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The Potential Effects of Recall Bias and Selection Bias on the Epidemiological Evidence for the Carcinogenicity of Glyphosate

Glyphosate is a widely used herbicide worldwide. The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2015 declared that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans, noting a positive association for non‐Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). The principal human data on glyphosate and NHL come from five case–control studies and two cohort studies. The case–control studies are at risk of recall bias resulting from information on exposure to pesticides being collected from cases and controls based on their memories. In addition, two of the case–control studies are additionally at risk of a form of selection bias that can exacerbate the effect of recall bias. Both biases are in the direction of making glyphosate appear carcinogenic. If odds ratios (ORs) are not biased and a pesticide plays no role in causing NHL, the probability that an OR for that pesticide is greater than 1.0 is approximately 0.5. The fractions of ORs for pesticides other than glyphosate that are greater than 1.0 in the case–control studies are 0.90 (n = 92), 0.90 (n = 152), 0.93 (n = 59), 0.76 (n = 140), and 0.53 (n = 54), the first two from studies that are at risk for both types of bias. In the two cohort studies, which are not subject to these biases, the comparable fractions for relative risks for all cancers are 0.51 (n = 70) and 0.48 (n = 158). These results comply closely with what would be expected if evidence for carcinogenicity of glyphosate in these studies results from statistical bias in the case–control studies.