A paper widely cited as demonstrating the safety of glyphosate has been retracted, according to the co-editor of the journal in which it was published, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology.
The 25-year-old article “has been widely regarded as a hallmark paper in the discourse surrounding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate and Roundup,” the widely used herbicide that has glyphosate as its active ingredient, said Co-Editor Martin van den Berg.
“However, the lack of clarity regarding which parts of the article were authored by Monsanto employees creates uncertainty about the integrity of the conclusions drawn. Specifically, the article asserts the absence of carcinogenicity associated with glyphosate or its technical formulation, Roundup. It is unclear how much of the conclusions of the authors were influenced by external contributions of Monsanto without proper acknowledgments.”
Bayer bought Monsanto, which created Roundup, in 2018.
A statement Bayer provided to Agri-Pulse said Monsanto's involvement with the paper "did not rise to the level of authorship and was appropriately disclosed in the acknowledgments. The listed authors had full control over and approved the study’s manuscript. Two prior inquiries into the study previously found that the paper was appropriate, including the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and [author Gary] Williams’ former employer.”
The statement, which was attributed to Monsanto, continued: “Glyphosate is the most extensively studied herbicide over the past 50 years. Thousands of studies have been conducted on the safety of glyphosate products, and the vast majority of published studies had no Monsanto involvement. The consensus among leading regulatory bodies worldwide is that glyphosate can be used safely as directed and is not carcinogenic.
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"Because the Williams, et al. paper is 25 years old, the EU did not rely on this paper in its recent assessment and approval process. Furthermore, the Williams paper is a review article of properly conducted studies which were separately provided to regulators for their review, and contains no original data."
EPA is currently reviewing the human health effects of glyphosate to comply with a court decision that found fault with its previous assessment. The agency concluded in 2020 that glyphosate is safe to use and unlikely to cause cancer.
Van den Berg said "the apparent contributions of Monsanto employees as co-writers to this article were not explicitly mentioned as such in the acknowledgments section."
“This omission suggests that the authors may have misrepresented their unique roles and the collaborative nature of the work presented,” he continued. “The failure to disclose the involvement of Monsanto personnel in the writing process compromises the academic independence of the presented findings and conclusions drawn in the article regarding carcinogenicity.”
Van den Berg said there are other problems with the paper, which concluded that “under present and expected conditions of use, Roundup herbicide does not pose a health risk to humans.”
For example, “correspondence with Monsanto disclosed during litigation indicates that the authors may have received financial compensation from Monsanto for their work on this article, which was not disclosed as such in this publication,” he wrote. “The potential financial compensation raises significant ethical concerns and calls into question the apparent academic objectivity of the authors in this publication, which concerns and questions have not been answered.”
The paper conclusions regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate “are solely based on unpublished studies from Monsanto, which have failed to demonstrate tumorigenic potential.” The authors “did not include multiple other long-term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies, that were already done at the time of writing their review in 1999.”
The only surviving author, Gary Williams, did not respond to inquiries from the journal, van den Berg said.
The paper “exerted considerable influence over two decades, shaping public understanding, scientific discourse and policy decisions,” researcher Alexander Kaurov and Harvard historian Naomi Oreskes said in a paper published in September. It has been cited hundreds of times.
The ghostwriting was unearthed in 2017 through litigation filed against Monsanto alleging exposure to Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans. Bayer has spent more than $10 billion to settle more than 100,000 cases, and about 61,000 remain pending.
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