Researchers Accused of Spreading Disease

Italian scientists are under investigation for allegedly worsening the transmission of a pathogen that is decimating olive groves in Puglia.

Written byBob Grant

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WIKIMEDIA, LOKOMOTIV

Nine researchers who aimed to control the spread of a bacterial pathogen that kills olive trees are being investigated, public prosecutors announced at a press conference in southern Italy last week (December 18). They also indicated that a public official who was in charge of the disease-control effort is also under investigation.

“We are shocked,” Donato Boscia, head of the Bari unit of Italy’s Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection and one of the scientists under investigation, told Nature. “The accusations are crazy.”

The researchers were trying, as per European Union rules, to control the spread of a bacterium called Xylella fastidiosa that is carried by spittlebugs and is endemic to California, Brazil, and Costa Rica. Xyella bacteria were reported in southern Italy in 2013, the ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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