Comments to "Degli-Innocenti, F. The pathology of hype, hyperbole and publication bias is creating an unwarranted concern towards biodegradable mulch films" [J. Hazard. Mater. 463 (2024) 132923].

Autor: Nizzetto L; Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Økernveien 94, 0579 Oslo, Norway; Research Centre for Toxic Compounds in the Environment, Masaryk University, 62500 Brno, Czech Republic. Electronic address: Luca.nizzetto@niva.no., Binda G; Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Økernveien 94, 0579 Oslo, Norway; DISAT Department of Science and High Technology, University of Insubria, Via Valleggio 11, 22100 Como, Italy., Hurley R; Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Økernveien 94, 0579 Oslo, Norway., Baann C; Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Økernveien 94, 0579 Oslo, Norway., Selonen S; Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Mustialankatu 3, 00790 Helsinki, Finland., Velmala S; Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Latokartanonkaari 9, 00790 Helsinki, Finland., van Gestel CAM; Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment (A-LIFE), Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Journal of hazardous materials [J Hazard Mater] 2024 Jun 05; Vol. 471, pp. 133690. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Feb 03.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2024.133690
Abstrakt: Some narratives present biodegradable plastic use for soil mulching practices in agriculture as "environmentally friendly" and "sustainable" alternatives to conventional plastics. To verify these narratives, environmental research recently started focusing on their potential impact on soil health, highlighting some concerns. The paper by Degli-Innocenti criticizes this unfolding knowledge arguing that it is affected by communication hypes, alarmistic writing and a focus on exposure scenarios purposedly crafted to yield negative effects. The quest of scientists for increased impact - the paper concludes - is the driver of such behavior. As scholars devoted to the safeguarding of scientific integrity, we set to verify whether this serious claim is grounded in evidence. Through a bibliometric analysis (using number of paper reads, citations and mentions on social media to measure the impact of publications) we found that: i) the papers pointed out by Degli-Innocenti as examples of biased works do not score higher than the median of similar publications; ii) the methodology used to support the conclusion is non-scientific; and iii) the paper does not fulfil the requirements concerning disclosure of conflicts of interests. We conclude that this paper represents a non-scientific opinion, potentially biased by a conflict of interest. We ask the paper to be clearly tagged as such, after the necessary corrections on the ethic section have been made. That being said, the paper does offer some useful insights for the definition of exposure scenarios in risk assessment. We comment and elaborate on these proposed models, hoping that this can help to advance the field.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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