LThe social sciences are interested for around fifteen years in the making of policies relating to environmental and health risks and the way in which scientific knowledge is mobilized to inform political action, or on the contrary excluded from decision-making. The case of glyphosate is typical of a change in regulations that can be dizzying. Is there a pilot on the plane?
This pesticide has been classified as a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Organization since 2015. However, policies regarding glyphosate are unstable and the science produced on its effects is marginalized.
At the end of November 2025, one of the most cited studies on the safety of the pesticide was finally disavowed by the journal of toxicology and pharmacology which had published it in 2000. On January 16, the Supreme Court of the United States of America announced, for its part, that it had agreed to examine an appeal presented by Bayer on the admissibility of complaints filed against the firm in different American states. The Missouri court fined Monsanto (acquired by Bayer in 2018) $1.25 million (€1.07 million) in 2023 for failing to warn about the cancer risks of glyphosate. Bayer argues that the product was approved without a health warning by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for which glyphosate is not carcinogenic. The firm, supported by the Trump administration, considers that the federal regulatory framework should take precedence over that of the states.
The processes described by science historian Naomi Oreskes in The Merchants of Doubt (Le Pommier), the work published with Erik Conway in 2010, explains these procrastinations or these paradoxes. Regarding the effects of tobacco, the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain due to pollution, climate change, the same methods were used. This involves manipulating scientists, using financial arguments and/or mobilizing ideological motivations, in order to exaggerate the level of doubt or amplify the uncertainties that may exist. Suggest that knowledge is not solid enough to minimize the problem and dismiss science, organize the delay of action, the postponement. Behind the uses of a so-called debate on science, it was a question of blocking political action, and specifically state regulation.
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