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Dr. Jonathan Lundgren, a respected expert when it comes to the risk assessment of pesticides and genetically modified crops, worked for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research (ARS) for more than a decade. But when his findings on the ill effects of systemic pesticides and RNAi on pollinators began to gain traction and visibility, the harassment and the punishments did as well. The 40-year-old agro-ecologist and entomologist hoped that if he kept his head down, the increasing aggression would dissipate. But it didn’t. His scientific work continued to be disrupted along with his ability to communicate with other colleagues as well as the press. Ultimately the coercion and intimidation derailed Lundgren’s career trajectory and he stepped down as lead scientist and lab supervisor. Are political officials suppressing and altering scientific findings and conclusions that don’t jive with industry interests? “USDA is blocking science,” affirms Lundgren, “and I refused to be silenced.” On behalf of Lundgren, The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed an official Whistleblower complaint. “Censorship of public agency science does not affect only scientists –it concerns the public at large as well as every entity relying upon the integrity of USDA science,” stated PEER executive Direction Jeff Ruch. “USDA cannot piously pledge its devotion to scientific integrity while at the same rebuffing any attempts to safeguard it.” Separately PEER has also filed a lawsuit against the USDA to strengthen its Scientific Integrity Policy. The suit targets official restraints on USDA scientists who publish or speak about their findings in peer-reviewed journals, before professional societies, and other unofficial settings. In a letter dated June 11, 2015, USDA chief scientist Catherine Wotecki wrote that the agency refused to consider the substance of the petition because scientific integrity only affected its “internal personnel rules and practices” and was therefore exempt from the public notice and comment process normally required of agency rules. Neonicotinoid seed treatments, manufactured by Bayer and Syngenta, have been harming honeybees since they were introduced on the marketplace in the mid ‘90s. They are the most widely used insecticides with sales of about $2.6 billion. Today they’ve infected our soil, waterways, they’re harming our pollinators, harm developing brains, and have also been found in our blood stream. Lundgren’s troubles began around March of 2015 when he submitted an article to the scientific journal Naturwissenschaften (The Science of Nature) ; his data illustrated that the seed treatment and systemic pesticide Clothianidin kills monarch butterfly larvae in the laboratory, and that these pesticides were found in milkweed plants (the only food source for developing larvae) under field conditions. Several months after Lundrgen’s article was published, his direct supervisor Sharon Papiernik confronted him and informed him that the paper shouldn’t have been submitted without “official” approval. She was also visibly upset that he’d conducted a radio interview on the topic. “The USDA gave me the okay [to publish the study] and then after the paper drew international attention from the media, said they never did,” recalls Lundgren. Not long after that incident, The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and Pennsylvania No-Till Alliance scheduled Lundgren to give presentations on his research on the effects of genetically modified crops on farmland ecology. It is customary for these organizations to cover his travel expenses to Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. Lundgren was literally boarding the plan when his superiors instructed him to return home and reimburse airfare costs out of his own pocket. He was reprimanded for not completing the requisite paperwork. He was told to return to his duty station immediately, that he was officially AWOL and would not be paid for the week, and that he needed to pay for all travel expenses out of pocket. This was his first accidental oversight on travel paperwork in 11 years, and three other employees had had similar travel oversights within 6 weeks before Lundgren, and received no discipline. Next, he was suspended for 30 days, before they reduced it to two weeks without pay. “That’s a severe punishment for doing my job,” Lundgren said in an interview from his South Dakota homestead Blue Dasher Farms. “The tax payers, farmers, and beekeepers paid for this research to be done. I don’t work for the government, I work for the people of the United States. They deserve to know the latest science on these issues, even if that data is politically inconvenient.” The suspension affected his personnel file, harmed his reputation, and cost him over $9,000 in lost pay and expenses. In total USDA cited two infractions: providing some of his research to a scientific journal without proper approval, and violating official travel policies in connection with lecture he delivered in Philadelphia and Washington. However Lundgren says these actions were not justified and in reality they were trying to block his research. “I am not even anti-gm or anti-pesticide,” says Lundgren. “I just believe that if there are safer methods they should be used first. If you do things right, you don’t’ need them.” Lundgren has been critical of gmo’s and systemic pesticides in the past. One paper he coauthored suggested that soybean seeds pretreated with Syngenta’s thiamethoxam (another nicotine-based systemic pesticide) produces no yield benefits to farmers, who pay extra for the seeds and may even be hurting beneficial predators in soybean fields that farmers need to manage the aphids that the insecticide isn’t controlling. And in 2013, he wrote a paper in Bioscience, on the potential dangers of “gene splicing” pesticides (RNAi), which he said require further study to determine if they would possibly harm other organisms. He also peer reviewed a report published by the Center for Foods Safety called Heavy Costs, which was critical of neonicotinoid pesticides for proving little to no benefit to farmers and adversely affecting bees. We put a lot of emphasis on the importance of science without taking into consideration the politics involved. For starters, science is not independent. Many universities who conduct research, for instance, are indirectly funded by big corporations who give them donations.
