Overview
- Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology withdrew the 2000 Williams, Kroes and Munro review after finding undisclosed Monsanto involvement and that its carcinogenicity conclusions relied on unpublished company studies, undermining the paper’s integrity.
- The editor cited serious ethical concerns, including possible undisclosed payments, misrepresented authorship, and failure to include available long-term toxicity research; the sole surviving author did not respond to the journal.
- Evidence of ghostwriting surfaced in 2017 litigation, but the retraction followed a 2025 request by Alexander Kaurov and Naomi Oreskes, who documented the paper’s outsized influence despite limited transparency.
- Health Canada and the U.S. EPA said their overall assessments remain unchanged, with the EPA noting it does not rely on review articles and expects to release an updated human-health assessment for public comment in 2026.
- Bayer, which acquired Monsanto, says the acknowledgments appropriately noted Monsanto’s contributions and insists glyphosate is safe, while environmental groups call for moratoria and the U.S. solicitor general asked the Supreme Court to weigh federal preemption of state failure-to-warn suits.