we have a policy against basing such decisions on what editors think that they know). Rather, because we are discussing a disease in human beings, the decisions about sourcing must be based on WP:MEDRS. And that rules out reporting something because it is "breaking news" in research. As Kingofaces correctly points out, this is one meta-analysis among multiple meta-analyses and review articles, and there is a high barrier to using it to effectively overrule the other sources. We don't know yet whether or not scientific consensus has changed. (The fact that the new paper could change scientific consensus isn't good enough: guessing whether something could do that is just editor opinion.) If it does change consensus, that will soon be reflected in other publications that are independent of this one, and if/when that happens, Wikipedia most certainly will report it. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:06, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

IMO this reflects a very strange situation in U.S. Science (I am not American). (1) I would expect a university press release (which includes a link to the research paper) to be identical to the research findings, except that its stated in a layman's terms. It seems that you view it as an advertisement, i.e. something whose credibility should be questioned and whose purpose is (at least in part) to hype the university's status. (2) I would expect an academic article to advance science, i.e. to provide further evidence than known before. In such a case, I would have thought that Wikipedia should reflect that new information exists. It seems that you see a new article as merely a statement of fact (hopefully you don't question its correctness), without any say about its relevance. I wonder - in what cases do you thing the scientific community would reject the results of such a paper: wrong methodology? not enough analyses gathered for a meta-analysis? Why didn't the paper's reviewers reject it on these grounds? (3) Who decides what is the "scientific consensus" - Is this an NIH/WHO decision? -- Ronnie — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.109.189.248 (talk) 18:22, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

This isn't about how US science works. It's about how Wikipedia works. If you want to change how Wikipedia works in this instance, the place to discuss it is at WT:MEDRS. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:19, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I opened a discussion there. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.109.189.248 (talk) 20:52, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

That discussion is at WT:MEDRS#New research results about increased cancer risk of herbicide were not authorized. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:20, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

I gotta say the framing of this discussion of how science works versus how WP works rubs me really wrong. Yes, WP is not a part of scientific process and the scientific process and debate has to happened outside WP and WP merely reflects the (settled) results or in (large) unresolved cases the current state of the debate. However Glyphosate is not Climatechanges and the above boldly claimed scientific consensus imho simply does not exist. And while it is true that many scientific organisations currently state that there is cancer risk associated with Glyphosate, it isn't true for all (see the IARC case). And while you can argue most studies don't show associations, it is again by far not true for all and imho if one were to declare a supposed consensus it is more along the line of "association with cancer is currently very weak, further research is needed", which is miles away from a supposed consensus a la "no association with cancer". The latter however seems to be used here to be able to argue that WP policy requires to dismiss this study (or any other new differing result) out of hand.--Kmhkmh (talk) 23:08, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

"There's already text stating the scientific consensus..." A meta analysis has been posted. This isn't fringe content this is the most recent, MEDRS compliant information which adds to the growing scientific body of information on glyphosate and whatever its impact on health maybe. We overstep ourselves as editors when we decide that scientific consensus does not include the most recent meta analysis. We can decide weight and report this new meta anlysis carries less weight in terms of our articles, but we can't decide it doesn't exist in favor of an already determined POV. Again this isn't fringe content; we must report this, taking into account due weight, this new compliant content. I'm scratching my head on this.Littleolive oil (talk) 23:44, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• I'd like to suggest a version of this."our current meta-analysis of human epidemiological studies suggests a compelling link between exposures to GBHs and increased risk for NHL.Littleolive oil (talk) 01:40, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

That would go against the scientific consensus and violate WP:DUE (the opposite of "we must report this"). The scientific consensus is very clear that practically all national-level scientific groups and agencies agree with the consensus, and the lone outlier, the IARC, has been heavily criticized for its methodology. It's even to the point that the WHO, which the IARC is housed within, has ignored their designation and considers glyphosate not to be as significant carcinogen. Things going against the scientific consensus are indeed frequently WP:FRINGE (glyphosate and cancer claims frequently fall under that), but they are instead almost always undue weight until a consensus has actually changed. There's nothing even close to such as change yet, and a single meta-analysis cannot be used to contradict higher level sources. If those high-level scientific groups starting changing their designations, then there would be something to discuss. Until that happens though, Wikipedia cannot try to get ahead of the science.

The other issue is that we've seen these kinds of meta-analyses on the subject already (see Glyphosate#Human. The problem is that the underlying literature is easily prone to bias and confounding, particularly on the non-Hodgkins lymphoma topic (the studies are correlational and frequently confounded with other pesticide use). There are weight issues with even including this study in the lower-tier of just looking at meta-analyses, so it's really become a topic where secondary coverage of the meta-analyses is frequently needed at this point. The status of that last paragraph I linked to stays the same in either case where some studies saw a correlation with NHL, but many find none with the positive associations often having methodological issues.

Scientific consensus is already a high bar though. If it's climate change, we don't say we need to include sources that go against that consensus, we don't include studies saying there is a significant health risk to GMOs, etc. even if they are meta-analyses. Doing otherwise would contradict too many polices. A lot needs to happen for a study like this to be mentioned here. Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:22, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Again this is NOT chlimate change and the scientific consensus you claim simply does not exist.--Kmhkmh (talk) 05:39, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Please avoid violating WP:OR by claiming there is no consensus. The relevant portion of current text is very clear on this. A scientific consensus can occur in areas other than climate change. Kingofaces43 (talk) 06:23, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

Again you claiming a scientific consensus, doesn't make one. And yes a scientific consensus is not restricted to climate change, in fact most of our science articles live in a consensus space. Glyphosate and various related issues however fail a scientific cosnsensus on many topics as far as I can see, instead you can only talk of majority opinions (in a heavily lobbied field). Also you can't really violate WP:OR on a talk page.--Kmhkmh (talk) 20:37, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

• I've read through the paper (being summoned from FTN WT:MEDRS) and I do think a sentence should go in the article at some point, perhaps after waiting a few weeks to make sure no major flaws are uncovered. We're already citing other NHL meta-analyses, and if there isn't anything wrong with this one then consistency would suggest adding it as well. The sources do seem pretty clear that there's a consensus with respect to general carcinogenicity, but my impression (I can't say for sure) is that this might indicate a minority view for NHL in particular that's significant enough to mention, again with the caveat that the paper's methods and results are not substantially questioned in the future. If not, then the presence of the other NHL meta-analyses should be re-evaluated.

That said, if we want to consider additions, the text that was originally inserted and Olive's above proposal both contain editorializing as well as at least one major problem. For the latter version, the language "our current meta-analysis" suggests the most recent meta-analysis is necessarily the most authoritative, or even subsumes previously published meta-analyses, which are definitely not the case. For the former, it emphasizes the observed risk estimate when the authors specifically de-emphasize it and instead offer cautions on interpretation, and the use of the vague plural "some cancers" (while it could arguably be considered technically correct) gives the false impression of greater severity. (And on that note, while it's not explicitly laid out in this source, for context it may also be necessary to make the point that this is essentially focused on occupational exposures, which is very different from the environmental exposures that tend to be of greater interest to the general public.) Sunrise (talk) 05:54, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I’ve mentioned weight issues, and part of what you mention for other NHL text if somewhat historical. That is included because those initial NHL analyses caused a splash at the time, but were largely later discredited, hence the current layout. This source hasn’t reached that bar yet. Including itwould become more like dueling sources when the current version provides how other sources summarize the progression of literature instead. That background is a little buried within the sources if only glancing at text.

As for where the consensus applies with respect to “general cancer”, the NHL studies were prominently weighed in on within the various consensus statements in the sources. They were looked at, and the weight of evidence was considered as no significant risk. That’s why we need to be careful about contradicting the consensus that includes NHL with a single meta-analysis when there has already been a lot of weighing in with previous sources. Kingofaces43 (talk) 06:22, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I couldn't find any mention of this at WP:FTN. Was it actually my post at WT:MEDRS? If not, Sunrise, could you please link to the discussion? Also, I believe that a thoughtful reading of WP:MEDRS does not lead to the overly simplistic conclusion that this is a MEDRS-compliant source, at least not if we present it in a way that gives it more weight than the source material as a whole. That doesn't mean that we are going to dismiss it out of hand. (Also, although no one is doing anything wrong here, I just want to remind everyone that the discretionary sanctions from the ArbCom GMO case apply to this page. Just giving the reminder before there is any problem.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:48, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

(For my part, I probably wouldn't have considered commenting here at all if I didn't know the atmosphere was being controlled by the DS! And yes, I meant WT:MEDRS, sorry for the mixup.) Your proposal below is in line with the sort of thing I was thinking of for the ideal case - minority (or fringe) positions, if mentioned, must be placed in the context of the majority view, and any addition would have to comply with that. However, I agree with the comment that this isn't coming across very well for the existing text. In particular, to me the weighting in the current version of the lead seems to imply there is at least a serious possibility of cancer risk: emphasis on "concerns" with no direct counterbalance, a lot of use of attribution and quotation, the 2014 meta-analysis getting the final word in paragraph 4, and IARC being given the most visible position in paragraph 5. The situation becomes clearer after reading the body, but the same kind of thing applies there too, such as giving the "limited evidence" statement the first position in the paragraph that describes the consensus statement. Sunrise (talk) 04:08, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Sunrise. Sorry if anything caused you any stress. I agree with you overall on the content issues. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:52, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Sunrise, I've taken a stab and rearranging this section a little bit to at least be more in line with what an intended reading should be with appropriate weighting. That would be the prime spot for adding the example citations like Tryptofish mentioned. That being said, it's currently written to rely on other studies commenting on the minority viewpoint rather than standalone, so I'm still not sure how best to fit in the new study with regards to my SYNTH comment above. If this version at least makes better sense, we can go forward from there on whether it's better to wait awhile before adding anything about this new study. We'll be getting ourselves into less trouble at least trying to add it in to some variation of the change I just made.

Something like that could also be copied into the lede too to replace the problem areas you brought up if people are ok with that idea. I'm not beholden to my particular version, but that's the gist to get across at least using the sources we have so far. I can do more digging if we want to discuss specifically how international agencies have discounted many meta-analysis in this subject, though it may be redundant to some degree too. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:12, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I've been thinking about this, and while I would oppose giving this one paper a prominent treatment in the form of something like a paragraph of its own, I do think that we could cite it in the form of something like: "Although some reviews of the literature have concluded that there is evidence of occupational carcinogenicity, (cite papers, including this one) most analyses have concluded that the weight of evidence is against that being the case. (cites)" Or something like that. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:36, 17 February 2019 (UTC)

I’ve been batting around a similar idea. Basically this conversation so far is showing readers aren’t catching that scientific agencies haven’t been giving these studies weight due to various issues in the studies (that would also at least in part be inherent in this study too). We skim over that in our current content aside from the single sentence mentioning bias and confounding, so that’s a prime candidate to flesh out. Your example could fit in that paragraph, but it also wouldn’t really matter whether this new study is included or not since the sources already mention them. I’ll looking into fleshing out based on previous sources in the morning.

The only caution I would have against citing the study even as an example would by a SYNTH concern. The sources we can bring up talk about previous meta-analyses and the underlying literature’s issues that this new study would have run into as well, but those sources don’t discuss this new study directly. Not sure how best to tackle that aspect if someone is adamant about including the example listing as you mention quite yet, but your approach looks ok. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:34, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

I think we are moving in the right direction, but I'll wait to see what other editors think at this point. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:54, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which means to "give information on many aspects of a subject." So the high barrier should be against suppressing any significant aspect of the evidence, shouldn't it? Not against including it. Even CNN reported the new meta-study. https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/14/health/us-glyphosate-cancer-study-scli-intl/index.html . On WP we have to be more PC and MSM than the corporate media?

FWIW The reason I ended up on this page is my neighbors have evidently killed off the bees in our neighborhood this spring by using herbicide on their weeds. No bees, no fruit on my trees. In the book Seeds of Destruction, Engdahl claims Roundup is the cause of the bee die off. Now I believe it. There's primary evidence for you.

Probably no point posting Engdahl as a source on the main page. It will be whitewashed away faster than Tom Sawyer's fence.

WP is a fabulous resource, but many people do not trust it on controversial issues, because of this tendency to downplay controversy and focus only on a "consensus" view. By definition consensus is not unanimous. And who decides which controversies are worthy of note? For instance, there is a virtually unanimous consensus that the earth is round. Yet WP has a bundle of pages on Flat Earth theory. Which conceivably are not a threat to any corporate interest.

To a non Wikipedian like me, it's pretty mind boggling that WP admins can justify referencing a study that supports a corporate viewpoint, yet ban mention of the corporate sponsorship. That's such a basic rule of journalism. How anyone can hold those contradictory views - and then delete a science article from a university website as a puff? This reminds me a bit of East Block totalitarian doublethink, or just plain bias. Sorry if I'm not being polite, I'm actually trying, but sometimes being frank and being polite are contradictory positions too.

Indeed, WP does often include a paragraph for contrary views. In the case of Global Warming, there is this page: List of scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus on global warming. So I don't see how global warming can be used as an example for suppressing opposing views about glyphosate.

JPLeonard (talk) 10:42, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that editors can be in favor of presenting content in a particular manner, without being motivated by supporting "a corporate viewpoint", and without it being "whitewashing". The editing community went through an epic process at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Genetically modified organisms over these issues. I agree with you that Wikipedia is rather poor at covering controversial current events, but we would be even worse if we simply went by editor opinion. You may perhaps find WP:RGW interesting reading. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:56, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi Tryptofish, I am glad we agree on something, "that Wikipedia is rather poor at covering controversial current events". However, I'm not talking about the manner of presentation, but about deleting entirely, about suppression of noteworthy opposing views or data. And I'm not suggesting to go by editor opinion. Just state the facts. Such and such a study said so and so. So we are both in favor of improving WP on that score.

To me, Flat Earth is completely untenable. According to WP, the Greeks had worked out that it's round by 600 BC, and Eratosthenes even measured its circumference accurately around 200 BC. Nowadays you can call anybody in a different time zone and ask them the time, and work it out yourself. So how do some otherwise rational people still join the Flat Earth Society? From what I've seen, it's echo chambering, cherry picking and purity spiraling.

What I'm getting at, is that a consensus may be influenced within any group by such factors. So one should be careful to distinguish "consensus" from certainty, because it is in flux all the time, as noted above by others. Without considering objections to the status quo, we don't move forward.

About the GMO issue, that's closely related to glyphosates, Monsanto, Roundup Ready and F Wm Engdahl's book. I see that there is a controversy section there Genetically_modified_organism#Controversy but apparently the page is locked, is that correct? The template also has no section for books. There is also a section on the right text box for Controversies with 5 entries, starting with Genetically modified food controversies so one can see that there has been effort put into this, which of course reflects the intensity of anti-GMO protests worldwide.

So it seems that WP does deal with controversies on current events, even closely related ones, and what several posters here are wondering is, why not here? JPLeonard (talk) 19:50, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

This page is about glyphosate as a specific chemical entity, whereas the controversy section of the GMO page, and the Genetically modified food controversies page, are obviously the best places for controversies. It makes better sense to cover information in the most closely related articles, as opposed to having redundant stuff appearing in multiple pages. If those pages are restricted to editing by longer-term editors, you can always post an edit request on the corresponding article talk page. Wikipedia:Edit requests describes how to do that. This talk section, here, is from February, when editors were discussing whether or not to source the information to a press release, before the actual study came out. If you look lower on this talk page, where the most recent discussions are, you will see me linking to the now-published study, and advocating that we cite it heavily, and other editors largely agreeing with me about that, although we are still discussing how, exactly, to frame it. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:41, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm confused. A herbicide is not a food so how can the place for this be the GMO food page? Anyway, the article already contains a discussion with opposing views about risks of this chemical:

"the available data is contradictory and far from being convincing" with regard to correlations between exposure to glyphosate formulations and risk of various cancers, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).[6] A meta-analysis published in 2014 identified an increased risk of NHL in workers exposed to glyphosate formulations.[7]"-- JPLeonard (talk) 02:07, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Looking back at my earlier comments to you, I'll confess to having been a little confused myself. This section of the talk page is from a while back, and there have been a lot of different things being discussed more recently, so I feel like it has been a lot for me to juggle. Actually, the meta-analysis is going to be added to this page. It would be better to discuss it down there, in the more recent talk page discussions below. But it's reasonable to consider herbicides that are used on GM food crops to be part of the controversies over GMOs and related technologies. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:03, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

good source for improving the intro and making it more user friendly

http://www.speclab.com/compound/c1071836.htm --Espoo (talk) 23:55, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, but this is not a good source. Much better sources are available and have already been cited. I don´t think your addition of language dictionaries in the lead/1st sentence improved the article. JimRenge (talk) 00:14, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

New verdict

There have just been news reports of a verdict in a new case in the same topic as Glyphosate#Lawsuits claiming links to cancer. I expect that this may set off a round of edits that may be poorly formed. I suggest that it be treated with similar weight as the previous case. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:07, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

Questionable source

I question the use of this review article:[2] It is a review done by :Professor of Pesticide Chemistry and Toxicology, Assiut University and Deputy Chairman of the Agricultural Pesticide Committee (APC), Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Arab Republic of Egypt. It appeared in the Journal of Toxicology and Health, which brings up nothing other than its own information when googled. I'd appreciate some feedback. Gandydancer (talk) 14:30, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the question. The first thing I thought of was whether it might be a predatory journal, so I looked into it. At the link you provided, it's shown as being part of Herbert Open Access Journals (Herbert Publications). And that publisher is on this list: [3], which is generally considered the definitive list of such publishers. As such, it fails WP:RS and needs to be removed from this page and any other page that cites it.

That's a pity, because it probably is not the fault of the author of the review, because most authors who publish at these journals have been hoodwinked into thinking that the journal is legit. The author appears to be a full professor, and we obviously do not reject sources by authors from non-first-world countries, so the opinions there are probably on the up-and-up, and critical reviews of the literature are normally exactly what we want to use as MEDRS sources. Maybe that author also has published in a valid journal, which would be worth a look. But this one has to go. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:16, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I looked at what else the author has published, and he is really a very distinguished authority on the chemistry of these kinds of things, but he has only one other review about pesticides, and it's in the same publication. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:52, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Yes, what a pity indeed. That he would submit both reviews about pesticides to a predatory journal that uses made-up names as peer reviewers is probably not his fault. Gandydancer (talk) 19:52, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

It's so difficult to read affect online, that I have to check. I'm not sure whether you are being sarcastic about that, but I hope that's not the case. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:57, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

In case you didn't know, legitimate scientific journals almost never tell the authors who the reviewers were. Peer-review is typically done anonymously. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:13, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

I am, of course, aware of that. Gandydancer (talk) 21:20, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Good, thanks. So I guess that means that you agree that he likely potentially did not know that it was a predatory journal. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 1 April 2019 (UTC) word changed --Tryptofish (talk) 21:34, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you. I agree, we better avoid citing predatory journals. I am surprised to see that the same author who wrote: "When the conditions of glyphosate use in Egypt is rationally analyzed, it appears that exposure of the public to glyphosate is order of magnitudes far below the zero-risk dose." concludes one year later "(...) Taken all together, it can be fairly said that confidence in the regulatory certified ADI values is highly eroded." and proposes a new acceptable daily intake of 2.5 ng/kg bw/day, 1/400 000 of the existing ADI of 1mg/kg bw/day. (Yehia A. Ibrahim (2015). A regulatory perspective on the potential carcinogenicity of glyphosate, Journal of Toxicology and Health 2, 1. Yehia A. Ibrahim (2016). Hypothetical adjustment of the acceptable daily intake and correction of the underrated risk: A case study of glyphosate based herbicides, J. Toxicol. Environ. Health Science 8 (7), 57.) The website academicjournals.org, J. Toxicol. Environ. Health Science, is blacklisted by wikipedia. JimRenge (talk) 23:21, 1 April 2019 (UTC) suppl. JimRenge (talk) 22:17, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

The source is still on the page (and the other pages where it was cited). That's because it's cited multiple times, and it was only removed at one place. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:41, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Done, removed it in Bayer, Monsanto, Roundup, Glyphosate, GBH, etc. JimRenge (talk) 20:33, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, JimRenge, that's much appreciated. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:31, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

That's unfortunate. I didn't find anything that set off any red flags on predatory journals when I first found the source and looked at the time. I'll do a little bit more digging on replacement sources, but there are some pointing out that some of those Herbert journals are legitimate, and another review does point out Ibrahim as a good source for what various agencies have said on the matter. I'd have to dig into the specifics on this journal more though. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:44, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

The consensus at RSN and elsewhere has been pretty clear that we should not cite anything from sources that are on Beall's list of predatory journals, and I want to adhere to that consensus. I'm glad that you found that other review, however, because taking it along with the first one that I cite just below in "Other sources", they do fill the gap left behind by omitting Ibrahim. On the other hand, I'm pretty well convinced by my look for sources that it is no longer valid for us to say that IARC was the "only one". Flawed yes, and we should say so, but there are clearly newer sources that also raise concerns, and I want us to present a balanced view of both "sides". --Tryptofish (talk) 18:37, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

That's my general sentiment too. I was curious if there was any such coverage of the journal itself in terms of reliability, but I didn't find any in a quick search. It's better to focus on other sources as you say. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:10, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Other sources

I've looked for some better sources on the same issue.

• This: [4], looks to be a valid review by a qualified expert in a legitimate journal, that makes criticisms of IARC that are similar to what Ibrahim said.
• This: [5], is another good recent review, that says that current safety evaluations of glyphosate are out-of-date and that it should be regarded more critically.
• These: [6] and [7], present both "sides" of the issue.

--Tryptofish (talk) 19:41, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I would want to know if the IARC claims that Monsanto's lawyers retained Bob Tarone (#1) were true, before paying $47 to read it. I've read the others (quickly) and it's true that they seem more balanced than what was in the article before, but they pretty clearly don't say the same thing as what the entry currently does so the text will need significant rewriting. The comments about non-US, non-European data/studies in #3 are particularly of interest. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 00:47, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

It appears that Tarone has testified under oath that he did not receive any money and was not influenced in any way by Monsanto: [8]. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:59, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

A similar commentary by him here: [9]. But I don't think it adds much to the other article. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

I should add that I came across that while searching for anything else about Tarone having had a conflict of interest. As far as I can tell, all of the accusations come out of the IARC letter. And that letter says that the European Journal of Cancer Prevention was going to reclassify Tarone's piece from a "research paper" to an "opinion paper"; however, the present-day online version of the article still calls it a "research paper". --Tryptofish (talk) 22:29, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

About MEDRS sources

I've just made this edit: [10], and I want to explain why, because it may not be entirely obvious.

For content such as this, that says or implies that something may cause birth defects, Wikipedia relies on WP:MEDRS to evaluate sources, so that we don't mislead readers with preliminary or one-off health information (which gets published in the scientific literature all the time, and needs to be replicated subsequently by independent researchers). I previously had placed this tag: [11]. That's because the source was a press report rather than a peer-reviewed study, and because it was about a case report of a single patient, rather than a retrospective review of the literature as a whole. More information was then added, which I appreciate: [12]. But that only compounded the problem. First of all, these amount to three separate reports, so there is WP:SYNTH in treating two of them as justifying the first. Also, the two new sources are primary sources, rather than retrospective reviews of the kind of observation reported in the first press report. That's why I removed it. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:33, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

About that deleted material

This is the text that was deleted.

In a legal case filed against Monsanto in France in May 2018, a surgeon who operated on a boy born with multiple deformities said that without any genetic antecedents, it was "highly probable" that the pesticide played a role in his deformities.

Correlations between high glyphosate levels in urine and shortened pregnancy have been observed. An Argentine study of vertebrate embryos concluded that "the direct effect of glyphosate on early mechanisms of morphogenesis in vertebrate embryos opens concerns about the clinical findings from human offspring in populations exposed to GBH in agricultural fields."

References

As I understand it Trypto's complaint is not that we report the fact that Monsanto is being sued in a case related to birth defects (though he *did* admittedly delete that), nor with the research into retinoic acid and reduced gestation periods, but the fact that these were right next to each other in the text. How would others (or Trypto) suggest these 3 items be arranged to keep everyone happy and still to provide readers with the information. (cf. wp:notcensored, etc.) p.s. there are some photo-pages about Argentinian birth defects in rural areas, but I thought that probably wouldn't pass the censors. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 09:16, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

In general it's a bad idea to comment on legal cases that have only been filed. Anyone can claim anything in a filing, but that doesn't mean it is true. The primary research references are obviously not MEDRS-compliant (or even SCIRS) and I agree with Tryptofish that it is especially problematic to use these to reinforce the suggestion that the birth defect was caused by glyphosate when this is contrary to the status-quo that it does not affect reproductive health. Please knock it off with your mentions of censorship etc. these are long-established principles for dealing with health-related information on Wikipedia. SmartSE (talk) 10:01, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

There is also the issue of WP:SYNTH. For WP to imply that primary source: 'Glyphosate can shorten the duration of pregnancy' plus primary source: 'Glyphosate does stuff in lab animals' equals 'what the surgeon said about a single case of a baby with birth defects', that's what WP:SYNTH is about. It's not about putting the sources in different places. It's about WP:NOR. And that in turn is why we use literature reviews rather than have editors decide to combine primary sources to communicate something. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:49, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Hmmm... I see there's a study on the correlation between high levels of glyphosate pollution in Argentina and miscarriage (3x more likely) and congenital abnormalities (2x more likely). That said, the publisher is blocked as predatory on en.wp (SCIRP: ) It's very curious all that I am learning about how research gets banned/blocked/blacklisted from en.wp.

References

In matters related to this page, Trypto, could you also explain why since 2015 you haven't ever deemed it useful to add that the IARC had found the herbicide to be a "probable carcinogen" on the Roundup page you've principally authored (in large part by copying from this page)? Or why no mention had ever been made of the Monsanto Papers on this page or that one? (the prize, much less the articles, aren't exactly new...) These two facts are very, very strange.

I appreciate that you don't wish to consider the World Health Organization a *notable* exception to the list of regulatory / advisory institutions that have deemed the herbicide to be non-carcinogenic. Even if it *is* the WHO, "notable" could, I suppose be construed as editorializing. However, let's keep this in perpective. What follows is the one-sided story I found and had to fix at the Roundup entry you "steward"... (see here in particular which you said you copied from this page in Sept 2018). Could you explain why there was no mention whatsoever of the IARC finding, while that finding is an essential element of the article you were citing (the main purpose of the article being to react to / investigate that claim). This would seem to be WP:NOR of the highest degree... taking one article and skipping over the parts it is "inconvenient" that the article mentions.

Finally, any ideas why there is a line through the principal author of this entry's pseudonym on the talk page? Have they been blacklisted/blocked/banned/shot or are they OK? SashiRolls ^{t · c} 20:35, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't really sound to me like you are asking me about content, which I would be happy to do, but rather that you are making innuendos about me. If you actually feel that there are problems with my conduct, take it to the appropriate venue. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:36, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

"Knock it off", SmartSE? I beg your pardon? Who are you to speak with me in such a manner? Please focus on arguing convincingly why the studies should be "removed". I don't think the average passerby will be convinced by your statement above. How is it that the Egyptian researcher mentioned two sections ago passed MEDRS? (because he was entrusted with making a national recommendation?)

Now as for whether RS reporting on a widely publicized lawsuit should be included in an encyclopedia entry, that's a different question. Also SmartSE & Tryptofish I would ask that you refrain from refactoring TP comments. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 12:05, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

I agree with SmartSE that we should be avoiding using anything from ongoing cases where anything can be alleged. There are definitely WP:MEDRS issues with this too, so I don't really see anything we can do right now at least. Something to discuss if there are new secondary sources though. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:48, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

BRD: Should Monsanto-funded studies be marked as such?

There is a discussion going on in edit summaries about whether research funded by Monsanto should be marked as such (see most recently here). This, I suppose, is a sort of intellectual mise en abîme. Wikipedia policy says that contributors having a vested interest must declare that interest on the talk page and wait for other contributors to validate (or reject) their proposed contributions.

The article cited includes a disclosure statement saying that one of the principal authors has worked, as an employee of the subcontractor "Exponent", for Monsanto. The authors are employed by Exponent, a scientific research and consulting firm that provides services for private and governmental clients, including on projects concerning glyphosate and other pesticides. In the past five years, Ellen Chang has provided consulting services through Exponent on behalf of Monsanto Company on other issues, and she also has provided consulting services on other pesticides and lymphohematopoietic cancers for other clients. It also notes that the research was wholly funded by Monsanto.(source)

I see no reason for en.wiki not to indicate who paid for the research. Doing so does not invalidate the study, but dutifully mirrors the disclosure statement and funding sections in the conclusions to the article. IMO, 19 bytes won't break the servers' backs. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 17:09, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

About a month ago, a statement about funding was added in the "Cancer" section: [13], and I tagged it, with the edit summary Saying "funded by Monsanto" in this way seems to me to go too far towards editorializing in Wikipedia's voice. Do sources demonstrate that the paper was actually biased as a result?: [14], which I think is self-explanatory. Actually, despite my most recent edit summary, I misremembered what I had done as a revert; in fact, all I did was put a tag after the phrase, explaining the tag in my edit summary just above, and the tagged passage is still there as of today. About a month later, the same statement about the same source was added in the "Human" section, without taking note of the earlier tag: [15]. And that is what I reverted yesterday: [16].

As per my earlier edit summary, saying "funded by Monsanto" in Wikipedia's voice makes it sound like Wikipedia is passing judgment on the soundness of the study, which violates WP:NOR. The correct way to write about it would be to cite a reliable source, such as a journalist or an academic (and not a conspiracy theorist), writing about the funding of the study and saying that the funding had a noteworthy influence on what the study said – and to attribute that view to that source. And if there are different sources that come to differing conclusions about it, we would have to reflect that difference. But not to say it in Wikipedia's voice. If we can say it in an NPOV way, with proper attribution, that would be fine with me. I'm not looking to prevent the information from appearing in an appropriate way. (It certainly has nothing to do with the number of bytes.)

I have a concern about the quoting of the WP:COI policy. If it was simply intended to draw a parallel between COI issues at Wikipedia, and possible influences of funding on the source being discussed, that's fine, no problem. But if there were any intent to imply that I am an editor with a COI and should not have made the edits that I did, that's a problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:29, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Sources too closely associated with the subject, can prevent an article from being neutral. "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." (WP:RS/overview) When the author is writing about the toxicity of a product that is sold by his employer he may have a conflict of interest. JimRenge (talk) 22:37, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

This does seem straightforward. Without the declaration of funding the paper would not have been published in the source (Journal of Environmental Science and Health). Why would different standards hold here? SashiRolls ^{t · c} 04:17, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

At the same time, the journal did decide to publish the paper, calling it a "systematic review" rather than an opinion piece, and it would be original research for Wikipedia to imply in Wikipedia's voice that there had been something dodgy about the editorial decision to publish it that way. Our standards require us to go by what the sources say, not by what editors think about the sources (and because this is health-related, our requirements for going with what academic journals decide are reviews are all the more stringent). But as I already said, I would be happy to support adding the information, if it were attributed to secondary, reliable sources that say that the funding is something that, in the opinion of the secondary sources, is important to consider when evaluating the paper. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:18, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Certainly considering that it is extremely unlikely that any corporation has ever published a study or a review that found their product to be problematic it should not be considered unimportant to know exactly just who paid for the study or review. If we are not allowed to mention funding I assume we have a guideline saying just exactly that. Right? Gandydancer (talk) 18:01, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Who is the editor who said that we should never mention it? Certainly not me.

(Parenthetically, one of the most landmark analyses of climate change was written by a scientist who accepted funding for it from the Koch brothers and then used their funding to publish the opposite of what they wanted. And I have a friend who took funding from the tobacco industry to support studies he published that demonstrated the toxicity of nicotine. Scientists actually do that sort of thing a lot more often than the public realizes. And anyway, Monsanto did not publish the review. A peer-reviewed scientific journal did.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:08, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I fixed it myself: [17]. And it wasn't that difficult to do. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:46, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

P.S. I also noticed that some more recent reviews have cited the 2016 one. On a quick read, two agreed with the 2016 review and one disagreed; I haven't looked into the authors or their funding. I don't have time right now, but it would be worth looking into that further and maybe updating the page accordingly. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:55, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Tryptofish, I'm just catching up, but where did this NRDC source come in? Had it been discussed before and I missed it, or was it just brought in? The issue I'm seeing is that it is not MEDRS (not to mention an advocacy group) and can't really be used to criticize a MEDRS source.

Below, I mentioned two reviews, but what's the third review you mention? At least in my look of the secondary sources so far barring a third one, I'm not seeing any criticism of the 2016 review we can use here. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:06, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

You asked me just as I was about to log out for tonight, so I'll have to get back to you tomorrow about the reviews that I saw. The NRDC came from me, in my comment immediately above, about "I fixed it myself". I'm conflicted about this: I at least partly agree with you about MEDRS issues; on the other hand, I appreciate that there is a controversy that is separate from the health science aspects, and I don't want to leave that out, and although NRDC is an advocacy group, I think they are reasonably mainstream. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:13, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

OK, I've gone back and looked closely at sources. First of all, I have some hesitation about the two that you listed just below. Both of them only mention the 2016 review very briefly, in passing, without really expressing an evaluation of it one way or the other, more like "here are some analyses that found a correlation, and here are some that didn't", with Chang 2016 among the latter. And the second one has a lot of authorship from Monsanto people, so it will be more of a battle to get editors to agree to using it than it's worth, given how little it really tells us about Chang 2016.

The three that I saw were:

1. This, which on looking more closely I am going to quickly rule out, because it's on Beall's List of predatory journals.
2. A large health study from 2017. It cites Chang favorably and reaches the same conclusions (albeit with some caveats about not-quite significant effects in "highest exposure" groups). It's not exactly a review article though. The authors seem to have no conflicts of interest.
3. A meta-review from 2019. Cites Chang, no COI issues. But it concludes that there is a "compelling link" between glyphosate and those kinds of cancers.

I think we might want to significantly update the sourcing we use on this and related pages, but we must include that meta-review (#3) and present both sides. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:20, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

On the two I cited, I was not saying they were comprehensive, but that of reviews citing it, nothing negative came up (as opposed to glowing in-depth reviews which I did not say). Hopefully that makes it a little more clear. Kingofaces43 (talk) 04:02, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

• In general, it's inappropriate to call out funding source alone on peer-reviewed research when it's done by independent researchers, and a common mistake made by non-scientists as Tryptofish alluded to above. If there was some connection with the funding source that biased the study design or findings, then peer-reviewers or future MEDRS sources will ultimately call that aspect out, not us. If I'm peer-reviewing a paper for a journal that has an article with industry funding, it gets treated the same as any other where I try to fish out methodological issues, etc., though maybe with more scrutiny on methodological "positive" biases. If it passes peer-review, we can't cast shade on an article for solely due to funding source done by independent researchers.

In this case, the disclosure statement makes clear the authors had sole control of the article, not the funder. That's the main criteria for independence for us here (if a current Monsanto employee were an author, that would be a different story). Independent consulting agencies alone are more variable quality quality compared to university researchers, but while Chang has the affiliation with the independent consulting agency, both Chang and Delzell are affiliated with Standford University.

I took a look on Web of Science though to see what MEDRS reviews are citing the study. There are two:

1. Re-registration Challenges of Glyphosate in the European Union
2. Glyphosate epidemiology expert panel review: a weight of evidence systematic review of the relationship between glyphosate exposure and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or multiple myeloma

In either case, there is no criticism of methodology, findings, etc. It's been nearly three years with no critical coverage so we have to consider criticisms of the meta-analysis with respect to just funding source WP:UNDUE unless a source shows there was a problem with the funding source. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:57, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Nobody is "shading on an article". The reverted addition was a neutral and verifiable statement of fact: "funded by Monsanto". Wikipedia should not have lower standards for documenting that fact than the original journal does. The idea that the original journal is committing "a common mistake made by non-scientists" by reporting the funding is strange. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 05:46, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

SashiRolls’ reasoning seems clear and correct. The reverted addition should be restored. Jusdafax (talk) 06:29, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

What's wrong with what I put in about it? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:48, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

In case editors did not see it: [18]. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:14, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

It seems ok, but let's look to be sure. Hmmm... the edit summary (§) doesn't get a very good "plays well with the other children" grade (0/1). Hmm... it does seem to be an effort to sidestep the ethical question of how the source should be represented in the first place (0/2), but it also made clear -- at least to me -- that the "dose makes the poison" hatnote needed reverting over at Roundup (1/3) and it seems like a reasonable compromise locally, as long as we reject categorically the premise that a secondary source is necessary to transcribe funding info from an original source (2/4). It was also probably time to remove the call (as you did) to add stuff to that entry from fr.wp. (so 3/5) SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:39, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Another editor had said that the removed material should be put back, so I wanted to make sure that editors were aware that the material was, in fact, put back – but in a form that follows policy. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:54, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Just out of curiosity, which policy? A primary source showing that the study was funded by Monsanto would be a bank statement showing the transaction, or a form filled out by a contributor saying their research had been so funded. The Journal of Environmental Science and Health is a secondary source for such a claim, unless I'm mistaken in my reading of wp:secondary. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 22:04, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Attributing and specifying biased statements. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:12, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

SashiRolls, it's best not to misrepresent my comments like that. No one was saying the journal made any "mistakes" It's standard practice to include funding sources in the acknowledgments. It's not standard practice mention funding source for every study cited on Wikipedia though. Either there's a legitimate reason why funding source is an important detail outlined in MEDRS sources for criticism of the review, or there's nothing particularly relevant about the funding source. Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:02, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

While I may have misunderstood your comment, I don't believe I have misrepresented it:

In general, it's inappropriate to call out funding source alone on peer-reviewed research when it's done by independent researchers, and a common mistake made by non-scientists as Tryptofish alluded to above.

The disclosure statement & funding sections of the published article are separate from the acknowledgments section. Those who want to discuss the matter of who is doing the "calling out" can reach those two sections quickly by using this internal anchor provided to "conclusions" in the initial publication being used as a source: (#_i40). Frankly, I have no opinion on the "truth" of the matter concerning gylphosate (I am not competent to judge). However, judging is not a volunteer contributor's task, though NPOV is. And NPOV would seem to suggest that we should follow the "best practices" of the journal we are citing. This doesn't seem that complicated, biased, or even worthy of great walls of text. What gives? SashiRolls ^{t · c} 16:00, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

The fact that editors should not judge in that manner is exactly why WP:NPOV calls for biased statements to be attributed rather than asserted in Wikipedia's voice. Wikipedia policies and guidelines are the "best practices" that Wikipedia should follow. And complying with that is indeed what editors are responsible for, which is why I revised the way that the page refers to the funding. Now that it has been fixed, I think that "what gives" is it's time to give this wall of text a rest. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:54, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

I for one am willing to let your new text be for now with the MEDRS tag in place rather than removing the source outright for now. It doesn't look like anything else is going to get resolved here and now at least. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:59, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

The Revised Glyphosate Issue Paper: Evaluation of Carcinogenic Potential. EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs. December 12, 2017. page 22, introduces the Chang/Delzell paper as follows: "This list was also cross-referenced with review articles from the open literature [Chang and Delzell (2016), Greim et al. (2015), Kier and Kirkland (2013), Kier (2015), Mink et al. (2012), Schinasi and Leon (2014), and Williams et al. (2000)] Footnote 11: All review articles, except Schinasi and Leon (2014), were funded and/or linked to Monsanto Co. or other registrants." It seems that EPA thought the readers of their study should be informed about the funding of these reviews. JimRenge (talk) 16:23, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

A footnote like that falls into passing mention. Is there any significant discussion of funding source with respect to validity of the review? That's ultimately what we should be shooting for. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:43, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, of course we should tell the reader that Monsanto/Bayer is funding research intended to benefit the company. I'm not going to argue the idealized notion that a peer-reviewed publication always and completely clears the source study of bias. Instead, I note that there have been many articles written about how Monsanto/Bayer has been and still is funding research about the company's products, and how that research is being questioned for apparent bias. The idealized case is not what we have here – instead, this is a matter of following the reliable sources in their questioning of the funding sources. Binksternet (talk) 21:11, 7 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue the idealized notion that a peer-reviewed publication always and completely clears the source study of bias. No one ever advanced that idea in the first place (though it can be a common mistake). The point was that the first step of assessment is peer-review where reviewers look for biases, methodological issues, etc. If a problem did get missed in a MEDRS source like that, we wait for criticism from other MEDRS sources. So far, we don't have anything like that. Kingofaces43 (talk) 05:02, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Trypto has again reverted the inert statement that the 2016 meta-study is funded by Monsanto, preferring instead to suggest it's people he considers to be wacky who point that out. As Jim Renge pointed out above, the EPA itself makes this clear, as I pointed out the original pub makes this clear. If you've read the 2019 Benbrook article SmartSE suggests including, this is a major aspect of the difference between the EPA and the IARC evaluations (along with the fact that the EPA seems to have studies only on technical glyphosate (i.e. unmixed with additives that let it get under the skin more readily, with AMPA, etc.)). So far, jusdafax, Gandydancer, Binksternet, Jim Renge and I seem to think it's no big deal to make brief mention of the fact without fanfare, whereas Trypto wants to write an entire sentence to add new information rather than just attribute the statement. Kingofaces43 wants to go farther, adding a tag of shame to that sentence for maximal rhetorical effect. Right now I see a 5-2 split in favor of straightforward reporting the question, as Gandy had done, and as I did here. Please if I'm mistaken in my reading of your opinions above, feel free to let me know. Why are you editing against what seems to be a pretty strong 5-2 consensus Tryptofish? SashiRolls ^{t · c} 15:59, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

It's not the way that you are framing it. I'm adhering to Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Attributing and specifying biased statements. If you think that I'm being disruptive, WP:AE is that-a-way. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:12, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Better sourcing needed

I question the use of the following section of the article:

In October 2017, an article in The Times revealed that Christopher Portier, a scientist advising the IARC in the assessment of glyphosate and strong advocate for its classification as possibly carcinogenic, had received consulting contracts with two law firm associations representing alleged glyphosate cancer victims that included a payment of US$160,000 to Portier. According to Geoffrey Kabat, Portier played a key role in requesting the IARC perform a review of glyphosate carcinogencity and in deliberations that result in the IARC's conclusion that glyphosate was carcinogenic. Following these reports of Portier's actions, the IARC's final report was also found to have undergone significant changes compared to an interim report through removal of text saying glyphosate was not carcinogenic and to strengthening claims of carcinogenicity. During deposition, Portier said the interim report originally did conclude “limited evidence of animal carcinogenicity.” but denied knowing when the text was changed to “sufficient evidence of animal carcinogenicity”.

I can't read The Times article due to a paywall. Geoffrey Kabat (please see his article) used this blog for his information: [19]. Here's another example of Reuters' journalist Kate Kelland work: [20] Our article makes some pretty strong charges against Portier. Is this flimsy sourcing adequate? I don't think so. Gandydancer (talk) 00:55, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

References

Thank you for raising this, and the section just below as well. Over the last few days, I've been significantly reevaluating my own thoughts about how the page (and the one on Roundup (herbicide)) should be covering toxicity and the associated controversies, in light of new sources that I have just come across. In this regard, I'm going to give a more detailed reply in the section just below. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:37, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

@Gandydancer: Can you please clarify what specifically you find problematic? The whole thing, or just parts? If you google the title of The Times article you should be able to find a copy on lankaweb.com. On the face of it, The Times, Reuters and an expert on risk doesn't seem to be 'flimsy'. SmartSE (talk) 21:24, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I know how to get that article but most of our readers don't. If this is worthy of repeating here it should be available in more than just this one site, using one expert with a questionable history, and a journalist that apparently is rather er, less than careful about her facts in writing at least one other article. As you know, WP insists on extra careful sourcing when it comes to what we have to say about people in general, not just the ones that have a bio here. This information needs to meet WP standards; it does not and it should be deleted. Gandydancer (talk) 00:45, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Access to sources is irrelevant to whether material should be included. The Times is a perfectly acceptable source for that and as evidenced here by the multiple references, there is more than one source discussing this. It's ironic you are alleging journalists are dishonest based off blog posts, while at the same time arguing that blogs (farmonline.com.au most definitely isn't either btw) about Benbrook aren't worthy of your attention. There is no dispute about Portier being paid by the lawyers, so why should it not be included here? SmartSE (talk) 14:15, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps you have not worked on many WP bios as I have. If we're going to post dirt on someone WP insists we have sound RS from multiple sources to back it up. That is not evident here. "Portier being paid by the lawyers..." right. Why would he work for free? If there is something unethical about this it should be well documented, which it is not. Gandydancer (talk) 14:43, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

There is nothing in BLP about requiring multiple sources for critical information and regardless, this isn't the case. There's another one in Reason (magazine) here too: [21] and if anyone can access it, this in the WSJ may well mention it as well. And it's also covered in National Review [22]. SmartSE (talk) 16:16, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

When I was looking around for responses to the 2019 meta-analysis, I fairly quickly came upon online arguments about Geoffrey Kabat's criticisms of it, that centered on whether or not Forbes had banned him from writing for them, and all of it traced back to a brief posting on Twitter by a journalist who is in a dispute with Kabat. My (only) reason for pointing that out is to say that (a) the squabbles about which journalists are or are not corrupt are often petty and are difficult for us to source reliably, and (b) that we are probably best off giving very little space to them on pages like this one, that are about the chemicals, and leave it more for pages like Monsanto, Bayer, Monsanto legal cases, and Genetically modified food controversies, to discuss the accusations against persons. I think there are some basic controversies, such as the scientific conclusions of IARC versus other studies, and Monsanto possibly influencing some published papers, that remain germane to this page, but one reason that I'm pushing for a 2018–9 focus for the science is that it just isn't that useful for this page (or this talk page) to devote a lot of space to the history of "this person or that person was accused of corruption". In other words, if the issue is the toxicity or carcinogenicity of glyphosate and its formulations, we should cover it here, but if the issue is that one person or another got accused of stuff in the course of figuring out whether or not it is carcinogenic, we should leave it for other pages. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:36, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

I will at least agree we don't really want to expand beyond what we currently have with the periphery stuff. That said, Portier's involvement within the IARC decision falls pretty squarely within the scope of this page until the IARC stuff does become more of a historical thing for this subject, so that's at least where the main focus should lie. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:50, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Question re sourcing

The following addition was removed with this reasoning: Best not to use a Benbrook et al. paper as discussed previously, and not a review in terms of WP:MEDRS (essays are often of much lower quality than even primary research articles).

Noting a 100-fold increase in the use of glyphosate-based herbicides from 1974 to 2014, the possibility that herbicide mixtures likely have effects that are not predicted by studying glyphosate alone, and that current safety assessments rely heavily on studies done over 30 years ago, a 2018 review found current safety standards to be outdated and "may fail to protect public health or the environment."

Why do you say we should not use Benbrook. BTW I'm aware it is not a MEDRS Review--I should have used a different term to avoid confusion. Gandydancer (talk) 02:08, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Looking at our sourcing guidelines I find this article acceptable--especially considering the latest information is from 2000:

A 2000 review of the ecotoxicological data on Roundup shows at least 58 studies exist on the effects of Roundup on a range of organisms. This review concluded that "...for terrestrial uses of Roundup minimal acute and chronic risk was predicted for potentially exposed non-target organisms".

Also note that that review used Monsanto unpublished studies for the most part, Monsanto reps to help with the review, and this group: [23], who seem to be a tad shady. I should think that we'd be glad to have something newer that is not so heavily related to the possibility of Monsanto-bias. Gandydancer (talk) 16:16, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

References

As I noted in the section just above, I've become very concerned over the past few days about how we have been treating these issues. In particular, when I was looking for more recent sourcing that followed up on the review from 2016, in the talk section above about "funded by Monsanto", I came across this just-published meta-analysis of the scientific literature on glyphosate and cancer. As I see it, this looks like the most recent literature review on the subject, in a reputable scientific journal, and is WP:MEDRS-compliant, and the authors do not have conflicts of interest. If editors see anything to contradict that, please tell me. And it concludes that glyphosate is correlated with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. So I think that makes it the present-day scientific consensus, and we need to present it that way. As best I can tell, the source material still indicates very little acute toxicity of glyphosate, but that now, glyphosate does have to be regarded as a probable carcinogen.

So I'm thinking about how we should revise our pages about glyphosate and Roundup. And I'm beginning to think – but I want to know what other editors think – that we should remove most of the older material about "is IARC right or wrong?", because it's kind of "yesterday's news". We might want to briefly cover how there has been a long controversy over whether or not glyphosate is carcinogenic, and include the controversies over Monsanto authoring things, but I think we need to end up with the conclusion that it apparently is. That being the case, I think we should simply remove a lot of the stuff about back-and-forth about whether this or that journalist was right or wrong, and focus instead on where the science is today: focus on sources as of 2018 and 2019, and treat most pre-2018 stuff as "historic". --Tryptofish (talk) 19:05, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

References

Here are some published responses to that review: [24], ([25] struck). I think it would be reasonable to present the review with those responses. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:03, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I struck one of those per [26]. I'm not convinced that the description of the paper being retracted is valid, but it would be sufficient to rely just on the other response, from the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I'd say we should be cautious of presenting a single new analysis as over-riding the previous scientific consensus. The science continues to evolve, but I don't think that makes the older sources irrelevant and, as those links show, the conclusions are controversial and contrary to previous studies, including the cohort study which is the main source of new data in their analysis. I think it is ok to briefly mention the review, but it would be premature to think that this had changed the previous consensus. We need to wait and see how other researchers treat this analysis. SmartSE (talk) 21:17, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) There's another piece by Steven Salzberg that discusses the new analysis: [27]. Most pertinently The relative risks of cancer at 5, 10, and 15 years were actually lower in the group exposed to glyphosate, and yet Zhang et al. didn't mention this fact. This will presumably be covered in the literature soon. SmartSE (talk) 21:33, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

Interesting, I just read the meta-review. Thanks Trypto. Their focus on the high-exposure groups has got me thinking about that "dose makes the poison" hatnote. The six billion kilos scattered over the earth in the last ten years, which doesn't bake out after "green burndown," too. No wonder everyone's glyphosate levels in my postage stamp of the world are so high (local papers report on these urine tests). But reading the Germans, it's all alarmist hooey. Phew... that's a relief. :)

Regarding all the COI actions / channels, I would expect an encyclopedia to be historical and do imagine that the company's strategies for targeting certain publications will remain an important part of "knowledge equity" for the next 10 years, at least. How should the history of all these thorny questions and (maybe) magouilles be treated? Probably in a separate section from the science. I agree the most pressing concern for the scientific part of the entry is probably getting the precious MEDRS data up to date. But with 6 billion kilos served in this decade alone, I don't think this entry will ever be only about science, if it is meant to be encyclopedic. I also do not understand why the initial source Gandydancer added last night was reverted, though somehow after reading it I was pretty sure it would be for one reason or another. Can someone explain that removal without using capital letters in the middle of any sentences? SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:30, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Smartse and SashiRolls, thanks both of you. I'm cautiously optimistic that we are coming closer to agreeing about the page. At this point, I do see a lot of back-and-forth about the 2019 meta-analysis. The more I look into it, the more complicated it looks to me. My reading of the sources for the past year or so is that the two major publications, for our purposes, are that meta-analysis and this major study from 2018, which finds no cancer correlation. I think both of them agree that any risk comes only with high-levels of exposure, which means people who actually work with the herbicide, as opposed to the rest of us who get exposed via what has accumulated in the environment.

I think that, yes, we should have a sort of "historical" treatment of the past decade or so, with an emphasis on controversy. The controversy about the IARC versus Monsanto does remain of current interest, but the IARC is no longer an outlier. And for the purely scientific part, we should emphasize these two studies from 2018–9, with some context about what other sources say about them. As I looked into the responses to the 2019 paper, it pretty quickly devolves into people on Twitter going back and forth about whether or not a writer was kicked off of Forbes, and I think Wikipedia should not get bogged down into that. Our emphasis should be that, as of now, those two sources are the main scientific ones for glyphosate and cancer, and we can briefly cover some of the criticisms of them. I'd be inclined to mainly rely on what major groups like the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment have said; opinion pieces in Forbes are probably not as useful for evaluating a MEDRS source. It's entirely possible that something else will come out six months from now that will require a further revision, but I think that this is where we are at as of now. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:05, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

The main thing here is that we can't use an individual meta-analysis that contradicts the plethora of other sources on the correlation subject (an analysis that is prone to false-positives) or cancer in general, much less a source that contradicts higher-tier evidence like the regulatory agencies that have already been fleshed out within the last five years. It gets into a recentism problem too looking too much at the most recent source even if it didn't have criticism rather than the totality or recent sources. Even disregarding that aspect, I'm not seeing anything new since we discussed the study at back in Feburary aside from the critical commentary of the review you provided here to override the various agencies that have assessed this in terms of evidence strength. At best, we'd be looking at fitting it into Glyphosate#Cancer like we do for the other criticized correlational studies as a single sentence or two.

On the type of restructuring you bring up, that doesn't really seem appropriate in this case. The IARC stuff is still very recent in MEDRS terms, and I have to mirror what SmartSE said above. Considering the lack of significant literature change, I feel like we'd just be rehashing old conversations we used to craft the current content. On the note of restructuring though, we do have three somewhat identical articles on this subject, so if I were personally considering any restructuring at this time, it would be getting the article suite down to two articles or even one someday. As I mentioned in a previous talk section, I don't really see anything happening in the sources that would result in significant changes or progress in the article right now though, so time it's probably the best choice for now. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:51, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I wrote the above before seeing your reply to me here. I'm obviously not going to change anything on the page right away, and I'm going to wait and see what other editors here hash out. I do think that we need to make the sourcing current, no matter how we present it, and I also think that, although MEDRS requires reviews, it doesn't require reviews of reviews. It seems to me that, even if the scientific consensus hasn't made a U-turn, it is clear that the "IARC as outlier" narrative is an historical one, and we cannot simply cling to it in the face of sources that say otherwise. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:10, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

As it stands right now, we don't have any sourcing showing the IARC is no longer an outlier. Back around 2015-16, the literature was much the same as it is now. Major agencies haven't reversed their assessments, and correlative studies coming out on NHL are still being criticized for the same methodological problems (e.g., self-reporting issues and confounding in high-exposure groups), hence my comment that there's not much we can do as editors right now. If all we had was dueling reviews, it might be a different story, but as it stands right now, we'd be pitting a single review against mulitiple higher-tier sources. That said, I do have an idea for how to tackle the most recent reviews to keep discussion focused on very specific content, but I'll have to get back to that after the weekend when I get back. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:36, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Please do not try to explain scientific sourcing to me, and while we are at it, please go slower with reverting other editors on the page. The IARC is no longer the only major literature review that comes to the conclusion that it came to, because now there is another. That does not mean that the IARC has been "vindicated", as it were, in terms of its methodology. It doesn't even mean that it was "right". But it does mean that we can no longer say that it is the only one. And we do have to give significant weight to the most current sources. I'm fine with no longer saying, as I had earlier, that the scientific consensus has actually changed. But we now have to be clear that there is a significant weight among reliable sources for both "sides" of this debate. I already said that we should also cite criticism of the new meta-analysis from a major scientific organization. But we don't get to go beyond that, based on editor opinion. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Gandydancer, on Benbrook, it doesn't qualify as a MEDRS source as you even said it wasn't a review. Not to mention in contradicts other sources that essentially say there isn't a significant concern with synergistic effects from formulations, and that text was already hammered out quite a bit in previous iterations. Add in Benbrook's ties with organic industry PR[28][29] that ironically actually do cross the WP:INDEPENDENT line as well as being well known for WP:FRINGE advocacy in the subject, it's definitely not an author to outright reach for. It's similar to how we avoid using Seralini carte blanche. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:51, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm not going to read your blogs to form my opinions. Re the essay, it is my understanding that it can be used for an opinion. As for all this talk about FRINGE advocacy, I will need to bite my tongue on that suggestion rather than to reply. Gandydancer (talk) 00:57, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Can someone explain that removal without using capital letters in the middle of any sentences? (did you really just source your argument to Medium & farmonline.com.au?) SashiRolls ^{t · c} 23:01, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

WP:MEDRS explains why we stick to reviews and why we don't reach for lower quality sources like essays, and the rest that needs to be addressed was already mentioned in my previous reply. For the sources, I suggest following what they discuss that is verifiable rather than getting distracted by sourcing since we aren't generating content based on those sources. That said, farmonline seems to be a normal news source on farm topics and there's plenty of other coverage of Benbrook's direct involvement in the organic industry if we want to start sourcing things in a different article.[30] At the end of the day, I'd expect people would raise a fuss if I tried using a source say by Kevin Folta, so if someone even made a false equivalence that what Benbrook was doing was no different than Folta, we'd already be avoiding that kind of author anyways. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:36, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

stricken second-hand news

France is in an uproar about Monsanto's glyposhate profiling of journalists (allegations of GDPR-type violations). When will "knowledge equity" include this airing of sources and methods in its encyclopaedic entry on the product? Hard to guess. Each article cited mentions the European battle over glyphosate (in no case is it a passing mention), but reading the edit summary explaining the reversion (§) it's got nothing to do with glyphosate at all. (Redacted), meet π.

Front page news on glyphosate deleted

The "Monsanto France database": Right to privacy complaints On 9 May 2019, Le Monde and France 2 announced that they had a copy of the "Monsanto France database" that the PR firm Fleishman-Hillard compiled in 2016, the year after the IARC classification. These tables listed private data concerning journalists, scientists and politicians who were evaluated on a scale of 1-5 concerning their political opinions on, for example, "agriculture, pesticides, GMOs, and health... ." Le Monde & Stéphane Foucart filed a legal complaint in the High Court of Paris on 26 April based in part upon the right to privacy. Le Parisien announced it would file a complaint with the CNIL and Radio France is preparing legal action, as are a European deputy and the NGO Foodwatch. Ecological Transition Minister François de Rugy said he was not 'surprised' that corporations today appear to finance methods more reminiscent of foreign intelligence agencies. References

Also, perhaps less urgently / energetically, should we have graphs showing how the new import tariffs will affect US & Chinese glyphosate producers and/or US & Chinese farmers? ʘ ʘ SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:04, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

Unless there are reliable sources about the tariffs and glyphosate, no. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:14, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

I too am going to have to lodge a pro forma objection to the redaction on this page. Anyone should be allowed to address the good King o'. If you want to call me sashiro or SA. shirolls you can, that won't bother me. I take it squatters are allowed here, as long as they don't bring π? Fine. What do you want to do about the "front page news" Trypto? (see the glyphosate in the blue box here) SashiRolls ^{t · c} 12:55, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

I think the best thing to do about it is what Smartse did and describes just below: it fits much better at Monsanto legal cases than here. Thus, it's not a question of whether or not Wikipedia should cover it, but rather where Wikipedia should cover it.--Tryptofish (talk) 17:14, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

KingofAces beat me to it on removing this (I'd had my 1RR for the day). My reasoning was exactly the same however. This article is about the chemical in general, whereas those articles are specifically relating to Monsanto and their PR agency. If there is a legal case that comes out of it, it is distinct from the others already mentioned in this article that relate to the toxicity and marketing of the chemical. Including it in Monsanto legal cases is far more appropriate and the Le Monde headline you linked to supports this - Fichier Monsanto not Fichier glyphosate. SmartSE (talk) 13:11, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Be my guest. I'll add that page to my watchlist to watch it get done. I'd recommend working from the wiki-text above. Best, SashiRolls ^{t · c} 13:33, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Done. I didn't understand what "a European deputy" meant so removed that for now. SmartSE (talk) 14:47, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Acceptable reviews

After leaving all Monsanto articles some time ago I took hope that things have changed here. I was wrong and hope that I do not have to again leave. Using this review [31] because it had the (Redacted) my added information was still deleted saying that it did not meet our WP:MEDRS standards. It is very discouraging to spend that much time reading a review and adding what I believed to be appropriate information only to have it deleted. Gandydancer (talk) 22:16, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

I used that source specifically because KingofAces said it was WP:MEDRS. How that is called an attack that needed to be redacted is beyond me. Gandydancer (talk) 23:54, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

I can't comment on what KingofAces said but there are a few things to bear in mind: As I'm sure has been discussed here before, articles in Frontiers journals can be questionable and we should be careful how we use them. This specific one is a bit strange in that the article reviewers are all authors who are cited extensively in the review and have some relatively fringe views in this area (similar to Seralini). Other researchers have commented that the fatty liver disease work contained "a number of questionable issues related to the experimental design and the interpretation of the obtained data." The idea of MEDRS is to get around problems of interpreting the findings of individual pieces of primary research. If as in this case though, the reviewers of the review are themselves the authors of the primary research, it's fairly obvious that they are not going to critically evaluate their findings. There's a considerable body of work on the NHL risk, but the fatty liver disease work comes from a single paper and so shouldn't be presented as if ti is equivalent. SmartSE (talk) 14:07, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on this issue. I did not choose that article but rather used it because KoA had said that it was MEDRS compliant (which actually surprised me). All of your criticisms seem reasonable. Gandydancer (talk) 14:58, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Is there any objection to using either of these sources? [32] and [33] ? Gandydancer (talk) 17:21, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

I think the first of those two is an excellent find, thanks! We should definitely use it. The second one is more tricky, because it's labeled by the journal as an "essay" (see here), so it isn't really a review, so much as some recommendations. It's probably best suited for sections that discuss regulation, rather than those about the toxicity ("safety standards" as opposed to "safety"). --Tryptofish (talk) 17:33, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

The second one is a review as well.

See: "Publication types Review Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Gandydancer (talk) 18:05, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that, and I take it as meaning a review of safety standards, as opposed to a review of the scientific literature. Here: [34], is a link to how the paper actually appeared in the journal, and it's very clearly labeled "Essay". I think it's fine as a source in sections about regulation, to say something approximately like "More recently, Vandenberg et al. have recommended changing the safety standards by..." But I would not use it for saying that glyphosate isn't as safe as people used to think. That's the distinction I'm making. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:33, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

My edit read: Noting a 100-fold increase in the use of glyphosate-based herbicides from 1974 to 2014, the possibility that herbicide mixtures likely have effects that are not predicted by studying glyphosate alone, and that current safety assessments rely heavily on studies done over 30 years ago, a 2018 review found current safety standards to be outdated and "may fail to protect public health or the environment."[85] According to our article there is in fact a 100% increase in use and mixtures are probably more harmful than glyphosate alone. I don't know about the "30 years" part but it sounds about right. I do not believe that to say in our article that the authors say current standards "may fail to protect public health or the environment." would violate our guidelines. And again, this was published on PubMed as a review article. This was rejected by Kingofaces due to Best not to use a Benbrook et al. paper as discussed previously, and not a review in terms of WP:MEDRS (essays are often of much lower quality than even primary research articles) Also note that you and another editor now apparently have no problem using Benbrook. There seems to be a double standard problem here. Gandydancer (talk) 20:36, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Tryptofish in that it is an essay piece rather than a classical review and that it is more relevant to regulation and future research than current opinions on safety. The hundred-fold part seems unrelated to the issue of safety and in fact this part of the lead also seems a bit over the top given that it was only introduced in 1974 (it's a million times more than at some point!). It would be more relevant to frame it in terms of when the roundup ready crops were introduced since this was the main driver of increased use (although being off-patent and the move towards no-till farming are also drivers). Bit tangential to this mind! As for Benbrook, as I thought I made clear earlier, it depends on the source and how the source is used. Unfortunately things are not black and white. I don't think there will be any objections to adding content saying "more research is required" but to make it seem as if everyone agrees that the current safety standards are outdated is not appropriate and framing it as a review does give this impression, whereas saying it is essay (i.e. opinion) would make that clearer. SmartSE (talk) 21:15, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Smartse articulates very well what I was trying to say about how to use and how not to use that source. I would be OK with something approximately like: "Vandenberg et al. have noted that current safety assessments rely heavily on studies that are over 30 years old, and recommend that the standards be made more strict." I'll leave it to Kingofaces to explain his thinking. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:29, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Again, PubMed calls it a review. Per MEDRS "Broadly speaking, reviews may be narrative or systematic (and sometimes both). Narrative reviews often set out to provide a general summary of a topic based on a survey of the literature, which can be useful when outlining a topic." IMO this is clearly a narrative review. Re "The hundred-fold part seems unrelated to the issue of safety", I can't understand why the amount in the environment would not be related to the issue of safety. Several articles that I have read have made similar comments about both the increase of use, combinations of products used due to weed resistance, and the new method of using the product to finish off a field in a more uniform pattern, leaving higher levels on the product. Gandydancer (talk) 22:51, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Although I suggested some wording above, I actually don't feel strongly either way about how we source the amount in the environment. Maybe other editors feel more strongly than I do. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:28, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

SmartSE said, "I don't think there will be any objections to adding content saying "more research is required" but to make it seem as if everyone agrees that the current safety standards are outdated is not appropriate and framing it as a review does give this impression, whereas saying it is essay (i.e. opinion) would make that clearer." We will need to disagree on whether or not it is a narrative review but I do feel that we need to include their conclusion/opinion: "We conclude that current safety standards for GBHs are outdated and may fail to protect public health or the environment." It can be called an essay if that satisfies your concerns. Gandydancer (talk) 11:39, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

I think the best thing at this point is to get some outside editor opinions, so I have started WP:RSN#Distinguishing a review from an essay. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:32, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

• Gandydancer, when did I say the source was reliable? I've more or less mirrored what SmartSE said above about Frontiers journals, and that hasn't changed. It's possible I missed that this one was such a journal, but I don't recall where that would have been. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:47, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

After you removed my article info saying the source was of poor quality I used a source you mentioned related to Monsanto study funding in which they found "no criticism of methodology, findings, etc." so as to be certain not waste my time all over again. Perhaps ironic that that was the one that turned out to be of possible low quality and not the one I had used. Gandydancer (talk) 14:49, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

So basically, you claimed I said something I did not say at all. In that case, we were only discussing if there had been any criticism in any studies citing the study (which was no), not that those citing sources were appropriate for use here. Those are two very different discussions. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:13, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

I did nothing of the sort. When you desired to show that there had been no complaints re Monsanto funding you found that study to be both MEDRS and capable of making a Monsanto judgement. I don't know how many times I need to say this - I did not set out to prove you wrong, cause debate, or any thing other than to attempt to use a source that would find approval here, something that has proven to not be an easy thing to do. Gandydancer (talk) 01:07, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

you found that study to be both MEDRS. That is exactly the sort, so please stop insisting I said such when I reiterated multiple times before this that it was not MEDRS. That conversation only got to the point of saying there were two reviews that cited the study in question and they didn't say anything on funding. That particular avenue stopped short of any reliability discussion because there was no relevant content to discuss in the first place. Put another way, even low-quality sources didn't have anything to say on the matter much less higher quality ones. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:08, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

From WP:MEDRS. Note the relative positions of narrative and systematic reviews (and editorials).

• I think it's useful to look critically at the differences between narrative and systematic reviews. I'll reproduce here an image that is at WP:MEDRS. It shows that the two kinds of reviews serve very different levels of evaluating scientific evidence. In the hierarchy of source reliability, narrative reviews aren't that different from editorials. From WP:MEDRS#Biomedical journals: Narrative reviews often set out to provide a general summary of a topic based on a survey of the literature, which can be useful when outlining a topic. Systematic reviews use sophisticated methodology to address a particular clinical question in as balanced (unbiased) a way as possible. When the issues are controversial, the degree of being unbiased becomes particularly important for our purposes here. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:12, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

This is misleading - you've cut CFCF's visual in half, left out his wording and added your own. With the visual you have added it appears that narrative reviews are very low quality sources. Actually the article does not say that nor do the two editors at WP:RSN#Distinguishing a review from an essay. In fact those two editors are part of the group that wrote the guidelines many years ago and could be considered capable of giving expert opinions. You should remove this misleading visual that only appears to validate your opinion rather than being informative. Gandydancer (talk) 13:10, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

That visual comes directly from MEDRS, so there's nothing misleading, especially if you look at the context there. Narrative reviews generally are near bottom of the barrel in terms of secondary sources, and sometimes can be even more prone to issues than primary studies when there is no design as the visual points out. Within narrative reviews, you can have authors do an exhaustive literature search that gets close to being a systematic review to those cherry-picking only the ideas they want to present. In short, there can be a ton of variation in narrative reviews, which is why cautions get brought up about them compared to systematic reviews. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:08, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

The visual that Tryptofish has copied here shows us how Proctor and Gamble classifies information, not how Wikipedia classifies it. It is used as an example of the different ways to rank the importance of information. Gandydancer (talk) 13:31, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Gandydancer, the reason that I only reproduced one half of that image is that the other half does not include "narrative reviews", so I don't think that we could get any information about narrative reviews from that. And everything that I quoted from MEDRS is a direct quote. Uninvolved editors at RSN have pretty much rejected the idea that the source is a scientific review, with the range of opinions there extending from saying that it is purely an opinion piece, to saying that it is somewhat more of an essay than a review, with properties of both. You are the only editor arguing that it is purely a narrative review and not an essay. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:10, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Please review the conversation at the RSN page and note that I did not argue that it is a review but rather noted that PubMed termed it a review. I was perfectly satisfied to note that the article is the opinion of the authors. Gandydancer (talk) 13:31, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Comparing some wording choices

At WP:RSN#Distinguishing a review from an essay, editors have proposed various ways to word what we might put on the page about the Vandenberg source. I'd like to outline some of the discussion so far, here, and ask about the advantages and disadvantages of various options.

Earlier, Gandydancer suggested this wording:

Noting a 100-fold increase in the use of glyphosate-based herbicides from 1974 to 2014, the possibility that herbicide mixtures likely have effects that are not predicted by studying glyphosate alone, and that current safety assessments rely heavily on studies done over 30 years ago, a 20182019 review found current safety standards to be outdated and "may fail to protect public health or the environment."

(I've corrected the date from 2018 to 2019.)

More recently, Gandydancer suggested this revision:

Noting a 100-fold increase in the use of glyphosate-based herbicides from 1974 to 2014, the possibility that herbicide mixtures likely have effects that are not predicted by studying glyphosate alone, and that current safety assessments rely heavily on studies done over 30 years ago, in 2019 Vandenberg et al concluded that current safety standards are outdated and "may fail to protect public health or the environment."

I'd like to suggest, instead, this revision, in which I try to pay close attention to WP:CLAIM:

In 2019 Vandenberg et al. cited a 100-fold increase in the use of glyphosate-based herbicides from 1974 to 2014, the possibility that herbicide mixtures likely have effects that are not predicted by studying glyphosate alone, and reliance of current safety assessments on studies done over 30 years ago. They recommended that current safety standards be updated, writing that the current standards "may fail to protect public health or the environment."

--Tryptofish (talk) 17:27, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I think that's preferable, both because it's an active sentence and because it avoids WP:CLAIM issues. Alexbrn (talk) 17:32, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I am more than satisfied with Trypto's version. It is more well-written and sounds more "encyclopedic". Gandydancer (talk) 13:34, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks very much! I am happy that we were able to find a version that we can agree on. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:48, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

FYI

WP:ANI#Eyes, please, on Talk:Glyphosate. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:21, 10 May 2019 (UTC)

many red-hot herrings: enough? SashiRolls t · c 16:53, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Since some editors have raised questions about what is or is not a personal attack, it's really pretty simple: comment on the content, not on the contributor. Saying that one used a source because another editor supported using it is fine; saying that some sort of "stamp of approval" by that editor is in effect makes a discussion about a revert about the editor rather than about the content that was reverted. Referring to another editor by a diminutive form of their username, when it is done in a friendly way, is fine; sarcastically making fun of the username as part of a dispute is not. Consider: if the editor has not welcomed being called that way, it's probably a bad idea to call them that, regardless of what one is willing to be called oneself. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:06, 11 May 2019 (UTC) "stamp of approval" was not intended as an insult. Re using an insulting diminutive form of an editor's user name, I have referred to you many times as "Trypto", as have others. People refer to me as "Gandy" at times. Actually I like it. If you find it insulting I will remember to be more careful in how I refer to you or others on this page. It seems rather uncalled for to alert ANI to watch this page over my behavior but I will accept your decision and not complain about it. Gandydancer (talk) 17:56, 11 May 2019 (UTC) Thanks for clarifying that you did not mean it as an insult. And my posting at ANI was not in any way singling you out; it was about multiple things that were happening. As I said, no one would have misconstrued your intent if you had just said that you cited the source because KofA had earlier said that it was OK. I'm fine with calling him KofA (as opposed to, for example, "kingcake"). And it's fine to call me Trypto, or Tryp, or Tfish. Also, context matters. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:24, 11 May 2019 (UTC)d Actually I called him "Kingofaces", not kingcake or such. I will repeat, I'm surprised that an ANI alert was needed. We can agree to disagree on that. Gandydancer (talk) 18:48, 11 May 2019 (UTC) Yes, I know that, but another editor called him that. That's why I hope you understand that it wasn't about you. A whole bunch of stuff was going on at the same time, and I would not have gone to ANI if the only thing were your comment. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:59, 11 May 2019 (UTC) Trypto, please stop twisting. I wrote "some kingcake" in an edit summary to a lighthearted edit after Kingo took a bazooka to 2.2K I'd left in the letterbox (which does tend toward being frankly incensing if you're just after an hour's copylabor). So, kingscake, as I should have spelled it in that edit summary, can be interpreted as food fit for a king, or as galette de roi (which allows the lucky bean-finder to be king for a day). Please, don't be chilly or silly or whatever in misreading some sort of meanness into an offer of pie & cake. Next time maybe I'll just bring frankincense. SashiRolls t · c 19:25, 11 May 2019 (UTC) Uh huh. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:33, 11 May 2019 (UTC) To me, the ANI thread looks like Tryptofish purposely throwing a chilling effect on Gandydancer, which is unfair and counter-productive. It's clear what Tryptofish was referring to with the ridiculous redaction of a "personal attack" that attacked none. Binksternet (talk) 23:01, 11 May 2019 (UTC) Nonsense. Why did my ANI post refer to reverting and 1RR? Did that have anything to do with Gandydancer (other than the fact that it was her edits that got reverted)? Why would I be expressing concern about her edits being reverted, if I were trying to chill those edits? Hint: [35]. I guess I don't have the Binksternet stamp of approval. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:21, 12 May 2019 (UTC) I'm afraid that I'm too dense to understand this post. What does the "Hint" mean? Gandydancer (talk) 02:39, 12 May 2019 (UTC) If it's too oblique, that's my fault, not yours, sorry. KofA reverted some of what you had written. In that diff, I scolded him for reverting it instead of just discussing it. And I mean what I said to him. And that was at the same time that I was making the other edits on this talk page and at ANI. And at ANI, the first thing that I raised was that there was too much reverting going on. Consequently, I was objecting to the reverting of something that you had written. Given that I did that, it's bizarre to be claiming that I was trying to put a chill on your edits. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:28, 12 May 2019 (UTC) You redacted Gandydancer's bland and not-very-personal talk page comment as a "personal attack", which is a wikilawyer maneuver to derail whatever constructive progress is being made by her, to mire her in discussion about process. You made it personal at that moment. And now you want people to avoid doing the same thing you did. Binksternet (talk) 03:38, 12 May 2019 (UTC) You misunderstand what is going on here, in a very major way. It's completely counter-factual to claim that I'm not doing my level best to keep constructive progress going forward. I'm one of very few editors here who are not taking "sides" in the POV issues under contention. As I've tried to explain already, one of the things I was doing was to object to the reverting of one of Gandydancer's edits, which is pretty much the opposite of trying to get her edits removed. So, let's see. You and Gandy have seen this as being about her. From what he said here and at ANI, it sounds like SashiRolls thinks it was about him. And I'll wager anyone who is game that Kingofaces will object to what I said to him, as soon as he gets back here. So we're up to three editors who each see it as just about them. The only discussion miring is the way that people have felt the need to reply and re-reply to the FYI that I posted here – as opposed to just being careful going forward about not making stuff personal. If it makes you feel better, I will call it a "counterproductive thing to say" instead of a "personal attack". I remember an ArbCom case a few years back, in which one of the disputing editors had a habit of ending all of his talk page comments by saying "Cheers", followed by his signature. A second editor, just once, had responded by sarcastically ending one of his own talk page comments with "Cheers". Just once, and nothing beyond that. And ArbCom sanctioned that second editor for doing so. (If you want to test whether that has changed, I'll call your bluff on it.) I realize that civility is difficult to define, and very subjective. But the bottom line is that it is never a good thing to treat Wikipedia as if it were us-against-them, where it's all about which "side" you are on and everything is personal. If you think that's wikilawyering with an agenda of pushing a POV, there's probably nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:49, 12 May 2019 (UTC) According to Tryptofish he is "one of very few editors here who are not taking "sides" in the POV issues under contention." There you certainly have a statement that divides editors into two camps: The good guys and the bad guys. I have to wonder who the other good guys are. And who are the bad guys? Gandydancer (talk) 18:08, 12 May 2019 (UTC) Facepalm Or, maybe it's not good-against-bad, but, for example, it's-a-review versus it's-an-essay. Or big-agriculture-is-good versus big-agriculture-is-bad. The whole idea of going straight to seeing it as good-guys versus bad-guys is exactly the problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:13, 12 May 2019 (UTC) I really have no idea what you are talking about or where you are going with this. First you say "comment on the content, not on the contributor" and then you go right ahead and condemn others for their problematic POV positions while praising your own. And now you drag the review/essay discussion into this and and, from totally out of the blue, a big agriculture debate as well. Gandydancer (talk) 11:05, 13 May 2019 (UTC) Well, my explaining something that seems rather clear to me is certainly turning into quite the tangled web, kind of like a peat fire burning underground. I'll try to explain it again. I'll try to keep it very basic, so please accept my apologies if it sounds like I'm saying the obvious – but it really should be obvious, and my previous explanations seem not to have been clear enough. In editing controversial topics, editors often disagree. Sometimes, these disagreements are about getting point of view right. Sometimes, some editors take positions on one or another side of those POV positions. One place where editors have taken differing views at this page arises from views about big agriculture, and more specifically whether Monsanto has been a bad player regarding the possible carcinogenicity of glyphosate. Some editors are pretty consistently taking the position that the carcinogenicity is a big problem, and some other editors are pretty consistently taking the position that the carcinogenicity concerns are without merit. I believe strongly that it's better to reflect both perspectives on the page. So, for example, I've agreed with some editors in the past that the IARC needed to be presented as an outlier. But when the new meta-analysis came out recently, I changed my mind and am now disagreeing with those same editors and advocating that the page give more weight than before to the possibility that glyphosate may cause non-Hodgkin cancer. That's what I mean by not taking a single "side" in the discussions. Another example is where you have argued that a source is a review and I have argued that it is an essay (because it says "essay" right at the top of the journal page!). That's another discussion about POV. Am I "condemn[ing] others for their problematic POV positions"? No, that's just something you are reading into my comments even though it isn't there. Yes, I've condemned editors making things personal, but that's not based on one POV versus another. I said: "maybe it's not good-against-bad". If you are determined to construe that as "it is about good-against-bad", that's on you, not me. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:06, 13 May 2019 (UTC) Thanks for the visual. Since you mentioned my edit at AN/I, did you pursue discussion with the author of this comment, or do you think it unactionable? Why is it that our BCP (biography of corporate people / biochemistry of chemical products) civility policies seem so much better enforced than the same policies on (some) BLP? I also notice that the civility problems I mentioned at ANI have already found some echo. The word "shill" seems to be one of that user's favorite words. I would have thought by now you would have lobbied to have them reformed, but it's possible I didn't fill one of the forms out correctly. No, Trypto, I don't think it's all about me. SashiRolls t · c 18:44, 12 May 2019 (UTC) I don't follow you around to the page topics where you edit and I do not. So there is no reason for me to start editing Tulsi Gabbard. I would have assumed that your edit at ANI was a request for admins to look there, and I'm not an admin. I wish that the civility policy were followed everywhere, and most certainly in areas where there are Discretionary Sanctions. The DS for post-1932 US politics should apply at the Gabbard page, and the DS for GMOs apply here. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:02, 12 May 2019 (UTC) Look, everyone: This page and talk page have been put under Discretionary Sanctions by ArbCom, and there were good reasons for doing so. It's really very simple. If you disagree about something, comment on the content. Don't make it personal. Don't make it about someone else's supposed motives. It's not that difficult. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:38, 12 May 2019 (UTC) Look, everyone: data-driven analysis of who leaves the most K here in the glyposhate talkpage letterbox. Kingofaces43: 180K Sagerad: 175K Smartse: 153K Tryptofish: 126K Jytdog: 121K -- SashiRolls t · c 16:52, 13 May 2019 (UTC) I think the "look everyone" mimicry is obnoxious and not needed. And it's a mystery to me why the information would add anything useful here. So two editors who were since topic-banned had made a lot of comments? So what? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:12, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Benbrook article on EPA vs IARC

• Benbrook, Charles M. (2019). "How did the US EPA and IARC reach diametrically opposed conclusions on the genotoxicity of glyphosate-based herbicides?". Environmental Sciences Europe. 31 (1). doi:10.1186/s12302-018-0184-7. ISSN 2190-4707.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)

I don't think this has been discussed previously and I think it might be worth including. Given the author as has been discussed in the last few days we should be cautious, but quite unusually for a journal, there is an accompanying piece detailing the lengths that the editors went to to solicit reviews from independent experts which I think should negate worries over the authorship. From that We are convinced that the article provides new insights on why different conclusions regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate and GBHs were reached by the US EPA and IARC. We already have content on why EFSA and IARC reached different conclusions (currently ref 152, by Portier et al.) and this could help compliment that. At the moment, I don't think our article does a great job of explaining why the IARC reached different conclusions to the others. In terms of what I would suggest adding, it would be a summary of the conclusions e.g. use of unpublished industry data, pure glyphosate vs formulations and risks to the general population vs risks to any people exposed. Something else I noticed in the accompanying piece is that they say that Bayer have made the unpublished industry data available online. SmartSE (talk) 16:20, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Obviously, I don't know whether other editors will agree or disagree, but that sounds good to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:17, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

This is an interesting article that lays out the differences in a readable manner. The things I think might be missing from your presentation of the article is that Benbrook points out that nobody working uses "technical" glyphosate (the pure stuff), unpublished industry data is not peer-reviewed, though apparently Bayer has made it available for crowd-review, which is cool, but... :) Other ideas? SashiRolls ^{t · c} 17:07, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

There's a bit going on lately and catching up on other things first, but another way to get around the authorship issue is to focus on other sources that discuss the differences that are plentiful already. Another problem is the journal itself. Environmental Sciences Europe is the journal the republished Seralini's rat study without peer-review and has gained a reputation for being an easy place to publish anti-GMO, etc. views. Frequently publishing fringe points of views does seem to bring it into a similar parallel as citing an acupuncture journal in a CAM topic, and I'm still looking into the claims that it falls into the predatory category.[36]

Considering the stuff the journal did in the Seralini affair, saying for this article they had multiple anonymous peer-reviewers (selected by Benbrook or the editor) doesn't really address journal reliability concerns. If it weren't for the journal issue, we could consider very careful use of the paper, but we're doubling up problems on this source with Benbrook being an author too. If there's a specific piece of info someone thinks is worthwhile, it shouldn't be hard to find other sources discussing it though. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:25, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Ah well spotted. I should have noticed that, agree that reliability is dubious, but calling it predatory is probably a step too far. I think the conclusions are fairly uncontroversial so we should try to source them elsewhere and still consider including them even if this is the only source. SmartSE (talk) 16:52, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm on limited time while also trying to catch up on all the stuff popping up on this talk page, so I'm on the fence about it being formally predatory without more research (and probably time better spent on other content), but definitely dubious as you say. There's a fair bit that could be included from previous sources we've discussed on the exact subject with respect to risk vs. hazard, so I'll go back through those when I get time to see if any additional details would be worth including. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:08, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Wait, not so well spotted after all? I could've sworn I'd read that the editor of Food & Chemical Toxicology who wrote the retraction notice for Séralini's paper was "under contract" with Monsanto ("lié par un contrat de consultant à Monsanto") Le Monde. This is old news isn't it? Like Séralini's response to the retraction: FCT SashiRolls ^{t · c} 23:07, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

See also recent edits at Séralini affair. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:16, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Indeed, especially Trypto's long text about the former VP of RJ Reynolds' denial in the face of unambiguous documentary evidence (not published by the NYT) of his collusion with Monsanto to get the article retracted. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 18:46, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

That's a strange way to describe it, but I would welcome other editors looking there and seeing what you think about it. (The reason that I noted it here was because SashiRolls referred to the Le Monde source here.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:11, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Honeybee colony collapse disorder and glyphosate

If you google on bee death herbicide, the top hit is an ad from Bayer, "Does Glyphosate Impact Bees? | Understanding Glyphosate‎ -- Ad www.bayer.com/glyphosate‎ -- Glyphosate Is Safe For Bees And The Environment. Learn More Today"
which links to this rosy picture https://www.bayer.com/en/glyphosate-environment-biodiversity.aspx "Glyphosate’s Role in Preserving the Environment and Biodiversity"
Poor Bayer they didn't know what they got when they bought Monsanto.
And the 2nd hit is
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/25/651618685/study-roundup-weed-killer-could-be-linked-to-widespread-bee-deaths
September 25, 2018 "Roundup has been accused of causing cancer in humans and now scientists in Texas argue that the world's most popular weed killer could be partly responsible for killing off bee populations around the world... A new study by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin posit that glyphosate — the active ingredient in the herbicide — destroys specialized gut bacteria in bees, leaving them more susceptible to infection and death from harmful bacteria... glyphosate might be contributing to colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon that has been wreaking havoc on honey bees and native bees for more than a decade."
NPR and the University of Texas at Austin seem like reputable sources. No mention of bees anywhere on WP at glyphosate or Roundup (herbicide) though. JPLeonard (talk) 21:48, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

There has been a lot of discussion about this in the past. I think the most recent discussion, from last fall, is at Talk:Glyphosate/Archive 15#Glyphosate / Honeybees. It would be really good if you could go back and read that, and then explain here what specifically has changed since then. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:55, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

Request for feedback

Before I go to all the work of adding information to our article I want to get assurance that this review is OK for us to use: "Ignoring Adjuvant Toxicity Falsifies the Safety Profile of Commercial Pesticides" [37] Also, which sections of the article should contain information from this review. Gandydancer (talk) 14:30, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Mesnage is affiliated with Seralini, so that's already a red flag when things come out of those isolated groups, but you're using another Frontiers journal, which generally isn't considered reliable as you've been made aware of a few times now. I'd have to go digging for the talk section, but we've already had quite a bit of discussion on how to handle the adjuvant question where it essentially boiled down to things like POEA increasing the 'relative' toxicity of the solution, but that the toxicity is still extremely low, not a significant risk, etc. for humans. Kingofaces43 (talk) 14:38, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Please try to avoid scolding other editors with comments such as "as you've been made aware of a few times now". Also keep in mind that it was on your advice that I came across that article in the first place. Re using Frontiers journals, I am not ready to accept the opinion of three anonymous WP editors on just about anything, nor should any thinking person that wants to establish a fact. When I did research I found this: [38] Please refute this info and supply research that states they are not to be seen as reliable. Gandydancer (talk) 15:06, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

I agree that this probably isn't a suitable source given the authorship and journal. Frontiers was most recently discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_263#Frontiers_in_Neurology_-_blacklisted_or_no?. Alexbrn summed it up well Not blacklisted. But also, never used for anything other than mundane information. and Consensus [...] seems clear: we're not going to be using Frontiers sources for health claims SmartSE (talk) 15:40, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks but since I posted here I have seen the ongoing discussion at the RS article. So I won't post any farther here for now. Gandydancer (talk) 16:22, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

I'll just add that it seems to me that there is a consensus in the source material that, broadly speaking, the toxicity of a pesticide formulation can readily differ from the toxicity of the single active ingredient. I would think that there would be plenty of reliable sources that would say that, and there is no good reason to rely on this one for that purpose. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:50, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

• Responding to ping above. Yes, Frontiers journals are to be generally avoided. There's been quite a bit on this recently on WP:RS/N. Particularly for a "hot" topic like this, it is surely best to use sources of the best quality. Alexbrn (talk) 12:08, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Alexbrn. I'm not sure I agree with WP's take on Frontiers but I'm far from being an expert on sourcing and you most certainly are. Gandydancer (talk) 18:17, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

US Right to Know source

A new source was introduced in this edit by Gandydancer. This is a "viewpoint" article, but more importantly, it is authored by Carey Gilliam of USRTK, an organic industry lobbying group.[39] [40][41] Gilliam, a non-scientist from what I can find, profits by pushing the idea of glyphosate causing cancer in her Whitewash book as well.

This is basically much lower quality in terms of WP:INDEPENDENT than even previous discussions about independent university researchers getting industry funding, and more on par with citing an article directly authored by a Monsanto/Bayer employee. Last I checked, we were not doing the latter, and I'd still be opposed to using such non-independent direct sources like Monsanto, USRTK, etc. This looks like a pretty clear source to avoid unless we're significantly changing direction using independent sources in this subject. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:06, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I share your concerns about using that source and the bias of the author. USRTK are as bad as Monsanto. It's especially problematic how it is being used to counter a MEDRS review and paint it in a bad light. SmartSE (talk) 15:24, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I share these concerns too. I would think that it would be better to source that kind of information to a reliable mainstream journalistic news source. If those comments were considered sufficiently newsworthy to be reported, then they might be worth the WP:WEIGHT, but otherwise there are questions about how WP editors can select which kinds of quotes to present here, and which not to present. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:55, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

This source is listed as a review at PubMed. I have added a second ref. Gandydancer (talk) 14:39, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

That comment doesn't address the problems at all, so please slow down with regards to the sourcing problems brought up in your recent edits. As for the new reference, the source itself gives no indication of who produced it just saying it was prepared for members of the US House of Representatives while heavily citing the website the Baumhed lawyers bringing the first lawsuit. Not to mention it's still not MEDRS. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:46, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

This should not have been deleted. I don't know why one would need to be a scientist in order to merit a place in an article about a product of which 6 billion kilos have been used in the last decade... The first author here appears to work at Tufts University and to have a PhD. We could of course mention USRTK and link to the Reuters' journalists book in the article if it would be better form... (just as nobody is trying to delete the content Monsanto boasts in internal emails that they ghostwrote). It just causes readers to be rightly suspicious of en.wp if we:

• delete widely-known and widely-reported information which is relevant and in the public domain
• refuse to acknowledge that peer-reviewed publications label Monsanto-funded publications as such
• allow only the company marketing the product and not their critics to have a place on the page (Smartse says: "USRTK is as bad as Monsanto", yet Monsanto's studies are published on this page...)

I suggest restoring the information there was no consensus to delete. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 19:10, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

WP:ONUS policy applies here, so consensus is needed for the addition, not the other way around. It's pretty long-standing that we don't include studies done by Monsanto employees alone to source content due to the independence factor, and that applies to other competitors in the industry like organic groups. That's especially why we stick to independent sources. Kingofaces43 (talk) 19:22, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

The information has been added back to the page, this time sourced to Bloomberg, which also reports the quote: [42], and I appreciate that this is much better sourcing. I have, however, put an "under discussion" tag following the material: [43], and I want to explain why I did that. I recognize that there are well-sourced reasons to include, on this page, some sort of information about this controversy. But I have concerns about presenting it in this way. In a page section about human toxicity that is otherwise summarizing scientific reviews, this addition devotes a large percentage of the section to a single quote that is not about the science, but about a controversy that is described in the cited source as being one side of an ongoing court case, and which the source reports as one part of an article that also includes rebuttals and further context. Here, those additional perspectives are omitted while presenting what, on the face of it, seems very damning, even though the cited source treated the information more as being one side of an unresolved debate. To some extent, what WP:BLPPRIMARY says about the reliability of "trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents" applies here (albeit regarding an organization as opposed to an individual). Perhaps this could be better covered instead in Glyphosate#Legal cases. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:38, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

It has become pretty clear to me that there is no source that will find acceptance here. In the past this information was refused saying it needed a WP:MEDRS source. So I added that and it was refused saying it was biased, though as far as I know it is PubMed's job to check out what they use and not the job of anonymous Wikipedia editors. One could as well call the Monsanto sponsored reviews too biased to use because their researchers were heavily involved in promoting Monsanto interests or too pro GM products. I added a US House pamphlet and it was refused saying that the authors were not listed. Tryptofish said "it would be better to source that kind of information to a reliable mainstream journalistic news source." So I used the Bloomberg site. Also found to be inadequate. When our readers read this article and see that we state, "under present and expected conditions of new use, there is no potential for Roundup herbicide to pose a health risk to humans," they need to know that Monsanto was involved in doing that review. Gandydancer (talk) 18:10, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

I just said that "this is much better sourcing", and that "there are well-sourced reasons to include, on this page, some sort of information about this controversy", but that "this could be better covered instead in Glyphosate#Legal cases." In what has become a pattern that I will not tolerate any longer, you have turned that around to mean pretty much the opposite of what I said, as if I had said that this source is not good enough. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:28, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

To other editors: please do not revert the content that was added, so long as this discussion is going on. Let's figure out the best place and way to present the information, without any further reverting. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:59, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

(EDIT CONFLICT) I believe that you are the one that is twisting comments. IMO this information should be added in the place that reports the outcome of the 2000 review and absolutely not in the legal sections portion. It makes a lot of difference, as I'm sure you are aware. This is not a legal concern, it is related to the fact that numerous sources show that Monsanto is implicated in the 2000 review that found the product to be safe. Gandydancer (talk) 19:08, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Gandy, I would suggest making a "reference group" and include all three of your references (as Trypto did here on Jill Stein's BLP for the Bo Gardiner blog and the passing mention of her in a Physics Today piece where the author points out what he calls an opinion piece slamming Stein on the Slate blog.) Thanks for your effort on this, Gandy. I've learned a lot from it. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 19:12, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

I mostly agree your views on the content being out of place and not appropriate sourcing for addressing scientific content. As a general comment to everyone, there are avenues for addressing scientific impropriety, and no such sourcing has come up yet. Either such sources comment on the review not being valid, or the journal itself acts saying there actually was impropriety, retracts it, adds erratum, etc. We also have to deal with the fact that the review is heavily cited (41 reviews citing at last check on Web of Science), and that has weighed in to previous discussions before this, hence the need for the round in circles template. In short, I'm not seeing anything new we can easily work with to change the previous times this has come up.

In general, the legal cases page is the better fit right now simply because it's mostly on what has gone on during the case. However, we still have problems you mentioned from the BLP aspect. The other is that pending cases like this are prone to a lot of things that aren't supported, and it's usually better to wait until a case concludes to suss out what was important from the legal standpoint. It's going to be extremely difficult to craft content even there at this time. The better option would be to remember WP:NODEADLINE and wait until we have better sourcing or description in terms of relevance whether it's on the MEDRS or legal side of things. I have to do that all the time when I personally see studies that have problems, but there's nothing in high-quality sources we can use yet as editors, so this is really no different. If we absolutely must have commentary on it now, it would belong outside of the science content here, and it would really need careful consensus before being inserted, as is expected of us as part of 1RR when content like this is initially disputed rather than reinserting it. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:47, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

The response of these three editors does not surprise me in the least and in fact it is exactly what I expected. In 2000 a Monsanto employee wrote, "The publication by independent experts of the most exhaustive and detailed scientific assessment ever written on glyphosate… was due to the perseverance, hard work and dedication of the following group of folks,” and then she listed seven Monsanto employees. She went on to say, "This human health publication on Roundup herbicide and its companion publication on ecotox and environmental fate will be undoubtedly be regarded as “the” reference on Roundup and glyphosate safety." And indeed she was correct--almost 20 years have passed and it does remain the reference on Roundup and glyphosate safety--at least it continues as such on Wikipedia if nowhere else. Gandydancer (talk) 14:27, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

That makes it sound like Kingofaces43, Smartse, and I are editing as if we were Monsanto employees, when in fact we are neither suppressing the newer sourcing nor doing anything more than trying to edit according to policies and guidelines. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:40, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Round in circles

I feel a little like I'm going "round in circles" myself, for having to bring this up, but I'd like to ask editors about Template:Round in circles, as it is reflected in these edits to this talk page: [44], [45], [46]. In my opinion, the template is a net positive to have on this page, because we continue to have new editors asking about issues that were already discussed and it would be helpful to all involved to remind those editors to check for those previous discussions – and I just don't understand why it would be beneficial to remove the template. Should we put it back? --Tryptofish (talk) 16:48, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

We do not need two search engines on the talk page. 99.9% of all other pages with TP archives have a simple search box. Having two search-boxes that function in the same way adds no functionality, just some chilling "it's all been talked about before" text. Given the shortcomings of this article, and the TP-dominance of 3-4 actors, the redundancy doesn't seem helpful at all. Much more informative, in my view, would be to include the top five TP editors names in the header, but this is true for any page. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 20:08, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

In other circling news, Kingofaces43 and Tryptofish seem to be working together at AE to have me banned for my writing. It was as I was preparing my defense that I thought I'd check who put the template on the page. It was Kingofaces43, so I wouldn't be entirely surprised if they comment below. SashiRolls ^{t · c} 20:16, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

I just looked at the template page, and I see that a parameter can be added to remove the search box and just display the text. I agree that we don't need two search boxes, and it would be fine by me to put the message back without the box. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:34, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

That looks like the pest approach as the point of the template wasn't the search engine, but the reminder. Even back when it was added, the redundancy wasn't a problem relative to reminding editors to check for previous discussions before repeating things all over again. Kingofaces43 (talk) 15:25, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

I will register my disagreement, FWIW. The 17 talk pages that have been filled up by the TP leaders (Trypto, Kingo, Smart, jytdog) shows the degree of disagreement that exists with those who control the talk page (>600K from #1, #3, #4, #5). It would be best: not to constantly remind people who is "in charge"; and to stop rejecting 5-2 talk page consensus, as is being done concerning the Monsanto sourcing / ghostwriting on the page. SashiRolls ^{t · c}