[Pollinator] Fwd: [beemonitoring] Fortune article on recent honey bee CCD study

Mon Oct 11 16:33:38 PDT 2010

As evidence that you can't believe everything you read on the Internet,
there has been quite a chatter on the beekeepers' listserve about the
accuracy (or not) of this Fortune article. What Jerry Bromenshenk himself
had to say about it is pasted in below, followed by one from another
beekeeper. There are two posting from Jerry. I deleted one long paragraph
from the first one, but if anyone wants to read it all, you can see it at
the Bee-L archives at
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=BEE-L;a31c0d8a.1
010.

Matthew

************************************************************

Date:    Sat, 9 Oct 2010 00:51:54 EDT

From:    BeeResearch at AOL.COM

Subject: Re: Paper on CCD

The Fortune reporter knows full well:

(1) the onion seed pollination work was done for a large U.S.  company,
there was no grant received from Bayer,

(2) the acoustic recorder is better at pesticide detection than  pathogens

- the latter part of the development is an ongoing research  project still
being funded by USDA.  

(3) we weren't asked by NYT to disclose our funding sources, it wasn't
brought up, and there was no need since this information is required by
PloS ONE before they will even review a paper.  You can find it on the PloS
ONE site.

(4) Bee Alert  Technology, Inc. is a technology transfer company  that is
legally recognized as an independent company in the State of  Montana,
affiliated with the University of Montana.  It is MT  State Board of Regents
Approved and has been since the early 2000s.  Intellectual property
agreements are in place, stipulating issues such as  patents, IP rights,
licensing, and if we ever make any money - which seems a  LONG way off, the
University receives an established royalty for research and  education.  

The Fortune article presents an assortment of lies and  half-truths by a 

reporter who left another magazine before it folded.   Unfortunately, this 

article has spawned a copy by New Yorker Magazine that added  an even more
inflammatory headline and chose to emphasize some of Ms Eban's  more
outrageous claims of what she alleges I said.  

The NEW version of this fiction appears at:

_http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/bee_mystery_unsolved_lead_inve.html_

(http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/10/bee_mystery_unsolved_lead_inve.html)

and  it also encourages reader comment, as does Fortune.

The only good thing about all this is that it can still generate a  smile,
courtesy of friends - such as the proposed title sent to me "Fortune's
Misfortune - Smearing  Scientists Is Liable To Be Libel ".

Thanks to all.   Jerry

Date:    Sat, 9 Oct 2010 17:39:01 EDT

From:    BeeResearch at AOL.COM

Subject: Re: Paper on CCD

In a message dated 10/9/2010 8:37:02 A.M. Mountain Daylight Time,
plb6 at CORNELL.EDU writes:

That  should be the "New York" magazine.

Thanks Peter -

Sorry, I was in a rage.

The Fortune author was fed a concocted story, and she refused to change the
story she had already written. 

I did not receive a grant from BAYER, so the whole premise of the  article
and its clone was false. 

Our study is based on data from the Premiere US ARMY lab for this type of
work.  I have 17 co-authors. 

I WAS livid - never did I think that our results would be so threatening
that I'd be personally attacked in an attempt to discredit the work of the
Army,  4 universities, 3 companies, and 18 authors.

Also, another beekeeper added the following:

Date:    Fri, 8 Oct 2010 20:43:30 -0700

From:    randy oliver <randy at RANDYOLIVER.COM>

Subject: Re: Paper on CCD

> 

> Re:

> http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index

> .htm

Just how low can a reporter stoop?  This story is patently libelous.

Just because a reporter has the clear agenda of blaming imidacloprid for all
bee problems, doesn't mean that she needs to fabricate some conflict of
interest nonsense about Jerry.

If she had actually taken the time to read the article, rather than just the
headline, she might have understood that Jerry's paper was not concerned
with pesticides, other than one brief mention, in which it says: "A survey
of bee samples from across the USA revealed traces of pesticides in many bee
samples, but none were shown to correlate with CCD," referring to Mullin, et

al.*

What they actually said was: "While exposure to many of these neurotoxicants
elicits acute and sublethal reductions in honey bee fitness, the effects of
these materials in combinations and their direct association with CCD or
declining bee health remains to be determined," so I do not feel that Jerry
misrepresented them.

What apparently ticked off the Future "journalist" was that she was afraid
that Jerry's paper might divert attention from her pet peeve--that Bayer's
neonicotinoids must be killing bees.  If she had taken a moment to read the
Mullin paper, she would have found: "Our results do not support sufficient
amounts and frequency in pollen of imidacloprid (mean of 3.1 ppb in less
than 3% of pollen samples) or the less toxic neonicotinoids thiacloprid and
acetamiprid to account for impacts on bee health."

This was not Jerry that said this, but the team of excellent pesticide
researchers cited below.

I've written to Fortune, suggesting that they publish a retraction of the
libelous claims.  Feel free to do so yourselves: letters at fortune.com

Randy Oliver

From: pollinator-bounces+mdshepherd=xerces.org at lists.sonic.net
[mailto:pollinator-bounces+mdshepherd=xerces.org at lists.sonic.net] On Behalf
Of Ladadams at aol.com
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 10:54 AM
To: pollinator at nappc.org
Subject: [Pollinator] Fwd: [beemonitoring] Fortune article on recent honey
bee CCD study

http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm

Laurie Davies Adams
Executive Director
Pollinator Partnership
P 415 362 1137
F 415 362 3070
423 Washington Street, 5th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
www.pollinator.org <http://www.pollinator.org/> 
www.nappc.org <http://www.nappc.org/> 
LDA at pollinator.org 

Take Action for Pollinators at www.pollinator.org
<http://www.pollinator.org/>  

  _____  

From: hgh at ufl.edu
To: beemonitoring at yahoogroups.com
Sent: 10/11/2010 10:26:04 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subj: [beemonitoring] Fortune article on recent honey bee CCD study

http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm

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