Your claim to authority here is helping out claimants on a tobacco case, a situation where the companies were unquestionably guilty.
With Monsanto, you have to look at the context. They have been repeatedly sued and lost jury trials, with absurd damages into the hundreds of millions awarded to individual claimants. With any jury trial, the chance of Monsanto losing is (empirically) well above 90%. If you can settle 100k claims at a cost on the order of one percent of what individual claimants are making in their lawsuits against you, it's not unreasonable to take that.
As others have repeatedly said, the question has nothing to do with whether or not the science is on Monsanto's side. Expecting a corporation to act on the basis of moral integrity is pretty laughable, as I'd expect you agree. They're acting on the basis of what they think they can get a jury to accept. If it turns out that juries are particularly awful at interpreting and respecting scientific research, you have to take that into account. If it turns out that settling a class action for way less than claimants have been making in individual lawsuits solves a lot of problems for you, it's reasonable to do that.
Note that I'm not claiming that glyphosate is safe. I'm only claiming that you can't act as if the results of jury trials (or settlements made to avoid jury trials) settle the scientific question.
> Your claim to authority here is helping out claimants on a tobacco case, a situation where the companies were unquestionably guilty.
I’m not claiming authority, in fact I did the exact opposite, I highlighted my lack of experience in billion dollar plus cases. However, my experience is enough within the industry to provide alternative insights to someone who thinks billion dollar cases settle like your average rank and file case, or even more unrelated like plea deals in criminal cases.
And no the tobacco companies were not “unquestionably guilty.” First “guilt” is a criminal term and immaterial as we are talking about civil cases and civil liabilities. Second some tobacco cases still go to trial, the companies actually win some despite being “unquestionably guilty.”
As it relates to liability with respect to the tobacco cases the studies tend to show tobacco products increase lung cancer risk anywhere from 15-30% and the glyphosate study I referenced concluded a 40% NHL cancer risk increase. So naturally I’m curious about the standard you apply when you say the tobacco companies were “unquestionably guilty” unlike glyphosate manufacturers, when the increased risk of a given cancer is higher as a total percentage for glyphosate than tobacco. If tobacco companies were “unquestionably guilty” and glyphosate is shown to increase cancer risk as a total percentage more than tobacco, please enlighten me about the science.
Everyone here who has responded to my comment is talking about “the science”, including you, whereas I’m the only one that bothered to reference a single statistic from a glyphosate study and no one else has bothered to address that study on the merits, except one response that accepts the 40% increase risk as true, but argues that’s a “small increase.” Finally, I’m not acting as though the jury trial settles the science, but when I’m the only one to reference a study and the replies don’t dispute the study or bother citing any studies of their own, then 90,000+ voluntary settlements by the product manufacturer are useful enough for this discussion on HN.
With Monsanto, you have to look at the context. They have been repeatedly sued and lost jury trials, with absurd damages into the hundreds of millions awarded to individual claimants. With any jury trial, the chance of Monsanto losing is (empirically) well above 90%. If you can settle 100k claims at a cost on the order of one percent of what individual claimants are making in their lawsuits against you, it's not unreasonable to take that.
As others have repeatedly said, the question has nothing to do with whether or not the science is on Monsanto's side. Expecting a corporation to act on the basis of moral integrity is pretty laughable, as I'd expect you agree. They're acting on the basis of what they think they can get a jury to accept. If it turns out that juries are particularly awful at interpreting and respecting scientific research, you have to take that into account. If it turns out that settling a class action for way less than claimants have been making in individual lawsuits solves a lot of problems for you, it's reasonable to do that.
Note that I'm not claiming that glyphosate is safe. I'm only claiming that you can't act as if the results of jury trials (or settlements made to avoid jury trials) settle the scientific question.