Post by copperkid3 on Mar 4, 2016 2:43:01 GMT
A couple of years ago, the now 40-year-old Lundgren — running a government lab, winning awards from both his agency and President Obama —
occupied the right position to aid in this crisis. He says he was doing just that when the trouble started: a pair of suspensions —
one for conduct unbecoming a federal employee and another for violating travel regulations.
In October, Lundgren filed a whistleblower suit alleging that he was disciplined to suppress his science.
The government says the suspensions had nothing to do with his research.
Today, he is the most outspoken of several scientists who say they feel muzzled by the government.
The lawyers who filed Lundgren’s suit allege that nine additional USDA scientists have been ordered to retract studies and water-down findings,
or have faced discipline in retaliation for their work. They further allege that three of those scientists, beyond Lundgren, were also working on
pollinator-related research. The USDA’s inspector general just announced an audit, to take place later this year, in response to the “significant volume”
of complaints they’ve had on their office’s hotline, alleging scientific censorship on pesticides and other issues.
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/was-a-usda-scientist-muzzled-because-of-his-bee-research/2016/03/02/462720b6-c9fb-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html
As a USDA-ARS employee, Lundgren has run his own lab and staff for 11 years, wrote a well-regarded book on predator insects,
published nearly 100 scientific papers and acted as a peer reviewer for dozens of publications. For years, his body of research
was either neutral or favorable to farming policy and the chemical industry. But three years ago, he started cautioning against
the overuse of pesticides. That shift, he says, triggered his suspensions and the downturn in his professional fate.
He believes the problem began in 2012, when he published findings in the Journal of Pest Science suggesting that a popular class
of pesticides called neonicotinoids don’t improve soybean yields. He also served as a peer reviewer for a Center for Food Safety
report on the dangers of neonics. The next year, he published a paper suggesting that a new genetic pest treatment, dubbed
RNAi pesticides, required a new means of risk assessment.
The publications drew media interest, and after an interview with an NPR affiliate, Lundgren was brought into a conference call
with his supervisor, Sharon Papiernik, and an area director above her, Larry Chandler.
“You shouldn’t talk to the press anymore without prior approval,” Lundgren says Chandler told him. “We’re trying to protect you.”
Data seems to be mounting suggesting that pesticides are a significant contributor to bee declines.
A recent scientific literature review conducted by researchers in the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Italy determined that
pesticide exposure renders bees more susceptible to disease and increases mortality rates. Pesticides have also been linked to
harming bees’ memory and navigational capabilities.
“No one would describe them as the driver,” says Lundgren, “but they are significant, and the government doesn’t seem to want to do anything about them.”
Most of the attention has focused on neonicotinoids. Entering broad use here in the late ’90s, neonics’ global share of the pesticide
marketplace ballooned by 2008 to roughly 25 percent and $2.5 billion. Neonics can be implanted directly on the seed and are classified
as a “systemic” insecticide because they are fully incorporated into the plant’s tissue, remaining present in pollen and nectar.
Two key studies have found that feeding neonics to bees, even in amounts so low they couldn’t be detected afterward, render them more susceptible to infection.
The co-author of one of those studies, Jeffrey Pettis, is joining Lundgren in speaking out.
occupied the right position to aid in this crisis. He says he was doing just that when the trouble started: a pair of suspensions —
one for conduct unbecoming a federal employee and another for violating travel regulations.
In October, Lundgren filed a whistleblower suit alleging that he was disciplined to suppress his science.
The government says the suspensions had nothing to do with his research.
Today, he is the most outspoken of several scientists who say they feel muzzled by the government.
The lawyers who filed Lundgren’s suit allege that nine additional USDA scientists have been ordered to retract studies and water-down findings,
or have faced discipline in retaliation for their work. They further allege that three of those scientists, beyond Lundgren, were also working on
pollinator-related research. The USDA’s inspector general just announced an audit, to take place later this year, in response to the “significant volume”
of complaints they’ve had on their office’s hotline, alleging scientific censorship on pesticides and other issues.
www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/was-a-usda-scientist-muzzled-because-of-his-bee-research/2016/03/02/462720b6-c9fb-11e5-a7b2-5a2f824b02c9_story.html
As a USDA-ARS employee, Lundgren has run his own lab and staff for 11 years, wrote a well-regarded book on predator insects,
published nearly 100 scientific papers and acted as a peer reviewer for dozens of publications. For years, his body of research
was either neutral or favorable to farming policy and the chemical industry. But three years ago, he started cautioning against
the overuse of pesticides. That shift, he says, triggered his suspensions and the downturn in his professional fate.
He believes the problem began in 2012, when he published findings in the Journal of Pest Science suggesting that a popular class
of pesticides called neonicotinoids don’t improve soybean yields. He also served as a peer reviewer for a Center for Food Safety
report on the dangers of neonics. The next year, he published a paper suggesting that a new genetic pest treatment, dubbed
RNAi pesticides, required a new means of risk assessment.
The publications drew media interest, and after an interview with an NPR affiliate, Lundgren was brought into a conference call
with his supervisor, Sharon Papiernik, and an area director above her, Larry Chandler.
“You shouldn’t talk to the press anymore without prior approval,” Lundgren says Chandler told him. “We’re trying to protect you.”
Data seems to be mounting suggesting that pesticides are a significant contributor to bee declines.
A recent scientific literature review conducted by researchers in the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Italy determined that
pesticide exposure renders bees more susceptible to disease and increases mortality rates. Pesticides have also been linked to
harming bees’ memory and navigational capabilities.
“No one would describe them as the driver,” says Lundgren, “but they are significant, and the government doesn’t seem to want to do anything about them.”
Most of the attention has focused on neonicotinoids. Entering broad use here in the late ’90s, neonics’ global share of the pesticide
marketplace ballooned by 2008 to roughly 25 percent and $2.5 billion. Neonics can be implanted directly on the seed and are classified
as a “systemic” insecticide because they are fully incorporated into the plant’s tissue, remaining present in pollen and nectar.
Two key studies have found that feeding neonics to bees, even in amounts so low they couldn’t be detected afterward, render them more susceptible to infection.
The co-author of one of those studies, Jeffrey Pettis, is joining Lundgren in speaking out.
