x-posted from GD: Glyphosate safety article retracted eight years after Monsanto ghostwriting revealed in court
Original DU thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220846951
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Source: Retraction Watch
Glyphosate safety article retracted eight years after Monsanto ghostwriting revealed in court
December 4, 2025
A review article concluding the weed killer Roundup “does not pose a health risk to humans” has been retracted eight years after documents released in a court case revealed employees of Monsanto, the company that developed the herbicide, wrote the article but were not named as coauthors.
The safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is hotly debated and currently under review at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, in 2015 declared glyphosate “possibly carcinogenic.”
The now-retracted article appeared in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, an Elsevier title, in 2000. Gary Williams, then a pathologist at New York Medical College in Valhalla, Robert Kroes, a toxicologist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and Ian C. Munro, a toxicologist at Cantox Health Sciences International in Ontario, Canada, were listed as the authors. The paper has been cited 614 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
Three papers about glyphosate on which Williams was an author received an expression of concern and lengthy corrections in 2018 because the authors didn’t fully disclose their ties to Monsanto or the company’s involvement in the articles.
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Read more: https://retractionwatch.com/2025/12/04/glyphosate-safety-article-retracted-elsevier-monsanto-ghostwriting/
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Source: The Guardian
Science journal retracts study on safety of Monsanto’s Roundup: ‘serious ethical concerns’
Paper published in 2000 found glyphosate was not harmful, while internal emails later revealed company’s influence
Carey Gillam
Fri 5 Dec 2025 16.42 GMT
Last modified on Fri 5 Dec 2025 16.47 GMT
The journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology has formally retracted a sweeping scientific paper published in 2000 that became a key defense for Monsanto’s claim that Roundup herbicide and its active ingredient glyphosate don’t cause cancer.
Martin van den Berg, the journal’s editor in chief, said in a note accompanying the retraction that he had taken the step because of “serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented”.
The paper, titled Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment of the Herbicide Roundup and Its Active Ingredient, Glyphosate, for Humans, concluded that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based weed killers posed no health risks to humans – no cancer risks, no reproductive risks, no adverse effects on development of endocrine systems in people or animals.
Regulators around the world have cited the paper as evidence of the safety of glyphosate herbicides, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in this assessment.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/monsanto-roundup-safety-study-retracted