Be Skeptical of Wikipedia Skeptics
Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD
Progressive Radio Network, July 23, 2019
As we have stated on many occasions in previous investigative reports, often it is not what Skeptics include on Wikipedia pages that raise concerns for alarm; equally important are the solid facts that are omitted, removed and/or censored. This is clearly the case for Wikipedia’s entries covering genetically modified crops (GMOs), pesticides such glyphosate or Roundup, and the biographies of prominent public advocates for the agro-chemical industry.
Starting in late 2017, Bayer-Monsanto’s Titanic for its crown-jewel product, the chemical herbicide, glyphosate, has been sorely punctured. Gaping holes are rapidly sinking profits and stock value as lawsuits mount over the herbicide’s carcinogenic effects. Investors are fleeing. After a California court awarded a former school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, $289 million in damages for Roundup-caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma, as of last April over 13,000 lawsuits have been filed. Consequently, without seeming like another bogus website of fabricated and fake news, Wikipedia can’t ignore the world headlines about glyphosate’s deadly health risks. Nevertheless, a visit to Wikipedia’s “Roundup” and “Glyphosate” pages requires scrolling down many pages before any truth comes to light. The entries’ introductory paragraphs continue to tout outdated, compromised and false regulatory agency studies, favorable to the neoliberal corporate regime, declaring glyphosate is safe and poses no serious dangers to human health. The latter entry quickly offers the false impression that “consensus among national pesticide regulatory agencies and scientific organizations is that labeled uses of glyphosate have demonstrated no evidence of human carcinogenicity.”