The Fake Persuaders

By George Monbiot, The Guardian. Posted May 29, 2002.

Persuasion works best when it's invisible.

The most effective marketing worms its way into our consciousness, leaving intact the perception that we have reached our opinions and made our choices independently. As old as humankind itself, over the past few years this approach has been refined, with the help of the internet, into a technique called "viral marketing." Last month, the viruses appear to have murdered their host. One of the world's foremost scientific journals was persuaded to do something it has never done before -- retract a paper it had published.

While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens' groups to campaign in favor of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now they create fake citizens. Messages purporting to come from disinterested punters are planted on listserves at critical moments, disseminating misleading information in the hope of recruiting real people to the cause. Detective work by the campaigner Jonathan Matthews and the freelance journalist Andy Rowell shows how a PR firm contracted to the biotech company Monsanto appears to have played a crucial but invisible role in shaping scientific discourse.

Monsanto knows better than any other corporation the costs of visibility. Its clumsy attempts, in 1997, to persuade people that they wanted to eat GM food all but destroyed the market for its crops. Determined never to make that mistake again, it has engaged the services of a firm that knows how to persuade without appearing to persuade. The Bivings Group specializes in internet lobbying.

An article on its Web site, entitled "Viral Marketing: How to Infect the World," warns that "there are some campaigns where it would be undesirable or even disastrous to let the audience know that your organization is directly involved ... it simply is not an intelligent PR move. In cases such as this, it is important to first 'listen' to what is being said online... Once you are plugged into this world, it is possible to make postings to these outlets that present your position as an uninvolved third party... Perhaps the greatest advantage of viral marketing is that your message is placed into a context where it is more likely to be considered seriously." A senior executive from Monsanto is quoted on the Bivings site, thanking the PR firm for its "outstanding work."

In November 2001, two researchers at UC Berkeley published a paper in Nature magazine, which claimed that native maize in Mexico had been contaminated, across vast distances, by GM pollen. The paper was a disaster for biotech companies seeking to persuade Mexico, Brazil and the European Union to lift their embargos on GM crops.

Even before publication, the researchers knew their work was hazardous. One of them, Ignacio Chapela, was approached by the director of a Mexican corporation, who first offered him a glittering research post if he would withhold his paper. The director then told Chapela that he knew where to find his children.

In the US, Chapela's opponents have chosen a different form of assassination.

On the day the paper was published, messages started to appear on a biotechnology listserve used by more than 3000 scientists called AgBioWorld. The first came from a correspondent named "Mary Murphy." Chapela is on the board of directors of the Pesticide Action Network, and therefore, she claimed, "not exactly what you'd call an unbiased writer." Her posting was followed by a message from an "Andura Smetacek" claiming, falsely, that Chapela's paper had not been peer-reviewed, that he was "first and foremost an activist" and that the research had been published in collusion with environmentalists. The next day, another email from "Smetacek" asked the list, "how much money does Chapela take in speaking fees, travel reimbursements and other donations... for his help in misleading fear-based marketing campaigns?"

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