10/16/2017 0 Comments Oil Job Guide 2009 Edition ExeterRegistered TimeIPS Support Portal is now available Posted by TimeIPS Staff on Sep 30, 2005 0935 AM TimeIPS News Welcome to the TimeIPS Support Portal, the. News, sports, features, obituaries, advertising, and special online features from the citys daily newspaper. Scientists Loved and Loathed by an Agrochemical Giant. Today, Dr. Cresswell has returned to less controversial areas of bee research. He says he respects scientists he has met from Syngenta, but views collaboration with industry as a Faustian bargain. He called Syngenta a kind of devil. What I didnt realize is that supping with them would actually have a broader impact on how the world sees me as a scientist, he said. That was my misjudgment. A Tangled Relationship. If some scientists struggle to reconcile themselves with taking corporate money, others embrace complex business relationships. James W. Simpkins, a professor at West Virginia University and the director of its Center for Basic and Translational Stroke Research, is one of many outside academics whom Syngenta turns to for research. He has focused on the Syngenta product atrazine the second most popular weed killer in America, widely used on lawns and crops often co authoring research with Syngenta scientists. Atrazine, banned in the European Union, has also been controversial in America. Most notably, Syngenta started a campaign to discredit Tyrone B. Depending on the X, you put different shoes on the spider, Gisela Winckler, a research professor at Columbia University, said about this instrument. What is the. Hayes, a professor it once funded at the University of California, Berkeley, when Dr. Hayes found that atrazine changes the sex of frogs. Dr. Simpkins has had a different relationship with the company. In 2. 00. 3, he appeared before American regulators on Syngentas behalf, saying that we can identify no biologically plausible mechanism by which atrazine leads to an increase in prostate cancer. Dr. Simpkins was also lead author of a 2. And last year, he was part of a small team of Syngenta backed scientists that fought Californias move to require that atrazine be sold with a warning label. He also recently edited a series of papers on atrazine for Syngenta, garnering praise from a senior researcher at the company, Charles Breckenridge, who wrote in an email that the papers tell a simple, yet compelling story. The depth of the financial intertwining of Dr. Simpkins and Syngenta was laid out in nearly 2,0. The Times after a Freedom of Information Act request. Not only does Dr. Simpkins receive research grants, but the company also pays him 2. Syngenta even asked Dr. Simpkins to contribute to Dr. Breckenridges annual performance review. Asking outsiders to contribute to corporate reviews is not unusual. However, Dr. Simpkins is also described in the emails as a partner in a venture set up by Dr. Breckenridge called Quality Scientific Solutions to consult on pesticides and other issues. West Virginia Universitys website says that research conducted at W. V. U. is data driven, objective and independent and not influenced by any political agenda, business priority or funding source. And John A. Bolt, a university spokesman, said that all of Dr. Simpkinss Syngenta related research had been conducted before Dr. Simpkins arrived at West Virginia in 2. Photo. Angelika Hilbeck, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in a lab at the North West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa. The agrochemical industry has long challenged her research, and she has been outspoken in fighting back. Credit. Joao SilvaThe New York Times But a review of Dr. Simpkinss published work shows that he wrote favorable atrazine studies with Syngenta scientists in 2. Mr. Bolt said Dr. Simpkins only served as an expert adviser in the studies. In 2. 01. 4, Syngenta made a 3. Mr. Bolt said that the donation was made in general support of the research activities of Dr. James W. Simpkins. None of the money, Mr. Bolt said, was used to support research related to Syngenta. Dr. Simpkinss collaborations with Dr. Breckenridge appear to be expansive. In an email to Dr. Simpkins last year, Dr. Breckenridge sent him a study on the Mediterranean Diet and suggested that they use a multilevel marketing company to help them sell a product of their own. If we could come up with a better Snake Oil, he wrote to Dr. Simpkins, we would have access to a massive marketing force. A Critic and a Target. Some scientists labor outside the industry. It can be a difficult path. Angelika Hilbeck worked for Agroscope, a Swiss agricultural research center, in the 1. The corn was engineered to kill insect larvae that fed on it, but Dr. Hilbeck found that it was also toxic to an insect called the lacewing, a useful bug that eats other pests. Ciba Geigy, a predecessor of Syngenta, had a confidentiality agreement with Agroscope, and insisted that she keep the research secret, she said. Confidentiality agreements are not unusual for Agroscope. In one such agreement obtained by The Times, the agency agreed to return or destroy corporate documents it received as part of a research project. Dr. Hilbeck said she refused to back down and eventually published her work. Her contract at Agroscope was not renewed. An Agroscope spokeswoman said the episode took place too long ago to comment on. Dr. Hilbeck continued as a university researcher and was succeeded at Agroscope by Jrg Romeis, a scientist who had worked at Bayer and has since co authored research with employees from Syngenta, Du. Pont and other companies. He has spent much of his career trying to debunk Dr. Hilbecks work. He followed her lacewing studies by co authoring his own, finding that genetically modified crops were not harmful to the lacewing. Next, after Dr. Hilbeck co wrote a paper outlining a model for assessing the unintended risks of such crops, Dr. Romeis was lead author of an alternative approach with a Syngenta scientist among his co authors. Then, in 2. 00. 9, Dr. Hilbeck was an author of a paper looking at risks to ladybug larvae from modified crops. Dr. Romeis followed by co authoring a study that found no adverse effects to ladybug larvae. In subsequent publications, he referred to work by Dr. Hilbeck and others as bad science and a myth. They were my little stalkers, Dr. Hilbeck said. Whatever I did, they did. In an interview, Dr. Romeis, who now leads Agroscopes biosafety research group, said, Her work does not affect our mission in any way, adding that the idea of researching the effects of genetically modified crops was not patented by her. Refereeing a scientific dispute is difficult. But Dr. Romeis and his collaborators do seem preoccupied with Dr. Hilbecks work, judging from a review of email traffic between Agroscope and the U. S. D. A. obtained by The Times after a Freedom of Information Act request. In 2. 01. 4, as Dr. Romeis was developing a paper assailing Dr. Hilbecks work, one U. S. D. A. scientist, Steven E. Naranjo, joked in a message to Dr. Romeis Joerg, its generous of you to see that Hilbeck gets published once in a while Dr. Hilbeck is used to looking over her shoulder. We shouldnt be running into all kinds of obstacles and face all this comprehensive mobbing just doing what were supposed to do, she said. Its totally corrupted this field. 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