
After Tyrone Hayes said that a chemical was harmful, its maker pursued him - danso
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/02/10/140210fa_fact_aviv?currentPage=all
======
r0h1n
Wow. If there was _one_ article you had to read to understand how large
corporations systematically and unethically try to vilify their critics to
shift focus from their own dangerous behaviours, this is it!

Just a few of the things Syngenta turned out to be doing:

1\. paying for detailed sychological profiles of critics, including weaknesses
(“grew up in world (S.C.) that wouldn’t accept him,” “needs adulation,”
“doesn’t sleep,” was “scarred for life,” "investigate wife")

2\. paying others to not just discredit Hayes' work, but to make him look "as
foolish as possible"

3\. putting together a team of over 100 people, including 25 professors, to
act as "spokespeople on Hayes"

4\. buying Google keywords for his name and variants to astroturf people
searching for him. Searching Google for "Tyrone Hayes" brings up "Tyrone Hayes
Not Credible"

5\. getting paid scientists to write op-eds accusing Hayes of being a "junk
scientist"

6\. leaning on universities (Nicholas School of the Environment, at Duke) so
they wouldn't hire Hayes

7\. trying to get Hayes to bait himself (“set trap to entice him to sue,”)

8\. sending sock puppets to Hayes' talks whose job was to only ask him the
same embarrassing questions (“everywhere Tyrone went there was this guy asking
questions that made a mockery of him. We called him the Axe Man.”)

There's so much more in the article that this could become either

(a) a primer for scientists and critics to understand how corporations target
them, or

(b) a ready reckoner for corporations on what tactics to use to smear
opponents.

~~~
dbingham
> 2\. paying others to not just discredit Hayes' work, but to make him look
> "as foolish as possible"

> 3\. putting together a team of over 100 people, including 25 professors, to
> act as "spokespeople on Hayes"

> 5\. getting paid scientists to write op-eds accusing Hayes of being a "junk
> scientist"

> 8\. sending sock puppets to Hayes' talks whose job was to only ask him the
> same embarrassing questions (“everywhere Tyrone went there was this guy
> asking questions that made a mockery of him. We called him the Axe Man.”)

These are the truly terrifying ones. The weight of people -- supposedly
credible scientists -- that they were able to bring to bear to speak against
him calls into question effectively every controversial scientific finding. If
that much 'scientific' expertise can be bought, then you never know if that
failure to reproduce certain results was bought and paid for or not! Following
the funding sources isn't always possible. It completely corrupts the whole
scientific process and destroys its objectivity.

If you want to see a similar example, look at what's happening to the team
that discovered irregularities in rats generated by Glysophate. They're being
discredited in a very similar way, only much more thoroughly. How do we know
that all of that paper's detractors haven't been bought in a similar way?

~~~
jjoonathan
The glyphosate team is a bad example. They deserved every bit of the criticism
they received [2]. In fact, I'd go so far as to Monsanto's criticism was
highly understated and generally an outstanding example of scientific
discourse. I suspect that they (the team that found negative effects) didn't
get the results they wanted so they came up with an implicit null hypotheses
so shitty that they practically guaranteed p<.05: they first did PCA on a
48-dimension dataset and _then_ did significance tests along the principal
components. I'm not a statistician, but that methodology is about as dubious
as it gets. You should read it and decide for yourself before using it as an
example.

It's a pity that this kind of behavior is par for the course in the category
of "controversial environmental findings," because there are plenty of
legitimate questions to ask and legitimate issues to raise.

I have no relation to Monsanto, except that I eat their products. We talked
about this paper [1] in journal club and were unimpressed (except by their
criticism of Monsanto's methodology, which was, ironically, spot on). I wasn't
aware of Monsanto's formal response [2] at the time, but from a brief glance
it appears to hit the nail on the head.

[1]
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793308/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793308/)

[2]
[http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Documents/SpirouxdeVendimo...](http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Documents/SpirouxdeVendimois.pdf)

~~~
dbingham
Well, and this is the very problem with these tactics and the very reason why
they are so thoroughly evil.

I do not have the ability read a scientific paper and judge its merits. I'm a
software engineer. I can usually get the gist of what the experiment did, what
they found, etc, but not judge the merits.

The fact that this amount of scientific critique can be bought, for someone
like me, calls into question any scientific discussion anywhere. Because I
don't know who to trust to tell me whether a paper or experiment is good or
not.

My natural inclination would be to be suspicious of Monsanto and side with the
glysophate paper's author. After it was so thoroughly discredited, I believed
the critiques of the paper. However, reading about the methods that were used
against Tyrone Hayes, I'm now thoroughly questioning that paper's being
discredited. Because the manner in which that paper is being attacked _looks_
so similar to the manner in which Tyrone Hayes was being attacked.

Do you see what I'm getting at? It ruins the trustworthiness of scientific
discourse for anyone not a scientist. And that's an enormous problem.

~~~
valcrist
What source of information in life isn't like this? You have to trust the
news, the history books, everything else. You make a fair point, but you can't
simply just say the two studies can both be questioned because of the manner
they are attacked.

You don't judge the the paper based on how it's being discredited. You try
your best to judge the paper on it's own merits. If you lack the
knowledge/information to do so, then you obviously have to live with the fact
that your opinion on the matter may not necessarily reflect what is true. It's
a tradeoff many of us make considering we can't be experts in everything. If
it's something you truly believe in and want a better opinion on...then you
have to spend time on doing research into it.

~~~
im3w1l
Everyone verifying everyone is O(n) work per person or O(n^2) total work. I
think it is possible to do better than that. Web of trusts for instance.

~~~
chii
It doesn't have to be everyone verifying everyone - just that a reproducible
result tends to be more trustworthy. This is why reproducing results from
other studies are also valuable scientific endeavours.

~~~
im3w1l
But you know, just verifying that it is reproducible takes time. Ideally you
would have a system that enable you to trust everything you read with minimal
work. Like if I claim the world is round you would know from my awesome
reputation / fancy title / little green WoT indicator, that you can take that
at face value.

In this case the poster tried to use fancy title, but found that it didn't
work satisfactorily.

> The weight of people -- supposedly credible scientists -- that they were
> able to bring to bear to speak against him calls into question effectively
> every controversial scientific finding.

------
siliconc0w
One thing that I have been saying for years is that google is a dichotomy.
Google claims that their intention is to organize and show the most
objectively relevant content as possible and yet all their income is from
advertising which is a completely different objective. It's offering up
relevance to the highest bidder. This _can_ work in certain circumstances (if
I'm willing pay more for a search term than anyone else I likely have relevant
content) but it is far from the promise of objectivity.

To wit: The P.R. team suggested that the company “purchase ‘Tyrone Hayes’ as a
search word on the internet, so that any time someone searches for Tyrone’s
material, the first thing they see is our material.” The proposal was later
expanded to include the phrases “amphibian hayes,” “atrazine frogs,” and “frog
feminization.” (Searching online for “Tyrone Hayes” now brings up an
advertisement that says, “Tyrone Hayes Not Credible.”)

Is everyone really cool with the premier organizer of information being so
easily bribed(through a fucking API) to essentially lie to it's users.

~~~
tim333
To google's credit it keeps the organic search and the paid search separate
and everyone knows the paid results are 'bribed(through a fucking API)' as you
put it. To me when that came it that was great - I think the biggest
competitor at the time Google came in was Yahoo which I think allowed straight
bribery in the main results and most other information came through main
stream media, in my case in the UK things like the Guardian and the BBC which
were ok but had an official kind of politically correct line and not much
coverage of anything else. I'm not quite sure how Google could do better while
still making money. Perhaps if they allowed people to rate the paid ads as
good or rubbish etc.?

~~~
DanBC
Google could make the paid ads more distinct.

Many people don't know the ads are ads, even though their on a different
background colour and that box is labled "ads".

They could also allow me to tell them that an ad has zero interest to me. I
don't block ads, but it's frustrating when I get a blitz of car insurance ads.
I don't own a car; I am never going to buy car insurance. It would be great to
be able to turn those ads off.

I imagine some alcoholics or gambling addicts would like to turn off alcohol
and gambling ads too.

~~~
nitrogen
That "different background color" becomes invisible on cheap TN laptop screens
at a slight deviation from vertical. I wouldn't be surprised if Google A/B
tested background colors until they happened upon one that effectively
disappears for a lot of users.

------
sdegutis
> _wrote that the company could “prevent citing of TH data by revealing him as
> noncredible.”_

> _looked for ways to “exploit Hayes’ faults /problems.”_

> _“If TH involved in scandal, enviros will drop him,”_

Heh, I thought corporations being this unethical and immoral was only a movies
thing, not something that actually happens.

> _She wrote, “What’s motivating Hayes?—basic question.”_

Wow. So, it's not malice, it's genuine curiosity? This company literally did
not understand basic ethics?

~~~
mikeash
Corporations aren't really immoral, just amoral.

If a human bit the head off a live baby seal, we'd probably call that evil.
But when a polar bear does it, it's just the nature of the polar bear. It
operates on instinct.

Most corporations only care about their bottom line. Even if the individuals
within them are moral, the structure tends to cancel that out.

They are built to seek profit. If they obey the law, it is only because
obeying the law maximizes profit. If they are moral, it is only because
morality maximizes profit. On the other hand, if breaking the law maximizes
profit (e.g. because enforcement is lax or penalties are low) then that's what
they'll do. Likewise, if immoral acts make the most money, that's what they'll
do.

What Hollywood gets wrong is that corporations aren't intentionally evil.
There's no CEO sitting in his office laughing maniacally about how his new
project is going to kill widows and orphans. Hollywood always wants a villain,
but in this case there isn't one. Villainy falls out of the corporate
structure and lots of employees just doing their jobs to keep bread on the
table.

This is far from an isolated example, of course. Discrediting or destroying
whistleblowers is what just about any corporation will do and has done, as
long as they think the positives outweigh the negatives on next quarter's
earnings statement.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _Corporations aren 't really immoral, just amoral._

> _Most corporations only care about their bottom line. Even if the
> individuals within them are moral, the structure tends to cancel that out._

It's ridiculous (and disastrous) that we grant this idea of corporate
personhood, bestowing to companies the rights of people, but not the
responsibility. It is a dangerous mindset which cooly accepts that
corporations are amoral vs. immoral.

At the end of the day, there are _people_ who are making these decisions and
_people_ who are benefitting from them. If the decisions are immoral, then the
corporation is immoral. If the corporation is engaged in immoral behavior,
then the people are immoral.

> _What Hollywood gets wrong is that corporations aren 't intentionally evil.
> There's no CEO sitting in his office laughing maniacally about how his new
> project is going to kill widows and orphans._

I don't think I've ever seen a Hollywood movie wherein the CEO of a
corporation laughed maniacally about doing something evil for its own sake.
Instead, corporations and their leadership are always characterized as being
driven by greed.

> _Hollywood always wants a villain, but in this case there isn 't one._

Sure, there is a villain. Those people who do evil things for the sake of
greed, whether in Hollywood or IRL, are still villains and are rightly
portrayed as such.

To imply that evil deeds are not villainous if a person is driven by greed vs.
sadism/insanity plays into the culture of corporate absolution and tacitly
endorses the behavior.

~~~
dhimes
GP is saying, I believe, that the corporation's greed doesn't necessarily grow
out of the greed of an individual, but rather out of an organization of
individuals all trying to do their jobs. Each is responsible for making a
small contribution to 'protecting the bottom line,' but as an organized system
it makes the organization greedy.

This is why we need strong regulations. I never liked them before, but now
I've come to understand that they are required to allow the honest people to
behave honestly.

I've made a similar point here before: the same situation is occurring in the
US' national intelligence groups right now. There is no 'evil' person trying
to 'take away our rights.' There are just people who are responsible for
protecting us who have been granted the authority to read our emails.

What are they going to do? Not look? Suppose it was you? And tragedy happened
and you later learned that had you looked you would have saved 2000 lives? You
would have a hard time getting over it. So you look- trying to uphold the
principles you believe in as you do so, but you look.

However, as an organized system, with good people trying to do the right thing
in each of their own small part, it's evil. That's why we need laws to prevent
it.

We need the laws to prevent evil results of good intentions.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _the corporation 's greed doesn't necessarily grow out of the greed of an
> individual, but rather out of an organization of individuals all trying to
> do their jobs_

I don't believe that's all your GP was saying. But, I disagree nonetheless. My
primary point is that there are actual people who benefit from the
corporation's actions. So, we need to stop this nonsensical notion that
corporations are "amoral". And, we need to stop slipping in and out of
corporate personhood when granting rights vs. assigning responsibility.
Actually, the whole idea of corporate personhood just needs to die.

> _Each is responsible for making a small contribution to 'protecting the
> bottom line,' but as an organized system it makes the organization greedy._

Sure, in any organization there are people who just toe the line and, in many
cases, don't even know that their efforts may contribute to something immoral.
But, that's irelevant here. The point is that there are certainly people
within the company who are making these decisions and who are well-aware of
their immorality and consequences. They do this for personal gain (perhaps
among other reasons).

So, putting this off on the corporation or organization is ill-considered.
There is a tendency to let these individual decisions just sort of dissolve
into the morass of the organization. It's especially bad because then we say,
"Oh the corporation is amoral. It was just doing what it was supposed to do".

I believe your analogy with U.S. intelligence overlays roughly but differs
significantly enough that it's a different discussion. The short though, is
that I don't believe that we can just conclude that it was all good intentions
with coincidentally evil results.

~~~
dhimes
These options aren't mutually exclusive. Yes, there _are_ bad operators out
there. But there are also cases, I believe, like I outlined.

The danger of ignoring it is that if we blame really bad outcomes (like the
banking crisis) on a malicious plot by a bad player, it's too easy to dismiss
as a one-off event when the problem may be systemic.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Even in these cases there are _actual people_ who are responsible.

------
unclebucknasty
Googling "Tyrone Hayes" now shows an ad titled, _Atrazine and Hayes -
Academics Question Tyrone Hayes ' Work_.

The ad links to the "official sounding"
[http://academicsreview.org/](http://academicsreview.org/). That domain is
privately registered by proxy and there is no information on the site itself
regarding ownership.

There are, however, clearly industry-supportive, but unattributed articles on
a variety of topics, in addition to Mr. Hayes. Not sure if those were added
for "credibility" or actually used in separate campaigns.

This stuff is straight out ouf Hollywood, and it's the reason conspiracy
theories thrive. Sometimes, and perhaps more often than we think, there really
are people out to mislead us for their own gain.

~~~
tveita
For what it's worth, I see no ads in the search right now, and a Wikipedia
blurb saying

"Tyrone B. Hayes is an American biologist at University of California,
Berkeley. He is known for his research demonstrating that the herbicide
atrazine is a potent endocrine disruptor that demasculinizes and feminizes
frogs."

A slight aside: "People also search for" contains Steven Milloy. His name
autocompletes to "steven milloy is an idiot".

~~~
unclebucknasty
Yeah, looks like the "Tyrone Hayes Not Credible" ad from the article is back
in circulation for me. Maybe HNers exhausted the budget for the other one.

This ad links to [http://agsense.org/atrazine-alarmists/tyrone-
hayes/](http://agsense.org/atrazine-alarmists/tyrone-hayes/) where the tagline
is "Where farmers explain the real benefits of atrazine for healthy crops and
healthy land". Awesome. Makes me want to drink an ice cold glass of it.

Their page on Mr. Hayes leads off with an ad hominem attack:

[http://agsense.org/atrazine-alarmists/tyrone-
hayes/](http://agsense.org/atrazine-alarmists/tyrone-hayes/)

------
mathgladiator
What I want to know is this. How do people go to work, find out they need to
_work_ to discredit someone, then try to go on about it. Coming from the tech
world, I'm not even sure how this exactly works, and I wonder if I have rose
tinted glasses for most of the "real world". For instance, are there meetings
about who and how to discredit people?

~~~
refurb
What if you believed the work in question unfairly demonized your product?
What would you do then?

Note that the EPA reviewed all the data in question and still determined that
the risk did not outweigh the benefit. The article implies that industry owns
the EPA, which I find a little surprising due to the power they can (and do)
wield.

Anyone else shocked at the number of studies the EPA reviewed and found didn't
fit their definition of quality work? Wow, kind makes you wonder!

~~~
DerpDerpDerp
Welcome to the grand world of revolving doors and regulatory capture.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#United_States_examples)

------
lazyant
What I found most disturbing is how EPA works. They accept only research that
passes a bar that was lobbied by the industry and that only industry can pay.

Even if they accepted negative research about a product then they do a risk
assessment to see how many deformed babies are affordable given the dollars
the industry would lose.

------
tehwalrus
The privatisation of science (pesticides, medicine, etc) will always lead to
these types of conflict of interest.

If the objective is to find The Truth, then a profit motive can be very
damaging. It is why pharmacology in its current form is very badly flawed,
among other endeavors.

------
sizzle
WOW, I am subscribing to the New Yorker, this kind of journalism is
refreshing.

~~~
ansgri
How could you know without extensive investigation on your own that it wasn't
sponsored by some other biased group?) No, really, when you have believed any
similar article, it seems unreasonable to expect truth of any journalism and
science (which has now become a form of journalism since the only visible
effect is articles being published).

~~~
tim333
Even if it was sponsored by some biased group it provides a lot of information
as to what was going on and then you can judge who you believe. Bit like the
adversarial court system where both sides put their case. Without the New
Yorker article there would not have been someone putting Hayes case as well.
Syngenta can now reply and say why it's all rubbish if they are so inclined.

~~~
dba7dba
> Syngenta can now reply and say why it's all rubbish if they are so inclined.

I would love to see Syngenta's response. The facts were supposedly from
INTERNAL memos of Syngenta. Will Syngenta sue New Yorker for lying and
defamation?

------
altero
I hate to be that guy. But this reminds me hysteria around DDT, now it is
estimated that DDT ban is responsible for 20M deaths due to malaria.

But how strong is link between that chemical and negative effects? This guy
works on this for 15 years, other confirm his result. But there is no lawsuit
or anything which requires strong evidence.

Also the lethal dosage is 3 grams/kg for rats, that is far from poisoning. In
EU it was banned not because of toxicity, but because it degrades slowly in
ground waters.

~~~
marvin
That's a moot point. Science isn't about banning dangerous chemicals. It is
about providing politicians the facts they need to make an educated decision
regarding whether a chemical should be banned or not.

This is simply another another example of a _long_ tradition of standing
behind scientists when their findings agree with you, only to shun, ignore and
discredit them when their findings are inconvenient. Tobacco, DDT, asbestos,
deep sea diving, global warming.

Science rarely cares about what to do. It's only about finding out what is
true. If politicians read Haynes's research and concludes that this is an
acceptable tradeoff, there's no problem. If they are unaware of Haynes's
research and make a decision on incorrect assumptions, that _is_ a problem.

~~~
route66
See here the word "scientific" used by a politician to prepare for some
hardball during the ongoing TTIP negotiations.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcoue-
mlQxw&t=56](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcoue-mlQxw&t=56)

Multinationals will be able to sue countries for their business obstructing
laws concerning environmental legislation etc., thereby conveniently bypassing
democratic process.

~~~
dhimes
_Multinationals will be able to sue countries for their business obstructing
laws concerning environmental legislation etc., thereby conveniently bypassing
democratic process._

That's a ridiculously stupid idea. We are now all going to be vulnerable to
the most gullible among us.

~~~
ItendToDisagree
I think that's currently called 'Representative Democracy'

 _Ba dum chhhh!_

------
slowmotiony
Wait, so the use of atrazine is still legal in the US?

~~~
merrua
Yep and its banned in the EU.
[http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Atrazine+Regulati...](http://www.toxipedia.org/display/toxipedia/Atrazine+Regulation+in+Europe+and+the+United+States)

------
brohee
The PR damage control team is pulling extra hours, I just got an atrazine
advert reading another unrelated New Yorker article. And certainly nothing
would indicate I would be interested in any agricultural product...

~~~
mynewwork
Isn't that just very basic web-tracking and ad targeting? Somewhere an ad-
server is keeping track of keywords your browser is associated with and now
atrazine is in your list.

------
askew
I'm getting a Michael Clayton-esque vibe from this whole story.

------
jfc
While reading this, I wondered if there is a startup focused on crowdfunding
research. A quick Google search brought up Microryza.com, an online
crowdfunding platform for researchers.

This type of funding might end up being really useful for scientists in the
future, in light of corporate shenanigans and diminishing government funding.

------
stuaxo
Nice article, could probably have been a bit shorter, but I guess that is the
new yorker.

~~~
throwwit
Try Text-to-speech... the best multitasking trick.

~~~
matthewmcg
Yes, the voicedream app + instapaper is great for listening to these articles
while you walk around.

------
mschuster91
This article should be manually pinned to the top of the first page.

~~~
timje1
The articles for which this statement is true often end up there for a day or
two. The system works :)

------
raphman
The internal Syngenta documents the article talks about can be found at
[http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Portal:Atrazine_Exposed](http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Portal:Atrazine_Exposed)
Exhibit 19 is a scan of Sherry Ford's notes on Syngenta's FUD strategy.

------
ott2
The takeaway of the article seems to be: when fighting limited-liability
companies, being irrational is a good tactic. It is sad if guerilla warfare is
the only option left when fighting corporate actions one disagrees with.

------
apw
What prevents some enterprising high school student from purchasing some
Atrazine off Amazon.com, catching a few hundred tadpoles from their local
pond, and doing their own study?

------
seanhandley
Why is the article dated February 10th 2014 ? Did this come from the _future_?

~~~
alina24
Its a weekly magazine,this article being in the next week's print edition.

------
dba7dba
12 billion dollars a year. There's your answer.

