Could the commercial interests of pesticide companies be affecting the impartiality of researchers? Bee researchers at Italy’s University of Bologna certainly think so. “Despite the fact that CCD is unanimously considered by scientists to depend on several causes, two camps are now in conflict,” they write in “The puzzle of honey bee losses” (Maini, Bulletin of Insectology 63:153-60). “On the one side are the environmentalists/beekeepers and on the other pesticide companies and the scientists sponsored by them." Attached is an article on the influence of Bayer Cropscience on Dutch policy makers (which appeared in the magazine "Vrij Nederland" on April 4, 2012).
” Although they concede, “It is impossible to ‘demonstrate scientifically’ the direct influence that the pesticide corporations, seed companies and some farm lobbies have on research teams that conduct research on honey bees,” they do provide examples where other researchers have been surprisingly certain that pesticides could not possibly be involved in CCD. In a recent article, “Clarity on honey bee collapse?” (Science 327: 152-3), Sussex University’s Francis Ratnieks and Norman Carreck state, “The consensus seems to be that pests and pathogens are the single most important cause of colony losses” and that imidacloprid, implicated in French bee losses, now “seems unlikely” to be responsible for French bee deaths. Maini wrote a letter to Science, objecting that “many other scientists are concerned about the inappropriate use or even misuse of insecticides” and that by stating the “main cause of bee losses are ‘diseases’, Ratnieks and Carreck “may give the false impression that insecticides can be sprayed” without due attention. Furthermore, their conclusion about imidacloprid and French bee mortality “appears to be a biased opinion and a conflict of interest”, given that it relied on a citation by “a researcher employed by the producer of imidacloprid” (Bayer AG) and it had been chosen from a special issue of the Bulletin of Insectology that presented several other articles with different conclusions concerning imidacloprid. Maini’s letter was swiftly rejected by Science without explanation.
Source: Lab Times 6-2010, 30-35 (attached)
Listen to Professor Stefano Maini in the Organic View Radio Show hosted by June Stoyer: Neonicotinoids, Is Science For Sale? - Apr 07,2011
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/theorganicview/2011/04/07/prof-stefano-mai…
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