Today The Guardian and The New Lede published the third story in the series about paraquat and Parkinson’s disease – a look into why so many independent scientists say there is a clear association between the common weed killer and the dreaded brain disease, but regulators disagree.

(If you missed the first piece – a deep dive into secret internal corporate documents held by Syngenta and Chevron – be sure to read it here, or a slightly more detailed version here.)

Among the nuggets of news is this:

The EPA had looked at 26 epidemiological studies in its assessment of paraquat and Parkinson’s and all but two of them found positive associations between the pesticide and the disease. Yet the EPA downgraded most of those studies, focusing on those that did not find an association. The agency similarly dismissed many animal studies that found an association.

Records show that one of the EPA officials signing off on that EPA paraquat assessment had come to the EPA from an industry position.