Update: As this article was about to publish in December 2018, Hank Campbell was removed from the staff roster of the American Council on Science and Health, the organization he has led as president since July 2015, for unknown reasons. A few days later, he delinked his ring of science blogs (Science 2.0, Science Codex, ScienceBlogs) from ACSH.org.

Hank Campbell was president of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) from 2015-2018. ACSH claims to be a “pro-science consumer advocacy organization, but documents reveal it is a corporate-funded group that receives money from industries ACSH promotes and defends.

According to internal financial documents leaked to Mother Jones in 2012, ACSH receives funds from a wide range of tobacco, pharmaceutical and chemical companies, and it pitches product-defense services to these companies in exchange for funds. Emails released via litigation establish that Monsanto funded ACSH and asked the group to defend glyphosate from cancer concerns.

Campbell took over the leadership of ACSH in July 2015 from acting president Gil Ross, MD, a convicted felon who was jailed for Medicaid fraud. Tax records show that Dr. Ross was still on the ACSH payroll as of 2017 with $111,618 in compensation as “former senior director of medicine and public health,” while Campbell received $224,358.

Prior to leading ACSH, Campbell worked in software development, created what he calls the “world famous Science 2.0 movement,” and wrote a book about the “anti-science” left. He runs a ring of questionable science websites, including one that posted anti-Semitic materials that Campbell tried to defend.

Campbell’s network of for-profit, non-profit science blogs

NYU Professor Charles Seife posted documents in November 2018 that shed light on Campbell’s network of science blogs that help promote the American Council on Science and Health. In a Twitter thread he called Mapping a Monsanto-loving octopus, Seife reported:

• Campbell’s corporation ION Publications LLC (founded in 2008) owns several science blogging websites, including Science 2.0, Science Codex and others. According to its most recent tax records, ACSH paid ION $60,000 as a “website development service that promotes ACSH.org and increases traffic to the website.”
• In 2018, Campbell converted Science 2.0 into a nonprofit and then acquired ScienceBlogs.com. The nonprofit’s officers are Campbell and David Zaruk, a former chemical industry lobbyist who once worked for the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. The science blogging websites under these umbrellas cross-promote each other and the ACSH.org website.

Seife summed up his Twitter thread: “this is how a once-admired science blogging site, @scienceblogs, was acquired by a complex and, IMO, shady network of for-profits and non-profits helping Monsanto.”

Helping Monsanto

According to documents released via litigation, Monsanto paid the American Council on Science and Health in 2015 to defend glyphosate and help discredit the scientists of the World Health Organization’s cancer research panel for their report raising cancer concerns about the herbicide.

The documents indicate that Monsanto executives were uncomfortable about working with ACSH but did so anyway because “we don’t have a lot of supporters and can’t afford to lose the few we have,” Daniel Goldstein, Monsanto’s senior science lead, wrote in an email to colleagues. Goldstein provided links to two books, a pamphlet, a pesticide review and 53 articles on the ACSH.org website that he described as “EXTREMELY USEFUL” (emphasis his).

Anti-Semitic material on Science 2.0

Some former writers for ScienceBlogs.com refused to grant rights for their work to remain on the site due to its association with Campbell and Science 2.0, and other observers called on writers to do the same. At issue was Science 2.0’s publishing of anti-Semitic material, which Campbell tried to explain and defend.

In response to the criticism, Campbell removed some posts by the physicist Sascha Vongehr, including one titled, “One Thing Hitler Did Wrong.” The removal notice describes Vongehr’s work as “satire” that came off as offensive due to the “the author’s imperfect grasp of the English language.” Science 2.0 continues to display dozens of articles by Vongehr, including some that contain various anti-Semitic sentiments, such as a post in which Vongehr describes himself as “a Germanic racist” and another titled “Advanced Racism For Dr Duke And Prof Slattery: Why Hate Jews?”

Related: Science 2.0 refuses to remove Nazi eugenics blog posts, by Keira Havens, Medium (7.9.2018)

Using USA Today as an outlet

In February 2017, two dozen health, environmental, labor and public interest groups wrote to the editors of USA Today with concerns that the paper regularly publishes science columns authored by ACSH staff, including Campbell, without disclosing ACSH’s funding from multiple corporate interests. ACSH Vice President of Scientific Affairs Alex Berezow, who co-authored Campbell’s 2012 book, remains on the USA Today Board of Contributors but his bio there does not disclose his leadership staff position at ACSH.

Related:

• Newsweek and USA Today Need Standards for Opinion Writers, by Stacy Malkan, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (2.2.2018)
• Public Interest Groups to USA Today: Dump Corporate Front Group Science Columns, letter to editors (2.23.2017)
• USA Today Fail: Trump Science Article Written By Corporate Front Group, by Stacy Malkan, Alternet (6.1.2016)
• The American Council on Science and Health is a Corporate Front Group, USRTK fact sheet