Country-specific effects of neonicotinoids on honey bees and wild bees

The American Academy for the Advancement of Science’s journal Science published an article whose authors violated multiple guidelines for scientific integrity. The article claimed two years of field studies in three countries show exposure to neonicotinoid pesticides reduces the ability of honeybees and wild bees to survive winters and establish new populations and hives the following year. Not only did the authors’ own data contradict that assertion – they kept extensive data out of their analysis and incorporated only what supported their (pre-determined?) conclusions. Their report and Science article supposedly presented all the results of their exhaustive research. They did not. The authors fudged the data, and the “peer reviewers” and AAAS journal editors failed to spot the massive flaws. Other reviewers (here, here and here) quickly found the gross errors, lack of transparency and misrepresentations – but not before the article and press releases had gone out far and wide. The AAAS and Science need to retract the Woodcock article, apologize for misleading the nation, and publish an article that fully, fairly and accurately represents what the CEH research and other field studies actually documented. They should ban Woodcock and his coauthors from publishing future articles in Science and issue press releases explaining all these actions. The NJEM should take similar actions.
Source:
The crisis of integrity-deficient science, by Paul Driessen, web posted July 10, 2017
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0717/fakescience.html
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.

The lead author of a major study which found that neonicotinoid pesticides harm honey bees has hit back against criticism from the chemical companies that part-funded the work.

Dr. Ben Woodcock from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), said Bayer and Syngenta, which produce the controversial pesticides, had looked to undermine his work after it was published, despite providing $3 million in funding.

Speaking exclusively to Energydesk, he said:

"From a personal perspective, I don't really appreciate having them accuse me of being a liar. And accusing me of falsifying results by cherry-picking data. That's not what we've done. I've got little to gain from this and it's been a major headache. We just present the results we get."

Both companies have accused the scientists of overstating the threat posed by neonicotinoids to both honey and wild bees, adding that the data, as they saw it, did not reflect the conclusions from CEH.

After the study was published a Bayer spokesperson told Energydesk:

"This study is one of a number of landscape studies carried out recently. The results of the CEH study are inconsistent and therefore inconclusive with variability of effects over both the bee species and the countries in which they were studied."

The company's head of UK government media relations, Dr. Julian Little, told Energydesk: "We're quite frustrated about how these results have been portrayed. The reality seems to be a long way away from the headline."

Syngenta's environmental specialist Peter Campbell told the press that CEH had misrepresented the study and argued that full results of the experiments showed neonicotinoids had no effect in the vast majority (238 of the 258) of the 258 potential effects measured.

Quoted in The Times, Campbell also suggested the results had been talked up in order to get published in a prestigious journal.

He said: "There is a pressure to get papers published. Any journal, particularly journals like Nature and Science, it has to be an interesting story. We don't get into Science and Nature with a study which says, for example, no effect of oilseed rape treated with [neonicotinoid] on solitary bees. It's not that interesting a story."

Woodcock said the accusations made by Bayer and Syngenta were "utterly unfounded."

"I'm intrigued to know what they would've wanted us to do. If you find negative results on key metrics—number of bees in hives, number of bees surviving after winter—how would they want us to present that? How could we interpret this in what they see as an unbiased way?

"Science papers are short. There about 1,500 words. The discussion is tiny on this. It's like a paragraph. So it's not like we spent vast amounts of time discussing the details of this. You literally present the results more or less as they are, along with some broad statements on what you observed."

The study, which was part-funded by Bayer and Syngenta, with the rest paid for by the UK government-backed Natural Environment Research Council, examined the impact of two neonicotinoids—clothianidin (made by Bayer) and thiamethoxam (made by Syngenta) on wild bees and honey bees in three European countries: Germany, Hungary and the UK.

Source: Ecowatch, July 17, 2017
https://www.ecowatch.com/bee-study-bayer-syngenta-2460732961.html