Jackpot Junk Science: Scientists say a weed killer is safe, but a judge excludes evidence.
The Wall Street Journal | By The Editorial Board
After the WHO agency’s determination, the Environmental Protection Agency convened its own panel to review glyphosate. The scientists conducted a “comprehensive systematic review of studies submitted to the agency and available in the open literature,” the EPA’s director of the Office of Pesticide Programs, Richard Keigwin, wrote last year. They concluded “glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans.”
The public-health agency Health Canada says it “left no stone unturned” in evaluating glyphosate in 2017. It found no likely cancer risk and notes that “no pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.”
Yet in the Hardeman case, federal Judge Vince Chhabria strictly limited discussion of the EPA’s analysis of glyphosate “to avoid wasting time or misleading the jury, because the primary inquiry is what the scientific studies show, not what the EPA concluded they show.” He also barred Bayer from discussing almost all conclusions foreign regulators had reached.