GMOs and the puppetmasters of academia – what the New York Times left out

The NYT's expose of Kevin Folta's PR role as a pro-GMO shill in the employ of Monsanto barely scratched the surface of a huge web of corporate money, influence and intrigue that permeates the US's premier universities and scientific institutions, writes Jonathan Latham – from Harvard and Cornell to the AAAS. Why the reticence to name all the names?

Missing from the main Times article is a sense of the extensive and intricate networking of a small army of academics furthering the interests of Monsanto and other parts of the chemical, agribusiness and biotech industries.

“Reading the emails make(s) me want to throw up” tweeted the Food Babe after reading a lengthy series of them posted online by the NY Times on 5th September.

The emails in question result from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and are posted in the side bars of a front-page article by Times reporter Eric Lipton ('Food Industry Enlisted Academics in GMO Lobbying War, Emails Show'). See also this account on The Ecologist.