Whatever you feel about Bayer, whatever evils they really have done and do, all this ruling does is continue the precedent that the truth doesn’t matter. This sort of mindset where you just discard any science you don’t like is a driving factor behind damn near everything shitty in the world, from climate change deniers, to anti-vaxxers, to people who think failed economic policies that let big businesses like Bayer run amok will definitely work this time, to homophobes, racists, and transphobes. All of them will stare straight at piles of evidence that their beliefs are wrong, toss out a generic criticism of science, and walk on, secure in their faith that their opinion, or half an hour on google, is as good as someone else’s evidence.
I honestly would like to see this article edited slightly to discuss the actual scientific research behind glyphosate. Bayer/Monsanto got punched in the nose, and we all want to stop, point, and laugh. Fair enough. But that’s no excuse for furthering an anti-science mindset that’s destroying our planet on a social, medical, and environmental level, yeah?
Agreed, and jurors get things wrong regularly. So do judges, but generally a judge and his or her clerk will study technical issues (and sometimes develop expertise over time) much more than random jurors.
I’m not sure exactly how the system can be changed though, short of repealing the Seventh Amendment (right to a jury in civil cases). Jurors are legally considered the “finders of fact.” Overturning a jury’s factual findings on appeal is very difficult. From this lawyer’s perspective, science comes into the courtroom through hired-gun expert witnesses, and hopefully you get a judge who understands the technical issues, either to disregard bad scientific evidence or (especially if there’s a jury) exclude the worst expert witnesses from the case (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard).
In some areas of the law, particularly governmental and regulatory, specialist judges and boards and committees are the fact finders. But in any private lawsuit worth more than a tiny amount of money, plaintiffs and defendants have a constitutional right to have the case decided by a jury. Hard to fix that.
Wow, lots of fairly elitist apologists posting. Sure jury verdicts are imperfect but in the context of revolving door love fests between regulators and corporations they’re often the best we’ve got folks. I suppose all of you think the big tobacco trials were a bunch of crap decisions by ignorant masses as well? In a sane world we’d have regulations based on the Precautionary Principle, but oops…much lower corporate mega profits, so no go.
Also, there seems to be some plantiff bias (intentional or no) in the judges decision
to NOT allow Monsanto/Bayer to enter evidence showing no link with glyphosphate and cancer.
(paywall)
Given that the couple is in their 70s, are in remission for cancer, and will definitely be spending a few more years fighting the appeal of this verdict, I suspect here the answer here will be “leave it to their heirs”.
I think this is something fairly unique to the US. England, which had juries in civil cases at the time that the Constitution was adopted, has now almost completely abolished them. One of the reasons given was that juries do not have the technical expertise needed to assess damages.
That’s a fairly negative way of putting it. The EC (European Commission) presumably gets many many requests to ban glyphosate, (such as this one) so they investigate it scientifically. In the case of glyphosate there’s research being done in four countries to look at reviewing it’s approval in 2022.
Much research has been done on glyphosate, but very little has been done on some of the other chemicals that are added to it to create the finished product (least of all by the manufacturers). There’s nothing wrong, and I’d say it’s a good idea, to test the entire formulations and not just some of their ingredients individually.
tl/dr this is a rational scientific response to a very public issue, not demonisation.
To be fair, I’m not sure that it’s a 1:1 comparison, given that there is/was a lot of very good evidence that smoking causes cancer, which doesn’t seem to be the case here.
I’m no fan of Monsanto, that’s for sure, but I wouldn’t be comfortable with this same standard being applied to, say, drug manufacturers (who are also not the most sympathetic defendants) in a trial about vaccine safety. Would you?
Tobacco companies are dishonest with their customers, thousands of whom are dying from obviously smoking-related maladies. Scientific studies corroborate smoking’s risks, and tobacco companies are sued. Jury review copious evidence, decides it’s worth penalizing the tobacco companies and changing regulations.
Herbicide company is no less honest with its customers than any other large corporation. Even admits that they can’t rule out carcinogenicity. Scientific studies do not reveal substantive risk. Nevertheless, a few customers decide to sue the herbicide company for maladies that could have come from any number of sources. A jury sees “MONSANTO” and awards damages based on no evidence of glyphosate’s risks.
Yeah, totally the same thing. Just because juries worked once doesn’t mean we should let them continue to decide scientific matters. But I guess I’m an elitist apologist, whatever that means.
Most certainly not 1:1. What is, after all, a true 1:1?
But I hold to it being a decent if imperfect analogy with some lessons to learn. The first lawsuits against tobacco companies were a decade or so before the US government definitively declared smoking to be carcinogenic (1964 Surgeon General’s report). Regulatory agencies rarely lead the way on these issues; it is public advocates and public litigation that very often does. That’s not the system I would prefer - I’d prefer Precautionary Principle-based and conflict-of-interest free regulation and oversight. But that is an alternate universe to the one we live in.
What is baffling here is that so many are explicitly and implicitly stating that there is no evidence at all to back up the jury’s decision, that the jury was a modern witch hunt or a mob with metaphorical pitch forks sticking it the Man and nothing else. I am guessing that some, maybe most - of you stating that there is no evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity are aware that you are being factually inaccurate. The WHO recently listed glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen” precisely because of the mounting evidence that it is. Not many of you are mentioning that (hmmm…) It is arguably a preponderance of the scientific research thus far. (And yes, that is arguable. Certainly not a totality - but anyone understanding how science works knows it almost never is.) It is entirely reasonable that a jury being presented with the same scientific evidence the WHO considered to reach that conclusion, along with additional testimony and evidence, would reach the decision it did.
So, the firm conviction that the decision is an illogical or irrational one, despite not having been in the courtroom to hear the testimony and scrutinize the evidence presented, is itself irrational.
The dismissive position that the jury was just a bunch of ignorant rubes with an agenda is neither rational nor pro-science; it plainly (and ironically) reveals the irrational thought process and agenda of those making that argument.
The IARC’s classification of glyphosate is generally accepted (by the scientific community) as erroneous. For example, a very large study that showed no connection between glyphosate and cancer was deliberately excluded from consideration because it hadn’t yet come out in a journal. There is fairly widespread consensus that if that study had been included, glyphosate would not have been classified as “probably carcinogenic”.
It’s also worth remembering that if the IARC classifies a substance as “probably carcinogenic” (like glyphosate), this is usually based on studies where rats have been fed their own weight in whatever it is that is being studied, and some of them have developed cancer. It says very little about whether using glyphosate as directed will actually put humans at risk of developing cancer, and in any case the risk that is of real interest here is that to agricultural workers who have to deal with it, rather than the general public. (Everyone agrees that getting yourself doused in Roundup is probably a Very Bad Idea, but according to the scientific consensus – and California jury verdicts notwithstanding – applying it, with appropriate caution, to the weeds in your driveway is very unlikely to give you cancer.) Incidentally, some other stuff in the same IARC category as glyphosate includes red meat or working as a hairdresser.
I believe you take the converse of the illogical position when you make the comparison to the tobacco companies. The fact is that there is nothing approaching the level of proof that glyphosphates cause cancer as there was that smoking did, and the comparison misleads about where the facts currently stand.
I don’t take issue with a jury system (it’s the worst, except for all the rest) and I don’t pretend that I heard all the evidence presented to this specific jury, but one need not believe that the jury was a “bunch of ignorant rubes with an agenda” to believe that the verdict does not comport with what our best evidence currently shows.
