A Science Historian Tackles Ghostwriting In Scientific Papers

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FLORA LICHTMAN: I’m Flora Lichtman. And you’re listening to Science Friday. We keep hearing that these are unprecedented times for science. We have science skeptics running federal agencies, growing distrust of vaccines, and messaging from the highest levels of government that scientists are in the pocket of industry. But is it really a unique time for science? And what can we learn from history?

We have just the person to answer those questions, a science historian who has gone deep studying skepticism and science. Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University. Welcome back, Naomi.

NAOMI ORESKES: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, I’ve heard that science comes under attack when it threatens authority. Is that a true statement? Is that true generally?

NAOMI ORESKES: Well, I hope it’s true. Because I’m sure I’ve said that myself. [LAUGHS] So I think–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Perhaps I heard it from you, Naomi.

NAOMI ORESKES: Yeah, it could be. I’ve definitely written that in a book. So there’s no question that one of the reasons science can be vulnerable is that sometimes scientists discover things that threaten powerful people, powerful interests, or threaten cherished beliefs, widely-held values. And so two examples that I’ve written about are evolutionary theory and acid rain, so quite different examples. And I think they’re useful in that way.

So we all know that pretty much for as long as there’s been a scientific debate about evolution, there has been resistance to the scientific findings that human beings have probably evolved just the same as frogs and snakes and aspen trees and all the rest. And that’s an idea that has always threatened people, partly because it’s been interpreted by some people as challenging the idea that God made man in his image, and partly because a lot of people just don’t like the idea that in some deep way, we’re not very different than the slugs that you find in your garden. So evolution–

FLORA LICHTMAN: I don’t know why, but OK.

NAOMI ORESKES: Yeah, and people just don’t like that. So that’s one example. Acid rain is almost the other extreme. And I love the example of acid rain. Because the scientists who worked on acid rain, who discovered that air pollution can make snow and ice and clouds acidic– and that does damage to trees, to fish, to property.

And because that had to do with air pollution, it threatened the interests of people who produced air pollution, particularly the power industry, the electric power industry. And so they saw their work come under attack by people who didn’t want to accept the truth of what it told us about air pollution and its relationship to power generation in this country.

And of course, climate change follows on the heels of the acid rain story and is even bigger and more difficult because it’s not just about one particular kind of air pollution. It’s about a kind of pollution that affects the entire globe.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I’ve also heard people say the problem right now is that science has become politicized. But was science really ever apolitical?

NAOMI ORESKES: Well, exactly. I mean, on some level, the idea that science could exist separate from the rest of society and therefore be completely apolitical, that’s not an idea that any historian of science would defend. But that said, there’s a particular kind of attack on science that’s been going on for a while now.

In my own work, I trace it to the Reagan administration of attacking sciences whose findings threaten powerful political and economic interests, like the fossil fuel industry or the tobacco industry. And in that sense, we have seen the deliberate attempt to politicize people who are hostile to scientific findings. But it’s a different thing to see people deliberately trying to politicize scientific findings and deliberately trying to mobilize distrust of science for political ends.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I want to talk about this, because I actually feel confused at the moment about this conversation about trust in science. Because I feel like when we’re talking about it today, there’s some sort of nebulous us and them, those of us who believe in science and those who do not. But it feels very muddy. We have scientists telling us that they don’t currently trust our scientific institutions. We have pediatric groups suing the CDC. So how do you think about this?

NAOMI ORESKES: Yeah, well, that’s a great question. And I love the way you started it with the question about us and them. Because of course, that’s not– no one who’s trained as a scientist, no one who does science would ever want to say, there’s us and there’s them.

Because we– and I’ll put myself in this category because I’m trained originally as a scientist myself– we believe that science is a powerful toolkit for understanding the natural world, and that the things we learn through science can make our lives better, safer, healthier, possibly even happier. And so it’s very sad when we see people rejecting scientific evidence for what appears to be not very good reasons.

And I should also add, public opinion polls on this point are actually rather heartening. So we have lots of rather good polling data, particularly from the Pew Research Foundation, that show that the vast majority of Americans do, in fact, still trust science and scientists. So something like 70% of Americans broadly trust science and scientific institutions. And–

FLORA LICHTMAN: Which is quite high, given–

NAOMI ORESKES: Very high, much higher than– we’re a very, very high number. There’s not many other things–

FLORA LICHTMAN: I mean, compared to journalism, it’s really high.

NAOMI ORESKES: Correct, correct, compared to banks, journalism, Congress. I mean, scientists have actually done rather well compared to other institutions. So in that sense, there’s a good news story here. It’s not all doom and gloom. But that said, we’re in this very challenging moment because of the corruption of certain scientific institutions. The current federal government, the current occupant of the White House, has deliberately corrupted the scientific processes at the Center for Disease Control.

And you now have political ideologues in places that used to be occupied by independent scientists. And these political ideologues have now issued vaccine guidance that flies in the face of an enormous amount of both scientific research. And so now you have the situation where you have the American Academy of Pediatrics saying, well, actually, the old vaccine guidelines made sense, and we’re sticking by them. And so that could be a very confusing situation for the public.

And so what I always say about this is, you have to ask yourself, who are the real scientists here? And it used to be, you could simply say, well, scientists working in scientific jobs and federal scientific agencies, that was a pretty safe bet. What the current administration has done is to muddy those waters.

And so, now, what we have to say is, well, who are the independent scientists? Who are the scientists who, as far as we can tell, have not been corrupted by deliberate political interference? And for that, we have to, sadly, now, say that it’s not the Centers for Disease Control, but it is the groups of independent scientists and physicians in this country, like the American Academy of Pediatrics.

FLORA LICHTMAN: But what is in it for the federal government to undermine vaccines? What’s the motivation?

NAOMI ORESKES: Well, that’s a very good question. Of course, you’d have to ask them, and they would probably tell you that they are standing up for the truth. I think that the best way to understand what’s gone on in terms of vaccine safety is to step back and look at the larger history of anti-science activities from business-oriented conservatives in this country since the Reagan administration.

So what a lot of my work has been about is about scientific research on environmental and public health topics, like acid rain, like climate change, like tobacco, in which scientific evidence showed that commercial products, like cigarettes or gasoline, products that were perfectly legal and that nearly all of us used– because if we go back to the ’50s, something like 75% of American men smoked– that these products were doing huge damage to the environment. They were doing damage to individual people’s health.

These findings were very threatening to powerful interests, like the tobacco industry, or later, the fossil fuel industry, or now, today, the pesticide industry. And so these industries began to organize and literally to organize– and we’ve documented in our work– to fight the scientific evidence and to undermine public trust in science. But over time, over the course of decades, it became generalized to a kind of general, anti-scientific position.

Because these corporations realized that if they could undermine public trust in science in general, that, in a way, their job would be easier. They wouldn’t have to convince us that cigarettes were safe. They could simply claim, oh, don’t trust those egghead scientists. Don’t trust those elitists at Harvard, like Oreskes. So it becomes a political strategy to protect corporate interests, to protect corporate profits, and also to protect a political position against government regulation of the marketplace.

And so I think the vaccine story is best understood in that context, that if you extrapolate this broadly– which the people I’ve studied have done– they will say they don’t want the government regulating the marketplace. They don’t want the government telling us what to do. They think people should be free to do what they want.

Now, that’s a great idea in principle, but in this case, the people they’re defending are actually corporations selling dangerous products. And so once you take that position, then it becomes logical to say, well, we don’t want vaccine mandates either. We don’t want mask mandates. We don’t want any kind of mandates. We just want freedom.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, there’s some irony here. Because if you listen to a congressional hearing with Health Secretary RFK Jr., he often talks about corruption in science. It’s just a different corruption or something.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: When I was a kid, NIH was the premier gold standard scientific institution in the world. Over the years, it was captured by industry and by, I think, a kind of ossification that happened at NIH because of the longevity of some of the leadership there. And there was a tremendous amount of corruption.

NAOMI ORESKES: Right. Well, there’s two things that I think are important to understand. There’s a tremendous amount of projection that goes on in this space. So the tobacco industry will accuse academic scientists of having a political or economic agenda, when, in fact, they’re the ones with the agenda. But to me, the tragedy about RFK– well, there’s multiple tragedies there. But the tragedy that there really is corruption in science– and that’s another question we can get on to. But he’s pointing the finger in completely the wrong place, in my opinion.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is what I want to talk about when we come back. We have to take a short break. But when we come back, I want to ask you about your explosive paper on glyphosate, this active ingredient in the weedkiller Roundup. Stay with us.

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FLORA LICHTMAN: So yes, let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about this investigative work that you did on this scientific study claiming glyphosate, which is one of the main ingredients in the weedkiller Roundup, is safe. That’s what the study said, and you looked into it. Tell me where this work started and how it unfolded.

NAOMI ORESKES: Well, the work started in part because my fantastic post-doc, Sasha Kaurov, had a little spare time on his hands. So the idea was this. This very major paper, as you just mentioned, had been published in the year 2000– so 25, 26 years ago– that claimed to be an objective, independent, and comprehensive review of all the scientific data relating to the safety of glyphosate. And this review concluded that glyphosate was safe, and that, in particular, that it was highly unlikely to cause cancer in humans.

Now, about 17 years later, in 2017, there was a lawsuit in which a whole bunch of documents became available that showed that this paper had been substantially, possibly entirely, ghostwritten by Monsanto employees. But those employees were not–

FLORA LICHTMAN: The company that made Roundup.

NAOMI ORESKES: Correct, the company that made Roundup. But those employees were not listed as the authors of the paper. The people listed as the authors were a group of academics. So this is fraud. I mean, this is what we call ghostwriting. But I think that’s a little bit too nice a term for it. It’s fraud. You’re claiming that the authors of the paper are people who are not, in fact, the authors of the paper. So it’s a form of lying.

And so this had come out in 2017, but the question I had was, OK, so what impact did this paper have? And so that’s the question that Sasha and I took on. And what Sasha did was to use his computational skills– he’s a computational social scientist– to track the impact of this paper. And we did that in three domains– academia, so other scientific papers citing this paper; regulatory agencies, so agencies, like the EPA, making decisions about the safety of glyphosate; and then public understanding as reflected in Wikipedia articles.

And what we showed was that this fraudulent paper had had massive impact. It was one of the most cited papers ever written on glyphosate safety. It was extensively cited in government documents. And Wikipedia pages relied on it as well.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The ripples went far and wide.

NAOMI ORESKES: Correct. So that’s the result we published once our paper was published. Then we reached out to the journal that had originally published the paper saying, we believe this paper should be retracted because it was fraudulent. And it’s had enormous, in our opinion, adverse impact. The editor agreed. And so a few months ago, in December, the paper was, in fact, retracted.

FLORA LICHTMAN: If we zoom out, how widespread is this practice? Do you have any sense?

NAOMI ORESKES: Well, it’s very difficult to tell because, of course, the people who do it don’t admit it, right? And it’s– right. I mean, this is like anytime you’re trying to quantify deception, it’s a very challenging thing to do. And part of my research has been trying to figure out how you can quantify deceptions. But most of the evidence we have comes from cases where there were lawsuits. And so emails, documents became public because of lawsuits.

If we look at those lawsuits, most of them are actually not about pesticides, although there are a growing number having to do with glyphosate. Most of them are about pharmaceuticals, drugs, and medical devices. And in that space, some researchers think that as many as half of all papers on drugs and medical devices may be at least– may be wholly, or in part, ghostwritten or, in some other way, inappropriately influenced by the manufacturers of those products.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Well, this is what I think is so confusing for the American public. If that’s true, half the papers in this space, in the pharmaceutical space, are fraudulent, essentially. Then when you hear someone like RFK say in a congressional hearing that there’s massive corruption, that seems to be true. That matches with that data. So how do we parse which science is good science, and which science is not good science, especially if the deception is deception, if it’s hidden?

NAOMI ORESKES: Right. It’s extremely difficult. And so I think that if people feel confused, it’s not their fault. But here’s what I want to say about it. This is why public funding of science is so crucial. Because if we want to preserve and protect the integrity and the objectivity of science, the most important thing we can do, the singlemost important thing we can do is to protect public funding. Because this corruption in pharmaceuticals and medical devices– and again, I’m quoting other experts who think it could be as high as 50%. We don’t really know that for a fact. But even if it’s 20% or 30%, that’s still a very, very serious problem.

It means that we have to take these studies out of the hands of the private sector actors who have a vested interest in a particular outcome, and put it back in the hands of independent scientists who are– and I’m going to say this. Some people may be cynical, but I’m going to say, scientists who are really, genuinely interested in the truth. And that’s the reason why the current administration cuts on academic science, and also, independent science in the agencies, is so incredibly dreadful. Because unless we have independent public funding of scientific research, then it makes it very, very difficult for us to ensure the integrity and trustworthiness of the science that we depend on.

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is an answer to the question, why publicly fund science?

NAOMI ORESKES: That’s what I think.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So that it’s honest.

NAOMI ORESKES: Correct. Because it’s much– well, let’s just say, it’s much more likely to be honest. It’s much less likely to be corrupted by economic interests than research that is funded by corporations that have a vested interest in a particular outcome.

FLORA LICHTMAN: As we’ve reported on this show, Congress, in a surprising and bipartisan way, has rejected Trump’s cuts to science in budgets over the last few weeks. We will see what happens with those bills. But what do you make of that? And why do you think that happened?

NAOMI ORESKES: Well, I think it’s heartening, because I think it shows that like the American people, most members of Congress understand that science produces a net good for the American people. And not only a net good, but a really giant net good. Various people, over the years, have tried to quantify the benefit of science. It’s not always an easy thing to do. But there are certainly things that we can show– savings in public health costs, savings in damage from earthquakes, new products that have been developed based on fundamental scientific understanding.

And when you make those kinds of calculations, what you find is that public investment in science and technology more than repays itself by many, many orders of magnitude. And I think that anyone who knows even a little bit about the history of science in this country understands that and understands that if scientists come up with a cure for a disease, it’s not just Democrats or Republicans who benefit from that. It’s all of us. And if something like glyphosate is causing health damage across the country, we are all suffering from that, red states and blue states, urban and rural.

So I think the evidence is so overwhelming of the benefits of science to society that we see people on both sides of the aisle– Republicans, Democrats, independents– realizing that federal funding for public science is a net good and should be sustained to the greatest extent possible.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Naomi Oreskes is a historian of American science at Harvard University. Naomi, thanks for joining me today.

NAOMI ORESKES: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I know that you all will have smart thoughts about this subject and strong feelings, I suspect. You can always call us, 8774-SCIFRI. We would love to hear from you. This episode was produced by Dee Peterschmidt. And if you want to keep the conversation going, on Saturday, we’re going to drop a special bonus episode I recorded with The Middle, a public radio show hosted by the great Jeremy Hobson, where we get into this from a few other angles. I’m Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.

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