Corporations are Inventing People to Rubbish their Opponents on the Internet

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Corporations are inventing people to rubbish their opponents on the internet

 

George Monbiot

Tuesday May 14, 2002

The Guardian , United Kingdom

 

Persuasion works best when it's invisible. The most effective marketing worms

its way into our consciousness, leaving intact the perception that we have

reached our opinions and made our choices independently. As old as humankind

itself, over the past few years this approach has been refined, with the help of

the internet, into a technique called " viral marketing " . Last month, the viruses

appear to have murdered their host. One of the world's foremost scientific

journals was persuaded to do something it had never done before, and retract a

paper it had published.

While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens' groups to campaign

in favour of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now they create fake

citizens. Messages purporting to come from disinterested punters are planted on

listservers at critical moments, disseminating misleading information in the

hope of recruiting real people to the cause. Detective work by the campaigner

Jonathan Matthews and the freelance journalist Andy Rowell shows how a PR firm

contracted to the biotech company Monsanto appears to have played a crucial but

invisible role in shaping scientific discourse.

Monsanto knows better than any other corporation the costs of visibility. Its

clumsy attempts, in 1997, to persuade people that they wanted to eat GM food all

but destroyed the market for its crops. Determined never to make that mistake

again, it has engaged the services of a firm which knows how to persuade without

being seen to persuade. The Bivings Group specialises in internet lobbying.

An article on its website, entitled Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World,

warns that " there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even

disastrous to let the audience know that your organisation is directly

involved... it simply is not an intelligent PR move. In cases such as this, it

is important to first 'listen' to what is being said online... Once you are

plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that

present your position as an uninvolved third party... Perhaps the greatest

advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where

it is more likely to be considered seriously. " A senior executive from Monsanto

is quoted on the Bivings site thanking the PR firm for its " outstanding work " .

On November 29 last year, two researchers at the University of California,

Berkeley published a paper in Nature magazine, which claimed that native maize

in Mexico had been contaminated, across vast distances, by GM pollen. The paper

was a disaster for the biotech companies seeking to persuade Mexico, Brazil and

the European Union to lift their embargos on GM crops.

Even before publication, the researchers knew their work was hazardous. One

of them, Ignacio Chapela, was approached by the director of a Mexican

corporation, who first offered him a glittering research post if he withheld his

paper, then told him that he knew where to find his children. In the US,

Chapela's opponents have chosen a different form of assassination.

On the day the paper was published, messages started to appear on a

biotechnology listserver used by more than 3,000 scientists, called AgBioWorld.

The first came from a correspondent named " Mary Murphy " . Chapela is on the board

of directors of the Pesticide Action Network, and therefore, she claimed, " not

exactly what you'd call an unbiased writer " . Her posting was followed by a

message from an " Andura Smetacek " , claiming, falsely, that Chapela's paper had

not been peer-reviewed, that he was " first and foremost an activist " and that

the research had been published in collusion with environmentalists. The next

day, another email from " Smetacek " asked " how much money does Chapela take in

speaking fees, travel reimbursements and other donations... for his help in

misleading fear-based marketing campaigns? "

The messages from Murphy and Smetacek stimulated hundreds of others, some of

which repeated or embellished the accusations they had made. Senior

biotechnologists called for Chapela to be sacked from Berkeley. AgBioWorld

launched a petition pointing to the paper's " fundamental flaws " .

There do appear to be methodological problems with the research Chapela and

his colleague David Quist had published, but this is hardly unprecedented in a

scientific journal. All science is, and should be, subject to challenge and

disproof. But in this case the pressure on Nature was so severe that its editor

did something unparalleled in its 133-year history: last month he published,

alongside two papers challenging Quist and Chapela's, a retraction in which he

wrote that their research should never have been published.

So the campaign against the researchers was extraordinarily successful; but

who precisely started it? Who are " Mary Murphy " and " Andura Smetacek " ?

Both claim to be ordinary citizens, without any corporate links. The Bivings

Group says it has " no knowledge of them " . " Mary Murphy " uses a hotmail account

for posting messages to AgBioWorld. But a message satirising the opponents of

biotech, sent by a " Mary Murphy " to another server two years ago contains the

identification bw6.bivwood.com. Bivwood.com is the property of Bivings Woodell,

which is part of the Bivings Group.

When I wrote to her to ask whether she was employed by Bivings and whether

Mary Murphy was her real name, she replied that she had " no ties to industry " .

But she refused to answer my questions on the grounds that " I can see by your

articles that you made your mind up long ago about biotech " . The interesting

thing about this response is that my message to her did not mention

biotechnology. I told her only that I was researching an article about internet

lobbying.

Smetacek has, on different occasions, given her address as " London " and " New

York " . But the electoral rolls, telephone directories and credit card records in

both London and the entire US reveal no " Andura Smetacek " . Her name appears only

on AgBioWorld and a few other listservers, on which she has posted scores of

messages falsely accusing groups such as Greenpeace of terrorism. My letters to

her have elicited no response. But a clue to her possible identity is suggested

by her constant promotion of " the Centre For Food and Agricultural Research " .

The centre appears not to exist, except as a website, which repeatedly accuses

greens of plotting violence. Cffar.org is registered to someone called Manuel

Theodorov. Manuel Theodorov is the " director of associations " at Bivings

Woodell. Even the website on which the campaign against the paper in Nature

was launched has attracted suspicion. Its moderator, the biotech enthusiast

Professor CS Prakash, claims to have no connection to the Bivings Group. But

when Jonathan Matthews was searching the site's archives he received the

following error message: " can't connect to MySQL server on apollo.bivings.com " .

Apollo.bivings.com is the main server of the Bivings Group.

 

" Sometimes, " Bivings boasts, " we win awards. Sometimes only the client knows the

precise role we played. " Sometimes, in other words, real people have no idea

that they are being managed by fake ones.

 

 

Source: www.monbiot.com

Addendum

At learning about the Chapela & Quist report, the Mexican government went on to

take samples from sites in two states, Oaxaca and Puebla, according to Ezequiel

Ezcurra, the director of the institute of ecology at the ministry of the

environment.

 

These states are the genetic home of maize. Therefore it is especially important

to protect the wild maize plants there from contamination.

 

A total of 1,876 seedlings were collected, and evidence of contamination of wild

maize was found at 95% of the sites, when screened with the cauliflower mosaic

virus (CaMV) 35S promoter [which is only found in GE plants /the editor].

Contamination varied from one to 35% of the maize plants, with 10-15 per cent

average.

 

Source: ISIS Report, 29 April 2002

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comment by PSRAST

This adds an additional dimension to the picture of seriously dishonest biotech

propaganda and manipulation of decisionmakers and the public.

 

Apparently the Biving PR company has invented at least two " virtual " persons,

and perhaps hundreds (which is fully possible with internet), for bombarding a

scientific journal in order to create the impression of a storm of " critisizm "

against a paper that represents a serioius threat to biotech interests. In

addition a " virtual " scientific " institute " , the " Centre For Food and

Agricultural Research " has apparently been invented by the same PR firm for

creating an impression of legitimacy to its fraudulent attacks on biotech

critics.

 

Most importantly, the critizism was not against the main very important and

disturbing discovery (for biotech) that GE maize has contaminated wild strains

(see Mae Wan Ho). It is directed against some technicalities that are blown up

so as to detract attention from the real issue. This is a classical propaganda

trick for confusing people. Exactly the same strategy was used against the world

renowned food safety expert professor Arpad Pusztai when he pointed out that

present methods for testing GE foods are inadquate (see The Pusztai case ).

 

The most serious thing about this story, is not only that " virtual " critics are

invented but that scientists who are secretly corporation -sponsored or

-dependent are used to mislead the public and governments about food

biotechnology. It is such fraudulent disinformation that has made it possible to

launch GE foods on to the market in spite of seriously inadequate knowledge of

their safety. This has been combined with threats, attempts to corrupt, and if

that does not work, attempts to have employers sack scientists who have dared to

reveal the real truth about GE plants and GE foods.

 

For more see:

 

Astonishing Denial of Transgenic Pollution. In this article, Dr Mae Wan Ho

explains why the critizism of the Mexican maize study is scientifically invalid.

Excerpt:

" The critics [are]...implicitly acknowledging the presence of transgenic DNA in

the [maize] landraces. In other words, they are not disputing that transgenic

pollution has occurred.

 

....Once again, the scientific establishment ...agenda is to keep the public

confused while transgenic pollution continues unabated.

 

The only decent thing for the scientific establishment to do now is to give

plenty of support to Quist and Chapela and others to extend their research. The

aim is to rule out the possibility that transgenic constructs could be

fragmenting and scattering, throughout the genome as well as throughout the

ecosystem, by horizontal gene transfer and recombination. "

 

PR strategies used to manipulate opinions about GE foods.

World renowned scientist lost his job when he warned about GE foods - The

Pusztai case

" Independent Scientists An Endangered Species " .

Dysfunctional science - Towards a " pseudoscientfic world order " ?

 

 

 

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