Tom Nickson, Ph.D.
Former International Policy Lead, Monsanto Company
Expert Bio
I worked for Monsanto since 1981 after earning a Ph.D. in organic chemistry. My experiences range from bench chemist, to 19 years of environmental risk assessment for biotech crops. For the last 10 years, I have chaired the Global Industry Coalition’s working group on environmental risk assessment, and attended every Meeting of the Parties (MOP) for the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety since 2004. I have served on 3 Ad Hoc Technical Expert Groups (AHTEG) on risk assessment and risk management under the Cartagena Protocol and participated in open-ended on-line forums for 4 years.
Studies, Articles and Answers
Showing 1 out of 1 results
Question
A: I’ll try to answer the first part of your question, but obviously, I can’t say anything directly about credibility. As you point out, both Bill Freese and Jack Heinemann are widely cited in anti-GM communications. They hold strongly to certain beliefs that a very large part of the scientific community does not share, but that do resonate within the anti-GM community. Two of these beliefs include that the process involved in modern biotechnology poses unique risks, and that the current regulatory processes used to evaluate risks are unsatisfactory. The majori [...]
A: Generally speaking, credibility, as it relates to scientific data, can be established via independent replication of study results and ultimately leads to acceptance of the data by other scientific experts. In consideration of newly generated data or the absence of study replication, credibility can be obtained by evaluating and characterizing the data against sets of criteria presented in several excellent publications (Klimisch et al., 1997; Conrad and Becker, 2011; Henry and Conrad, 2008). In the pesticide industry, data reliability is achieved through the conduct of toxicity s [...]
Health & Safety Other