IARC on Glyphosate – what to do when a mistake is made? The Governing Council of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC[1]) is meeting[2] today and tomorrow. Not listed on the published agenda is glyphosate, but much of the conversation will be about the hotly disputed decision[3] that glyphosate is ‘probably carcinogenic to humans’ (Group 2A). Was it the right finding, why was so much of the animal experimentation evidence deemed unsuitable for consideration, is it ethical to make pronouncements of any sort if there is no published evidence of how often IARC decisions are wrong? How should scientific expert opinion be held to account? Who underwrites the effect of mistakes? Is it ethical not to take responsibility for mistakes? Holding IARC to account It seems obvious in hindsight that institutions of all kinds whether commercial or public should publish an account of how accurate their published findings are[4]. In time, false positives, false negatives, true positives