Internal Monsanto emails revealed the company wrote scientific papers concluding Roundup 'does not pose a health risk' then paid outside scientists to sign as authors. A Monsanto executive wrote that scientists would 'have their names on the publication, but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing.' In 2015, scientist William Heydens suggested they 'ghost-write' another paper with Monsanto paying scientists to 'edit & sign their names.' The landmark Williams et al. (2000) paper was cited by government agencies worldwide for two decades before being retracted in November 2025 for 'serious ethical concerns.'
“Monsanto is writing its own safety studies about Roundup and putting scientists' names on them. The key papers claiming glyphosate is safe are corporate propaganda disguised as independent science.”
From “crazy” to confirmed
The Claim Is Made
This is the moment they called it crazy.
For twenty-five years, a single scientific paper shaped how governments worldwide assessed the safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's blockbuster herbicide Roundup. The Williams et al. (2000) study concluded the chemical "does not pose a health risk" and was cited repeatedly by regulatory agencies in the United States, Europe, and beyond. What those agencies didn't know was that Monsanto had written the paper itself.
Internal company emails, later revealed through litigation, showed that Monsanto executives explicitly planned to have outside scientists sign their names to research the company had authored. The arrangement was straightforward: Monsanto would handle the costly and time-consuming work of writing the study, while independent-seeming scientists would provide credibility through their bylines. One executive described the scheme plainly—scientists would "have their names on the publication, but we would be keeping the cost down by us doing the writing."
In 2000, when the study was published, regulatory bodies had no reason to suspect fraud. The paper appeared to be the work of credentialed scientists, and it supported what Monsanto had been claiming for years. Critics who questioned Roundup's safety were dismissed as unreliable; here was peer-reviewed science suggesting those concerns were unfounded. For a quarter-century, the Williams paper remained an authoritative reference in safety assessments.
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Confirmed: They Were Right
The truth comes out. Officially documented.
Confirmed: They Were Right
The truth comes out. Officially documented.
The dismissal of earlier warnings proved premature. By 2015, as glyphosate faced increased scrutiny over potential cancer links, Monsanto's internal communications surfaced in court documents. William Heydens, a Monsanto scientist, had written candidly about plans to "ghost-write" another paper, with the company paying external scientists to "edit & sign their names." These weren't vague suggestions—they were documented proposals for scientific ghostwriting, a practice that violates fundamental principles of research integrity.
The revelation that Monsanto had authored its own safety studies raised an obvious question: if the science was sound, why hide authorship? The answer suggested the company knew the work would carry more weight if attributed to independent researchers. This wasn't about streamlining the research process; it was about manufacturing credibility.
In November 2025, more than two decades after publication, the journal retracted the Williams et al. paper, citing "serious ethical concerns." The retraction acknowledged what should have been obvious from the beginning—a study authored by a company's own scientists and merely signed by others cannot claim independence or objectivity.
The implications extend beyond one paper or one company. When corporations fund research and control its narrative, regulatory agencies and the public cannot trust the results. For twenty-five years, governments made policy decisions affecting millions of people based on a ghost-written study they believed was independent science. Farmers, consumers, and regulators all acted on information that had been shaped by the very company with the most to gain from a favorable conclusion.
This case demonstrates why scientific integrity matters and why undisclosed conflicts of interest are not victimless violations. The delayed retraction means countless regulatory decisions based on compromised evidence remain in effect. Trust in scientific institutions depends on transparency about who funded research and who actually conducted it. When those lines blur, the entire system of evidence-based policymaking becomes corrupted.
Beat the odds
This had a 0.3% chance of leaking — someone talked anyway.
Conspirators
~100Network
Secret kept
8.6 years
Time to 95% exposure
500+ years
