>
> Re:
> http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm


Just how low can a reporter stoop?  This story is patently libelous.

Just because a reporter has the clear agenda of blaming imidacloprid for all
bee problems, doesn't mean that she needs to fabricate some conflict of
interest nonsense about Jerry.

If she had actually taken the time to read the article, rather than just the
headline, she might have understood that Jerry's paper was not concerned
with pesticides, other than one brief mention, in which it says: "A survey
of bee samples from across the USA revealed traces of pesticides in many bee
samples, but none were shown to correlate with CCD," referring to Mullin, et
al.*

What they actually said was: "While exposure to many of these
neurotoxicants elicits acute and sublethal reductions in honey bee fitness,
the effects of these materials in combinations and their direct association
with CCD or declining bee health remains to be determined," so I do not feel
that Jerry misrepresented them.

What apparently ticked off the Future "journalist" was that she was afraid
that Jerry's paper might divert attention from her pet peeve--that Bayer's
neonicotinoids must be killing bees.  If she had taken a moment to read the
Mullin paper, she would have found: "Our results do not support sufficient
amounts and frequency in pollen of imidacloprid (mean of 3.1 ppb
in less than 3% of pollen samples) or the less toxic neonicotinoids
thiacloprid and acetamiprid to account for impacts on bee health."

This was not Jerry that said this, but the team of excellent pesticide
researchers cited below.

I've written to Fortune, suggesting that they publish a retraction of the
libelous claims.  Feel free to do so yourselves: [log in to unmask]

Randy Oliver





*Mullin CA, Frazier M, Frazier JL, Ashcraft S, Simonds R, et al. (2010) High
levels of miticides and agrochemicals in North American apiaries:
Implications for honey bee health. PLoS ONE 5: e9754.

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