Skepticism about the dangers of global warming and vaccine hesitancy about Covid-19 are unambiguous proof that distrust of collegial, transparent scientific advice based on scholarly literature poses major risks to society. There is no better fuel for this mistrust than situations where bodies vested with seemingly similar scientific authority give opposing answers to the same question. The glyphosate issue, which returned to the headlines following the reauthorization proposal presented to European Union (EU) member states on Friday, September 22, illustrates, almost to the point of caricature, this kind of conflict, whose very public display is detrimental to the image of science.
For a number of years, regulatory agencies and scientific institutions have been at odds over the toxicity of glyphosate. Between, on the one hand, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), and, on the other, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM, the French national institute for health and medical research), views seem irreconcilable. "Strong evidence of genotoxicity [the property of chemical agents that damage the genetic information within a cell causing mutations, which may lead to cancer]" (IARC), "probably not genotoxic" (EFSA, ECHA), "probable carcinogenic" (IARC), "medium presumption of a link" with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (INSERM), "probably not carcinogenic" (EFSA, ECHA): The list of diverging opinions goes on and on.
Who among the general public has followed the controversy closely enough to know that the data considered by some and others are not the same? Who knows that INSERM and IARC rely on scientific literature – that is, on studies published following peer review in learned journals – and that the regulatory agencies, who consider over 95% of this literature to be unreliable or irrelevant, base their opinions (as required by law) on regulatory tests supplied by industry?
These subtleties undoubtedly escape the majority of public opinion. All that they hear is the damaging background noise of dissent, which feeds relativism and mistrust. Supposed to be a scientific exercise, regulatory expertise sometimes actually works against science. "The assessments made by these European agencies do not correspond to any scientific body of work," summed up toxicologist Laurence Huc, research director at the Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (INRAE, the French national research institute for agriculture, food and the environment), in an interview with Mediapart. "For the biologist in me, this process is a sham."
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