Is a Renowned Honeybee Scientist in Bayer's Pocket?

Last week, Change.org brought you news that scientists potentially discovered the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a disease that's been decimating honeybee populations for the past few years. Beekeepers, environmentalists, and farmers may be ready to don their party hats, but hold off: The discovery isn't so black and white — er, I mean black and yellow.

A joint study between the military and scientists concluded that a virus-fungus combo could be what's sending bees to their graves. But as Fortune recently reported, this study might not be all it's cracked up to be. Montana bee researcher, Jerry Bromenshenk, served as lead author of the study pinpointing the virus-fungus duo. Bromenshenk serves as CEO of a company that produces sensors to detect bee diseases, and he also received a hefty grant from Bayer, a leading pesticide producer. Uh oh, Bromenshenk — the buzz is that your study could be biased.

Fortune paints a picture of Bromenshenk that's shady at best and downright scandalous at worst. Back in 2003, Bromenshenk agreed to serve as an expert witness for a group of beekeepers that brought a class-action lawsuit against Bayer. Some scientists and many beekeepers claim that Bayer's Imidacloprid pesticide killed off honeybees. In fact, some scientists still think that neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides that kills insects by attacking their nervous systems, may be at least partially responsible for CCD. Even though Bromenshenk said he would help out the beekeepers in their case, he eventually backed out and then received a research grant from Bayer to study bee pollination. Bromenshenk claims his withdrawal from the case and the grant were unrelated, but the whole sitch seems a little fishy.

Bromenshenk says that Bayer's funding wasn't used on his CCD study at all. The research did not look at pesticides' potential impact on bees before suggesting that the virus-fungus combo could be the cause of CCD.

Fortune notes another potential conflict of interest for Bromenshenk. The bee researcher is the CEO of Bee Alert Technology, a company that's making sensors to detect bee diseases. Pinpointing a CCD cause that is an actual disease (like a virus or fungus — or both) would certainly behoove Bromenshenk's company. If beekeepers are looking for a specific disease in their hives as opposed to the presence of a certain chemical (like, um, Imidacloprid), it might prompt more interest in Bee Alert. I'm not accusing Bromenshenk of skewing the results to benefit his company, but, well, it does all seem a little too coincidental.

No one's saying that Bromenshenk's study is garbage — in fact, regardless of his ties to Bayer and his own company, the findings do present some groundbreaking research. What this whole situation highlights is the problem with scientists accepting funds from companies that are a direct conflict of interest to the scientific topics they study. Bromenshenk knew that pesticides have been fingered as a potential contributor to CCD — he had no business accepting a research grant from a company that manufacturers said pesticides.

It's hugely important to find CCD's culprit — after all, honeybees pollinate about one-third of the food Americans eat and bring in about $15 billion a year in agricultural revenue. Scientists must work with beekeepers, farmers, environmentalists, and each other to solve CCD — and tell corporations to mind their own beeswax.

Photo credit: cygnus921 via Flickr