The bee findings were not what Syngenta expected to hear. The pesticide giant had commissioned James Cresswell, an expert in flowers and bees at the University of Exeter in England, to study why many of the world’s bee colonies were dying. Companies like Syngenta have long blamed a tiny bug called a varroa mite, rather than their own pesticides, for the bee decline. Dr. Cresswell has also been skeptical of concerns raised about those pesticides, and even the extent of bee deaths. But his initial research in 2012 undercut concerns about varroa mites as well. So the company, based in Switzerland, began pressing him to consider new data and a different approach. Looking back at his interactions with the company, Dr. Cresswell said in a recent interview that “Syngenta clearly has got an agenda.” In an email, he summed up that agenda: “It’s the varroa, stupid.”
For Dr. Cresswell, a Birkenstock-wearing 54-year-old, the foray into corporate-backed research threw him into personal crisis. Some of his colleagues ostracized him. He found his principles tested. Even his wife and children had their doubts. “The last thing I wanted to do was get in bed with Syngenta,” Dr. Cresswell said. “I’m no fan of intensive agriculture.” But turning away research funding is difficult. The British government ranks universities on how useful their work is to industry and society, tying government grants to their assessments. “I was pressured enormously by my university to take that money,” he said. “It’s like being a traveling salesman and having the best possible sales market and telling your boss, ‘I’m not going to sell there.’ You can’t really do that.” The issue soon came up at Dr. Cresswell’s dinner table. “Me and my mum were like, ‘Oh, you’re taking money,’” his daughter Fay, now a 21-year-old university student, recalled of the conversation that took place. “We didn’t have an argument, but it did get quite heated. We just said, ‘Don’t.’”
A review of Syngenta’s strategy shows that Dr. Cresswell’s experience fits in with practices used by American competitors like Monsanto and across the agrochemical industry. Scientists deliver outcomes favorable to companies, while university research departments court corporate support. Universities and regulators sacrifice full autonomy by signing confidentiality agreements. And academics sometimes double as paid consultants.
For James Cresswell, taking money from Syngenta was not an easy decision. Dr. Cresswell has been a researcher at the University of Exeter in England’s southwest for a quarter-century, mostly exploring the esoterica of flower reproduction in papers with titles like “Conifer ovulate cones accumulate pollen principally by simple impaction.” He was not used to making headlines. But about a half-decade ago, he became interested in the debate over neonicotinoids, a nicotine-derived class of pesticide, and their effects on bee health. Many studies linked the chemicals to a mysterious collapse of bee colonies that was in the news. Other studies, many backed by industry, pointed to the varroa mite, and some saw both factors at play. Dr. Cresswell’s initial research led him to believe that concerns about the pesticides were overblown. In 2012, Syngenta offered to fund further research. While many academics resisted efforts by The Times to examine their communications with Syngenta, Dr. Cresswell did not challenge a records request submitted to his university. And he spoke with candor.
Dr. Cresswell and Syngenta agreed on a list of eight potential causes of bee deaths to be studied. They discussed how to structure grant payments. They reviewed research assistant candidates. Dr. Cresswell sought permission from Syngenta to pursue new insights he gained, asking at one point, “Please can you confirm that you are happy with the direction our current work is taking?” But he also pushed back at times. An email from Syngenta to the university said that Dr. Cresswell “will have final editorial control,” but Dr. Cresswell, in another email, expressed concern that a proposed confidentiality clause “grants Syngenta the right to suppress the results,” adding, “I am not happy to work under a gagging clause.” He says the term of the clause was reduced to only a few months.
Neonicotinoids are now subject to a moratorium in the European Union. A recent study by Britain’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology attributed a population loss of at least 20 percent of many kinds of wild bees to the pesticides. Syngenta and its competitors argue that the real culprit is a disease called varroosis, which is spread by varroa mites. The Bayer Bee Care Center in Germany includes menacing sculptures of the little pest.
But Dr. Cresswell’s initial research for Syngenta did not support the varroosis claims. “We are finding it pretty unlikely that varoosis is responsible for honey bee declines,” he wrote to Syngenta in 2012. An executive wrote back, suggesting that Dr. Cresswell look more narrowly at “loss data” of beehives rather than at broader bee stock trends, “As this may give a different answer!”
For the next several weeks, the company repeatedly asked Dr. Cresswell to refocus his examination to look at varroa. In another email, the executive told Dr. Cresswell, “it would also be good to also look at varroa as a potential uptick factor” in specific countries where it could have exacerbated bee losses. In the same email, part of a chain with the subject line “Varoosis report,” he also asked Dr. Cresswell to look at changes in Europe, rather than worldwide. Dr. Cresswell agreed and said, “I have some other angles to look at the varoosis issue further.”
By changing parameters, varroa mites did become a significant factor. “We’re coming to the view that varoosis is potent regarding colony loss at widespread scale,” Dr. Cresswell wrote in January 2013. A later email included scoring that bore that out. Mr. Gibbs of Syngenta said, “We discussed and defined the direction of the research in partnership with the researcher with the aim of ensuring that it was focused and relevant.” He added, “We did not undermine Dr. Cresswell’s independence, dictate his approach to assessing the eight factors agreed upon with him, or restrict any of the conclusions he subsequently drew.”
That said, Syngenta was a client and Dr. Cresswell was providing a service. Looking back, Dr. Cresswell said that while he still thought concerns about the pesticides were overblown, aspects of his project were inevitably influenced by the nature of the relationship. “You can write it up as, Syngenta had an effect on me,” he said. “I can’t actually deny that they didn’t. It wasn’t conniving on my part, but absolutely they influenced what I ended up doing on the project.”
For Dr. Cresswell, the affiliation with Syngenta became a burden. Environmentalists saw him as an adversary, and his industry connection came to define him in newspaper articles. When he was called to testify before Parliament, Dave Goulson, a biology professor at the University of Sussex, sat next to him. Dr. Goulson likened taking money from agrochemical companies to taking money from the tobacco industry, which long denied that cigarettes were addictive. Some people thrive on controversy. Dr. Cresswell does not. “It hurt me more than I was willing to admit at the time,” he said. “Everything happened so fast.” He had a breakdown. He said that he began to feel “I was virtually incompetent,” adding that he would put his head on his desk and think his work was a mess. He ended up leaving his job for several months. While he presented his research publicly, it was never published.
In an interview, Dr. Goulson said, “I’ve known James for a very long time and always thought he was a good guy. “You can’t win,” Dr. Goulson added. “If you are funded by industry, people are suspicious of your research. If you’re not funded, you’re accused of being a tree-hugging greenie activist. There’s no scientist who comes out of this unscathed.”
Today, Dr. Cresswell has returned to less controversial areas of bee research. He said he respects scientists he met from Syngenta, but views collaboration with industry as a Faustian bargain. He called Syngenta “a kind of devil.”
“What I didn’t realize is that supping with them would actually have a broader impact on how the world sees me as a scientist,” he said. “That was my misjudgment.”
Source: The New York Times, 31 December 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/business/scientists-loved-and-loathed…
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