> A UK team reported that colonies of bumblebees exposed to “field-realistic” levels of imidacloprid in the lab and then left to grow in field conditions grew slower than controls. They also produced 85% fewer new queens to carry on their line. That work was led by Dave Goulson, a bee researcher now at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. In 2006, Goulson had started a charity dedicated to conserving bumblebees, and people began telling him their concerns about neonics. 

> “To start with, I was pretty dubious,” he says. But by 2014, the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides (TFSP) — a group of 30 scientists, including Goulson — announced that it had analysed 800 peer-reviewed studies on neonics and bees, and found “clear evidence of harm sufficient to trigger regulatory action” … Goulson and Woodcock say some of the studies that industry cites as showing no harm are statistically dubious, and more flawed than the headline-garnering trials that show harm. 

> Goulson says his view has changed as the evidence has mounted. In 2014 — at the time of the TFSP's first synthesis report — he thought that there might be certain situations in which neonics were the best option. But since then, he says, there's been even stronger evidence of collapsing insect populations — and it is hard to regulate partial bans. “I think now I'd vote for a complete ban,” he says.

> Whatever regulators do, Goulson says, he is growing increasingly downbeat about the chances of any consensus forming between industry and academia on the issue. “I'm starting to come to the conclusion there will never be a game-changer,” he says. “There is nothing I think any scientist could do at this point to make people all sit down and have any answer.”

Cressey, D. (2017). The bitter battle over the world’s most popular insecticides. Nature News, 551(7679), 156.

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