Tyrone Hayes, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California-Berkeley, discussed scientific ethics in the face of corporate pressure Monday night at the Sanford School of Public Policy.
The talk focused on Hayes' study of environmental contaminants and how, he claimed, a chemical manufacturer attempted to discredit his research. Several years ago, Hayes said he was commissioned by the company Novartis—which eventually merged into Syngenta—to conduct research on the herbicide atrazine.
At the time, he said, atrazine was the single most widely used herbicide in the country—and about 80 million pounds of it are still in use each year. However, Hayes discovered that the herbicide was toxic and caused hermaphroditism and birth defects in frogs.
“They offered me a research contract to figure out if [atrazine] was an endocrine disruptor,” Hayes said. “We looked at a range of concentrations that could be found in the environment, and we exposed animals to it throughout larval development by dissolving it in water, as it is in the environment. Our hypothesis was, ‘it might do something.’ We didn’t know what was going to happen."
Atrazine is used as an herbicide for corn and is sometimes also used on golf courses and Christmas tree farms—a major industry in North Carolina. After reporting the negative effects on frogs he discovered, Hayes said he noticed a change in his relationship with the company.
“I initially reported a few samples [to the company]. So I analyzed more samples and more samples. But then it seemed like they were trying to slow down the progress," he said. "With each set of samples, it got worse and worse. They started to slow down, not provide the money, then they asked me to manipulate the data in ways that were not appropriate. At that point, I quit.”
After ending his contract with Syngenta, Hayes resumed his research on the effects of atrazine on frogs. Syngenta continued to try to stop his research from becoming public, he alleged, even going so far as to discredit him as a scientist by sending him threatening emails and appearing at his talks.
“They owned all of the data I had produced, so I had to redo all of it,” Hayes said. “I used to make a joke that they had a list of ways of ‘how to piss off a black guy.’ They had psychological profiles on me, and part of what they played on was the race card. They played on this imposter syndrome—you don’t dress right, you don’t speak right. They tried to make me uncomfortable with who I was. Every time they said, ‘you can’t speak this way or you can’t be like this,' I would step it up.”
But Hayes said intimidation was nothing new to him. He even alleged that Syngenta once interfered with a job offer he had received from Duke.
However, he did not stop his work and is still looking into health risks for humans—and is currently conducting research on factory and farm workers exposed to atrazine at high levels. In June, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report on the toxicity of the compound, noting differing levels of toxicity for different types of animals. A human health assessment is also set for release later this year.
“I started to realize that the impact is not just on frogs—we all make estrogen the same way, and it all functions the same way,” Hayes said. “Minorities are more likely to live in and work in areas where there are chemicals that we know lead to adverse health effects.”
Hayes noted that there is now a broad body of studies suggesting atrazine’s negative effects on prostate and breast cancer.
Hayes also said that his advocacy made him unpopular with his university. He described meeting with Berkeley administrators about harassment from Syngenta, and administrators told him he should get a lawyer.
“I said ‘fool, that’s why I’m talking to you!’” Hayes said. “Berkeley is a corporation. I am an employee. And the people that I call students are customers to Berkeley. I think that if I didn’t have tenure when all this happened, they would have let me go.”
Syngenta filed an ethics complaint with UC-Berkeley in 2010, claiming Hayes sent racy and offensive emails to company representatives, and the pharmaceutical company has repeatedly claimed there are flaws in Hayes' research.
After a question from an audience member about the morality of accepting corporate money for research, Hayes explained his true motivation for leaving his contract more than a decade ago.
“My father never graduated from high school. My father used to come home from work laying carpet and say, ‘the difference between employer and employee is a paper on the wall. Never let yourself be in a position where another man can tell you when to eat lunch and when to come home to your family,'" Hayes said. "The reason I walked out of the contract was that my dad said when I have that paper, no one can tell me what to do.”
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