Academic Hall of Shame: 'Monsanto Mafia' scientists named, exposed for pushing GMO agenda in exchange for grants, favors and gifts

Wednesday, September 09, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: Kevin Folta, Monsanto Mafia, GMO propaganda

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(NaturalNews) The list of "Monsanto Mafia" scientists just keeps getting larger. Day by day, we're coming to learn that Monsanto has infiltrated dozens of universities across America, offering bribes (grants, gifts, donations, etc.) in exchange for the "intellectual protection" services of university scientists who whore themselves out to corporate "science."

(Monitor all this at the new website GMO.news or AlternativeNews.com.)

Yesterday we learned that Dr. Kevin Folta is arguably the most villainous of these academic puppets of Monsanto, having secretly taken money from Monsanto while viciously attacking GMO activists and clean food activists, all while falsely claiming he had no financial ties to Monsanto. (I just published his "Meet with Monsanto" itinerary, found in recently leaked documents, which details how his hotel room was "Prepaid by Monsanto," and this is just the tip of the iceberg.)

Folta's academic institution, the University of Florida, also accepted huge money from Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and other biotech giants. In essence, the Univ. of Florida is now a biotech front group, churning out Monsanto mafia members who shill for GMOs while lying about their financial corruption and viciously smearing clean food activists.

Feel free to give Kevin Folta a dose of his own genetically modified medicine via Twitter @kevinfolta or visit Kevin Folta's twitter page to see his ridiculous tweets denying everything and attacking the Food Babe for demanding scientific transparency. (Hilariously, Folta is rapidly becoming known as "Monsanto's douchebag" #KevinFoltaMonsantoDouchebag)

You can also tweet the Univ. of Florida which is serving as a Monsanto front for academic shills. Tweet to @UF or see twitter.com/UF. Do you think taxpayer money should be used by the university to pay the salaries of sellout scientists?

The puppetmasters of academia EXPOSED

Kevin Folta is just one among many Monsanto mafia members, and a new article called "The Puppetmasters of Academia (or What the NY Times Left out)" lists even more.

This new article, published on IndependentScienceNews.org, reveals an expanded list of other "Monsanto mafia" members who are also part of the bought-and-paid-for Monsanto attack team. Their job? Viciously smear clean food activists -- Kevin Folta calls them "food terrorists" -- strong-arm federal regulators, and leverage the willing members of the mainstream media to print slanderous, defamatory and false accusations against anybody who opposes the quack corporate "science" being shoved down our throats by Monsanto (the most evil corporation in the world).

Here's the expanded list as covered in that Independent Science News article by Jonathan Latham, PhD:

• Dr. Kevin Folta (University of Florida)
Click here for the secret email document dump of Kevin Folta.

• Dr. Bruce M. Chassy (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Click here for the secret email document dump of Bruce Chassy.

• Dr. David Shaw (Mississippi State University)
Click here for the secret email document dump of David Shaw

• Prof. Alan McHughen (University of California, Riverside)

• Prof. Calestuous Juma (Harvard University)

• Prof. Wayne Parrott (University of Georgia)

• Prof. Roger Beachy (Danforth Center, formerly USAID)

• Prof. Ron Herring (Cornell)

• Prof. CS Prakash (Tuskegee University)

• Prof. Nina Fedoroff (Penn State)

What follows is the introduction of the full article by Jonathan Latham, PhD. Click here for the full story.

The Puppetmasters of Academia (or What the NY Times Left out)

"Reading the emails make(s) me want to throw up" tweeted the Food Babe after reading a lengthy series of them posted online by the NY Times on Sept 5th. The emails in question result from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and are posted in the side bars of a front-page article by Times reporter Eric Lipton ("Food Industry Enlisted Academics in G.M.O. Lobbying War, Emails Show"). The article is highly disturbing, but, as the Food Babe implied, the Times buried the real story. The real scoop was not the perfidy and deceit of a handful of individual professors. Buried in the emails is proof positive of active collusion between the agribusiness and chemical industries, numerous and often prominent academics, PR companies, and key administrators of land grant universities for the purpose of promoting GMOs and pesticides. In particular, nowhere does the Times note that one of the chief colluders was none other than the President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

All this is omitted entirely, or buried in hard-to-notice side bars, which are anyway unavailable to print readers. So, here is the article Eric Lipton should have written.

First, The Lipton Story

The Lipton article seems, at first sight, to be impressive reporting. Lipton describes how Kevin Folta, Chair of the Dept. of Horticulture at the University of Florida secretly took expenses and $25,000 of unrestricted money from Monsanto to promote GMO crops. On behalf of the biotech industry, or via the PR firm Ketchum, Folta wrote on websites and attended public events, trainings, lobbying efforts and special missions.

Parts of this were already known, but Lipton digs up further damning evidence and quotes from Folta. They include an email to Monsanto that solidly contradicts Folta's previous denials of a relationship with Monsanto and the biotech industry: "I am grateful for this opportunity and promise a solid return on the investment," Folta wrote after receiving the $25,000 check, thereby showing both a clear understanding of his role and the purpose of the money. The article goes on to similarly expose Bruce Chassy (Prof Emeritus, University of Illinois) and David Shaw (Mississippi State University). It also discusses, presumably for "balance", agronomist and GMO critic Charles Benbrook, then at Washington State University, who unlike the others openly acknowledged his funding.

What Lipton Missed

But readers of the emails can find facts that are much more damaging to perceptions of academic independence than that contained in the main article. For one thing, the money Folta received is insignificant besides the tens of millions his university was taking from Syngenta (>$10million), Monsanto(>$1million), Pioneer (>$10million), and BASF (>$1million). Money that it's hard to believe did not have a role in protecting Kevin Folta as he roamed zealously (and often offensively) over the internet, via his twitter account, blog, podcast, and OpEds, squelching dissent and ridiculing GMO critics wherever he went.

Also missing from the main Times article is a sense of the extensive and intricate networking of a small army of academics furthering the interests of Monsanto and other parts of the chemical, agribusiness and biotech industries. Folta rarely acted alone. His networks are filled with economists, molecular biologists, plant pathologists, development specialists, and agronomists, many of them much more celebrated than Kevin Folta, but all of them in a knowing loop with industry and the PR firms. Their job was acknowledged openly in emails ("We are all bad-ass shills for the truth. It's a pleasure shilling with you." Or, as Folta himself put it: "I'm glad to sign on to whatever you like, or write whatever you like."). More generally, the group's role was to initiate academic publications and other articles and to firefight legislative, media and scientific threats to the GMO and pesticide industries, all the while keeping their industry links hidden.

Read the rest of this fascinating story of corrupted science at Independent Science News.