Round ‘Em Up! The 308th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Summary

---

Episode Overview

Title: Round ‘Em Up! The 308th Evolutionary Lens
Podcast: DarkHorse Podcast
Hosts: Dr. Bret Weinstein & Dr. Heather Heying
Release Date: January 7, 2026

Main Theme:
This episode centers on the retraction of a landmark scientific paper that underpinned the safety claims for glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide). Bret and Heather dissect the reasons for the retraction, explore the structural failures in scientific publishing and regulatory oversight, and discuss broader implications for science, public health, and the legal system. The discussion flows from detailed scientific analysis to systemic critiques, with passionate debate on academic responsibility and legal recourse.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Opening Remarks & Episode Agenda

• [00:05] The hosts wish listeners a happy new year and announce they will discuss animal communication and, primarily, a "bombshell" about glyphosate and the pivotal 2000 regulatory paper that has just been retracted by its journal.
• [15:52] After sponsor segments (omitted here), they pivot decisively to the glyphosate topic: “Shall we start with the glyphosate news?” – Heather.

---

Glyphosate Safety Paper Retraction

The Retracted Study’s Role

• [15:59–18:20]
  • The now-retracted 2000 review paper was long cited as the gold standard establishing glyphosate’s (Roundup’s) safety.
  • Quote [18:05, Bret]:
    “Retraction is a pretty extreme step. Lots of papers that don't stand up to scrutiny never get retracted ... so retracted is pretty serious.”

Fundamental Flaws in the Glyphosate Paper

• Textbook simplifications & real-world complexity:
  • The paper claimed glyphosate is safe because its biochemical pathway “only works on plants,” a claim the hosts dismiss as textbook-but-naive, given what is now known about the microbiome and unintended impacts on gut bacteria.
  • Quote [23:58, Bret]:
    “The track record of glyphosate is so appalling ... that I know the textbook explanation is dead on arrival, but the point is, you can see how this paper is structured to lead you to ... a comforting assessment.”

Retraction Notice—8 Points of Failure

• [27:56–61:53] Heather reads, paraphrases, and discusses reasons for the retraction:
  • Failures include use of only unpublished Monsanto data, failing to review existing literature, ghostwriting by Monsanto employees, undisclosed financial conflicts, and misrepresentation of authorship and contributions.
  • Quote [31:29, Heather]:
    “Right there means this was not a review paper at all.”
  • Quote [33:14, Bret]:
    “There's a whole range of games that can be played ... If I've got a paper with 10 authors, it costs me very little to give you the gift of being an author on this paper for a contribution that doesn't really warrant it ... these incestuous networks develop, and the countermeasures are manifestly inadequate.”

The Peer Review and Publishing System

• The peer review process is exposed as failing: standards are high in principle, but incentives and community structures lead to both lax oversight and occasional "circle jerks" in review, especially in small subfields.
• [44:16, Heather]: “So what is a paper? ... If it doesn’t hold together as a coherent mass, ... then I’m sorry, it shouldn’t qualify.”

Editorial Ethics & Retraction Tone

• Bret is critical of the cautious, legalistic language in the retraction, arguing for frank admission of journal and editorial failure.
  • Quote [60:20, Bret]:
    "This journal fell down on its obligations to the public and people died because of it. So my feeling is this needs to be accurate ... Monsanto authored parts of this paper. The authors failed to acknowledge literature ... This paper was a fraud, and that's how it should be stated."
• Heather defends the importance of scientific “caution,” noting that legal risk and lack of active involvement in the original publication complicate later admissions by new editorial staff.
• Ongoing debate about whether (or how much) current editors should accept responsibility for old failures, and what proper corrective action should look like today.

---

Legal Ramifications: Monsanto Lawsuits and Systemic Issues

Lawsuit Outcomes and Inadequate Punitive Damages

• [68:01–86:53]
  • The pattern: Large jury-awarded damages for plaintiffs with cancer attributed to glyphosate are consistently slashed on appeal due to the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause as applied to corporations.
  • The hosts discuss Dwayne Johnson’s case: multi-million dollar punitive damages shrunk by court review.
  • Quote [76:17, Bret]:
    “The juries are responding to the evil done to these people ... The problem is, what you want punitive damages to do is to alter the future behavior of the offending entity ... The award has to be large enough to do that.”
• The legal structure, as interpreted, turns corporate damages into a mere “cost of doing business,” failing to deter harmful conduct or protect the public.

Proposed Solutions (and Disagreements)

• Bret advocates for:
  • Correctly scaled punitive damages that meaningfully punish wrongdoing based on the perpetrator's wallet, not just the victim’s loss.
  • Legislative or judicial reform so 14th Amendment protections aren’t reflexively extended to corporations in these cases.
• Heather warns against solutions that risk “socializing” lawsuit proceeds or undermining individual justice, and emphasizes careful, precise legal reform.

---

Academia, Regulatory Capture & Science Journalism

• The culture of scientific publishing and regulation is portrayed as deeply susceptible to financial and career incentives, leading to a system where foundational (but flawed and conflicted) papers can shape entire fields and public policy for decades.

• [94:46, Heather on publishing incentives]: “There are already ... too many people with appropriate degrees trying to publish too many papers because the one metric ... is how many papers do you have.”

• The journal’s banning of tobacco-industry funded manuscripts (while welcoming pharma and agri-chemical funding) is ridiculed as symbolic but hollow, signifying wider misdirection of scientific propriety.

  • Quote [98:41, Heather]:
    “Somehow we all accepted ... that smoking is bad for you ... [But] if it was Merck or Monsanto ... then it’s okay.”

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• [23:58, Bret Weinstein:
  “The track record of glyphosate is so appalling ... that I know the textbook explanation is dead on arrival.”
• [31:29, Heather Heying]:
  “That right there means this was not a review paper at all.”
• [44:16, Heather Heying]:
  “So what is a paper? ... then I’m sorry, it shouldn’t qualify.”
• [60:20, Bret Weinstein]:
  “This journal fell down on its obligations to the public and people died because of it.”
• [76:17, Bret Weinstein]:
  “What you want punitive damages to do is to alter the future behavior of the offending entity ... The award has to be large enough to do that.”
• [98:41, Heather Heying]:
  “Somehow we all accepted ... that smoking is bad for you ... [But] if it was Merck or Monsanto ... then it’s okay.”

---

Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------| | 00:05 | New Year's greetings, upcoming topics | | 15:52 | Transition to glyphosate news | | 15:59–18:20 | Explanation and public role of retracted glyphosate paper | | 23:58 | Critique of “textbook” explanations in toxicology | | 27:56 | 8-point breakdown of the retraction reasons | | 44:16 | On responsibility and the nature of a scientific paper | | 60:20 | Bret’s takedown of the journal’s responsibility | | 68:01 | Legal battles: history, the Dwayne Johnson case | | 76:17 | Purpose of punitive damages in the US legal system | | 94:41 | Reflections on scientific journal policy and bias | | 98:50 | Episode wind-down and teaser for next time |

---

Tone & Style

Bret and Heather’s tone is characteristically sharp, direct, incisive, and skeptical—especially regarding institutional science, regulatory agencies, journals, and corporations. They do not shy from spirited disagreement with each other, demonstrating both rigor and passion. Academic concepts are explained in accessible terms, and the episode has a sense of urgency and outrage over the failures and harm wrought by scientific and regulatory malfeasance.

---

Transcript

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Foreign.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Welcome to the Dark Horse podcast live Stream. It's the 308th. I am Dr. Bret Weinstein. You are Dr. Heather Hying. I'm going to say with a certain degree of assuredness,308 is not prime, but.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

It is the first of the new year. So happy New Year to everyone watching.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yes, Happy New Year indeed. I hope it is an excellent one. I have concerns, but, you know, that's sort of my nature, I guess.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yes, it is.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yes. Yes, it is. All right, so we're gonna talk about animal communication. We're gonna talk about the safety of the public relative to things like pesticides and things that have emerged on this front.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

And.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

We'Ll see where it goes from.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

There and maybe some other things as well. So, yeah, welcome, everyone. Here we are in the new year will. We will actually not be back next Wednesday, but we'll be back a short time after that. It's a strange January for us. Hopefully not too strange for everyone else, but.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, hopefully it's good strange.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah, indeed. So we've got a watch party going on at Locals. As always, please consider joining us there. And we have the rent to pay right at the top of the hour with three carefully chosen sponsors that if you hear us reading ads, you know that we have clear, carefully vetted the product products or the services being offered. In this case, it's three sets of products, all of which are awesome. So without further ado, let us go go forth and pay our rent.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

We will Sally forth, whatever that means.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. Our first sponsor this week is We. You know what Sally for.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

I don't know why Sally has any. You're doing it.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. Okay. Our first sponsor, a foraging Sally in, for instance, a tropical bird. No, I think it's the same. It's the same word. So a foraging Sally. Okay, let's. Let's just back up. We're not. We're not doing ads at the moment. This is not paid. This is not paid content.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

The fly catchers are not paid.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I'm going to. I'm going to tell a story on myself to allow you to, I don't know, save face or something.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Okay.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

But I think it was our first field season as biologists. We had already spent some time in the neotropics, traveling together and exploring, actually doing some. And in Madagascar ending up like helping on research projects. But our first summer after our first year of grad school, we were in Costa Rica with a few other grad students and our professor, John Vandermeer, who had created a field course for us, in the style of the Organization for Tropical Studies, which simply wasn't offering one that year. And. And although we had both spent some time in tropical forest before, we didn't. There are literally tens of thousands of names to learn in any given forest and no one knows all of them. And we specifically didn't know the birds particularly well. And so I was standing with Dr. Vanderby at some point, and we were watching a bird who had gone forth from a branch and appeared to have been a hawking insectivore, had caught something in the air, an insect in the air, and then gone back. And he said, that is a foraging Sally. And sort of dutifully wrote it down in my right in the rain notebook and said, okay, that type of bird is called a foraging Sally. And I don't know if I vocalized what I was doing, but he looked at me like I was just an idiot. He said, no, not the bird. The behavior. The behavior is a foraging sally in which you. The bird sallies forth, forages, and goes back. Therefore, when we sally forth, is it not the very same Sally?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

I believe it is. And it's not done so much anymore. But back in the day, if you were to do it on a horse, it would be a mustang Sally.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I was trying to help you save face.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

I think you. I think we. I think we're. We're. We're back.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Okay, back to the ads.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yes.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Which we have not yet begun.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Nope.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

We are going to sally forth for the ads. Our first sponsor this week is brand new to us as a sponsor. It's clear. That's X, L E A R, but pronounced clear. Clear is a nasal spray that supports respiratory health. And it's a product that we've been using for a while now, made by a company with which you are, well, familiar. That's again, clear. X, L E A are. Throughout history, improvements in sanitation and hygiene have had huge impacts on human longevity and quality of life, more so often than traditional medical advances have. For instance, when doctors started to wash their hands between handling cadavers and helping women give birth seems obvious to us now, but it wasn't then. The rate of maternal deaths went way down. Breathing polluted air and drinking tainted water have hugely negative effects on human health. Clean up the air and water and people get healthier. Nasal hygiene often gets overlooked. But consider that the majority of bacteria and viruses that make us sick enter through our mouth and nose. It has become a cultural norm to wash our hands in order to help stop the spread of disease from person to person. But it's rare that we get sick through our hands. Rather we get sick through our mouth and nose. Thus, it makes sense that we should be using something that we know blocks bacterial and viral adhesion in the nose. Enter Clear. CLEAR is a nasal spray that contains xylitol. That's a xylitol with an X. Hence CLEAR with an x. Xylitol is a 5 carbon sugar alcohol. Our bodies naturally contain 5 carbon sugars, mostly in the form of ribose and deoxyribose. That's the R and the D, RNA and DNA, respectively. Those are the backbone sugars of those informational molecules that make up all life that we know it on earth. While most of our dietary sugars have six carbons, sugars like glucose and fructose, xylitol is known xylitol, again a 5 carbon sugar alcohol. Xylitol is known to reduce how sticky bacteria and viruses are to our tissues in the presence of xylitol, Bacteria and viruses, including for instance, Strep, Sars, Cov2 and RSV, don't adhere to our airways as well as which helps our body's natural defense mechanisms easily flush them away. So again, xylitol in our airways reduces the adhesion of many bacteria and viruses, perhaps all of them. We of course don't know that, but many, including Strep, SARS, COV2RSV and makes it more difficult for them to adhere and make us sick. CLEAR is a simple nasal spray that you use morning and evening. It takes just three seconds. It's fast and easy and decidedly healthy. If any of this sounds familiar, perhaps you listened to Brett's conversation with Nathan Jones, founder of Clear and the Inside Rail, in November of 2024. Or Brett's conversation with Nate's father, Lon Jones, an osteopath and the inventor of Clear, on how xylitol interacts with respiratory viruses. Last May May of 2025. We recommend those conversations and we highly recommend clear as a daily habit and prophylactic against respiratory illnesses. That's Clear. Once again, X, L E A R. Get Clear online or at your pharmacy, grocery store or natural products retailer. It's really widely available at this to find it just about anywhere and start taking six seconds each day to improve your nasal hygiene and support your respiratory health.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yes, and I will just say that the folks at Clear have been extremely supportive of the medical freedom movement. They're good people in addition to making an excellent product. And they have faced the most ridiculous opposition in including in the middle of the panic over SARS CoV2, though they demonstrated that it prevented adhesion and therefore caused you to be much less likely to come down with SARS cov2 were forbidden from saying that publicly by the federal government. They have now won their legal challenge. And, of course, you just heard Heather say this, which they are now allowed to say, but the evidence was there. So even at a time when we were turning civilization upside down to prevent the spread of this disease, here you had a product that did prevent the spread of the disease, and they were forbidden from saying it. An amazing story.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

It really is. So, again, clear nasal spray with xylitol. It's a nasal spray. Just like if any of you have had. I was gonna say inhaler. Not how inhalers work, is it. Never used inhalers. It's. It's a nasal spray just, you know, twice a day, morning and night, super simple, super fast. And it seriously reduces the likelihood of. When you're exposed, you're going to have those viruses or bacteria actually make you sick.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yes. And they have a version for preventing you from getting sick and a version if you find yourself becoming sick, a rescue version. I hope they will, at some point come out with a version for dyslexics who do not properly understand how you spell this term. If they just spelled it with a C, I'd know where to look for it, you know? Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

No, I agree.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Okay. Our second sponsor this week is Armor Colostrum, an ancient bioactive whole food. Here at Dark Horse, we talk frequently about the fact that we live in an age of hypernovelty. Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet, and even we can't keep up with the rate of change that we are enacting on ourselves. We are bathed in electromagnetic fields, artificial light, seed oils, microplastics, endocrine disruptors in our air, water, food, and textiles. And there are my other modern stressors, like overcrowding and having too little control over our own choices in life. Here's something you can control. Strengthen your immune health with a BioActive Whole Food. That is Armor Colostrum. All of this hypernovelty can disrupt the signals that your body relies on, negatively impacting gut, immune, and overall health. Armor Colostrum works at the cellular level to bolster your health from within. Colostrum is nature's first whole food, helping to strengthen gut and immune health and fuel performance. Armor Colostrum is great added to smoothies. I love it with banana and mint and cacao and Raw what? And raw milk. Wilk. I was going to say, but I don't eat raw wilks.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Oh, that does not sound good.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

No. Definitely don't put them in smoothies.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yep. Not going to show up.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Armor is a great alternative to raw whelk.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yes.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Smoothie.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah, but so is just about anything.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yes, true.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So that's a low bar. Armor Colostrum, however, meets a much higher bar. Bovine colostrum can support a healthy metabolism and strengthen gut integrity. And Armor Colostrum is a bioactive whole food with over 400 functional nutrients including but not limited to immunoglobulins, antioxidants, minerals and prebiotics. Armor Colostrum starts with sustainably sourced colostrum for grass fed cows from their co op of dairy farms in the United States. And they source only the surplus colostrum after calves are fully fed. Unlike most colostrums on the market, which use heat pasteurization that depletes nutrient potency, Armor Colostrum uses an innovative process that purifies and preserves the integrity of hundreds of bioactive nutrients while removing casein and fat to guarantee the highest potency and bioavailability. The quality control is far above industry standards, including being certified to be wait for it glyphosate free. And why should that matter? Hang in there and we'll get to that point once we're done with the ads. People who have used Armour's Colostrum have reported clearer skin, faster and thicker hair growth and better mental concentration. In addition, people using Armor's Colostrum have noticed a decrease in muscle soreness after exercise, better sleep and fewer sugar cravings. Armor Colostrum is the real deal. We've got a special offer for the Dark horse audience. Receive 30% off your first subscription order. Go to armor.com darkhorse or enter dark horse to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's a R M R-A.com darkhorse our.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Final sponsor this week is Caraway. They make high quality, non toxic cookware and bakeware that is excellent for, but not limited to making wonderful two egg omelets. And maybe you may be the only.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Person in the world who makes two two eggs.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

I know. That's why I think of it as a major innovation. Maybe you've made a New Year's resolution to eat better or cook more or decrease your exposure to toxins. You can do all three at once by cooking with caraway. We're in the cold season now. Wow. This is showing our northern Hemisphere bias. Dude, we are on the cold.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So is the population distribution of the planet.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Excellent point. All right, if you're not in the cold season now that's kind of on you. It is a time for warming soups and stews, braised and slow cooked cuts of meat and roasted root vegetables. Maybe you're full up on cookies after the holidays, but a nice piece of cake generally hits the spot too. With Caraway. All of this deliciousness, from roasting to baking, from a quick omelet, two eggs or otherwise cooked on the stovetop to a long simmered soup, is easy to accomplish. Caraway's cookware and bakeware is functional, beautif and non toxic. It is also easy to clean. What more could you want? Modern life is full of hazards, not least the nonstick coatings on cookware and bakeware. We threw out all of our Teflon cookware decades ago because Teflon is toxic. Yet over 70% of cookware in the United States is made with Teflon. And 97% of Americans have toxic chemicals from nonstick cookware in their blood. When you cook with Teflon, it only takes two and a half minutes for a pan to get hot enough to start releasing toxins. Enter Caraway. Caraway kitchenware is crafted with sustainable non toxic materials like PSC certified birchwood premium stainless steel, enameled cast iron and naturally slick ceramic to help you create safer, healthier home. Create a safer, healthier home. That's what you should do. Caraway makes several lines of non toxic cookware and bakeware. Our favorites are their stainless steel line and their enameled cast iron. All of Caraway's products are free from forever chemicals and their enameled cast iron is offered in six stylish and beautiful colors in including forest blue. Actually forest blue does not exist. I checked these.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

What we call forest blue looks to the rest of us like Carhartt orange.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, it looks nice though. We'll agree to that much.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

It's beautiful.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah. These pots are strong and highly scratch resistant. They'll last generations. And Caraway also offers butcher blocks to cut on glass lids for non toxic cooking with a view and a bar set which is crafted from rust resistant 304 stainless steel. We are cooking with caraway and now Zach, our elder son is 2 in his first college apartment. He says it's amazing, which we know to be true and we know that he will be cooking with it for years to come. Caraway's cookware set English again. Gotta remember to stick with English. Caraway's cookware set is a favorite for a reason. It can save you up to 190 versus buying the items individually. Plus if you visit carawayhome.com dh10 you can take an additional 10% off your next purchase. This deal is exclusive for our listeners, so visit carawayhome.com dh10 or use the code dh10 at checkout. Caraway Non Toxic kitchenware made modern.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

And in case anyone was concerned that you are limited to two egg omelettes with caraway cookware because there is one skillet we have of theirs that is Brett has discovered perfect for two egg omelets. Our younger son Toby, whom we sent back to yesterday.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Was regularly making 10 egg scrambles. I don't know. I don't know if people make 10 egg omelets, but he was making 10 egg scrambles because apparently we are told it is bulking season.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

When he comes home, I'm going to teach him.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

He's just home, you know, for like three weeks.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

I know. But given some time to reflect, you know, hours, I think when he comes home I should try to A, figure out whether a 10 egg omelet is possible and B, I think he actually prefers the scramble. What does that matter if it's possible? It seems like it is. A, it is a bar worth setting.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Not if it's not preferred.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

I don't see what preferred has to.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Do with it, frankly. But anyway, use caraway to make two egg omelets or 10 egg scrambles and anything in between.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

There you go.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah, there you go. Shall we start with the glyphosate news?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, let's do that.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah, let's do that. Okay, so actually I did not have queued up here but the New York Times, we're going to show the papers but of all places, the New York Times is covering and published. Let's see, when is this? This is January 2nd of this year. A study is retracted renewing concerns about the weed killer Roundup. Problems with a 25 year old landmark paper on the safety of Roundup's active ingredient glyphosate have led to calls for the EPA to reassess the widely used chemical. So as it turns out, they're the the main paper that has been used to point out and, you know, direct all naysayers and skept to the obvious safety of glyphosate is this one from 2020. And if I can have my screen back for a moment so I can show the.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Hold on the obvious safety concerns or lack of safety of Glyphosate. Anyway, you just skipped a word.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Okay, so here is the paper in question, published in 2000 in regulatory toxicology and Pharmacology. At this point, I did not have it before. I kind of thought I had, but I didn't. So you can't get it. I'm sure you can if you, if you work hard and use Wayback Machine or something. But at this point, all standardly available copies of the paper have retracted across every single page, which is kind of remarkable that, you know, these people are serious. The paper was called, was titled from 2020, from 2000, Safety Evaluation and Risk Assessment. The Herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient Glyphosate for Humans. Let's just share the abstract with the understanding again that this work is no longer being vouched for by the journal it's published in, nor has any other professional society or journal stepped in and said, well, actually we're going to go ahead and unretract that paper now that that's exactly how it works.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

But I'll just say retraction is a pretty extreme step. Lots of papers that don't stand up to scrutiny never get retracted exactly. Just the literature builds on it and that is a natural process. So retracted is pretty serious.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

It's very serious. And so we're just going to share this, the abstract from this paper from 25 years ago and then share the retraction notice itself. Because there are several reasons for the retraction in this case, all of which are interesting and none of which strike me as that they should be particularly new or surprising, at least to the dark horse audience. Because this story sort of has something for everyone with regard to. To what is wrong with science today.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yes. In fact, the pesticide story is like right next door to the pharma story. They are connected through Bobby Kennedy. Right.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So, okay, so again, abstract of this now retracted paper from 26 years ago on that purported to conclude that glyphosate was safe, effective, I don't know, safe for human health. Reviews on the safety of glyphosate and Roundup herbicide that have been conducted by several regulatory agencies and scientific institutions worldwide have concluded that there is no indication of any human health concern. Nevertheless, questions regarding their safety are periodically raised. This review was undertaken to produce a current and comprehensive safety evaluation and risk assessment for humans. It includes assessments of glyphosate, its major breakdown product, ampa, its Roundup formulations, and the. I don't even know, and the something surfactant used in Roundup formulations worldwide. The studies evaluated in this review included the performed this is going to be tough to read. Included those performed for regulatory purposes. Something something, something. I'm going to just skip a bunch of this because it's actually very hard to read with retraction listed written through it. Multiple lifetime feeding studies have failed to demonstrate any tumorigenic potential for glyphosate. Accordingly, it was concluded that glyphosate is non carcinogenic glyphosate. AMPA and POEA were not teratogenic or developmentally toxic. There were no effects on fertility or reproductive parameters in something generation reproduction studies. On and on and on. Again, really hard to read exactly what is being said here. Skipping to the end of the abstract. Acute risks were assessed by comparison of oral LD50 values to estimated maximum acute human exposure. It was concluded that under present and expected conditions of use, Roundup herbicide does not pose a health risk to humans. I will the only thing else I'm going to share from the paper itself again retracted published in 2000 long the sort of the gold standard for what people point to when they want to assure you that glyphosate is safe. The herbicidal properties of glyphosate were discovered by Monsanto Company scientists in 1970. It is a non selective herbicide that inhibits plant growth through interference with the production of essential aromatic amino acids by inhibition of the enzyme enolpyruvalsikimate phosphate synthase which is responsible for the biosynthesis of chorismate and intermediate in phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan biosynthesis. This pathway for biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids is not shared by members of the animal kingdom, making blockage of this pathway an effective inhibitor of amino acid biosynthesis exclusive to plants. So right there at the very beginning of the introduction we have one of the primary claims that is made often about glyphosate and about other herbicides. Said this only works on plants, we assure you, or in some cases with some herbicides, this only works on monocots. This is only going to work on grasses or the opposite on dicots and not monocots. So there's often these claims given the particular way that the molecular mechanism of action is, and given that we know we're very very sure that this doesn't exist in pick your clade in this case animals, therefore it's totally safe in animals. And it's true that we believe that it is true that this pathway for biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids is not shared by us. For one thing, we know, for instance, that tryptophan is what we call an essential amino acid. Essential amino acid being a list of amino acids that we cannot synthesize ourselves and therefore they are essential in our d. So that much is true. But like the. The most obvious problem that. That pops out to me from this, and I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this paper, having just been made aware of it, you know, a couple days ago, is that we're not just made of us. We contain multitudes. We have many, many. In fact, you know, we have. We have so many species of. An abundance of individuals, of bacteria, mostly, you know, the good bacteria that you will always hear about in our guts and throughout our bodies. And I don't. I have not found any evidence that we are confident that those bacteria don't have their pathways impaired by glyphosate. And in fact, I find some evidence that in fact, they do. So the human body itself may actually be able to do what it needs to do, even in the presence of this ridiculous herbicide. But given that we aren't alone, like none of us is simply an individual that is only made up of mammal, we're also made up of all these bacteria. And if it's impairing the ability of our good bacteria to do what they do, then it's impairing our ability to do what we do.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

So we sometimes talk about the textbook version of something, a textbook, a literal textbook, generally presents a simplified version of biological function. And the problem is often that the thing that you need to be concerned about isn't described in the textbook. If you look at what the textbook says about the way vaccines work, it seems extremely elegant if you understand that there's a manufacturing process that vaccines don't work the way the Jenner vaccine did, and that therefore other things have been introduced to compensate for the defects of modern vaccines. You understand that the story that the textbook tells isn't right. And this strikes me as exactly like this. Yeah, I can imagine. As if I was a bit more naive than I am. And I imagine I'm probably naive about a bunch still. But if I was a bit more naive than I am, I can imagine myself confidently saying, well, this is an elegant pesticide because what it does is it disrupts a pathway that's unique to plants. We aren't plants. And therefore you should expect this pesticide to be effective when trying to control things in one kingdom without disrupting Things in another. Now, the track record of glyphosate is so appalling with respect to disrupting animals and environments that I know the textbook explanation is dead on arrival, but the point is, you can see how this paper is structured to lead you to a. What would be a comforting assessment if it were isolated from all of the things that aren't being said here.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yes. And in 1970, when glyphosate was discovered, invented, or when its herbicidal qualities were discovered, I think it had already been invented before then. We did not have the kind of knowledge that we have now about the, you know, the fact that all mammals contain multitudes, that we in fact are conglomerations of individuals that include many, many species of, an abundance of individuals, of bacteria. But that doesn't make those people back then any less culpable because the idea that at any moment we know everything, we know everything we need to know, we know everything that there is to know can never be true. So we always have to assume that there are ways that things can act in complex systems that, that we have not yet considered. Therefore, claims that are meant to mollify, to calm, to sedate, to, to make you feel like this is just fine, don't worry about it, are very often covers for a hubris that is utterly unwarranted.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yes, and, and we've discussed many times the distinction between highly complicated systems and complex systems. And so the overarching problem here is that anytime you're taking a, let's say, a pesticide, introducing it to a food crop, you are assuming that you understand all of the things that might be disrupted when the chances that you do are effectively sorry, effectively zero. So, you know, the, what one would need to do is if you're going to introduce such a thing, you would need massive work on the tail end, tracking the harms. And most important of all, that work has to be done by people who don't have a conflict of interest so they can compare the well being of populations that are exposed to this to populations that aren't and say, well, what's their health effect? Rather than, you know, corporate goons who are going to arrive at a preordained conclusion because it's how they pay their mortgage.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. So speaking of conflict of interest, let's get to why this paper was attracted. First off, let's just take a look at authorship. Published in 2000 with three authors, which is a relatively small list of authors for a molecular paper, although it's a review paper. So such papers often have fewer authors listed at New York Medical College University of I don't know if that's going to be Utrecht maybe because it's retracted. Yeah, Utrecht and then can talks Health Sciences in International in Canada. So we've got representatives three three scientists out of the United States, out of the Netherlands and Canada authoring this paper and back in 2000. And then we have fast forward to the retraction notice published just now in again Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology for the paper that I was just showing you with that same authorship. So why let's just read some of their reasons for why this article has been retracted at the request of Handling co Editor in Chief Professor Martin Vanderberg Denberg Excuse me. Concerns were raised regarding the authorship of this paper, validity of the research findings in the context of misrepresentation of the contributions by the authors and the study sponsor, and potential conflicts of interest in the the authors. I the Handling co Editor in Chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology reached out to the sole surviving author, Gary M. Williams, and sought explanation of the various concerns which have been listed in detail below. We did not receive any response from Professor Williams.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Wow.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So two of the three authors are dead and one of them is not responding to requests for explanation of a paper which presumably helped make his reputation because it is the paper that for 25 years has been pointed to as evidence that glyphosate is still safe. Hence this article is formally retracted from the journal, this decision has been made after careful consideration, etc. Etc. This retraction is based on several critical issues that are considered to undermine the academic integrity of this article and its conclusions. 1. Carcinogenicity and genotoxicity Assessments the article's conclusions regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate are solely based on unpublished studies from Monsanto which have failed to demonstrate tumorigenic potential. The Handling co Editor in Chief also became aware that by the time of writing of this article in the journal, the authors did not include multiple other long term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies that were already done at the time of writing the review in 1999. Pause for a second. That 2000 paper that has now been retracted was explicitly a review article. It did not seek it did not undertake any new experiments. It did not seek therefore to generate any new data. It was explicitly a review of existing data so that the public could the public and the scientific community could know what it was that was actually known when taken in a collective form. A review paper thus has as perhaps its primary necessary goal that it actually successfully completely reviews all of the existing literature. Very first reason for the retraction here is that what they reviewed was unpublished Monsanto, which is the maker of glyphosate studies, and none of of the actually published reviews that had already been published at the time of submission to the journal. Which that right there means this was not a review paper at all.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, it was an anti review. I will say good on the handling editor for retracting it, but this is a failure of the journal. This is not something that came to light later. This was a failure of the journal to recognize that this review article failed to review the literature in question. Question.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Well, I mean, and this, yeah, this gets back to one of the problems of peer review, of course, that back when, you know, back when we were professors, I was, you know, somewhat often asked to peer review articles and I did. So I took it as a, as part of my responsibility to sort of the academy, even though it is explicitly unremunerated and it takes a lot of work. And there, you know, there's sort of two approaches that editors can take when sending papers out for peer review. They can send papers out to people who are doing work exactly in the domain where the research is being done. And thus they are very likely to know if anything has been missed. For instance, oh, there are review papers out there that you haven't reviewed here. However, you end up with this circle jerk of scientists potentially who, okay, there's a community of, call it 4, 40, maybe even 400 scientists depending on what the field is, who are all working in the same, in the same area. And if it becomes clear that one of them, yes, peer review is supposed to be anonymous, but almost always people can tell if it becomes clear that one or a handful of scientists are actually being rigorous in their peer review and pointing out flaws and causing people's papers not to be accepted by the journals, then there is going to be retribution. And so the problem with sending peer reviewed, with sending papers out to, to peers within the same sub discipline is that you have a game theoretic problem in which unless you can be assured that you are actually completely anonymous and if the community is very small, how could you possibly be honest? Review is taken as basically actionable for retribution. Or you can send papers out to people sort of more broadly in the field and then they are less likely to know that, oh, actually there are reviews out there. So again, it's unremunerated work. There's a problem if you send it to people who are most likely to know if the, if the review has been done well and then there are problems if you send it out to people who are less likely to feel beholden to the authors of the paper, but less likely, you know, what those people are likely to be able to do is assess the actual rigor of the work. And in a review paper that's going to be, you know, less interesting. It's not going to be about experimental design and hypothesis generation and all of this, it's going to be just about, about like are the statistics done correctly? Which is an important part of peer review. But it, it minimizes the role of the peer reviewers.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

But even so, we're talking about a paper, they've had a quarter century of feedback on this paper. And to the extent an editor should have known that this was missing important literature, shouldn't have taken much to figure that out. If they had made the mistake of publishing it and then discovered that because angry letters arriving at the journal, they should have quickly retracted it. And so I again would point out something's wrong. It should be no surprise something is wrong in the state of toxicology and it's going to involve economic feedback loops almost certainly. I would also point out one of the things that is inadvertently demonstrated here. If Monsanto running studies couldn't find carcinogenicity and all sorts of people who were not at Monsanto found carcinogenicity, what does that tell you about Monsanto studies?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Right?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

They're not science. That's what it tells you, right?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

That's right. Okay, so you know, there's a few more details about that. First reason for retraction. But, but that's a big one. Right?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Okay.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

They just, they don't appear to have actually reviewed the literature in, in a paper whose sole job was to review.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

The literature should have been dead on arrival over that.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah, exactly. Two second reason for retraction of this 25 year old paper, Lack of authorial independence. Litigation in the United States revealed correspondence from Monsanto suggesting that the authors of the article were not solely responsible for writing its content. It appears from that correspondence that employees of Monsanto may have contributed to the writing of the article without proper acknowledgment as co authors. This lack of transparency raises serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented. Now I did not go and try to figure out when the litigation in the US that revealed this was presumably wasn't right, then it Might be quite recently, I don't know. But this points to direct conflict of infant. Direct conflict of interest with regard to what? In every single scientific paper out there is explicitly expected to be stated that you have to state any conflicts with regard to finances or other work that you are doing or have done. And if there are other people who have contributed to the work, they need to be explicitly either made authors or acknowledged. And there is, if I remember correctly, at some point when I'm not on my screen here, I will look. I think in the acknowledgments of the original paper, there's a vague, unspecified, unnamed mention of help from Monsanto employees. You know, by help they mean they went ahead and gave us our conclusions and wrote most of it for us. Well, I guess so. Okay. Third reason for the retraction of this 25 year old paper, Misrepresentation of contributions. This is very similar to the last one. The apparent contributions of Monsanto employees as co writers to this article were not explicitly mentioned as such in the acknowledgments section. This omission suggests that the authors may have misrepresented their unique roles and the collaborative nature of the work presented. The failure to disclose the involvement of Monsanto personnel in the writing process compromises the academic independence of the presented. Findings and conclusions drawn in the article regarding carcinogenicity. Four questions of financial compensation. Further correspondence with Monsanto disclosed during litigation indicates that the authors may have received financial compensation from Monsanto for their work on this article, which was not disclosed as such in this publication. This raises significant ethical concerns and calls into question the apparent academic objectivity of the authors in this publication, which concerns and questions have not been answered. Goes.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Hold on. I just want to point out there's a whole, whole. There's a whole range of games that can be played and there are a whole range of countermeasures that have been deployed to try to prevent them.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yes.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yes.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Do you have a conflict of interest? You have to declare it. What did all of the authors do on this paper? You have to say the.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

How was the work funded?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

How. How was the work funded? Imagine, imagine all of the games you can play. If you can have an author of the paper who is not named, somebody can write the paper. Other people can claim they wrote the paper. So let's say I have a product and I want a paper that says the product has awesome impacts on my health, right? Well, I can write this fraudulent paper and then I can have other people. I can say I don't even Want to be an author? You be an author, it goes on your cv, you get the credit, they publish the thing. Then I say, wow, my product. Look, there's even scientific work that says it has awesome effects on your health. But of course it wasn't that.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

And given the penny any economy of academia where low authored papers add to your CV and add to your credibility as a scientist, even if they're crap papers and even if you didn't write them at all, people who are ethically compromised, which is to say most people are likely to take someone up on that offer. Hey, I've got this paper. It's already written, already vetted by, well, me, you know, you want to slap your name on it and see if you can get it published?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Sure.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

That's a deal that a lot of people will accept.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

And there's a whole range of ways that you can contribute to a paper that wouldn't seem to an outsider like they were real contributions, but are. So we have seen this proliferation because work has become more complicated. We've seen the number of authors on technical papers go way up. But that's not entirely about the complexity. It's also about if I've got a paper with 10 authors, it costs me very little, little to give you the gift of being an author on this paper for a contribution that doesn't really warrant it. And what will I get from you? Maybe you'll smile on my paper, my next paper in review. So anyway, these incestuous networks develop and the countermeasures are manifestly inadequate.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

They're inadequate, they're too slow, they're trying to keep up with a game that's evolving much more rapidly than the countermeasures are. I have begun to see, not on these molecular biology papers that are authored by many dozens of people, but on papers that have many authors, something between, let me say, just 5 and 12 or something. Increasingly now I will see a description of what each author's contribution was. Historically, the last author on a multi authored paper was basically the PI, the principal investigator of the lab. He usually was the one interested in the work in the first place, drove the experimental design at a broad level, wrote and received the federal grants. But often, unfortunately, modern science, modern scientists, even the most honest and remarkable of them, get trapped into more and more bureaucratic roles the more advanced they get. Like field scientists don't get go out in the field anymore. Lab scientists don't get to spend time at the bench anymore. What they've become is people seeking money from the federal government. And so it's their postdocs and their graduate students who are doing the work. And so you'll see on say a six authored paper, the first two authors maybe ran the first part of the experiment and did most of the writing and the third author did the stats and the fourth author did a bunch of the grunt work because it was the undergraduate in the lab and then the final author was the actual PI, without whom none of it would have happened, but didn't actually do any of the work involved, so may not be able to actually vouch for it.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It's a genuinely difficult question. Somebody may have done foundational work. They put provide the environment in which the work gets done. They didn't contribute to the experiment. Is that a contribution or isn't it?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Right.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

You know.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah, this is not an easy problem.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It's not an easy problem to solve. You could also, you know, let's say you have a case where you wanted to measure the length of microsatellites and you needed a primer to, to get the sequence measured. Somebody may supply the primer who had nothing to do with your research. Question. Question. But they made the primer.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. Without which the research couldn't be done.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Couldn't be done. Right.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So is that worthy of a line in the acknowledgments or is that worthy of authorship? Well, if you've, if you've got a four person authored paper, it's probably not worthy of authorship. If it's, if you've already got 20 authors on the things, slap it in there and like, let them add that line to their cv. And this is why you have people, you know, early and mid careers with, you know, hundreds of papers. You know, I, I once asked a colleague about some, some work in a paper that they were an author on. And I've reported this story before, but this is a particular story, but I have many others like it and I know it's not unique. This person said to me, I don't know what that means. I said, what do you mean you don't know what that means? You're an author on the paper. He said, well, I didn't write that part. I said, I don't, I don't care. You're an author on the paper. So why didn't, it's not the part, I was responsible for it. You know, he, he felt no, no shame, no embarrassment at all about actually saying, not only am I like, do, did I not write that? I don't know what it means. Maybe I don't Even agree with it. Sure, it's in a paper that my name is on, but I wrote this little piece over here, which was also crap, by the way. But, you know, like, there's just no culpability. So what is a paper? You know, we're at a. We're at a level where raises questions about what is a scientific paper and if it doesn't hold together as a coherent mass, where at the very least every single author can tell you what the hypothesis was and what work was done and how it was analyzed and what the results were and what that means in the context of what else is known in science, then I'm sorry, it shouldn't qualify.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yes. It actually reminds me of the thing you sometimes say that nobody at the cocktail party would be proud of being illiterate, but people frequently proclaim pride over being enumerate. In this case, you get this weird kind of pride inside of research science where people are basically evidencing that, yeah, I know how the game runs and I'm good at it. And you know, I didn't write that part of the paper. And they don't realize that they're telling on themselves. You're actually saying that you gave up on science a long time ago and you're just playing some stupid game.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Well, that's exactly it. Hey, look at me. I'm so good at the game of science. Like, and clearly you don't care about actual science like that. You know, you. You can get one. Congratulations, you're good at the game, but you're not good at the actual thing.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, and the game actually destroys the actual thing. That's. That's what gets people like you and me upset by this sort of behavior, is. It's not like that game continues and it's some separate thing. It's. It, you know, drenches the literature in things that masquerade as if they're informative when in fact, in fact, you don't even know what they are.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Right. Right. Okay, so let's keep going through. There's eight points of the reason that the co. Whatever. Founding. I don't remember the editor Handling.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Handling.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Co handling. Editor of Currently of Regulatory Toxicology of Pharmacology is retracting. Has retracted the foundational 2000 paper which supposedly, supposedly establish the safety of glyphosate in humans. Number five, ambiguity and research findings. This article has been widely regarded as a hallmark paper in the discourse surrounding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate and Roundup. However, the lack of clarity regarding which parts of the article were authored by Monsanto employees creates uncertainty about the integrity of the conclusions drawn. Specifically, the article asserts the absence of carcinogenicity associated with glyphosate or its technical function formulation Roundup. It is unclear how much of the conclusions of the authors were influenced by external contributions of Monsanto without proper acknowledgments. Again, related to the previous several but a distinct point.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It also strikes me though as very weak T at the point, you know that Monsanto has written part of this paper and it's not acknowledged as having authorship. The papers affirmative fraud.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Well, but that's what they, that's what he's, that's what they've done here. Right, but he says one of eight points.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right, but I know, but he's, he's saying we don't know which parts Monsanto wrote. The real answer is Monsanto wrote parts of this paper. Period. The end. It's a fraud.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I, I, I disagree. I think, I think being careful being as accurate and less important but as precise as possible when you can be, especially when you're retracting, you know there's going to be major pushback to this retraction. I'm sure there's going to be explanations for why. Okay, fine, you retracted that paper, but it was a good paper after all. Right. And so being very, very careful about what is and is not known is, is valuable.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, I don't want us to get lost in the weeds here, but what part of the paper would be acceptable for Monsanto to have written.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

That's not that he's not saying that some part of it is.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

He's, well, he's saying it's not clear which parts and I'm just saying this editor, I think you're misunderstanding not spot that this, this review failed to review the literature.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

This is 26 years later. This is not the editor who was involved in accepting this paper in 2000.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

This is not. I took handling editor to be the person responsible for this paper. Maybe if that's not the case, I doubt it. I really don't. Then I take back my.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I didn't look into that. I would be shocked if there was still the same handling editor.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, I agree it's impressive if I don't think so.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

No, but it hadn't even occurred to me that it could be so I didn't look it up. 6 6th point in the reason for retraction of this paper from 2020 Weight of evidence approach. The authors employed a weight of evidence approach in Their assessment of glyphosate's carcinogenicity and genotoxicity. While this methodology is sound in principle, the potential biases introduced by undisclosed contributions from Monsanto employees and the exclusion of other existing long term carcinoma genesis studies may have skewed the interpretation of the data. The author's critical analysis of both unpublished and published studies must therefore be viewed with caution. You're going to object again to the cautious language? May have skewed. Viewed with caution. This is, you know, this, this is how scientific papers are written.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, but this is the problem.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

No, no, no, no. That is not the problem. No, writing with. With clarity and conservatism and caution is not the problem. The problem is fraud.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, no, exactly. The problem is fraud. And the point is, is that the caution belonged in the other direction. The caution should know.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

The caution belonged in 2000.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right, exactly. Having failed to exercise, you're holding the.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Current retraction accountable for. Yes, and yes.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Because for the same reason that a grudging acknowledgment, this, this, I think this, this journal fell down on its obligations to the, to the public and people died because of it. So my feeling is this needs to be accurate. And the way it needs to be accurate is to say Monsanto authored parts of this paper. The authors failed to acknowledge literature that was relevant, that Monsanto didn't author. This paper was a fraud, and that's how it should be stated. And the problem is.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So you think that having more words makes this week. You think you want a three sentence retraction?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No. Well, first of all, I would accept a three sentence retraction, but then there's no detail. That's fine.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

It's not.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Okay, you can list all of these things, but I don't like hedging in there. And the question is, what else?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Careful. Is not hedging. It's.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It's saying we don't know which parts of this paper Monsanto authored. If Monsanto was not an author on the paper, the fact that it authored any part of it is in and of itself. Yes, in invalidating of the entire thing.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

He doesn't say that that's not true. He's just saying it's possible that the authors on the paper did write some of it. We don't know. But clearly Monsanto was involved in writing some of it and that's unacceptable.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, look, we have a completely broken academic environment. In my opinion. Part of it has to do with the places that things hide. Whether it's long authorship lists or caution that has been reversed. And the fact is, the public is entitled to understand how bad a failure this was. And this was a catastrophic failure, mind you. A catastrophic failure like this can happen when human life and limb is not at stake. But in this particular case, yes, human life and limb, people die from this pesticide. And this journal has responsibility because it completely failed to do the job a journal is supposed to do, do making sure that the papers it publishes are accurate and if they're not, retracting them quickly. So the fact that this took a quarter of a century is. I think we're learning why it took a quarter of a century. In the cautious language of the retraction.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I don't think that's fair at all. However, The only way that I think that that is a fair critique here is if this editor, Martin Vanderburgh, was the handling editor back then and has been sort of sitting on growing evidence all along. And a very quick AI look says, nope, he was not.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

So I would be surprised at that duration at the same time. Journal. Yeah, but I don't know what the word handling is doing there. If he wasn't the one who handled.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

This, he's handling it now. That's. I mean, that. That's. That's a term that shows up in. In. In journal editors. That's. That's not. That's not new to me. You know, it can mean different things in different contexts. But I'm not. I'm not that. That does not inherently come with a timestamp from before.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, but I mean, look, again, we're in the weeds. But if you think about the reason that I took Hamilton handling to be important here is that the handling editor suggests. One interpretation of it is that it was the editor who handled this paper. Why is this editor in charge of this retraction rather than the editorial board? Because he was the handling editor. Maybe that's not. Maybe it's not true. Not true, but it isn't. It. Well, it is an interpretation to that word. The word is ambiguous.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Okay. But. So I just allowed that there was one condition by which I would allow for what I think is a very ungenerous and frankly, not helpful reaction that you're having. And on. You know, my first look suggests very strongly that that condition does not hold, that this editor was not the editor who accepted and shepherded this paper back in 2000. And your. Your position hasn't moved?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, my position.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I allowed that there was one condition that would move my. My position. And it. It's it's not true. And I just think, I think this is, this is massively important. Important. This is going to get major pushback. I'll bet that we do not see. So one thing that is also true, that is related in the New York Times article is that in 2026, the EPA's I don't know if it's certification or whatever of glyphosate as safe for use on food crops for humans is coming up for review. So this comes at a critical moment. Like the EPA needs to take this not just into consideration. I just be like, oh, actually we know nothing, nothing that says that this garbage is safe for humans. And we need to, you know, we need to radically change our recommendations for its use. I would say get it off the market entirely. But, you know, the timing is important. It's powerful. It is a full retraction. You can see I can't even read the paper. You know, I couldn't even read all of the abstract because they've stamped retracted across the front of it. You know, I don't, I, I think asking for more, asking for it to have happened earlier. This is like you and like, why now?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Like, well, no, this is not, this is not. Look, I have one interest and one interest only in this, which is what happens now should be designed to make sure this kind of failure never happens again.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yes.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

And to the extent that the journal minimizes its responsibility, that is a problem. What needs to happen is this needs to be so embarrassing to the journal, journal. The level of egregiousness of the failure here is so large. This needs to be so embarrassing to the journal that no other journal would contemplate making an error like this that other journals will think, oh, crap, you know what we need again, I think.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I think you're misunderstanding what it looks like on the inside of peer review that, you know, the best journals, the ones that are actually trying to publish good science to, to other scientists are overworked, overburdened. They're asking unpaid academics to do a bunch of the work and most of the time they don't get responses at all. And then they get. And so don't do this again. Don't do what again? Apparently a bunch of what has been revealed that is the basis for this retraction came out through litigation that happened well after this was published. Now, the one thing that I have read in this retraction that, that could have been known at the time was presumably known by some people and was not caught by the editors and the peer Reviewers of The journal in 2000 is that there were published studies that showed carcinogenicity and toxicity of glyphosate that were not included in the review. That seems, you know, it seems obvious that that needed to be in a review. But how do you guarantee that that is like without redoing the work, without every time a paper is going to be published, someone at the journal itself red to make sure that everything is as it is claimed. It is a maybe intractable problem to guarantee that all the work is going to be excellent.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Okay. But let's take that. Okay. The work would have to be much greater than the available labor in order to get a proper study that would say this thing is safe enough to put it on food crops. And my point is, fine, if you can't do the work or if you can't review the work to make sure that this product is safe to be on food products, it shouldn't be. And the fact that.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

But the journal isn't about safe on food products. Like this is a basic findation.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Oh, yes, it is. It is playing a role in the process that arguably makes us safe. And because it is not doing that role well, we are not safe. So my point is, whatever the problems are in the academy, whatever the level of overworkedness of the people involved, they don't have a right to do shoddy work when life and limb is on the line. Frankly, they don't have a right to do shoddy work when only the future of science is on the line. Even if we were talking about cosmology, if you don't have the labor to make sure the thing is done right most of the time, then you shouldn't have a journal. And so I am in sense.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So the problem then becomes worse. There are already by many measures, too many people with appropriate degrees trying to publish too many papers. Papers. Because the one metric, because the thing that's easy to count is how many papers do you have.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yep.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

And there aren't enough journals even now to. To. To publish all the papers that people want to publish. The fact, I mean, we've talked about, you know, more chronic issues with regard to paper mills and, you know, fake people being put on papers and being. And you know, I know this problem is about to get way worse. Right. The papers are going to be generated entirely not by human humans. And, you know, the work itself may be fabricated.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right. But I think your question go. First of all, I have said in many different places, I don't think you disagree with me that the System is so broken it can't be fixed. Here we're getting to peer into a place where that brokenness resulted in humans getting cancers that they were assured would not be downstream of this product. And do I think that, you know, the population of the academy can be saved by. By reforming the system? I don't. I'm not particularly concerned about them because they haven't stood up against this fraud en masse as they should have. So, no, I don't. I don't think you can rescue these journals. I don't think you can rescue the faculty. I don't think you can rescue this process. Every time we peer into it, we see that this is its product. A bunch of people solving their own little game theoretic problems about how they're going to get through their career results in other people dying of cancer who were told that the product that they were using was safe. And it's not acceptable. So.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Well, you're really going to like 0.7.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Okay. Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So 7 of 8 of the. Of the reasons that the paper from 2020 has been retracted is historical context and influence. The paper had a significant impact on regulatory decision making regarding glyphosate and Roundup for decades. Decades. Given its status as a cornerstone in the assessment of glyphosate safety, it is imperative that the integrity of this review article and its conclusions are not compromised. The concerns specified here necessitate this retraction to preserve the scientific integrity of the journal. Go off.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No. I mean, I think we've said it all. Yes. I don't like this hedging voice. And whoever you are who wrote this, you owed the public better. You should have just said it straight. We screwed up. We published a paper we shouldn't have published. We didn't return retract it in a timely fashion. And even if that timely fashion was as soon as discovery in court revealed that the paper wasn't what it pretended to be, it should have been retracted then. And the fact that you're hedging and at this point, you know, you want a pat on the back for retracting it. No, this should. People died. I'm sorry, they died. And that's on you.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Okay, so I don't see hedging in this retraction. I disagree with you about that. But let's just read the the final point. 8 Conclusion. In light of the aforementioned issues, the handling co editor in chief lost confidence in the results conclusions of this article and believes that the retraction of this article is necessary to maintain the integrity of the journal. The scientific concerns regarding the lack of carcinogenicity only derive from Monsanto studies. Concerns regarding ghost authorships and potential conflicts of interest, none of which have been responded to, are sufficient to warrant this action. Any of those points would have been sufficient to warrant this action. Lack of using non Monsanto data or ghost authorship, like either of those, certainly reason not to publish in the first place of the ghost authorship, had they had no way to know that at the time. But any of these points would have been sufficient to retract. We appreciate the understanding of the scientific community regarding this matter and remain committed to upholding the highest standards of integrity in published research in regulatory toxicology and pharmacology. Yep.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, I'm glad he appreciates my understanding. Understanding I'm part of the scientific community.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Oh, wait. Oh, you're. You're going to like the disclaimer.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Oh, no. Yeah, it comes with a disclaimer.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

As handling co editor in Chief, I emphasize that this retraction does not imply a stance on the ongoing debate regarding the carcinogenicity of Glyphosator Roundup, but originates from directly following the COPE guidelines, which he has to say that that has to be his position. That has to be the journal's position because they haven't published counter evidence.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It certainly doesn't need to be stated. It's obvious this paper should never have existed. Okay. We all can figure out what that means, right?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Most of us can.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Those of us who need to figure out what that means can figure out what that means. The added hedge is. Is preposterous. But anyway, I'm sure it was written from under his desk.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I. That's not fair.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, it's fair.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

That's totally not fair.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

People died.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Here is a. It wasn't him.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, but he is.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So you've got. You've got a paper co authored by three people. Co authored by. Publicly co authored by three people. Apparently ghost authored by, like, the entire staff of Monsanto.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Okay. Only one of those dudes is still living. Only one of the publicly authored dudes is still living. He's not responding to requests for like, what the hell did you do? Do? Obviously, the ghost authors are invisible to us. There's no tracking them down. Although maybe in litigation, maybe, you know, maybe those court documents reveal some stuff. Those are the people who.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Oh, I agree.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

At whom you should be directing your ire.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right? No, no, it's. There's plenty to go around. The fact is, you had people submit a fraudulent paper, and those people have done something utterly unforgivable in light of what the top topic is. Right? These people have blood on their hands. The Journal failed to do the job of the Journal. I don't want the Journal hedging about the failure to do the job of the Journal. It's all too common, and it has had a horrifying impact on the way civilization functions, on the health of the public. I just want people to take responsibility for their part entirely. I have some sympathy for an editor who wasn't there there at the point that this paper was published, who now has to clean up the mess. But what I want them to do is say, here's where we screwed up. I want them to do it without hedging. And I think that that's a reasonable thing to do. It's what you would do interpersonally. If you had screwed up in some way and you were explaining to somebody else, I made an error, you wouldn't hedge. And the hedging doesn't belong here anymore.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

But interpersonal, personally, like I, I am not responsible for the sins of my ancestors. Okay, so if I am now the editor at a journal, a job that I took, I don't know when, right? But let's say 12 and a half years ago, okay, half again. 50% of the time since the paper was published, it is my job to oversee the Journal. And when I find evidence that there has been fraud in the Journal from well before my time, time to work hard to get that fixed. But it is not my personal responsibility to apologize for actions that were not mine. I didn't. I did not. I was not involved in accepting and accepting the paper, sending it out for peer review. That turned out to be wildly insufficient for knowing things that no one knew at the time outside of Monsanto, which turned out to be released in court records years later.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

So I don't know why, why this is signed by an individual editor. If the journal made an error, the people who are running it aren't the people who were there. It could have been done as the editorial staff.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I mean, he's written it in which he's saying that he's now seeing these things.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right. I get the form. But the question is, if this is a quarter century in the past, mistakes were made by a different staff. They are now trying to correct it. Resurrection, affect the status of the Journal in the public's mind. That's all well and good. I would do that by not hedging. I don't, you know, the fact that he's not responsible for those errors is of little consequence. It's. You know. Yeah. If he had not hedged, then I would.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I guess I would like. I mean, I don't think. I think we're going to drive off the rest of our audience, but I. I want to know where you saw the hedge.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Let's take the one sentence I remember at this moment.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Okay.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

The idea that we don't know which parts of the paper Monsanto. The fact that Monsanto wrote parts of the paper and was not acknowledged as an author makes this fraudulent. In light of the consequences of being wrong about toxicology, it makes it dangerous.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

The lack of clarity regarding which parts of the article were authored by Monsanto employees creates uncertainty about the integrity of the conclusions drawn.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right. Yeah. Uncertainty about the integrity. No, they can. They. They conducted a fraud. And it's one thing to be defraud. It's another thing to hedge. In the aftermath of it. This should just simply have been retracted. There's obviously ample reason.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I disagree. I think simply retract it without any of this. Without our ability to see what went into it. That would be ridiculous.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

They can enumerate each of those things without the hedging.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

This isn't hedging. Creates uncertainty about the integrity of the conclusions drawn.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Creates uncertainty. The conclusions drawn were from fraudulent. Creates uncertainty. This was a fraudulent paper. Can we. The next part, assuming you don't have further. You want to go here? Well, but I think the whole thing connects. Let us talk about what has happened in these trials in a general sense.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

What trials?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

The trials where Monsanto has been sued.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Court trials.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Legal trials. The same ones that reveal.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I thought you were talking about randomized.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, no, no, no. Court trials. So numerous people have sued Monsanto, which has now been purchased by Bear Bear, in this case, actually, is a bit in the position of your editor, who apparently was not at the Journal at the time this fraud was perpetrated on, but has inherited responsibility, legal responsibility.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Although they have. They have plenty of sins in their past.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Wow. Do they? Wow, you do. Do they? But nonetheless, Bayer made a mistake. It purchased Monsanto, including all of their liabilities. And.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Wait. Also. He's not my editor.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

All right, fair enough.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Sorry. Start. Start over. The. The court trials.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Okay. What happens is. And the first one of the trials that was won was actually one. He was not the only lawyer, but Bobby Kennedy was one of the lawyers on the initial trial in which a verdict against Monsanto for cancer caused by glyphosate was one by a guy named Dwayne Johnson.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I do we know do. We know when do.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

But I've forgotten it was ballpark, like.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

First decade of this, like, right after this got published or.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah. Could you look it up?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

What do I look up, though? I don't.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Dwayne Johnson verdict against Monsanto. But I want to make a point to you about what's going on here. So the general pattern is this. Individuals sue Monsanto for injury done by glyphosate. Oftentimes, these are people who work with a lot of it in an agricultural context or their landscape.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Reason this is 2018.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

2018. So they sue.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Oh, wait. So Dwayne Johnson isn't the lawyer? He was.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

He was the plaintiff.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yes, the plaintiff. Diff.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Oh, I remember this. Yes. Non Hodgkin lymphoma. He got a ton of money from them.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, that's what I want to get. Okay. He got a ton of money. I think something like $280 million.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

39.2 million. This is again, just first past chat GPT. 39.2 million in compensatory damages and 250 million in punitive damage.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Except guess what.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

The punitive portion was later reduced by the trial judge and on appeal, the final award was significantly less. Lowered 20 million to no. Reductions to around 78.5 and later to about 20.5 after appellate decision.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Okay, so the jury looked at this guy's terminal cancer and awarded him $280 million. It was reduced later by two successive judgments to $20 million. He is still alive. He was given two years to live when he was first diagnosed. He's significantly outlasted his prognosis. But nonetheless, this pattern, where a huge award is given by the jury in the aftermath of one of these cases and then it is later reduced, has been the consistent pattern with judgments against Monsanto. Now, I want to talk a little bit about why that is.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Is. So I want to hear that. But what do we know about whether or not that tends to be a pattern with very large punitive damage awards by trials, trial by jury trials that are reassessed in appellate court.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

That is exactly the pattern for all across all. Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Not just Monsanto.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right. So a jury of your peers hears about what some awful corporation did to you, awards you a huge amount of money because you're in a state that has punitive damages. Not all of them do. As you will remember, we were limited in our ability to sue the state when the evergreen meltdown happened and happened to us. Because Washington does not have punitive damages. Punitive damages are designed to Punish the offending entity so that it will stop with the egregious behavior. Now, I'm going to argue that we do them incorrectly and that there's a fix that needs to happen in order for the system to work. But I'll get to that in a minute. The reason that these judgments get reduced is because of the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Okay, didn't see that coming.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yep. You want to put the 14th Amendment up. So the 14th Amendment, for those who have forgotten, which includes me, was part of Reconstruction, and it was designed to protect slaves, former slaves. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction there thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law, or deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. So you don't really see Monsanto in there, do you?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

No. And I don't remember what you said about what part of the 14th Amendment is being used to justify the minimization of jury judgments.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It's the Equal Protection Clause at the end. Okay. Now, the reason that this. Yeah, because it's preposterous. Okay. What's going on here is that corporations, you'll remember, member, are persons. Corporate personhood, a widely misunderstood property. The reason that corporations are persons and they do need to be persons, is to bind them. You need to have the ability of a corporation to sign a contract and then to be able to enforce that contract against them. So that personhood was designed, designed to make them persons for purposes such as contracting and suing. It was not designed to give them the protection that is granted to all citizens. So what's going on here is that the courts have a kind of pseudo sophistication in which they look at the ratio between compensatory damages and punitive damages, and they consider things above nine to one to be excessive.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Excessive.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Now, this is insane.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

That still doesn't get you to a reduction of more than an order of magnitude of total damages awarded.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

I can't get you there myself.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

A ratio problem doesn't get you anywhere close to that reduction.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, the general property is reduction based on a skewed ratio of compensatory damages which are scaled to the harm that was done to you and the punitive damages. Now, let's talk about why. So, hold on. There are three things that are taken to be reasons to reduce these verdicts. One is the degree of reprehensibility of the defendant's contact. Two is compensation to civil criminal penalties for similar misconduct. So they compare to other penalties. Penalties and the ratio between compunitive and compensatory damages. Here's the problem. There is a general flaw in our legal structure, which is that penalties are scaled to the offense, not to the capacity of the individual or the corporation to endure the penalty. So Bill Gates does not not suffer the same fear of getting a speeding ticket that I do. Y Because there's no speeding ticket you could give him that would make, you know, the amount of time that he has to sit there with his window rolled down is way more expensive to him than any ticket he could be given. So there are no effective speeding tickets for Bill Gates. Right. In fact, the best thing you can do is draw out the process while you've got his window down. That'll hurt him. Right.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So a he doesn't drive himself.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

The juries are responding to the evil done to these people. Dwayne Johnson got non hodgkin's lymphoma from glyphosate, Having not been told that that was a possibility and, in fact, being assured that it wasn't right. The jury was incensed by this and gave him a big punitive award. And then the court said, well, that big punitive award is out of scapegoat. The problem is, what you want punitive damages to do is to alter the future behavior of the offending entity. You want Monsanto to not just simply budget for lawsuits. You want them to stop selling glyphosate because they know it gives people cancer. Right. The award has to be large enough to do that. So the jury's ire is actually right. And the courts are wrong to be reducing these things, because what they do is they turn it into a cost of doing business.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

But I'm curious about the larger trend that you say is true, which is that across the board, you have large jury judgments being reduced in the appellate courts.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yep. That is the big guys own the system. And my claim is that we need a wholesale rethink of this process. Punitive damages are vitally important to the system doing what it's supposed to do when you. It should not be a cost of doing business when you cause somebody cancer. It should cause you to rethink whether or not you can afford to have your product on the market at all. In order for that to be true, these things need to be Scaled to the degree of evil and the size of the entity being punished. Right.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

And what I mean I remember us discovering after our lives had blown up on us and Evergreen had turned on us that Washington didn't have punitive damages. Perhaps being told by our lawyers, lawyers who were very good at what they did, but they're like there's just not much we can do.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yep.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I don't think that either of us looked into at the time and maybe you know, like why do the states vary so much in with regard to the ability to enact punitive damages? And it. I would have guessed that historically states that were tending to vote blue would be more likely to have punitive damages. And so was surprised to find that Washington state had none.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah. I don't know what the history is. It's bound. Bound to be interesting. But when its corporations were dealing with the 14th Amendment should not apply. This is not. The founders gave corporations personhood to bind them, not to enable them with the rights of a citizen.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Did the founders do that?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, they did because there was some. Because they had.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

There was some interpretation more recently that got a lot of attention.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Oh it was the citizens United states.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

In the 90s or something.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Corporations right to free speech is like equivalent to that of an individual. So it's preposterous. In order to make the system work, A you need to have punitive damages. B, they need not to be scaled to the amount of harm. I mean, you know, the harm to Monsanto needs to be large enough that they don't do harm to Dwayne Johnson in the way that they did. So you need massive punitive damages. Now. Now it may be that some of those punitive damages should not go to the person who was harmed. Right. To the extent that the court awards. I think part of the reason that we hiccup on this is that it's not obvious. If you punish Monsanto at a level that makes it think twice about what it's doing, it's not obvious that that's relevant to what the person who was injured. The person who was injured deserves some.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

The of.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Of those damages. But in order, you know, if you're. It's possible that those funds should go elsewhere. In other words, the general harm that was done to the public, maybe it should go into a fund for other people who've been harmed. Something like that. I'm not arguing all of it. Some of the punitive damages.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

I don't. I think that's. I think you're asking for trouble really. I mean you're effectively talking about socializing the damages.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, what I'm talking about is the purpose of punitive damage is, is to punish.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

And, and it's punitive versus what would compensatory. Compensatory.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Compensated for harm.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah, but I just. That the, the strong allergic reaction to socializing of, of funds that have been earned through trial, in this case, an actual trial, I feel like I don't think any good will come of it.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, that's possible. But my feeling is if the court's purpose is to punish, it is not obvious that the best way to punish it is to transfer that wealth to the individual who was egregiously harmed. In other words, if you've got. If Dwayne Johnson is representative of a thousand people who never sued because they couldn't, or, or because their case was less clear or whatever it was, then it's not obvious that the huge windfall, and mind you, he didn't get a huge windfall. He got 20 million for his life being radically shortened. But the huge windfall that has been scaled to the size of the thing that you need to punish. It's not obvious that that is relevant to the individual who's been harmed. To a certain extent, he deserves to be more than made. Well, I believe, believe. But the purpose to punish has to be maintained. And it may be that the public is actually less enthusiastic about punitive damages because they see it as a windfall.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

But I don't see any evidence the public is not enthusiastic about punitive damages because, you know, you report that jury trials keep on producing these big judgments. Well, and then it's the appellate courts that reduce them.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

You know, I do wonder how it is that a state like Washington has no computative damages at all. But I don't see any evidence that what you're saying is true. And I think the idea of, yeah, we're going to let the guy who's obviously harmed go to court and take all of the risk, and then we're going to claw back some of that for unspecified others, like that just sounds like socialism and it's stupidest.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, I think actually the pattern is the one I'm describing and it makes sense because if you're in the jury box and the, the prosecuting attorneys are presenting you with the evidence that not only did Monsanto distribute a dangerous product, that it knew it was dangerous, that there was a discussion about whether or not the public needed a better warning and they decided against it. You know, if you have that evidence in front of you. It incenses you. That's very different than the public at home reading whatever they're reading that hears that somebody, you know, got a. I forget what the judgment was for the hot coffee that got spilled in the drive through window. But you're like, hey, wait a minute. But then you look at the case and you're like, oh, actually, you know, once you see the discussion where somebody knew that somebody was going to get scalded and decided that's fine, you know, how, how bad could it possibly be? You understand why these, why these punitive damages are there in the first place, but the public in general doesn't. They hear these giant numbers and there's.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Well, I mean, so, so I don't, I don't know the legal system at all. It's an entirely social construct, an entirely human construct. And so not being able to derive anything from first principles. I only know what I know and it's not much. And you are proposing, you are, you are noting a problem which you say is widespread, not limited to things like Monsanto. Judgments in which juries of one's peers come down with large amounts of punitive damages and later on those kinds of get reduced substantially by appellate courts. That is a problem that, you know, probably also the media follow up on the reductions is much less than the, than the original. Than the original. And so people don't even recognize that actually Monsanto wasn't really slapped, you know, hardly. It was like a mosquito at, at their, at their foreheads as opposed to a major problem. So something thing. I have no idea what is, you know, something is a miss there. And how might you solve it? I don't know. I think you are proposing that there is another problem. I don't yet see that there is that problem. Maybe there is that the public gets a little squirrely about the idea of large punitive damages delivered to individuals. There's a problem that you see, I don't know that there's a problem. And you've proposed something of a solution that is kind of vague. And I feel very concerned about the solution being proposed.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Okay, I have proposed a solution. It's not vague. You're concerned. What's the one nuanced solution? The solution is we have to fix the belief that the 14th Amendment protects corporations from egregious.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

No, but the.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Hold on. So we need to have punitive damages scaled to the size of the entity that has engaged in this bad behavior. And they have to not be protected by the 14th Amendment in this way. That's Illogical. Right. It was not designed to protect corporations in this way. So we need large punitive damages and we need corporations not to be immunized by the 14th Amendment because it's illogical.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

And so the justification by the appellate courts comes back to the 14th Amendment each of these times.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, the equal protection clause. So that's just. Well, I think the answer is, it's obvious what this does when you have these massive judgments reduced on appeal. What it does is it has Bayer, the owner of Monsanto, which is suffered substantial loss in its valuation after buying Monsanto, because these judgments are mounting and it's looking for relief from. The federal government, wants to be freed from responsibility. It's still selling the stuff. Right. So here's my point. You don't want that liability. Stop creating new victims. It's obvious. And what do we know about the judgments that were ultimately handed down? They weren't big enough. You're still selling. Selling the stuff.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Right.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So I'm probably still developing. I don't know. But my guess is that they're also still developing the Roundup Ready crops, which are, you know, the crops that are particularly resistant, which then use tons of.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

The stuff, which puts the very people.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

The idea of Roundup Ready means bring it on.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah. It means that you can afford to drench the crop in the stuff. They're also developing this insane use where they use it to desiccate crops right before harvest, which means that people ingest a lot more of it. They.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

So the point is the bad behavior continues unabated. These judgments need to be bigger, not smaller. Right. Reducing them has left this behavior in place. And so this does, for me, connect back to, you know, the Journal, in my opinion. I know it's not yours, but in my opinion, covering its ass here. My feeling is this stuff's got to hurt way more if it's going to stop. That's my point. It's got to hurt way more. The natural level at which it needs to hurt has to be more if we're going to get people, people to stand up and block bad papers or retract them quickly once they find out that they've been had, which is what we need in the public. That's what. That's what we're owed.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Well, given that this, this particular Monsanto lawsuit that you've been talking about was from 2018. Yes. That's some years ago, but it's not. It's. It's a small fraction of this time that has passed since this paper was published. And I don't know when the rest of the reasons that the papers being retracted came to be understood. My guess is, and this is not how journals should work, but that it was no one's job, once it had been accepted and published, to go back and continue to relitigate, as it were, the paper. And so only at the point that these big lawsuits started happening did anyone at the journal start to think, now.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Wait a minute, I don't think that's true. For the following reason. Do we agree that I don't remember. Was it eight enumerated reasons?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. Only one of them was concluding.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

So, okay, I think each of them was sufficient on its own. Does that seem right to you?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. Although honestly, only one of them. I think I can go back, but only one of them was about the. The one that seems the most substantive and obvious to explain to anyone who, Whether or not they have any background in academia is this is a review paper. Review papers review what's known. Bingo, dude. How is this helpful? This is. What I'm saying is that if they never went back to it. Let me just finish the thought. I think that the only one of the eight points that is likely to have been knowable outside of the context of the court cases is that a review paper is expected, is required to review all that is known. And in fact, it did not review all that was known, and in fact only reviewed that which was cryptically or not so cryptically out of Monsanto in the first place. It was never a review paper in the first place. That should have been caught in peer review, that should have been caught by the editors in the first place, etc. Etc. But journals are not in the business of, once they've decided to accept and publish a paper, continuing to go back and be like, now did we make the right decision? Like, that's not what. That's not what journals do. Well, so I just, I don't. Look, I am not pleased that this paper has sat for 25 years allowing. Allowing actual grifters and fraudsters to poison an entire planet with this garbage.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yep.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

But I don't think that you can hold a journal to a standard of constantly reassessing everything that it has already published. No, that is an unreasonable standard.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, this. This was exactly my point. I'm sorry I said bingo, but this is why I said it. They will have known almost immediately that they screwed up and that this review paper was no such thing.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

No, they will not have.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

You don't think they got a slew of correspondence People saying, hey, wait a minute, you missed these 16 papers. This is a review article, and it doesn't cover these 16 papers.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Hey, I don't think there were 16. I think there were a couple.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Okay.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

And, no, I don't actually. And, you know, if they did, then that's a different situation and we will never know.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, so we don't know. We don't know. But I would say the contentiousness of the safety of glyphosate has been such. And they, in fact, mention in their concerns continue to have been raised. I would bet that that was immediately called to their attention and that that is their responsibility as a journal. The journal screwed up in this case. We published a review that wasn't one that missed important evidence that everybody knew was in the literature. So even though 2018 is the first judgment successful against Monsanto, it's not obvious that that's where the discovery would have happened, because it wasn't the first trial against Monsieur Monsanto. But even if that were the case, we only find out.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

But is discovery inherently a matter of public record? I don't think so. You have to know to make a FOIA request or whatever the appropriate request is in the first place. Like, there's just a lot of. There's a lot of contingencies.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Well, I agree, and I. And we don't know that history. You and I don't know. Presumably somebody does.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

But.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

But the journal published a paper about toxicology of a product that was being used widely in the world. That review article was not a review article. I think they will have known that quickly.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

But that's. But that's your opinion. We don't.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

That's my guess.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Fine, but you can't. Like, that's not a basis on which to formulate the argument that they were being irresponsible.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It's contingent, if I am right, that they will have known quickly that they published a review that was not a review. They should have retracted it earlier. Yes, I agree. There's lots of stuff published that they can't go back and reinvestigate. And the place to discover that is in future articles that say, you know, this experiment was done poorly, here's what it missed. But a review article is different. A review article that doesn't review and, you know, becomes the cited article is a hazard in a. Its own right.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. And, you know, among other things, I did not look at. So it's an Elsevier journal, which is the, you know, major academic publisher, but I did not look into anything about their History, you know, who, who has been known to support them. You know, Elsevier is, is giant and predatory in its own, its own different, different way. But Regulatory toxicology and Pharmacology already sounds like it's, you know, it's not a basic science journal, it's an applied science journal. And, and we don't know like we can, we can guess but I'm not prepared to claim that the journal has been grossly in gross negligence of what it should have been doing based on some suppositions about what they knew on when.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Fair enough. I would say that what we have learned about medical journals and the degree to which what is in them is thoroughly compromised by pharma, it's hard to see why this would be any different. You know, there's tremendous amount of money to be made in toxicology for obvious reasons people are putting stuff into the world and you know, there's lots of reasons to want your competitors product to look more dangerous than it is to make your product look safer. So I wouldn't expect it's any purer.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Than that on their site. And you can show my screen here. One interesting thing I find and you know we've begun to talk about this a little bit privately. I don't think we've said anything publicly but it's, it's amazing what becomes known and becomes a focus of human concern. And so your aim is and scope is the page I'm at for the Elsevier journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology which published this article establishing the safety of glyphosate in 2000 is now attracted at this year. They describe what they are and it's sort of as you would expect. It's an applied journal science. Here's the types of peer reviewed articles published original research articles, also news. Regulatory Toxicology and pharmacology. The last thing on the Aims and scope page is RTP Tobacco Policy Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology as the journal serving developments for improvement of human health and environment will not consider manuscripts that have been supported by tobacco companies. Now cool, I guess but nicotine is the enemy. Like I don't know that it's good for you. I don't know that it's helping people. You know it might it but there's.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

A lot that's where they're gonna draw.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

That'S where they're drawing the line because somehow we all accepted I think after you know, court cases really before you and I were conscious or you know, maybe you were conscious of them but you Know, everyone came to accept that smoking is bad for you.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Smoking cigarettes is bad for you. I don't even know to what degree. That research is absolutely well vetted at this point. But the idea that tobacco is the one tobacco company is the one named type of company that cannot be involved in any way in papers that are submitted here. Like if you, if you say that you received funding from NIH and the DoD and you know, the Bill Melanie Gates Found foundation or whatever it's called now, and you know, Philip Morris, then you're out. But if it was Merck and Monsanto and you know, well, then, well, then it's okay.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It's actually funny.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

And the Bill Melinda Gates foundation and you know, the welcome Fund or the welcome Trust, whatever it's called, I have now forgotten.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

You remember the film thank youk for Smoking in which. That was the film in which I at least became aware that there was a Bobby Kennedy Jr. I did not know that beforehand that he is, is the. He is portrayed in the film as the sort of protagonist because of his work in this, in this area. Tobacco is the one corporate entity that just lost this battle. Yeah, right. And it's like, okay, fine, yeah, these things suck. They're bad for you. We all. We admit it, but you're hooked. Right. But the point is that's the one that they're going to forbid bid is bizarre given the number of things that are actually harmful. And that's the one where it doesn't really matter because as you point out, we all accept. Doesn't matter what the toxicology says. We all, right or wrong, accept the harms of this one particular product. It's the harms that we don't yet accept, which are the ones that it's really important that this journal get right. And their mom about it.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. And you know, and they. And part of what they say here is that this is the journal serving developments for improvement of human health and environment, which means this retraction never should have been necessary because the paper never should have been published in the first place because it was neither a review paper nor written by the people that were claimed as authors. And it had direct and intense extensive contributions from the very company that makes the product that was supposedly being assessed.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Totally.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. Now we could stop there or we could. We had a couple other things that we were thinking about doing.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

We could save them both, actually. Maybe. Maybe we. We save them. Yeah. Yeah. The. The other one we had planned for today day will keep just as well. And I'd be up to explore it next time.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

All right. I think that's all right.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

That's the fiery episode of the Dark Horse podcast.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah, let's see. Let's see if I can find out what, what else we're gonna. Oh, so just a teaser for next time. One of the next. The stories we're going to be talking about involves leopards, martial eagles and pythons. That's it. That's all you get. You know you have to guess. You don't have to guess. You already know.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

No, I already know.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It would be easy for me to guess, but I'm fair.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. And you're not a cheater.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Nope, Nope, I'm not.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Never have been. Not interested. Okay. I don't even know what I'm supposed to do now because we sort of stopped all of a sudden. Okay. We'll be back not next Wednesday, but a week from Saturday and. And then the following Wednesday with. With a couple more episodes of Dark Horse. But there will be an inside rail episode publishing on the 11th, I believe, and another one this month as well. And gosh, I just feel like I'm forgetting to say all the things, but, you know, a happy new Year to everyone. I hope you know, we're already a week in. We're 1 52nd of the way through 2026. Wow.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Already?

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Already, already.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

I'm still writing 2013 on my checks.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Okay, let me ask you a question. Yeah, no, actually I was gonna. When was the last time you wrote a check? I think you actually have written.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Yeah, I've written a check. You know, I write. Was eligible, but probably for a year at this point.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. Now the island that we live on actually requires checks more often of. Of us because for better and for worse, we are still living 50 years behind technologically.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Better and worse.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

For better and for worse. Yes, Mostly for better. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although there's glyphosate on the islands and it's actually.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

It's forbidden on the island. Yes, there still is some. But.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah. So this is, this is not, this is not the time, but I think we've mentioned before for it is apparently forbidden in the San Juan Islands. Glyphosate. And there are state agencies encouraging and in fact employing it in order to kill some plants and encourage other plants so that an endangered lepidopteran can thrive. And it's just so short sighted and arguments with such people gets nowhere. Maybe now it'll get somewhere. Maybe now we can stop the application of glyphosate within African National Historical Park. My God.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Hell, yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

Yeah, this is. This has been a long time coming, and so as much as you and I disagree about the particular. You know where to focus our. Our dismay and anger, we are in absolute agreement that the retraction was necessary. And we hope that the EPA pays close heed and changes its directives when it has to do so this year.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Good. Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

So you have some. Something else?

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Nope.

[Dr. Heather Hying]

All right. Until you see us next time, be good to the ones you love. Eat good food and get outside.

[Dr. Bret Weinstein]

Be well, everyone.