Talk:Glyphosate

Entropy article (again)

Today in these edits, User:Timpo added content based on the Entropy article. As mentioned above, this article has been examined on the MEDRS board and found not acceptable for use in supporting any content in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)/Archive_7#Review_of_Monsanto.27s_Roundup_herbicide.Jytdog (talk) 14:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

This is not simply a newspaper article, and Entropy (journal) I think is is a respected scientific publisher- unless someone knows different? My insertion deliberately fudged the claim thus Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff argue that...may be implicated... My second reference is to that complete scientific paper which has been peer reviewed (Open access PDF 48 pages with 286 references]) Monsanto is a Big Pharma American corporation and Roundup is one of their big successes - so they might be be alarmed if a Wikipedia article were to suggest a speculative line of enquiry which could at some later time become reliable?

Unfortunately many universities in the USA rely heavily on sponsorship, so academics working in the field of Genetically modified organisms may be implicitly subject to profound commercial information management forces even though there may not have an explicit and personal Conflict of Interest or any direct connection with associated corporate entities

Regrettably, because Lobbying in the United States is mature and effective in exploiting the rather weak (one year - eludable) revolving door (politics) it is becoming increasingly hard (for me, and seemingly for many outside the US) to trust in the impartiality of US based science or scientists. Were that it was not so, but I think we have a duty to insult our friends? Timpo (talk) 16:31, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

If you have concerns about COI, please bring them to COIN. Talk is not the place for that. Nor is it the place for WP:SOAPBOX either. Let's use the Talk page as it is intended discuss content and sources. Would you please review the discussion of the source at the MEDRS Talk page and respond. Thanks. 16:44, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Would like to know more about this citing article which seems confirmatory. I am unwilling to exclude the possibility that there is a negative reputation influence which makes publishing in off-topic journals more likely for this work. I would ask for the opinion of @Jmh649: as a trusted generalist (and also ask him how the the request for pre-registered studies from Medline/Pubmed approval went when he visited NIH?) 109.70.142.36 (talk) 02:59, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

With respect to the "confirmatory" article, it is a primary source. We do not base any Wikipedia content on primary sources as per WP:PSTS and especially with regard to health-related content, we do not generate content based on primary sources communicating results of in vitro studies as per WP:MEDRS. I cannot imagine that DocJames would say differently.Jytdog (talk) 07:52, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Does the statement that "Glyphosate has an antimicrobial effect on intestinal microorganisms" appear in the literature review section of that article, and if so, is it secondary? EllenCT (talk) 15:44, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

The intro says "Recently, it has been proposed that glyphosate may be a significant factor in the observed increased risk to Clostridium botulinum infection in cattle in Germany over the past 10–15 years (Krüger et al., 2013). Glyphosates toxicity to Enterococcus spp. leads to an imbalance in the gut favoring overgrowth of Clostridium spp. ( Krüger et al., 2013 and Shehata et al., 2013a) because common beneficial bacterium, Enterococcus spp. suppresses Clostridium (Shehata et al., 2013b)." In my opinion information that we present about health in Wikipedia should be based on secondary sources that are established opinion; it is very dangerous to put health information into articles based on primary studies as many primary studies turn out not to be replicable. Jytdog (talk) 18:23, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I see. Thank you. How long does it usually take MEDRS sources to appear when multiple primaries agree? EllenCT (talk) 23:59, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Not predictable... science sometimes leaps and sometimes it crawls. And I hope you are not leaping from the paragraph I quoted above to a belief that glyphosate is affecting the bacteria in your intestines! (toxicology is much more complex than that) Jytdog (talk) 00:35, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, feedlot cattle have fewer diseases than free-range pasture-fed. I would love to know why you think that is? The extent to which we depend on antibiotics is a monoculture risk, just like the extent on which we depend on a lack of diversity in pesticides. I'm not seeing much clear leadership on monoculture issues from multinational conglomerates borne in the modern mergers-and-acquisitions quarterly balance sheet shortsightedness, especially in terms of willingness to abuse monopoly positions, which we are often reminded of in the press. EllenCT (talk) 04:03, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

You lost me.Jytdog (talk) 07:04, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I'll explain later. I am upset about a political lynching on WP:ANI at the moment. EllenCT (talk) 07:30, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Further reading:

• http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/05/06/navigating-the-agricultural-biotech-minefield-when-an-mit-study-is-not-an-mit-study/
• http://www.sci-phy.com/detecting-bogus-scientific-journals/
• http://gmopundit.blogspot.ch/2013/04/all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about.html
• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamar-haspel/condemning-monsanto-with-_b_3162694.html
• http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/04/discover-blogger-keith-kloor-stumbles-ne

Cheers, 193.5.216.100 (talk) 15:09, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Weed captions

I was trying to tie the captions in to the article because Some readers look at the pictures and captions first before diving into an intimidating amount of text. Formerly 98 reverted this work because I had also added a new picture and that was considered WP:UNDUE. No argument with that but if 5 of 9 pictures is undue, perhaps 4 of 9 is also?

How about we take the sub-headings out of the section and discuss different plants in different paragraphs and include a gallery of the plants somewhere in the section? ~KvnG 14:54, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

it is important that we don't misrepresent anything. if you have no information that the actual picture is of an actual glyphosate-resistant plant, it is bogus to insert that information into the caption. way out of bounds.Jytdog (talk) 15:04, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

If you read carefully, you'll see that my captions did not actually say the resistant variants were pictured. I appreciate that a reader might assume that they are but it is an exaggeration to say this is "way out of bounds" as it is my understanding that the resistant varieties are not visually distinguished from the normal ones. ~KvnG 15:46, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

the caption said "A glyphosate resistant variant of Palmer amaranth, commonly known as pigweed, is now widespread in the southeastern United States." yep. you are right, it was an exaggeration. sorry about that. Jytdog (talk) 16:11, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't mind the captions per se, I just don't think we should make this article redundant with the existing "Pesticide Resistance" article. Of course there is glyphosate resistance, just as there is resistance to every other widely used pesticide.

If there were some aspect of glyphosate resistance that was uniquely harmful or rapidly developing relative to resistance to other pesticides, I could understand the emphasis. But we don't have pictures of methoprene-resistant mosquitos on the methoprene page, nor is it easy for me to see how such pictures add anything. As user:Jytdog has pointed out, you can't look at these pictures and tell whether the plant is glyphosate resistant or not. So why add them other than to create the impression that this product is not useful or that resistance to this pesticide develops in a uniquely rapid manner? It wouldn't be the most widely used pesticide in the US if it were not considered useful by farmers, and if resistance development is unusually rapid, it would be better to find a reference that states that.

With respect to breaking this out into subsections by resistant species, my question would be: What additional value does a comprehensive listing of observations of geographies and types of weeds in which resistance development has been observed add other than implying without a suitable reference that resistance to this particular pesticide is unusually insidious or rapidly developing? And if the ramifications of glyphosate resistance are not substantially different from those of other pesticides, isn't a deep dive into resistance in this article just a WP:REDUNDANTFORK? Wikipedia articles are supposed to be summaries and not comprehensive reviews. If the article briefly summarizes the benefits, and then gives a comprehensive listing of every observation of resistance, the result is unbalanced.

I'm not saying that resistance should not be discussed in the article, but there is a happy medium and I think we are moving beyond it. Thanks Formerly 98 (talk) 16:14, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

My proposal included removal of the subsection headings. This would allow us to make the section shorter and would give it more appropriate weighting when you read the TOC. I'm OK with removing the pictures entirely if that's the consensus; they're only one click away in the linked articles about each weed. My modest edits were an attempt to improve what was already there. I seem to have stepped into something larger. ~KvnG 21:18, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

CKDu - Chronic Kidney Disease unknown cause

It looks like there's a reasonably persuasive argument that glyphosate when used in paddy fields and similar situations causes fatal kidney disease:

http://rt.com/news/monsanto-roundup-kidney-disease-921/

Basically, the farmers are splashing it around and standing up to their knees in it, and drinking the run-off into aquifers as well. It's not immediately toxic, but it looks like the chemical is reacting with metal ions and eventually taking out the kidneys.

There's been huge number of deaths.

I'm somewhat reluctant to add it right now though, RT is not the most unbiased source (similar reliability to Fox news I guess). There were earlier stories on the BBC website about this disease, but they didn't mention glyphosate by name.

What do other people think?GliderMaven (talk) 16:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Seems legitimate. I found some other sources [1] [2] as well.GliderMaven (talk) 17:16, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Need a MEDRS compliant source. Primary research findings are not sufficient. Despite its name, the description of the GMAO and its activities on its website indicates that it is an advocacy group. Formerly 98 (talk) 17:25, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Here is the article that the press is writing about. The authors write "Here, we have hypothesized the association of using glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the disease endemic area and its unique metal chelating properties" There is no data in the paper nor is there a review of other papers with data. This is noodling - armchair biology. we do not include such things in wikipedia at all as per WP:CRYSTALBALL. definitely does not pass WP:MEDRS. sheesh. Jytdog (talk) 19:09, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

expansion tags

glyphosate is the active ingredient in many formulations. it has been off-patent in the US for 14 years now (and even longer outside the US), and there are many many formulations on the market. Chinese companies produce the majority of glyphosate today; the market place is very complex (sees this for some flavor). We have almost no information about these other formulations. Another issue is the additives that are in all these different formulations. Glyphosate formulations are much more toxic than glyphosate itself, and it is the formulations that are actually used in the real world, and are the actual source of toxic effects. This article is incomplete without discussion of the various additives that are used and what their toxicities are. so, that is why the tags are there. Jytdog (talk) 17:05, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

What references exactly state that the toxicity of glyphosate formulations is much greater than glyphosate itself? If these references exist and meet MEDRS standards, the discussion on this page should be limited to the formulations and not to the additives themselves as the article is about glyphosate, not Roundup. POEA, for example, has its own article.

The only MEDRS compliant reference of POEA I am aware of are here, and it states the opposite of what you are asserting. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10854122, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10854122, http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/glyphotech.pdf. None appear to reach the conclusion you have stated.

Lastly, by my count, about 20% of the articles is already dedicated to formulation toxicity. What would you consider appropriate weighting? 50%? I would regard any claim that the EPA and its European equivalent have approved highly toxic mixtures that are harmful to human health as an extraordinary claim requiring very strong references. Strong indeed if we are going to dedicate half of the article to the claim.

There are not "hundreds" of adjuvants for glyphosate as stated in the current version of the article. The link takes you to a page that shows manufacturers, and if you order the list alphabetically, you will see that many of these "adjuvants" are mixtures, and that the exact same mixture or very similar mixtures are made by multiple companies. The Pesticide Action Network lists the most commonly used ones here, calling compounds like glycerin (a component of most skin lotions with an LD50 of several grams per kg) "toxic". As a chemist, I am familiar with most of the compounds on the list, and if you take the time and trouble to go look them up, you'll find that the toxicities that PAN refers to are at superhuman doses. http://www.panap.net/sites/default/files/monograph_glyphosate.pdf. There is a simple reason to stick with a limited set of adjuvants: inert ingredients are regulated by both the EPA and the FDA. http://www2.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/pesticide-registration-manual-chapter-8-inert-ingredients#regulation. Formerly 98 (talk) 18:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

This is a little exhausting as these issues have been discussed extensively on this page and others. Glyphosate itself has no known targets in humans - it hits an enzyme found in some plants and lower organisms. (there is some discussion of it as an "endocrine disruptor" but there is no known mechanism or target by which it could do that). Formulations, on the other hand, contain surfactants (for example), and as anybody familiar with biology knows, if you dump detergent on a cell, you will kill it. So formulations are generally much more toxic than glyphosate itself. I will dig up the refs tonight. btw, there used to be a separate article on Roundup but I merged them, with consensus at the time, something like a year ago. Some folks opened an RfC to unmerge them a few months ago, which ended with a determination to do an unmerge. However, no one has done it yet. I don't intend to do it, as keeping them merged makes the most sense to me. Two reasons: a) the articles overlapped about 80%, and b) i don't see a reason why there should be an article on roundup and not on the other formulations. Maybe an article on glyphosate formulations would make sense, but that should grow organically out of this one, and right now sections on formulations are thin and need expansion even here. Jytdog (talk) 19:52, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

but please update the article to fix any flaws! your chemistry knowledge is super valuable. thx Jytdog (talk) 19:55, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

You had the misfortune to catch me on a cranky day, but if this has been discussed extensively already I will defer to the decision already made. Formerly 98 (talk) 20:02, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

sorry i am a little cranky too and i didn't intend at all to wave you off. does what i wrote above make sense? i really do think the article could use your expertise. Jytdog (talk) 20:29, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

I thought what you said was fine. And I'm still a little exhausted by the paracetamol discussion where we went on for 8000 words to craft 2 sentences. So right now I'm just not real anxious to take on something that has stirred a lot of discussion in the past. Maybe next month. For now I'll continue to look at other aspects of the article where any disagreements that come up can hopefully be rapidly resolved on the MEDRS board. Formerly 98 (talk) 21:02, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

 :) Jytdog (talk) 21:26, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

Concerns regarding some recent edits

I am concerned that some recent edits appear to delete information that may be seen as negative and replace it with more positive information. For instance this recently added information related to a recent review:

According to the authors, the use of glyphosate-based pesticides cannot be considered the major cause of amphibian decline, the bulk of which occurred prior to the widespread use of glyphosate or in pristine tropical areas with minimal glyphosate exposure. The authors recommended further study of species- and development-stage chronic toxicity, of environmental glyphosate levels, and ongoing analysis of data relevant to determining what if any role glyphosate might be playing in worldwide amphibian decline, and suggest including amphibians in standardized test batteries.[87]

Using this summary: " Solomon article - pulled more representative quotes from paper". All of the previous information was deleted. I'll quote the previous information.

According to the authors, because little is known about environmental concentrations of glyphosate in amphibian habitats and virtually nothing is known about environmental concentrations of the substances added to the herbicide formulations, if and how glyphosate-based herbicides contribute to amphibian decline is not yet answerable due to missing data on how natural populations are affected. They concluded that the impact on amphibians depends on the herbicide formulation with different sensitivity of taxa and life stages while effects on development of larvae are seen as the most sensitive endpoints to study. The authors recommend "better monitoring of both amphibian populations and contamination of habitats with glyphosate-based herbicides, not just glyphosate," and suggest including amphibians in standardized test batteries.

I am wondering why the editor would suggest that his/her edit was superior to the previous information. In suggesting that his/her decision to include information from the article that they thought was a good summation rather than the abstract of the researchers that wrote the review, couldn't it be reasonable to conclude that this editor rather than the researchers had done the review, or in other words, OR?

Gandy, you are correct. I completely blew this, seeing it through the lens of other material in which I had checked the statements made in the article against the cited source and found that the sources violated WP:MEDRS or simply mischaracterized the content of the cited reference For example:

* POEA is highly toxic to humans" - supported only by reference to in vitro studies, which is a violation of MEDRS. If its really "highly toxic", how is it that people routinely survive drinking 50 mL of or more of the undiluted product?

* "Research has shown that Roundup is teratogenic in animals" - supported only by two papers that describe the teratogenic properties of a completely different compound. Seriously.

* As you can see from my edits, there was a lot of other material that I found very questionable, mostly due to sourcing, but in some cases due to notability. Is it really notable that 5 years ago a French environmentalist group accused Monsanto of lying to regulatory authorities about the ingredients in its formulation given that no confirmation of this allegation has come to light in the ensuring 5 years? Surely regulatory authorities in France have access to a modern analytical chemistry laboratory and can follow up on such allegations.

But as for the amphibians article, you are completely correct. I looked up the rather lengthy article and read it for myself, but my interpretation of the author's intentions in this particular case was so far off that I failed to recognize that the text I replaced was a nearly verbatim quote of the article abstract. As such, it is a copyright violation, and cannot be restored. Let's work on finding some language that captures the authors intent better than I did without violating the copyright. Formerly 98 (talk) 18:37, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, it is an obvious copyvio--the editor just copied the abstract. In the same section, in this sentence, "Glyphosate formulations are much more toxic for amphibians...", you removed the word "much"--why did you do that? Gandydancer (talk) 11:53, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

The statement was originally supported by four references, three of which were primary and of dubious relevance. The fourth was to a book, and cited a 90 page section in which I could not find support for the word "much". I believe this is the point at which I deleted the adjective. The current version of the article supports the statement with a better reference that I added on March 10 as the result of a search for better references on the issue of formulation toxicity. The new reference clearly does support the adjective, which is something that I did not notice at the time, so I've re-added the word "much". Formerly 98 (talk) 13:35, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/06/14/groundbreaking-study-links-monsantos-glyphosate-to-cancer/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.157.147.2 (talk) 20:00, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Nope, that's exactly the sort of primary, in vitro research that MEDRS forbids, because so much primary research is not reproducible, especially primary research published in politically contentious fields. Formerly 98 (talk) 00:09, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Three relevant papers worth looking at

I do not have time right now to dissect these papers and work out what might be worth adding to this article. Perhaps another editor might? Djapa Owen (talk) 13:23, 18 May 2014 (UTC) Major Pesticides Are More Toxic to Human Cells Than Their Declared Active Principles Glyphosate induces human breast cancer cells growth via estrogen receptors. Roundup Herbicide 125 Times More Toxic Than Regulators Say

Please review WP:MEDRS None of these are reliable sources for medical information. MEDRS requires secondary sources (non-news media), and emphasizes that cell culture data is insufficient to make direct or implied claims about human health effects.Formerly 98 (talk) 13:47, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Are you suggesting National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine is a news media organisation?

We should not make direct or implied claims based on cell culture data then. Maybe just report the cell culture data? Djapa Owen (talk) 14:21, 18 May 2014 (UTC)