Talk:2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions about 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Lede POV tag

Latest comment: 9 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion

RockyMtnGuy, you tagged the article as having a biased POV lead. What are the aspects of the lede that you have issues with, and how would you prefer it to read? SageRad (talk) 14:12, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Suggest tag be pulled until the tagger makes a valid case. Jus da fax 14:40, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

The whole lede suffers from Political Spin (public relations), and apparently by people who know very little about the subject, so there's definitely somebody's political agenda at work here. Just as a wild guess, it might be Greenpeace, so here's a link to an article describing why Greenpeace's status as a nonprofit organization was revoked in Canada because it was found to be a political organization by the Canadian tax auditors: Greenpeace loses charitable status. Greenpeace appealed, several times, but the courts agreed with the tax auditors. Greenpeace argued it was revoked for political reasons, but there you have it: it's an advocacy group and they don't get tax deductions in Canada (unlike the US where everyone is gaming the system). There are all the signs of politics here, loaded language, red herring (fallacy), cherry picking (fallacy) of references, quoting sources with an a non-neutral point of view, all the things politicians love. Chemistry is not political, it is one of the hard sciences, and things are either true or not true. Half truths are not valid science. To quote the Wikipedia guidelines:

NPOV is a fundamental principle of Wikipedia

. This article is not neutral, but chemistry is, so it needs to be fixed. Everybody go away and read the Wikipedia:NPOV tutorial and the other links and we can all discuss it further.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 19:22, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

This seems problematic to me. I'm a hard science person, as well, and respect good sourcing. I want articles to reflect a neutral point of view, as well.

I think the whole conjecture that this page has been captured by a political agenda possible masterminded by Greenpeace is completely off-topic here.

The question of whether science is completely objective is also not so absolute as you make it out, and the choice about what science to include in an article can indeed be political, as well as the making of science (as we have seen in regard to climate change and some other areas in which there is a vested interest that wants to promote one model of the world over another that may be closer to reality). Chemical science is not immune to this. I caution you to be careful in your thinking on this, RockyMtnGuy and not to think that your point of view is the only valid one, and that other points of view must be advocacy and agenda pushing while yours is objective and neutral. I think that NPOV works when everyone recognizes that everyone has a point of view, and we work together to create an article that represents multiple valid points of view, especially on topic like this one, which has been fraught with contentious editing for a long time now, and is currently in the midst of an ArbCom case on the very subject of agrochemicals and GMOs.

Note that while you think Greenpeace is distorting reality, there are other who think that the industry is distorting reality. Note that companies like Monsanto are indeed advocacy groups as well, as they advocate points of view that benefit their corporate interests, just as Greenpeace advocates points of view that further their mission. SageRad (talk) 19:42, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Ahhhh, thank you, SageRad for opening the discussion on that flag...! I second Jusdafax for lack of case. btw: I do not see a civil case is made by replying to discussants "everybody go away...."--Wuerzele (talk) 20:33, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

And I state again that this tag be pulled. I do not see a valid case being made, just attempts to intimidate and shut down discussion. Jus da fax 20:37, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

RockyMtnGuy, to stay on point, what specific changes are you looking for in the lede? I can see tweaking the last sentence to be more clear that 2,4-D isn't the controversial aspect of Agent Orange to prevent the common misassociation that 2,4-D = Agent Orange and all the controversy behind it. Ledes are supposed to reflect the body, so it currently should summarize the current sections roughly. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:28, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I would be more convinced about the purity of Greenpeace's motives if I hadn't read Patrick Moore's book, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout It's an expose of the inside workings of Greenpeace by a former Greenpeace insider and I can recommend it highly. I love exposes by insiders and when you get one by an ex-CIA or ex-MI6 insider it's even better. Greenpeace, of course, insists that none of it is true, but it is consistent with what I've seen Greenpeace do in recent years. To summarize, Moore parted company with Greenpeace because he felt that the organization had been taken over by political radicals who knew nothing about science and were more interested in political goals than preserving the environment. He has a Ph.D. in Ecology, so he was mostly concerned with the science and objected to the politics. This article could be a classic example of the sort of thing Greenpeace has done in recent years, because it has all the political disinformation tricks in the book, and the science in it sucks.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 23:52, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Greenpeace doesn't seem relevant here with respect to the lede. I'm well aware of the kind of stuff Greenpeace does like other advocacy groups in this area, but as I reminded you on you talk page, please keep WP:NOTFORUM in mind so we focus on the content at hand. I'll see what changes I can make to the lede for now for a slight improvement, we'll want to focus on improves to the body first discussed below before focusing on the lede. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:31, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

The issue here is Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View policy, which states:

All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic.

In this article, the negative POV on 2,4-D is overrepresented, achieved by avoiding positive sources, and by cherry-picking neutral documents for only the negative results while ignoring the positive ones. There is little or nothing about the positive aspects of 2,4-D, notably that it has been in use for 70 years and was a factor in the Green revolution, which as that article states

The Green Revolution refers to a series of research and development and technology transfer initiatives, occurring between the 1930s and the late 1960s (with prequels in the work of the agrarian genetist Nazareno Strampelli in the 1920s and 1930s), that increased agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world, beginning most markedly in the late 1960s.[1] The initiatives, led by Norman Borlaug, the "Father of the Green Revolution," who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, credited with saving over a billion people from starvation, involved the development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers.

2,4-D fits into the green revolution as the first selective herbicide to be discovered that killed only weeds but not crops, and as such contributed to saving some of those billion people from starvation. That is a very positive fact should be mentioned. Also not mentioned are new soil conservation techniques such as No-till farming which require herbicides in lieu of tillage. Also there is the fact that 2,4-d is biodgradable and as such rapidly disappears from soil and water, and the fact that if ingested it is rapidly excreted in the urine. The LD50 is given as 639 mg/kg but that is not explained - in fact it indicates that 2,4-D is a lot less toxic if swallowed than Aspirin. Reading this article without knowing the history or chemistry, you would get the impression 2,4-D was mostly used in chemical warfare and is a highly persistent chemical which is retained in the body and is highly toxic. That's a strongly biased POV.

Also, I would point out that some people here are gaming the system. The open nature of Wikipedia allows that to happen. For instance, one editor went through and selectively rewrote over 5,000 articles on climate to reflect his own favorite theories. Of course, somebody noticed, so it was reported in the media: Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia. This sort of thing impairs Wikipedia's reputation and is one reason why university students are often banned from using it as a reference. I'm trying to make it a reliable reference, but that involves sticking to the facts and reporting both sides of controversial issues. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 19:47, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

EFSA tagged with "better source needed"

Latest comment: 9 years ago15 comments4 people in discussion

RockyMtnGuy, what issue do you have with the EFSA document used as a source, which you tagged here? Thanks for clarification. SageRad (talk) 14:22, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

The article says

In agriculture it is used as a soil application in orchards, while foliar application is used in grass hayfields, pastures, cereal grains, including corn and sorghum (occasionally)

While the reference is titled

Reasoned opinion of EFSA: Review of the existing maximum residue levels (MRLs) for 2,4-D according to Article 12 of Regulation (EC) No 396/2005

Which is rather thoroughly off-topic. Why would you expect readers to read through a 52 page document from Europe when various government agencies will give them a 1 page summary? That's what the article needs. Actually, I found the real source, the US EPA: Basic Information about 2,4-D (2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid) in Drinking Water, but it was talking about 2,4-D in private wells and wouldn't be my first choice of reference. Someone just cut and pasted the text, and then cited a totally different reference for it. Not good encyclopedia editing. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 19:44, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

The citation did specify the page numbers, and when i looked on those pages, i found a table that provided maximum residue levels for the crops in question in the content. The claim was that 2,4-D is sometimes used on certain crops, and i took that to be what the source was cited for, and think that it supports it. SageRad (talk) 19:49, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

RockyMtnGuy, re the "source title is rather thoroughly off-topic" are you serious? If so that comment is rather thoroughly off-topic. the source title is irrelevant as long as the content sources the claim. it suggests that you never bothered to look at the source, nor looked for an alternate source, that provides this information for the reader. if teher was a one page summary i would have used that. I added this content to the article way back when, and I rp'ed it to page 52 (so you dont have to read the entire document!), because that's where the info is. Your tagging of the source as "better source needed" is likewise inappropriate, the criticism beside the point, strawamannish. if you find a "better" source, according to your 1 page summary criteria, go for it.--Wuerzele (talk) 20:27, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

I think I see where RockyMtnGuy is going with this. The source isn't focused on the actual use of 2,4-D, what it's used for, etc as the source is a bit tangential focusing on maximum residue levels. Extension sources, etc. should give a more complete picture, so I'll do some digging around for some. Kingofaces43 (talk) 21:45, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

The section should indicate in more general terms what 2,4-D does, which is to say that it is a selective herbicide commonly used to kill weeds in a wide variety of agricultural applications, not just being "sometimes used on certain crops". It selectively kills most broad leaf weeds while leaving narrow leaf plants, e.g. grasses, grains, corn, etc. relatively unharmed. Starting in the 1940's, farmers started using it extensively because it killed most of their weeds and left their crops untouched. This resulted in a large improvement in agricultural yields worldwide, and a major reduction in deaths due to famine, which at one time not too long ago was a major killer in third-world countries. None of this is reflected in the article, and apparently some people would not like the public to know about it. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 00:18, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, better sourcing would be great. Let's work on this in a cooperative and friendly way. I find the summary sections of the Cornell Extension Toxicology Network page summary useful. Also useful, Wisconsin Dept of Health Services. Here is Purdue Extension document on 2,4-D. I like the extension service information sites, because they're not "activist" sites and they're not manufacturer or industry group pages. They're more likely to be less biased toward either strongly pro- or anti-pesticide points of view, and to provide a more balanced and nuanced perspective. I'd be open to including both industry and advocacy group pages, as well, as long as they are recognized as having a point of view and used accordingly. SageRad (talk) 01:08, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

In fact, last night i read a lot of that last source, the Purdue Extension document called "2,4-D- and Dicamba-tolerant Crops — Some Facts to Consider" and i highly recommend we use it to re-examine and re-source some content in this article. It seems well balanced, not biased toward either "side". Good contextualization. SageRad (talk) 15:42, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Some of these sources suffer from WP:Recentism since they are talking about the development of GMO crops - most of which were already resistant to 2,4-D. 2,4-D has been around since the 1940s, so the literature goes back 70 years, there have been a huge number of applications developed in that time, and not much is new information. If you want a current source, there is the US EPA: Technical Factsheet on: 2,4-D and Health Canada: More information on 2,4-D. However, they are looking at it from the health and regulatory aspects, so they have a narrow view of the subject. if you want a more extensive list of applications, you have to go to the industry because they are the one doing the research on it: The Industry Task Force II on 2,4-D Research Data because they devote an entire web site to it. The key point is that if you want to give a balanced presentation of the topic, you have to give the industry's POV as well as the government's POV and the environmentalist's POV. Pro vs. government vs. con.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 21:03, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

I do not believe you're correct in stating that most GMO crops were already resistant to 2,4-D, unless you mean in the weak sense in that 2,4-D is selective to suppress dicots and not monocots. When we speak of 2,4-D resistance, i think generally it means an engineered resistance, as explained in the Purdue Extension document: "Dow AgroSciences calls their 2,4-D-resistant technology the Enlist™ Weed Control System in corn, soybean, and cotton. This technology became possible when the company inserted genes into high-acreage agronomic crops that allow the plants to metabolize 2,4-D." The selectivity of the herbicide is a different matter. SageRad (talk) 19:29, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure I believe DOW (it's not just Greenpeace that I don't trust.) I know that corn is naturally 2,4-D resistant, and I have heard that soybeans have at least some natural 2,4-D resistance. However, I don't think cotton is naturally 2,4-D resistant. DOW is trying to imply that you have to buy their corn and soybean seed to get 2,4-D resistance, and their big fear is that farmers will realize that they don't have to rely on DOW for that. This is a huge problem for DOW, Monsanto, et al - their "intellectual property" might get away on them. For instance, if a farmer plants normal crops next to a field of "roundup ready" GMO crops, the crops might cross-pollinate, and some of the other farmer's seeds will become "roundup ready" without him paying a cent for it. All he has to do is plant the seeds, spray the field with roundup, and the plants that survive will be all "roundup ready". Then he harvests the seeds and he is ready to plant "roundup ready" crops the next year without paying a cent to a giant chemical company for the seed. That is the chemical company's greatest fear: Farmers will do their own genetic modifications, just as they have been doing since the start of agriculture millenia ago. It's a bigger problem for them in Canada than the US, since the Canadian Supreme Court has ruled they can't patent a living thing, unlike in the US where they can. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:33, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for some more explanation. Corn is indeed a monocot (grasses, sedges, etc -- linear leaves) and therefore is naturally resistant, but it's moreso that 2,4-D is selective to act upon dicots. Soybeans are dicots. I haven't heard of any natural resistance to 2,4-D among dicots. It could be that there are some conventionally bred resistant strains of some crops, as has been done for the Clear Field brand of herbicides (especially among sunflowers), but i haven't heard of that for 2,4-D. SageRad (talk) 21:53, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I somewhat underestimated DOW. I looked up the patent U.S. Patent Number 8,598,413 and it is somewhat more general than I expected. It involves "stacking" multiple herbicide tolerance traits in plants. As I mentioned, corn is somewhat resistant to 2,4-D but I checked and found it is highly variable depending on the particular strain and age of the plant. Too much 2,4-D can damage many varieties of corn. The particular 2,4-D tolerance trait patented involves inserting the aad-1 gene from the bacterium Sphingobium herbicidovorans that codes for the aryloxyalkanoate dioxygenase 1 (AAD-1) protein, which destroys the 2,4-D molecule. If they put in the aad-1 gene, a plant becomes totally 2,4-D tolerant. Then they can "stack" it with other herbicide tolerance and insect resistance genes to come up with a plant that is resistant to whatever herbicides and insects they want. Since Monsanto's patent on "Roundup Ready" soybeans has expired (other GMO patents will expire soon), and farmers can now grow their own seed, agroscience companies need to come up with something new to make money. DOW's patent allows DOW to come up with new varieties tolerant of whenever herbicides and insects they want. Genetic modification is starting to look more and more like building living organisms using Lego blocks.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 21:11, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Enlist Duo (by Dow) is indeed stacked with resistance to 2,4-D and glyphosate. That's an active resistance to 2,4-D that is beyond the natural degree resistance shown by monocots like corn. I believe that the market for Enlist Duo is partly due to resistant weeds emerging for glyphosate alone. SageRad (talk) 07:01, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

As per the article Enlist Weed Control System, Enlist Duo is just a mixture of glyphosate and a 2,4-D salt with a few other chemicals which DOW claims has low volatility and will minimize drift. As the article says, some weeds have developed glyphosate resistance, but 2,4-D will kill most of them. The GM corn and soybeans have both glyphosate and 2,4-D resistance "stacked" together, so farmers can just plant these GM grains and then spray them with the chemical mixture to kill most of the weeds. It's kind of a biological arms race - weeds trying to evolve faster than chemicals can be invented to kill them. Farmers could always spray glyphosate and 2,4-D separately, but that would be twice as much work.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 19:34, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

Latest comment: 9 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

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I checked it and it looks good. The US EPA is generally considered a reliable source. Note, however, the following text in the reference:

The U.S. EPA stated, “Based on chronic studies on animals, 2,4-D has been classified as a Group D chemical, one that is not classifiable as to human carcinogenicity. Although 2,4-D continues to be the focus of epidemiological and laboratory studies, both EPA’s review and the Scientific Advisory Panel have concluded that the available evidence is insufficient to classify 2,4-D as a human carcinogen” (1) (www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0150.htm). A more recent review by the U.S. EPA in 2005 concluded “there is no additional evidence that would implicate 2,4-D as a cause of cancer” (1). The World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has not evaluated 2,4-D and chlorophenoxy herbicides for carcinogenicity, and these herbicides are not listed as a priority for future evaluation

Which happens to directly contradict some of the text in this article.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 19:12, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

I would also like to add that statements like " 2,4-D is a possible carcinogen per WHO", in addition to being incorrect per the above reference, also contain another Informal fallacy: to wit, Argument from authority.

Argument from authority, also ad verecundiam and appeal to authority, is a common form of argument which leads to a logical fallacy. In informal reasoning, the appeal to authority is a form of argument attempting to establish a statistical syllogism. The appeal to authority relies on an argument of the form:
* A is an authority on a particular topic

* A says something about that topic

* A is probably correct

Fallacious examples of using the appeal include any appeal to authority used in the context of logical reasoning, and appealing to the position of an authority or authorities to dismiss evidence, as authorities can come to the wrong judgments through error, bias, dishonesty, or falling prey to groupthink. Thus, the appeal to authority is not a generally reliable argument for establishing facts.

If you have a number of different authorities who disagree on a subject, you shouldn't cite just one as being the final authority. The WHO in particular seems to be susceptible to groupthink. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:32, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I referred to the WHO because it recently classified red meat as "probably" carcinogenic - which should make it one level more dangerous than 2,4-D, which they classify as only "possibly" carcinogenic. When quoting them you should put words like "probably" and "possibly" in scare quotes to warn the reader that they are using the words in a non-conventional sense. They are speaking bureaucratese rather than normal English. They really need to be more careful how they phrase things because this confuses people and undermines their credibility.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 22:43, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

edits by RockMtnGuy

Latest comment: 9 years ago6 comments2 people in discussion

For the second time user:RockyMtnguy pushes sourcing to 24d.org.(an industrial source) First here calling an industry ref "a more useful reference with more application information", then here with editsummary "noncontroversial information and 24d.org is the info aggregator. I'll just delete the 1 citation and find 13 other sources for it." However, he didnt provide any ref.Re-everting is editwarring, absent discussion it is WP:disruptive Adding unsourced info with a pseudoreference (TBA) is inappropriate; this is an encyclopedia no stompground no playground I find this immature and unserious editing behavior.

Of note this editor applied 2 tags for "disputed factual inaccuracy of the article" and "neutrality of this article's introduction is disputed."--Wuerzele (talk) 01:46, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

My point in saying that I will find 13 other sources for the information is that I CAN find 13 other sources for it, but I shouldn't have to. Under NPOV criteria, the chemical industry deserves its day in court in the interest of fairness - you should not assume that chemical companies are THE FORCES OF EVIL and anything they say is AN EVIL LIE, which apparently you do. OTOH, the onus should be on you to find sources that prove information entered by other editors wrong before deleting or changing it. Good luck with that since the information I entered is not wrong. It is just facts.

The main problem is that you have systematically introduced an anti-industry bias into the article by 1) misquoting non-industry sources to put 2,4-D into a darker light than was intended, and 2) refusing to accept any industry sources for any kind of information whatever, whether controversial or not. This is not good encyclopedic writing. Let me quote from the Wikipedia standard: Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

Achieving neutrality

As a general rule, do not remove sourced information from the encyclopedia solely on the grounds that it seems biased. Instead, try to rewrite the passage or section to achieve a more neutral tone. Biased information can usually be balanced with material cited to other sources to produce a more neutral perspective, so such problems should be fixed when possible through the normal editing process. Remove material only where you have a good reason to believe it misinforms or misleads readers in ways that cannot be addressed by rewriting the passage.

Due and undue weight

Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources.

In this case, you are preventing one viewpoint - the industry viewpoint - from being heard at all, while systematically misrepresenting the government viewpoint by quoting only negative information while ignoring positive information. In addition to removing positive information, you are also removing a lot of useful, non-controversial information, resulting in a largely fact-free article with little useful information at all. So I'll re-revert, and you can re-re-revert, and we can go off to arbitration about it. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 22:09, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Sadly, I see you keep

butchering the article, reverted here,

using Wikipedia:Rhetoric language ("Adding one of the threatened "13 other sources"). Or rhetoric like "In this case from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture. Who knows more about grain than Saskatchewan? Nobody.") this is totally unserious.

pushing statements into paragraphs history here where they do not belong!

You disrupt the page not seeking consensus: YOu find UNILATERALLY that 24d.org is okay for example: "24d.org vetted and found to be a legitimate chemical industry web site". I told you to see archive, even jytdog recognised it wasnt okay !

Stop reverting and pushing controversial edits. The next step is WP:dispute resolution, my friend. --Wuerzele (talk) 23:43, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't use rhetoric, I use rigorous logic in my editing, hence the lessons in logic I previously put here to point out the obvious logical fallacies in the article. I also tend to inject some humor into my comments but not the article itself. You have a narrow definition of what a consensus is. I don't see that there is a consensus here, what I see is that you are acting as a Mindguard, censoring the article to prevent the inclusion of any information that does not fit into your own particular Worldview. Unfortunately for the reader, there is a lot of useful information that doesn't fit into your apparently narrow worldview. I checked 24d.org and found that it is a registered lobby group in Canada - a legitimate industry trade organization. It originally had 13 members, but has shrunk because 2,4-D manufacturing isn't very profitable. Lobby groups in Canada operate under very strict rules - see: Ten Things You Should Know About Lobbying In particular, if a group claims to do research, the Canadian government will actually check to make sure it does legitimate research (not so much in the US). In addition, I wasn't really kidding about finding "13 other sources" because the information I added is generic information that is available from numerous other sources. If you insist on more sources, I can find more sources. So far I have used the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture (Saskatchewan grows twice as much wheat as Kansas), the University of California at Berkeley, and Wessels Living History Farm. I have fine tuned the text somewhat based on what they said, but it doesn't differ significantly from what 24d.org said. I also found some interesting history that indicates 2,4-D was developed during WWII by four independent groups who neither patented nor published their research under wartime secrecy laws. That accounts for some of the confusion about its origins. If I get a chance (i.e. you don't revert it because it doesn't fit into your worldview), I'll put it in the article.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 22:07, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Looking deeper into the references for this article, it becomes apparent that editors have been starting from sources like this one from the Natural Resources Defense Council and then trying to find references to back them up:

What You Should Know About 2,4-D - Widely Used Lawn Pesticide Contaminates Air and Water

Despite dozens of scientific studies that link the toxic pesticide 2,4-D (2,4-dichlorophenoxy acetic acid) to cancer and other health risks such as cell damage, hormonal interference, and reproductive problems, 46 million pounds of 2,4-D are applied to U.S. lawns, playgrounds, golf courses, and millions of acres of agricultural land every year. This toxic pesticide contaminates our air and water, finds its way into our homes where it poses a higher risk to children, and the use of 2,4-D could be on the rise if new genetically modified corn and soybean crops are approved. To protect the health of thousands of Americans, NRDC recommends that the Environmental Protection Agency restrict use of 2,4-D and that the U.S. Department of Agriculture not allow new 2,4-D Ready crops on the market.

and then they go looking for sources to back that up. Unfortunately, they aren't going to find any because the NRDC article consists of hyperbole and urban myths, rather than actual facts. Technically, these are known as Factoids - statements which look like facts but in fact are not real facts. If you check them against what they claim are the sources, you will find that they are misquoting them and their facts are false, which is why the EPA rejected NRDC petition, and the courts rejected the NRDC lawsuit about the EPA rejection of their petition. This sort of thing is why the NRDC is on my list of unreliable sources. Please don't quote what they say, and then try to cite some more reliable authority as a reference, because that reference will usually contract them. The use of factoids from unreliable sources but citing different WP:Reliable sources which don't actually support the factoids is a serious problem with this article. See also Harvard Guide to Using Sources: What's Wrong with Wikipedia?, The Top 10 Reasons Students Cannot Cite or Rely On Wikipedia, and Why You Shouldn't Use Wikipedia for Research for more things you need to do better or not do at all to make Wikipedia better and more encyclopedic.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 22:57, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

See also the Woozle effect for information about how factoids and urban myths find their way into articles like this one. Check your sources, check your sources, check your sources, and watch out for woozles.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 23:06, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Disputed

Latest comment: 9 years ago29 comments5 people in discussion

Numerous factual inaccuracies, cherry picking, and a slough of red herrings

I came upon this article because I wanted to check the facts on the herbicide before I used it to kill the dandelions on my lawn. Since I often edit Wiki articles and am a stickler for balance and accuracy in articles, I was horrified by what I saw. I got a chemistry degree in my youth, and later designed a hazardous waste management system for the oil industry (I also got a computer science degree), so I feel qualified to criticize.

2,4-D is a possible carcinogen per WHO... What the WHO actually said per the reference in the body was:

The herbicide 2,4-D was classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on inadequate evidence in humans and limited evidence in experimental animals.... However, epidemiological studies did not find strong or consistent increases in risk of NHL or other cancers in relation to 2,4-D exposure.

and highly toxic to fish and other aquatic life. What the EPA really said was:

2,4-D generally has moderate toxicity to birds and mammals, is slightly toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates, and is practically nontoxic to honeybees.
The ester forms of 2,4-D can be highly toxic to fish and other aquatic life.

Carefully follow label directions to avoid harmful effects.

2,4-D was one of the ingredients in Agent Orange, the herbicide widely used during the Vietnam War.... According to the EPA:

2,4-D is not Agent Orange.
Agent Orange was a mixture of two different herbicides 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D (as well as kerosene and diesel fuel).

2,4,5-T contained high levels of dioxin, a contaminant, found to cause cancer and other health problems in people.

2,4-D does not contain detectable levels of dioxin.

We canceled all uses of 2,4,5-T in 1985 and no longer allow its use in the United States.

There are a lot of red herrings and cherry picking of reference material in this article (see Wikipedia guidelines), so I detect a definite political agenda at work, especially with the allusion to the Vietnam War, which ended 40 years ago and is irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. I am beginning to come around to the opinion of Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace and author of "Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout" when he said:

To a large extent the environmental movement was hijacked by political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anticapitalism and antiglobalism than with science or ecology.

I get the impression, based on some comments about DOW employees here, that having worked and consulted for giant multinational oil companies (designing systems to track and dispose of hazardous waste without damaging the environment), that some of the anticapitalism and antiglobalism activists will consider me to be the Antichrist. Note that I have never worked for DOW, only for companies that were sued by DOW and lost. One of my brothers-in-law used to work for DOW, doing safety management, but they pensioned him off early and he's now a university professor. However, I'm going to start cleaning up this article when I get time.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 19:51, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

You comment on the content "2,4-D was one of the ingredients in Agent Orange, the herbicide widely used during the Vietnam War." That content is accurate, and i think it's very relevant to an article about this chemical, and i would ask you in all seriousness not to delete that content. If i were a novice reader, i would want to know that when i came to this article. It's true, and it's crucial part of the history of this chemical. However, it may be good for the article to explain that the more toxic (to humans) component of Agent Orange was 2,4,5-T, which carried with it a by-product, dioxin.

When i check the Lancet source for the WHO classification, i find the report to end with the sentence "In considering all the relevant scientific data, the Working Group classified 2,4-D as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B)." That agrees with the content in the article that you have an issue with. If you want to talk about cherry-picking, it seems you've cherry-picked a quote from that article. Their conclusion was to classify the chemical as a possible human carcinogen, which is what this article reports.

Lastly, it appears you're right about the effects on aquatic life. In that case, I suggest modifying the article so that it points out that the ester form is highly toxic to aquatic life, and not 2,4-D in general. The ester form of 2,4-D is also covered by this article.

So, out of three points you made, i see one error in the article, which is the need to specify which form of the chemical is highly toxic to aquatic life. I'm concerned about your being "horrified" by what you see as inaccuracies in the article, and your listing of your credentials to evaluate the "truth" about this chemical. I have credentials as well, but i don't give them on Wikipedia, and it's not up to us as editors to interpret reality as experts, as we're assumed to not be experts but instead we need to use reliable sources to support content if it's challenged. Those reliable sources provide the expertise, and we are evaluators and gatherers of knowledge from these sources. I'd suggest being careful to not push an agenda in the article. Perhaps you're concerned that you think that too much negative-sounding content is in the article? It's not like the three points you touched above are actually incorrect (except the point about the ester form needing to be specified) but perhaps you think that the article shouldn't sound so negative? If so, then that could be fair topic for discussion. But if content is accurate then it can't be removed for inaccuracy. SageRad (talk) 20:45, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, i saw your edit which inserted various citation needed tags, and then i added proper sourcing for the claim that 2,4-D is one ingredient in Agent Orange, corrected the claim about high toxicity to specify some ester forms, and sourced the WHO classification of 2,4-D to The Lancet Oncology. SageRad (talk) 21:09, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, 2,4-D was one of the ingredients in Agent Orange, but the other was 2,4,5-T, and it was the one responsible for the toxicity of the stuff since it was contaminated with dioxins, which are seriously toxic. 2,4-D had nothing to do with it, and thus its presence in the compound is irrelevant and immaterial. It had nothing to do with the compound's toxicity. Besides that, the Vietnam War was over 40 years ago and the vast majority of combatants were killed by bullets, bombs, and napalm. Defective defoliants were the least of their worries when they were being carpet-bombed by B-42's. It falls into the "Other" category of things they could die of. Why bother even mentioning it.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 22:22, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

That is how the article currently reads. It clearly explains that 2,4-D was not the ingredient with the most serious effects on human health. On the other hand, i think its inclusion in Agent Orange is still a significant part of the history of this chemical and needs to be in the article. It's important enough to be included in the NPIC fact sheet. As for your "why bother" or "who cares" sentiment, i care, for one. And i know a person who is currently dying of cancer probably caused by his exposure to Agent Orange in the 60s when he was a child. He was adopted from Vietnam when he was orphaned, and now he has nasal cancer, likely a result of exposure. So i care for that reason alone, and others also do care. We are collaboratively working on these articles. SageRad (talk) 22:50, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

You need to look up the Wikipedia articles on Cherry picking (fallacy) and Red herring (fallacy). They are both logical fallacies, and thus not legitimate debating techniques. There are a lot of both of them in this article. The citations do not support the conclusions and thus it is heavily biased, unscientific, and not encyclopedic. I'm challenging the article on those grounds.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 21:26, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Re "You need to..." RockyMtnGuy your tone is uncalled for.

What if someone told you "You need to look up the Wikipedia articles on sourcing the lede"? How does that feel? Look up wikipedian.--Wuerzele (talk) 22:36, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

I know what cherry picking means, and your opinion about what is cherry picking may be different from another person's. It's a concept that is judged relatively by point of view, and i can sense that you have a certain kind of point of view that is different from mine. The citations discussed here do seem to support the conclusions, though. I think what you're getting at is that you think the article is written in a way with an agenda to demonize 2,4-D and you'd like it to look more positive in regard to the impression that it gives about the chemical. Is that a correct sense? SageRad (talk) 22:50, 7 October 2015 (UTC) We have room for completeness here. SageRad (talk) 22:50, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Nobody likes to be told to "look up" something, but I don't see the problem with RockyMtnGuy's tone. As for the Lead, it's supposed to summarize the article. This one doesn't, it's more like a collection of the most negative content in the article, placed in as conspicuous a location as possible. I don't know how, why, or when that happened, or by whom, but it did, and should be fixed so it's more representative of the body. Geogene (talk) 03:02, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Geogene your first time appearance here, as in several other instances (Talk:P. Robinson Fur Cutting Company, P. Robinson Fur Cutting Company, Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and Housatonic River) looks like WP:hounding of SageRad and myself. Because you are not contributing anything to the article, please keep your comments of this page. --Wuerzele (talk) 05:38, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Damn...this is why I normally stay away from environmental science articles. Happy editing. Geogene (talk) 20:12, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't mind Geogene's comment. This is also my first edit to this page, i believe. I just happened to be reading this page yesterday when RockyMtnGuy made his edit. I do think the lede could use editorial attention. My issue here with RockyMtnGuy's edits were that he's trying to do so by challenging sourcing, and yet these points are well sourced now. (We did make the one technical correction, and that is good progress.) If we wish to discuss the lede editorially, then let's do so explicitly, instead of using sourcing as a proxy for that discussion as RockyMtnGuy was doing. In fact, i just removed the last "citation needed" tag there, to bring the editorial discussion to this talk page instead of using those tags as proxy for expressing concerns. The content was sourced in the body of the article.

I happen to think the lede is fairly good, but that perhaps the WHO report and aquatic toxicity of some esters is out of place there. I think the Agent Orange mention is good, as that's a big part of the historical significance of this chemical, but then if it must carry the disclaimer afterward in another sentence then it becomes gangly for the lede. I think that the chemical's use in a GMO HT seed and chemical combo technology is very significant and does belong in the lede. I don't buy the argument RockyMtnGuy put in the "citation needed" tag (which was "this is a red herring to use the loaded words genetically modified"). The use of 2,4-D in a new class of herbicide-tolerant crop combo is *not* a red herring. It's very significant, and the most important recent event in the history of this chemical. And "genetically modified is *not* a loaded word. It's a common factual term for a technological process. If it scares some people then it's because some people are scared of it. We can also mention spiders in an article even though some people are scared of spiders. It's not there to scare people. It's just fact and significant regarding the chemical 2,4-D in human society. SageRad (talk) 12:22, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

I'm not challenging the sourcing, I'm challenging the chemistry and the logic. As any good chemist will tell you, 2,4-D is only moderately toxic, so calling it very toxic is a factual misrepresentation. And as any good courtroom judge will tell you, it doesn't matter if a fact is true if it is irrelevant and immaterial - he will throw it out on those grounds. The EPA said, straight up so that it was totally clear to everyone, that 2,4-D is not Agent Orange so that is what the article should say. The fact that 2,4-D was a component in Agent Orange is irrelevant and immaterial because as everyone who has studied logic should know, correlation does not imply causation. Logically speaking, fallacious logic will lead to false conclusions even if the basic statements are true. Wikipedia articles are supposed to be neutral and unbiased, and that is what I am striving for. On the other hand, this article apparently is biased to a radical political agenda and that is what I am against because the political types have used loaded language and fallacious logic to lead the readers to false conclusions of their own choosing. My background is in chemistry and computer science (i.e. logic). With my science background, I don't like to see BS (i.e. Bad Science) in articles about chemistry. And before someone introduces ad hominem reasoning about my motives, keep in mind that it is normally categorized as an informal fallacy and that I have been around Wikipedia for a while and can be ruthless to people who present fallacious arguments. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:43, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

The NPIC said straight up that 2,4-D was in Agent Orange so you're distorting things with a bias when you report only that the EPA said it's not Agent Orange. Both are true, and the article reports the reality. What i sense is that you'd like every mention of Agent Orange to be struck from the article or located in a footnote. That's an editorial position, not a factual question, and i disagree with it.

In your opening salvo, you quoted Patrick Moore with a conspiracy theory on the motivations of people who care about the environment. I find your accusations to be out of line regarding this page. You keep making reference to logic, but what i hear is you saying that this page doesn't read favorably enough for 2,4-D for your taste, and you think this page has been taken over by communists. SageRad (talk) 13:50, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

I do think this article could use some good editorial work, but i don't think it will be possible with your presence here being this contentious and pulling so hard in one ideological direction. SageRad (talk) 13:55, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

RockyMtnGuy back to the beginning: out of three points you made, the one error was corrected, so I do not see any points remaining. correct me if I'm wrong. --Wuerzele (talk) 07:22, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

I have been reminded that one should stick to the topic when discussion it on the talk page, and I have been babbling on about my experiences fighting tobacco industry shills in the tobacco article wars, so I have deleted my surplus verbiage reduce my input to what is relative to the topic, and those things people replied to. It's important to stay on topic. If you think something in it was important, just say so.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:11, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

"Vietnam War" and "Agent Orange" are loaded language intended to bias the reader, but have nothing to do with the chemistry of 2,4-D. In this article, it is true that 2,4-D is IN agent Orange and it is also true that 2,4-D is NOT Agent Orange. The former is a Red herring (fallacy) because in the rules of logic, correlation does not imply causation. Correlation is irrelevant because 2,4-D was not the cause of the toxicity of Agent Orange, it was the dioxin in the mixture (and dioxin contamination of the 2,4-D samples was also a factor in some flawed cancer studies as well). The extraction of data from the references involves Cherry picking (fallacy) of the text to arrive at invalid conclusions and therefore should not be used to support the contentions in this encyclopedia article.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 20:16, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

RockyMtnGuy, you state that"2,4-D is NOT Agent Orange", is the only statement that is relevant and material. I disagree, (you seem to build a strawman). 2,4-D not being Agent Orange is not even the point of this page, as a negation can never be a "main point" for any wikipage. The point is that Agent Orange and 2,4D to this day, share a toxic contaminant, which is relevant.

you write a lot about "correlation does not imply causation". This is off-topic. "Agent Orange and 2,4D to this day containing the same toxic contaminant" is not stating a correlation. your lengthy excursion is off topic,

Please remember to be concise, per Talk pages are for discussing the article, not for general conversation about the article's subject. "If you want to discuss the subject of an article (or other subjects like logical fallacies), you can do so at Wikipedia:Reference desk instead."--Wuerzele (talk) 08:03, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

And since I mentioned tobacco conspiracies, above, where was Greenpeace on the second-hand smoke debate? Instead Greenpeace tries to conflate a moderately toxic herbicide like 2,4-D with the Vietnam War. Tobacco has killed millions more people than the Vietnam War. Where was Greenpeace when that was happening?RockyMtnGuy (talk) 21:50, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Looks like it is a possible carcinogen per "possibly carcinogenic to humans" Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:26, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

And there is the issue. Tobacco smoke is not "possibly carcinogenic", it is "definitely carcinogenic". The probabilities are at the 99.99% level based on the huge studies done on it. It's important to distinguish between that and things that might possibly be carcinogenic based on ambiguous results from a few dubious studies, such as 2,4-D. The tobacco industry confused the public by hiring scientific shills as consultants to cast doubt on the issue. The tobacco companies themselves tested tobacco smoke to see if it was carcinogenic, but they shredded all the results, destroyed all the lab animals, and bulldozed all the buildings, so we don't know what the results were. But we can speculate. 2,4-D has no such lobby group behind it.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 17:11, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

What makes you so sure that a chemical like 2,4-D has no lobby group behind it? I think it's quite apparent that there is a vested interest in promoting 2,4-D as safe, whether or not it is actually safe, just as there was with PCBs and as there is with glyphosate, etc. There is an industry that makes money by selling these chemicals (excluding PCBs, of course, which are banned), and has interest in selling more of them. In fact, 2,4-D is a key ingredient in Enlist Duo and other up-and-coming herbicide products, and therefore it seems quite easily apparent to me that there is an industry that has a vested interest in promoting the notion that 2,4-D is safe, whatever the reality. SageRad (talk) 12:22, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

There is a big lobby group behind 2,4-D: the American farm industry. In addition to having a degree in chemistry, I grew up on a farm, so here's the issue: there are alternatives to 2,4-D but they are much less effective and/or much more toxic. Farmers should be wearing biohazard suits while spraying some of them. 2,4-D is more effective, cheaper, and a lot less toxic so they like it. Glyphosate is even less toxic. The reference to PCBs is a red herring (fallacy) but the reason it was banned was not because it was toxic, but because when it burned, it created high toxic dioxins (the same culprit as in Agent Orange). The electric industry put it in all their transformers, but they sometimes caught fire and spread dioxins all over the area. So PCBs were banned, but PCBs are nearly industructable, so now there old are transformers full of banned PCBs sitting in storage yards all over the country, rusting away forever. And then we move on to Enlist Duo red herring (fallacy). Some weeds have become resistant to glyphosate, so farmers want to put 2,4-D into the spray to kill the weeds glyphosate can't kill. They can mix 2,4-D and glyphosate themselves, but the mixture will clog up the sprayer. Enlist Duo won't clog, which is why the industry wants to sell it and the farmers want to buy it. American farmers have a lot of political clout, much more so than the chemical industry, so the EPA is going to need some good reasons to ban it, but it doesn't have any.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 23:48, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

PCBs are toxic even when not burned. They are endocrine disruptors and block the thyroid system. Enlist Duo will lead to resistant weeds as well. PCBs are very persistent and are bio-magnified. I know someone who died probably by exposure to PCBs by eating ducks. I do not believe the full toxicity of 2,4-D is understood yet as per [1]. SageRad (talk) 00:11, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

He may have died, he may have eaten ducks, and the ducks may have been contaminated with PCBs, but was it the PCBs that killed him? The common fallacy is that if something happens after something else happened, it must have been caused by it, whereas the logicians know that correlation does not imply causation. You have to find a causual link. I was going to say that "someone would have to dump and awful lot of PCBs in the water to produce lethal ducks", but then I checked and found that GE dumped 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River over the years. So don't eat fish or ducks out of the Hudson. By contrast I once went on a guided tour of the Swan Hills Hazardous Waste Treatment Centre in Alberta, which is the only facility in Canada and one of the few in the world capable of destroying PCBs and safely disposing of the byproducts. However, Alberta never allowed anyone to dump PCBs into the rivers, so after the transformers and other equipment have been put through the plant, problem solved. But lets get back the facts, which is what this article should contain - hard facts, not random speculation and innuendo, and don't fudge the facts. The oral LD50 (median lethal dose) of PCB in rats is about 1000 mg/kg, which means a 60kg (132 lb) person who ate 50 grams of it would have a 50% chance of dying. The LD50 of 2,4-D varies, but is 375 to 666 which means it would take 22 to 40 grams for a 60kg person. By contrast, the LD50 of Aspirin is 200, meaning it would only take 12 grams, and the LD50 of nicotine is 6.5–13, which means 0.4 to 0.8 grams can kill a person. I mentioned the last two because they kill a lot of people who think they are safe. Hundreds of people die each year from Aspirin overdoses, while the death count for nicotine is confused by the fact that people smoke it and there are about 50 other toxic substances in tobacco smoke. However, people do sometimes eat cigarettes, either on a bet or because they are crazy, which is why we know the LD50 for humans. So I consider 2,4-d to be only moderately toxic because it kills far fewer people than some other common chemical products. RockyMtnGuy (talk) 21:18, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

I said "probably". I don't need a lecture on correlation versus causation. LD50 in rats is not wholly material to lethality in humans over some time. This is very off-topic, as this article is not about PCBs, and your points use strawman and are also not fully accurate, but this is not the place to address them. Suffice it to say that LD50 for acute toxicity is simply not a full descriptor of lethality for modes of action that are not immediate. This is all because i mentioned PCBs in light of showing that there can be vested interests in promoting a point of view about a chemical like 2,4-D and the you went into depth on PCBs and made a false statement about them not being toxic unless burned. Let's pull back, and see if we can stay on topic of the content of this article, with integrity. SageRad (talk) 14:19, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

The problem with the header is not that it needs citations, but that it shouldn't need to - the header should be a concise summary of the sections, which it is not. So, I have started to edit this article (I could say put lipstick on this pig) by putting some basic facts into the first section: Applications. Source: the EPA. It's your government, not mine, so you trust it, don't you? Also 2,4-D is not banned everywhere in Canada, in particular it is not banned in the province and town I am currently living in.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 23:32, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

I have edited a lot of articles on Wikipedia, but this is getting as bad as editing an article about second hand smoke when the tobacco company shills get involved, or editing a light rail transit article when automobile company shills show up. I replaced text in the 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic_acid#Applications section because the first link to the EPA was dead, and the text did not reflect the current EPA assessment of 2,4-D. I edited the piece that said, "Where municipal lawn pesticide bylaws exist, such as in Canada,[8] alternatives must be used." because it implies that 2,4-D is banned everywhere in Canada, which is far from being true. The citation to "flora.org" did not follow Wikipedia standards for Identifying usually reliable sources and was mostly inaccurate. I identified usually reliable sources: the US EPA and Health Canada, both government authorities. Health Canada says

The Health Canada Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA), the federal body responsible for the regulation of pesticides in Canada, has concluded its re-evaluation of (2,4-dichlorophenoxy)acetic acid [2,4-D]. Health Canada has determined that 2,4-D meets Canada's strict health and safety standards, and as such can continue to be sold and used in Canada.

That's quite different from what the article implies about Canada.RockyMtnGuy (talk) 23:45, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Lede POV tag

Latest comment: 9 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion

RockyMtnGuy, you tagged the article as having a biased POV lead. What are the aspects of the lede that you have issues with, and how would you prefer it to read? SageRad (talk) 14:12, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Suggest tag be pulled until the tagger makes a valid case. Jus da fax 14:40, 22 October 2015 (UTC)