illegal channels of influence on UC Berkeley - more Chapela coverage

[Guest guest]

GMW: " illegal channels of influence " on UC Berkeley - more

Chapela coverage

" GM WATCH " <info

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:53:35 +0100

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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EXCERPT: " I believe there are illegal channels of influence driven by

corporate, academic and political forces that are not disclosed to

faculty, " Chapela said. " The university is governed by a shadow process,

which I really look forward to shedding some light on through this

action. "

 

The net result of the process, Chapela said, is to harness the

university, its faculty, and its students to benefit profit-making

corporations

rather than the common good.

 

 

( Moderator's Note: This same process is going on in most areas

affecting life in the USA whether in academia, your foodstuffs, your

medicine, your government, it's regulatory agencies, the politicians

involved, the juiciary or the media that reports on it all.)

 

 

 

1.Chapela Files Tenure Suit Against UC Berkeley

2.SEEDS OF DISSENT

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1.Chapela Files Tenure Suit Against UC Berkeley

By RICHARD BRENNEMAN

Berkeley Daily Planet, April 19, 2005

http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=04-19-05 & storyID=21185

 

Ignacio Chapela, the UC Berkeley professor denied tenure after his

outspoken criticisms of genetically modified crops and corporate/academic

ties, filed suit in Alameda County Superior Court

Monday against the UC Board of Regents.

 

The action, filed by Oakland attorney Dan Siegel, alleges wrongful

conduct by the university on three separate grounds: discrimination on

the

basis of national origins (Chapela was born in

Mexico), violation of the California Whistleblower Protection Act, and

false representations by the university of the real grounds of

‚ " secret, de facto requirements for promotion. "

 

The lawsuit doesn't include specific monetary damages, which Siegel

said would be determined later in the course of the action. The suit does

call for remuneration for:

 

* Lost wages, earnings and benefits.

 

* Compensatory damages for humiliation, mental anguish and emotional

distress.

 

* Injunctions to mandate redress of the alleged wrongs.

 

* Attorneys' fees and costs of the action.

 

" I've been at UC Berkeley for eight years, and I have very mixed

feelings about the case moving away from the internal processes of the

university, " Chapela said Monday.

 

Monday's filing was forced by the impending statutory filing deadline

for filing a discrimination lawsuit, Siegel said. Chapela filed a

discrimination complaint with the California Department of Fair

Employment

and Housing last April 21, and received immediate notice of his right to

file suit.

 

According to the discrimination statue, any lawsuit must be filed

within a year of state notification, forcing Chapela to act this week. On

June 24, the professor also filed a complaint with the university

alleging that he had suffered retaliation for his whistleblowing

activities.

He said Monday that the university failed to respond within the time

required by statute.

 

Chapela serves on the faculty of the Department of Environmental

Science, Policy and Management of the College of Natural Resources.

 

By most accounts, the controversial professor's career foundered on two

issues: his outspoken critique of UC Berkeley's financial partnership

with Novartis, a Swiss biotech giant since

renamed Syngenta, and his publication of a report describing man-made

genes in native strains of Mexican corn.

 

Chapela and graduate student Richard Quist published their findings in

Nature, long considered the world's preeminent scientific journal, in

November 2001. Agribusiness giants, alarmed by

the implications of the findings, immediately launched a

countercampaign designed to discredit the researchers.

 

Much of the heat came from a British website that offered criticisms

from supposed scientists who were later revealed as fabrications of the

site's creator [this is seriously inaccurate - see below for the true

story of the industry's dirty tricks campaign against Chapela]. Critics

also sent scathing letters to Nature, which responded with a quasi

correction, the journal's first, that advised readers to decide for

themselves on the accuracy of the report.

 

Despite the Nature flap, Chapela's colleagues voted 32 to 1 in favor of

tenure, followed by a unanimous vote for tenure by the Campus Ad Hoc

Committee on tenure on Oct. 3, 2002. But on

June 5, 2003, the university's budget committee voted against tenure.

After a second negative vote by the budget panel, then-Chancellor Robert

Berdahl denied Chapela tenure on Nov. 20.

 

The university agreed to keep Chapela on staff through the remainder of

this academic year, and Chancellor Robert Birgenau is currently

considering his case, Chapela said.

 

" I believe there are illegal channels of influence driven by corporate,

academic and political forces that are not disclosed to faculty, "

Chapela said. " The university is governed by a shadow

process, which I really look forward to shedding some light on through

this action. "

 

The net result of the process, Chapela said, is to harness the

university, its faculty, and its students to benefit profit-making

corporations

rather than the common good.

 

" This has gone on way too long, " he said. " My hope is that this action

will open up the case to the public of Berkeley, this country, and the

world. "

 

Following massive academic and public outcry against the Novartis pact,

UC Berkeley submitted the agreement for review by Michigan State

University. Though their report found that many

of the worst fears of critics hadn't materialized, both UC Berkeley and

Novartis agreed to end the compact when the five-year term ended in

2003.

 

Siegel said he assumes the case will take 14 to 18 months to come to

trial. UC Berkeley did not respond to a request for a comment on the

lawsuit.

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2.SEEDS OF DISSENT

The Big Issue, No 484, 15-21 April 2002

http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=19 & page=1 & op=2

 

Anti-GM scientists are facing widespread assualts on their credibility.

Andy Rowell investigates who is behind the attacks

 

Anti-GM scientists and activists are increasingly having their

credibility attacked through a campaign orchestrated by the biotech

industry.

Now

that campaign has seen a prestigious scientific journal become the

latest casualty.

 

The attacks against the journal Nature culminated in the publication

last week of an admission that it was wrong to print a scientific paper

last year

that was critical of GM. The admission was the first in the journal's

history. It is apparently the latest example of biotech giants using

front

organisations and websites to discredit scientific research that

criticises GM technology.

 

The saga started last November when Nature published an article by

scientists from the University of California Berkeley that alleged

contamination of native Mexican maize by GM. As Mexico has a moratorium

on commercial GM planting, it raised crucial issues about genetic

pollution in a centre of maize biodiversity.

 

The paper led to the researchers and Nature being attacked by pro-GM

scientists and the biotech industry. Nature finally buckled under the

pressure, issuing a statement saying " the evidence available is not

sufficient to justify the publication of the original paper " .

 

" It is clearly a topic of hot interest " , says Jo Webber from Nature,

admitting that this story is not just " technical " but also " political " .

 

The political context is that the biotech industry is trying to lift

European, Brazilian and Mexican moratoria on genetically modified seeds

or foods. It is desperate to open up Europe, having lost more than $200

million due to the moratorium on growing of GM corn alone. Nature has

refused to comment further about the row.

 

This week sees crucial negotiations at the UN Convention on Biological

Diversity in The Hague. The Nature statement could not have come at a

better time and the biotech industry is naturally gleeful. " Many people

are going to need that (Nature's editorial) reference " , says Willy De

Greef from Syngenta, the world's leading agribusiness company, " not

least those who, like me, will be in the frontline fights for biotech

during the Hague negotiations " .

 

Despite Nature's climb-down, the authors of the original study, David

Quist and Ignacio Chapela, have published new evidence they say

vindicates their original findings. They add that two other studies by

the

Mexican government confirm their research and believe Nature has been

" under incredible pressure from the powers that be " .

 

" This is a very, very well concerted, co-ordinated and paid for

campaign to discredit the very simple statement that we made, " says Dr

Chapela.

 

The central co-ordinator of the attacks has been CS Prakash who is a

professor of Plant Molecular Genetics at Tuskegee University Alabama, and

who runs the AgBioWorld Foundation. AgBioWorld was co-founded by an

employee of the Washington-based right-wing think tank Competitive

Enterprise Institute.

 

Prakash calls the Quist and Chapela study " flawed " and says the

" results did not justify the conclusions. " He adds that they were " too

eager

to publish their results because it fitted their agenda " .

 

Prakash's pro-GM website has been the central discussion forum of the

Nature article. He said: " I think it a played a fairly important role in

putting public pressure on Nature because we have close to 3,700 people

on AgBioView, our daily newsletter, and immediately after thi paper was

published many scientists started posting some preliminary analysis

that they were doing.

 

" AgBioView has brought together those scientists and AgBioWorld

provided a collective voice for the scientific community " . These

discussions

led to a highly critical and influential statement attacking

Nature that received more than 80 signatories.

 

Two letters signed by pro-GM scientists that criticised Nature's

original publication were also printed in the same issue as the journal's

retraction. The lead authors of the letters, Matthew Metz and Nick

Kaplinsky, signed the pro-biotech statement on the website.

 

Both have or have had links with the Department of Plant and Microbial

Biology at Berkeley that entered into a $25 million deal with Novartis

(now

Syngenta), a deal that was opposed by Chapela. " It became a very big

scandal and they cannot forgive that " , says Chapela.

 

But most importantly it wasn't scientists but a PR company that works

for GM firm Monsanto that started and fuelled the anti-Nature debate on

Prakash's listerv. On the listserv the first attack was posted by

someone called 'Mary Murphy' within hours of publication. She wrote: " It

should be

noted that the author of the Nature article, Ignacio H Chapela, is on

the board of directors of the Pesticide Action Network North America, an

activist group. " Murphy accused Chapela of being " not exactly what

you'd call an unbiased writer " .

 

The next bulletin was from someone called 'Andura Smetacek' who claimed

Chapela was in league with environmental groups and added, wrongly,

that his paper was " not a peer-reviewed research article

subject to independent scientific analysis " . Smetacek and Murphy have

between them posted around 60 articles on the Prakash Iist. So who are

they?

 

Mary Murphy's email is mmrph, which hides her employer. On

one occasion on an internet message board she used this address but

also left a trail of other identifying details that showed she worked for

the Bivings group, a PR company with offices in Washington, Brussels,

Chicago and Tokyo.

 

Bivings, which has more than a dozen Monsanto companies as clients,

has been assisting the GM firm's use of the internet since realising that

it

played a significant part in the company's poor PR image. Bivings says

it uses the internet's " powerful message delivery tools " for " viral

dissemination " .

 

When asked about what they do for Monsanto, a spokesperson for Bivings

said " We run their web sites for various European countries and their

main corporate site and we help them with campaigns as a

consultant. We are not allowed to discuss strategy issues and personal

opinions " . They declined to give any further information on their work

for

the company.

 

However further insight can be gleamed from a recent report by Bivings

which said: " Message boards, chat rooms and listservs are a great way

to anonymously monitor what is being said. Once you are plugged into

this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present

your position as an uninvolved third party. "

 

As a " third party " Bivings has covertly smeared biotech industry

critics on a website called CFFAR.org as well as via articles and

attacks on

listservs under aliases. The attack on the Nature article was a

continuation of this covert campaign.

 

Andura Smetacek is no stranger to such tactics. The Big Issuet can also

reveal that she was the original source of a letter that was published

under the name of TonyTrevawas, a pro-GM scientist from the University

of Edinburgh, in the Herald newspaper in Scotland. The letter became a

source of legal action between Greenpeace, its former director Peter

Melchett, and the newspaper. The case went to the high court and ended

with Melchett receiving undisclosed damages and an apology from

the Herald. Trevawas has always denied he wrote the letter.

 

In a letter written earlier this year, Smetacek said: " I am the author

of the message which was sent to AgBioWorld. I'm surprised at the stir

it

has caused since the basis for the content of the letter comes from

publicly available news articles and research easily found on-line " .

 

Smetacek is also a " front email " . In an early posting to the AgBioView

list she gave her address as London, while in recent correspondence

with

The Ecologist magazine Smetacek left a New York phone number. However,

after extensive searching of public records in the US, the Big Issue

found no one in America with that name. Despite numerous requests by The

Ecologist for Smetacek to give an employer or land address she has

refused to do so.

 

A clue to her identity is that Smetacek's earliest messages to

AgBioView consistently promoted the CFFAR.org website. CFFAR stands

for the

Centre For Food and Agricultural Research and describes itself as " a

public policy and research coalition dedicated to exploring and

understanding health, safety, and sustainability issues associated with

food and fiber production " .

 

In fact the website attacks organic agriculture as well as

environmental groups, like Greenpeace, calling them " terrorists " . The

website is

registered to an employee of Bivings who works as one of Monsanto's web

gurus.

 

Even the AgBioWorld Foundation website is linked to Bivings.

 

Jonathan Matthews, a leading anti-GM activist, has researched the

activities of Bivings. While searching the AgBioWorld archives he

received a

message that told him that an attempt to connect him to a Bivings

database had failed. Internet experts believe that this message implies

Bivings is hosting an AgBioView database. These experts also notice

technical similarities between the CFFAR, Bivings and AgBioWorld websites.

 

Prakash, though, denies receiving funding or assistance for the

AgBioWorld foundation and denies working with any PR company saying he is

" pro-the technology not necessarily the companies " .

 

However Matthews said: " Via Bivings, Monsanto has a series of shop

windows with which to influence the GM debate. One of these is

AgBioWorld.

The chief mannequin seems to be Prakash who has been very influential

in the whole Nature/GM corn contamination fiasco. But I wonder if Nature

really knows who is behind the attacks. "

 

Dr Sue Mayer from GeneWatch UK says: " It is quite extraordinary the

lengths the biotech industry and the scientific establishment will go to

discredit any critical science. "

 

 

 

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