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Background：

A review article published in 2000 was recently retracted. The study had concluded that the herbicide glyphosate had not been demonstrated to be carcinogenic. On December 5, the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology issued a statement announcing the retraction of the 2000 article, “Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans.”

According to the journal’s statement, the review’s central conclusion—that glyphosate had not been shown to cause cancer—was based entirely on unpublished data provided by Monsanto. In addition, the authors failed to incorporate other long-term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies, calling the objectivity of the review into question. More importantly, lawsuits filed in 2017 by cancer patients against Monsanto revealed internal company emails indicating that Monsanto employees may have been involved in drafting the article, despite not being listed as co-authors. These practices raised serious concerns about academic ethics.

A study published in September 2025 in Environmental Science & Policy traced the influence of this review article across academic journals, policy documents, and Wikipedia. The analysis showed that the paper ranked within the top 0.1% most cited studies in the glyphosate literature, exerting substantial influence on scientific debate and regulatory decision-making. The authors of the 2025 study subsequently filed a formal complaint with the editor-in-chief of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, requesting the article’s retraction.

Related Links:：

Retraction notice to“Safety evaluation and risk assessment of the herbicide roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, for humans” [Regul. Toxicol. Pharm. 31 (2000) 117–165]

Glyphosate safety article retracted eight years after Monsanto ghostwriting revealed in court

The Taiwan Science Media Center invited experts to provide commentary explaining the research integrity and academic ethics issues underlying this retraction.

Expert reaction:

December 11, 2025

Professor Yi-Yin Do, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, National Taiwan University

The review article in which the herbicide Roundup was concluded in no health risk to humans was published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology in 2000. According to Clarivate’s Web of Science this paper has been cited 614 times. This article was retracted mainly because it was written by Monsanto employees who were not acknowledged as coauthors. The authorship should be independent, accountable, adhere to academic ethics, and avoid potential conflicts of interest. The authors of this article made conclusions relied on unpublished studies from Monsanto and ignored many other published long-term chronic toxicity and carcinogenicity studies. The safety of glyphosate should be examined by independent scientists with no potential conflicts of interest, such as International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, who has declared that glyphosate is possibly carcinogenic in 2015. While retracting this paper cannot erase its impact, it at least sends a clear and belated message: academic fraud is unacceptable, regardless of how long a paper has been published, how many times it has been cited, or how much the journal profits; academic records must be protected.