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Jonathan Matthews looks at how Kevin Folta tries to vilify, marginalize, and silence scientists he disagrees with
BuzzFeed recently caused a stir with a bizarre story about Dr Kevin Folta, the University of Florida scientist whose close ties to the biotech industry made the front page of The New York Times.
In the article, Brooke Borel explains how Folta created a “shady podcast alter ego” to interview scientists for The Vern Blazek Science Power Hour. Folta even used his deep-voiced Vern Blazek alias to interview himself about, among other things, how activists tried to tie independent scientists like him to Monsanto.
But Folta never told his listeners, or at least three of his guests, that he was the show’s real host. And when those guests finally found out about the subterfuge, their verdicts on it ranged from “surprising and unsettling” to “a monster fuckup”.
That resonates with how many people felt when they found out that Folta had posed as a wholly independent scientist at lobbying events and reporter meetings arranged and paid for by the biotech industry. Then there were the articles he put his name to which turned out to be largely ghostwritten by industry PR people. Not to mention, of course, the $25,000 grant he got from Monsanto, a company he repeatedly maintained he had no connection with.
Perhaps this is why the BuzzFeed piece so captured people’s imaginations. Vern Blazek gave concrete form to their sense that with Kevin Folta, what you see is not what you get.
Indeed, the gap between how Folta presents himself and what he actually gets up to is so extreme as to seem almost sociopathic. In these instances though, he doesn’t change his name, disguise his voice, or hide behind a pair of shades. Instead he makes use of a persona just as carefully crafted to deceive as his fake reporter alias, but more insidious.
Folta hides in plain sight in the guise of a kindly and respectful science communicator. He has even styled himself “The Lobbyist of Love”, claiming to be known for his “unending patience and softness, even in the presence of insults and idiocy".
Yet as we shall see, from under this guise of tolerance and respect, Folta engages in censorship, character assassination and antics that are devious in the extreme.
Kevin Folta is extremely protective of his reputation as a scientist, and so readily resorts to legal threats to defend it that NYU journalism professor Charles Seife has accused him of “screaming ‘defamation’ every few minutes”.
Folta told one of his admirers that, because stopping “defamatory statements in the internet age is not easy”, he had been “consulting with attorneys, and devising a plan that works,” adding, “It is no [sic] enough to send two to the morgue, you need a daisycutter that solves the problem for good.”
But despite his fierce determination to protect his own reputation, Folta is careless about the reputations of scientists he disagrees with. Just how careless is shown by his comments on Twitter about Dr Arpad Pusztai, whose research showed rats were harmed by GMO potatoes: “Pusztai should have to explain why nobody repeated his results in 17 years (because they were fake).”
There is no graver charge that can be levelled against a scientist than fraud – and the accusation is particularly inappropriate in Pusztai’s case because nobody ever dared try to repeat his experiment. When Prof Jack Heinemann challenged Folta to produce evidence to back up his accusation, Folta started to back down before blocking him with the hashtag #blockthewhackjob.
Folta doesn’t stop at labelling scientists whack jobs and frauds, he is just as ready to call them liars as well. When one of his supporters described Dr Michael Hansen, a senior staff scientist with Consumers Union, as “a congenital liar”, Folta agreed: “I know. Everything the guy says is a carefully worded half truth. His science background serves him well. He’s no big fan of most of the charlatans in anti GM, he’s just a more refined one.”
In another exchange, Folta described Dr Hansen as a “classic Gish Galluper [sic]”. The Urban Dictionary defines a Gish Gallop as a debating tactic “created by creationist shill Duane Gish”, involving “spewing so much bullshit... that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it.”
Folta’s contempt for any scientist who acknowledges uncertainties around GMO safety was made clear when someone mentioned the peer-reviewed statement affirming that there is no scientific consensus on the issue. Folta dismissed the hundreds of scientists, including molecular biologists and biotechnologists, who had signed onto the statement, by declaring them mentally retarded: “Science does not care about a few morons.”
Folta’s attacks on fellow scientists as fraudsters, charlatans, whack jobs and morons should not be seen as mere intemperate outbursts. This extreme character assassination serves a purpose – to destroy these scientists’ credibility, not through evidence or reason but through defamatory assertion. The aim is to stop them being taken seriously either as researchers or expert commentators.
Of course, the best way to silence the critics is to deny them a platform. And Folta attempted to censor scientists from speaking about the scientific uncertainties surrounding GMO crops and associated products like Roundup at a conference in Colorado called Seeds of Doubt, for which the Colorado Department of Education offered professional credits to medical professionals who attended.
Folta tweeted: “Want to scream on a Saturday? Anti GMO conference counts for Healthcare Continuing Education Credit! That’s sick.” And when a Monsanto seed dealer responded, “There should be some type of legal action that could be taken against these people and their agenda”, Folta replied, “I agree. I put in emails with CO dept of Ed. I will stop this one. I’m out there next week, so I can twist arms in person” (my emphasis).
Ahead of the conference, Folta published a blog that contained his usual brand of ad hominem attacks on the scientists involved: “The participants are not being educated, they are being lied to by expert manipulators that push an activist agenda.”
