Dragging Trust in Science into the Sewer
How Philip Landrigan is Destroying the AAP’s Credibility
Trust is essential when parents seek advice from their pediatricians. It must be fact-based and free from politics and special interests. So an organization like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) needs to take special care that the information they provide for their members is based on the best available scientific practices and methodology. Sadly this has not been the case as the AAP’s management has allowed a rogue scientist to propagate a political message core to his activism, manipulate the scientific process and undermine trust in the profession.
The disgraceful antics of the pediatrician, Philip Landrigan, have been well-documented in The Firebreak.
Landrigan is one of the architects of the political campaigns coming from the Collegium Ramazzini – a group of activist scientists who are continually using its closed network in the academic publishing world to proliferate poor methodologies in its interventions against industrial chemicals.
Landrigan covertly transferred almost one million US dollars from funds donated to the Heartland Health Research Alliance (HHRA) to help finance the Ramazzini Global Glyphosate Study but he was only forced to acknowledge the transaction five years later when new management at the HHRA informed him such actions were illegal (and unethical).
Landrigan’s role leading the Heartland Study involved aggressively trying to hide funding from a collection of tort law firms and organic food industry lobby groups (through a complicated web of smoke and mirrors they called partnerships).
But perhaps Landrigan’s most egregious attack on public trust is how he has used his influence for the past eight months to prevent any credible scientific review of a politically-biased report he published in the AAP’s journal, Pediatrics, casting doubt upon the safety of GMOs. Landrigan’s goal here is to manipulate the community of American pediatricians into proclaiming scientifically unsubstantiated health risks of GMOs and other agricultural technologies and advising their patients to favor organic food.
The article, published in December, 2023, was a collection of campaign arguments against GMOs and the herbicide, glyphosate, based on and referencing weak studies, anti-GMO NGO campaign materials and journalists’ articles. In short, the article was not science-based and even generalists like myself could pull out errors and omissions of facts from nearly every paragraph. Landrigan’s report, if subjected to a modicum of scrutiny from a wider scientific community, would be retracted.
It should be noted that, in the Pediatrics report, Philip Landrigan did not disclose his financial involvement with the organic food industry lobby and US tort law firms suing Bayer who are behind the funding of the Heartland Study he is actively participating in. This study is attempting to engineer evidence linking herbicides like glyphosate to birth issues. These interest groups would profit very nicely should some pediatrician convince his peers to consider GMOs and agricultural technologies as harmful to human health.
Ethics courses could be taught on this man’s scientific integrity transgressions.
Power and Influence vs the Scientific Method
Beyond Landrigan’s undeclared conflicts of interest, this article will focus on something more frightening: the decline of respect for the scientific process. As of today, Landrigan’s report has not been allowed to be held up to the rigorous critical assessment and scrutiny the scientific method requires. What follows is a story of Landrigan using his power and influence (again) to push forward a political agenda without regard to scientific rigor or facts.
Since the publication in Pediatrics, respected physicians and scientists have relentlessly tried to raise awareness of the factual errors and politicized conclusions of Landrigan’s report. For eight months they have hit a wall of silence, subterfuge and circled wagons at the AAP and within the editorial board of its Pediatrics journal. (Landrigan sits on the Executive Committee of the AAP’s Council on Environmental Health and Climate Change.) For eight months, they have been unable to publish their rebuttals in any other journals. It appears that an influential group within the scientific community is circling around Landrigan to prevent his unfounded views on agricultural technologies from being exposed to legitimate scrutiny. This furthers a worrying trend where a certain politics has entered into the academic journals and medical communities prevailing over any robust scientific method.
This approach is breaking public trust in the pediatric profession (and between pediatricians). If the management of the AAP cannot put politics aside for the sake of respect for scientific methodology, if they bow before an influential activist rather than to the profession they took an oath to uphold, then perhaps they are no longer fit to represent their members.
What follows is a timeline of how Dr. Nicole Keller (a pediatrician), Dr. Andrea Love (an immunologist/microbiologist) and Dr. Kevin Folta (an academic molecular biologist) have, for the last eight months, been blocked from scrutinizing a woefully inaccurate, highly politicized report against a significant research technology. They initially acted independently, but connected after their efforts were rejected by Pediatrics.
Timeline of AAP’s Science Obstruction
December
1. The article is published as a report in Pediatrics on Dec 7, 2023 and was met with a strong initial reaction among pediatricians, agronomists and academics.
2. Dr. Nicole Keller, a member of the AAP, contacts editor Lewis First over the publication.
3. Dr Kevin Folta contacts editor Lewis First. Dr. First tells Folta that he may submit 250 words as an online comment about the article. Folta submits a response but the comment was not published and the article was not amended.
January
4. Dr. Andrea Love (Jan 3, 2024) contacts Sandy Chung, president of AAP, and the AAP Comms/Advocacy team: Denise Smith Rodd (Communications Campaign Manager Advocacy & External Affairs), Kathryn Beard and Terrisha Jackson providing a summary of the issues in the statement, a list of references, and an offer to assist. Denise replies and says she will share Love’s thoughts with the statement authors.
5. Andrea follows up on this offer two additional times over the next several weeks inquiring on feedback and providing additional offers of assistance while underscoring the importance of accurate information. She has received no further responses.
6. Keller and Folta run a widely received free webinar to publicly address the AAP report. The authors were invited yet declined to even answer the invitation.
7. Dr. Nicole Keller writes her account on Science Based Medicine.
8. Dr. Keller submits comments to the article, they are published but the authors provide no response.
9. Dr. Andrea Love submits comments to article. They were not published (and have not been, to date).
10. Keller and Folta join Dr. Andrea Love on her podcast.
11. Dr. Andrea Love writes several articles on the topic for her newsletter.
12. Dr. Andrea Love speaks with reporter Rina Raphael, who authors a piece on the topic in The Messenger (now defunct), and also publishes a longer version on her newsletter, Well To Do (end of January 2024).
March
13. Keller, Love and Folta prepare an Opinion article invited by Scientific American. It is submitted and goes un-reviewed for two months.
April
14. They withdraw the letter, and submit to Lancet Opinions an opinion about the lack of humility in being corrected and the failure of scientists to engage critics. It is rejected without review.
May
15. They submit an article to Pediatrics (May 7, 2024), and it is rejected two months later. The reviewers claim that the original article was properly vetted, and that they do not see the relevance of a rebuttal for the audience (July 2024).
July
16. Keller and Love join Folta to discuss the issues on Talking Biotech podcast and issue a call to action for journals or media outlets.
17. Dr. Andrea Love writes a newsletter on the same.
So What!!!
One might look at this as just another scientific disagreement and given how the GMO debate has gone on for decades, should not be considered as important. That one well-known scientist does not want to listen to other views is nothing new and these three scientists should just give up and move on.
But this report, claiming that GMOs and conventionally grown produce is a health risk, is pretending to be the official AAP advice for all American pediatricians. Parents are being advised by their doctor, the closest person in a parent’s trust relationship, to feed their children only organic food. There is no scientific basis for this and for many, this limits the amount of fruit and vegetables parents can afford or have access to. Organic food is simply a marketing tool built on unfounded fear and manipulation.
Does the AAP actually think that taking positions contrary to the scientific consensus is the role of a professional society of physicians?
Do they believe that their physicians should push the unscientific advice during consultations with their patients?
Shouldn’t the AAP members be given the chance to have an open discussion on these claims?
Do physicians’ professional societies have an obligation to correct false statements or positions that mis-advise their membership?
According to Philip Landrigan, the answer to all of these questions is: “No!” He is moving forward with his anti-GMO campaign. In a follow-up piece on an AAP site aimed at parents (and riddled with careless spelling mistakes), Landrigan is claiming GMO-free as the official AAP policy and recommends all parents choose organic food (see screenshot below).
No discussion, no scrutiny, no science. What we have here is an arrogant activist, financially supported by the organic food industry lobby and tort law firms making billions from glyphosate litigations, happily dragging trust in science into the sewer to win his political argument. One more example of the Ramazzinification of research.
Ultimately this story is not just about the roadblocks encountered by three experts that freely offered their time and efforts to help a professional society communicate actual evidence to its members.
It is about the damage to the public trust in science when reputable organizations fail to recognize a scientific consensus and the method of scrutiny and self-correction.
It is also about how a professional society self-inflicts a blow to its credibility by arrogantly rejecting science (as much as if they had published a statement on the dangers of childhood vaccination).
It is a constant reminder that public trust in science is fragile, and even the alleged beacons of medical guidance are not immune to broadcasting disinformation that is detrimental to public health and public understanding of science.
I salute Drs Keller, Folta and Love for their tenacity and ask the scientific community to send a message to their establishment to respect the scientific method.