Thread by @lovettbr

Something strange is going on with this article. 🤔huffpost.com/entry/monsanto…

Specifically, it is weirdly similar to a wiki-style entry on a website called SourceWatch written almost entirely by a user named "JessicaJames" (H/T to @mem_somerville for bringing this to my attention): sourcewatch.org/index.php?titl…

The entry has 18 references. Of these, 7 also appear in the @HuffPost article. It is not totally unusual that sources on similar topics would have some overlap, perhaps even this much overlap. Still, they seem oddly similar in how they're written.

To illustrate similarities, let's look at where these links coincide.

washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food…

HP: Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), who runs an organic farm, co-wrote a rebuttal with Anna Lappe, a best-selling food author and co-founder of the Small Planet Institute.

SW: On one occasion, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, who is an organic farmer, and Anna Lappé, co-founder of the Small Planet Institute, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post countering disinformation that Haspel had written about the food movement.

This is phrased similarly.

nytimes.com/2015/09/06/us/…

HP: A few months after the conference, The New York Times exposed Folta in a Sept. 5, 2015, front-page story for hiding his financial ties to Monsanto and becoming part of the company’s lobbying campaign.

SW: Months later, the New York Times ran a front page story on Folta's ties to Monsanto, based on emails uncovered by US Right to Know.

This SW edit was contributed by JessicaJames on 20 May 2018: over a year before the HP article was published. sourcewatch.org/index.php?titl…

senseaboutscienceusa.org/statscheck-hel…

HP: A quote from Haspel also appears atop the website for Sense About Science, a nonprofit that purports to deliver unbiased, transparent science to reporters...

SW: For example, the website Sense About Science USA features this quote from Haspel, "I live in fear of being taken in by poor-quality research, and STATS is invaluable to me"

It's not identical, but the arguments are similar. (Note: this was from user "MiniMouse")

theintercept.com/2016/11/15/how…

HP: ... but which has been cited for its own links to industry. (continued from above)

SW: "When journalists rightly ask who sponsors research into the risks of, say, asbestos, or synthetic chemicals, they’d be well advised to question the evidence Sense About Science presents in these debates as well."

The link to industry argument is a common thread here.

These appear in the same sequence:

washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food…

techtimes.com/articles/11422…

HP: Haspel tried to downplay the dangers of glyphosate... in an October 2015 column. However, she did not disclose that one of her sources, Keith Solomon, was a consultant for Monsanto...

SW: For example, in one column, she wrote about Monsanto's pesticide glyphosate, quoting Keith Solomon, an environmental toxicologist and professor emeritus at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Tamar did not disclose that Keith Solomon is a consultant to Monsanto.

huffingtonpost.com/entry/monsanto…

HP: When Ketchum partnered with Scientific American in 2016 to host discussions on science communications, HuffPost reported that Haspel was one of the three journalists chosen to speak on a panel.

SW: When Ketchum PR sponsored a panel on science and the public at the National Press Club, Tamar Haspel was one of the three journalists chosen to appear on a panel... [14]

This seems like the same sentence edited down to me. 🤷‍♂️

I'm not really sure what to make of this, but I wonder what other similarities there are and whether this is something @HuffPost is okay with. Should JessicaJames be credited for passages pulled for the HP article?