Who wants to buy some expert opinion?

In a galaxy far, far away when I was but a boy, I think the general view of scientists were of slightly disheveled elderly men in lab coats. Eccentric but basically trustworthy.

However, I now find myself in the appalling situation of agreeing in part with Michael Gove about so called 'experts'.
For years now the debate about pesticides; neonicotinoids and glyphosate, has gone back and forth, each side producing 'expert' and contradictory scientific evidence to the point where I have no idea who to believe.

There is far too much money being made in the food industry for companies like Monsanto, Bayer and Syngenta to let go of their profitable market share because of a few whinging eco warriors and it doesn't appear difficult for them to be able to find some scientific 'experts' who will churn out 'evidence' saying the pesticides aren't dangerous.
Conversely Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are quite capable of doing the same thing to support their view that they are.
So, who to believe?

Louis Heren was a journalist at The Times who when interviewing politicians always had in the back of his mind the thought 'Why is this lying bastard lying to me?'
Apparently Jeremy Paxman also applied this principle and its one I go with as well.

Today the NFU published an article calling for a proper [holistic?] review of the neonic ban [they have long argued the ban should be lifted and disputed the evidence in support of it] and setting out the millions of pounds lost to farmers because of it.
With no sense of the possible irony the NFU also say

And with this drop in tonnage goes the source of food for bees, early in the foraging year, provided by this important crop

The expert report is produced by Berlin based consultancy HFFA Research and written by Steffan Moleppa.
According to their own web site HFFA's clients include Bayer and Syngenta. Another client of HFFA is European Technology platform whose clients include .....Bayer, Syngenta and Monsanto.

Meanwhile of the other side of the fence, and on the same day, Greenpeace issue a report carried out by Sussex University, which calls for a continued ban on neonicitinoids. This was done by Dave Goulson who is a prolific write on bee issues and founder of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. No doubt his report has lots of charts and graphs, endless footnotes and indecipherable jargon but I expect it wouldn't have taken too much to guess what he was going to say before he even started.

So the game of scientific Top Trumps continue and I still don't have a clue who is right.

I wonder what would have happened if the research briefs were mixed up and Monsanto asked Coulson to review neonics, and Greenpeace asked HFFA.
Would we see headlines like'
'Monsanto agree their pesticides are killing the bees and say they're really sorry' and
'Greenpeace admit they were wrong about neonicitinoids. These things happen. Frack it!