Greetings.
We appreciate Peter Borst’s and Ghislain De Roeck’s interest in our
paper (Suryanarayanan and Kleinman, 2013; Social Studies of Science,
d.o.i. 10.1177/0306312712466186). We certainly want to improve our
understanding of the situation and are interested to hear any and all
criticisms of our work. However, Borst’s enumerated errors don't
actually speak to our paper and don't point to errors in it. We have
several reactions to Borst’s critique.
First, our paper is not arguing for or against the claim that neonics
harm bees. As we note in our paper, we recognize the “lack of conclusive
evidence from scores of field experiments by academic and agrochemical
industry toxicologists.” (pages 4-5).
Second, we make no claim as to what CCD is or is not, and neither do we
suggest anywhere that the CCD phenomenon is caused by the neonics. In
our paper, we say: “The emerging consensus is that CCD is not caused by
any single factor but is the result of a complex combination of multiple
factors, including certain agricultural pesticides, beekeeper-applied
chemicals, poor nutrition, pathogens, and parasites (USDA, 2010). But
which factors or sets of factors are more prominent and how they might
combine and interact to provoke the losses are still unresolved.” (page 3)
Third, we recognize that beekeepers have complained about insecticides
for decades, while themselves applying pesticides in their hives. On
page 11 we contend that “…beekeepers have consistently underemphasized
the potentially deleterious effects of the use of beekeeper-applied
chemicals. In face-to-face and electronic interactions, skeptical bee
researchers, beekeepers, and agrochemical representatives do not tire of
pointing out the potential double-standards in commercial beekeepers’
opposition to systemic insecticide use by growers and their implicit
acquiescence to the use of damaging in-hive miticides. While this
contradiction is, of course, denied by the beekeepers, their utterances
and mobilizations reflect their commercial interests and stakes, where
miticidal chemicals are seen as being necessary in the absence of viable
nonchemical alternatives.”
Some of the key observations in our study are:
There are an array of historically established organizational factors
that explain how and why commercial beekeepers’ knowledge claims about
the role played by newer systemic insecticides in CCD are subordinated
to those of academic and agro-industry toxicologists.
In gauging the health of their beehives, many commercial beekeepers tend
to take an informal precautionary approach which incorporates a
multitude of factors that might be affecting the health of their hives.
Their approach is shaped by practical experiences, commercial interests,
livelihood-stakes, and historical tensions with growers as shaped by the
political economy of US agriculture and the crop pollination market.
Scientists’ experimental approaches tend to isolate individual factors
and their direct, causal roles, and preclude serious consideration of
the environmental complexity impinging upon beehives. We trace the
prevalence of this approach to the primacy of the agricultural research
organizations such as the USDA and agro-economic contexts within which
early state entomologists and honey bee scientists practiced. The shared
culture of formal and informal norms, taken-for-granted assumptions, and
research practices, in which state, academic and industry entomologists
and honey bee scientists are bound, lead these scientists to choose the
prevalent experimental approach. This enhances their chances of securing
publications, grants, tenure, and attaining professional success.
At the U.S. EPA, a historical shift from a precautionary to a
non-precautionary ‘sound science’ approach to regulatory assessments of
environmental harm means that the search for definitive causal evidence
has also become the yardstick for federal regulation of pesticides. This
convergence in the approaches taken by university toxicologists and the
EPA has served well the companies that produce the insecticides-- they
have every reason to support and shape these approaches.
While none of the involved players deny the possibility that a complex
set of interactions, involving the neonics, explain CCD, the prevalent
experimental approach makes it extremely challenging to find definitive
evidence of complex causal relations and sub-lethal effects.
Furthermore, the dominant approach advocated by academic toxicologists,
the EPA, and agro-chemical manufacturers, justifies dismissing the
evidence provided by, and indeed, the expertise of, commercial beekeepers.
Sai Suryanarayanan, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of
Community & Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Daniel Lee Kleinman, Professor, Community & Environmental Sociology,
Associate Dean for Social Studies, Graduate School, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
--
Sai Suryanarayanan
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Department of Community & Environmental Sociology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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