Prof Attacks Chemical Firm Using ... Hip-Hop Lyrics

Chemical company Syngenta has filed an ethics complaint over a Berkeley professor's trash-talking. The company, the world's largest producer of the controversial herbicide artrazine, complains that Tyrone Hayes has sent offensive emails quoting rap lyrics to company execs, Gawker reports. Hayes' research has linked artrazine to cancer in humans and sex changes in frogs.

"So go ahed, bring your boys, cuz I'm bringing the noise. I told ya, you can't stop the rage. You been bragging, but we'll see who's tea baggin' when TDawg hits the stage," Hayes taunted in one email. Hayes—whose research has formed the basis for several legal actions against Syngenta—says he grew up in a tough community and was merely reacting to intimidation from the company in a way he felt was appropriate. "Where I came from, people did a lot more," says the prof.
(More Syngenta stories.)