The afterlife of a ghost-written paper: How corporate authorship shaped two decades of glyphosate safety discourse

Abstract

Corporate ghost-writing is a form of scientific fraud: a paper is falsely presented as the work of people other than its actual authors. When such papers circulate, they undermine the integrity of scientific research and policy decisions based wholly or in part on that research. This paper examines the impact of a single ghost-written study, Williams, Kroes, and Munro (2000) (WKM2000), published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. The paper was crafted by Monsanto to support claims of the safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Despite revelations of its ghostwritten nature in the Monsanto Papers, the paper has not been retracted and continues to be cited. Using a case study approach, we trace the impact of WKM2000 across three domains. We find that WKM2000 has exerted considerable influence over two decades, shaping public understanding, scientific discourse, and policy decisions. WKM2000 has been frequently cited on Wikipedia to support the safety of glyphosate; attempts to contextualize its ghostwritten origins have been repeatedly reversed or removed, illustrating how corporate-sponsored science infiltrates public knowledge platforms. An analysis of policy and governance documents citing WKM2000 revealed that the vast majority referenced it uncritically. In academic literature, WKM2000 is in the top 0.1 % by citation count among papers discussing glyphosate, indicating broad uptake, with minimal acknowledgment of conflict of interest. Our findings underscore the need for stricter journal policies to screen and retract ghostwritten papers, in order to safeguard science integrity, as well as public health and safety.