Selalini study on GMO corn re-published

[thief of fire]

Republished study: long-term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize

Background
The health effects of a Roundup-tolerant NK603 genetically modified (GM) maize (from 11% in the diet), cultivated with or without Roundup application and Roundup alone (from 0.1 ppb of the full pesticide containing glyphosate and adjuvants) in drinking water, were evaluated for 2 years in rats. This study constitutes a follow-up investigation of a 90-day feeding study conducted by Monsanto in order to obtain commercial release of this GMO, employing the same rat strain and analyzing biochemical parameters on the same number of animals per group as our investigation. Our research represents the first chronic study on these substances, in which all observations including tumors are reported chronologically. Thus, it was not designed as a carcinogenicity study. We report the major findings with 34 organs observed and 56 parameters analyzed at 11 time points for most organs.

Results
Biochemical analyses confirmed very significant chronic kidney deficiencies, for all treatments and both sexes; 76% of the altered parameters were kidney-related. In treated males, liver congestions and necrosis were 2.5 to 5.5 times higher. Marked and severe nephropathies were also generally 1.3 to 2.3 times greater. In females, all treatment groups showed a two- to threefold increase in mortality, and deaths were earlier. This difference was also evident in three male groups fed with GM maize. All results were hormone- and sex-dependent, and the pathological profiles were comparable. Females developed large mammary tumors more frequently and before controls; the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by consumption of GM maize and Roundup treatments. Males presented up to four times more large palpable tumors starting 600 days earlier than in the control group, in which only one tumor was noted. These results may be explained by not only the non-linear endocrine-disrupting effects of Roundup but also by the overexpression of the EPSPS transgene or other mutational effects in the GM maize and their metabolic consequences.

 

[bilby]

So what?

It was crap before; re-publishing it doesn't change that fact one iota.

All that this re-publication achieves is to lower the standing of ESE as a journal.

 

[thief of fire]

So what?
It was crap before; re-publishing it doesn't change that fact one iota.

Thanks you for your thoughts. Can I ask do you have any relevant qualifications in this area?
Do you also think the original Monsanto study, of which this was a repeat, was crap too. If not why not?
Here is what a former member of Food and Chemical Toxicology, itself had to say

Dear Colleague,
As a former member of the editorial board of Food and Chemical Toxicology I feel ashamed about your recent decision to retract Séralini’s paper previously accepted for publication after a full review process which, I tend to believe, had been performed seriously as usual for a journal of high quality like FCT. Indeed one of the arguments supporting your decision seems to be, if I am well informed, the number of animals per group. Evidently all your referees knew that but did not consider that as an argument to reject the paper. As clearly stated elsewhere your decision is not in line with FCT’s editorial rules.

I also feel ashamed because your decision gives support to those who argue and even claim that scientific research (especially in bio-sciences) is less and less independent and more and more subject to industry pressure. Your decision which can be interpreted as a will to eliminate scientific information that does not help supporting industrial interests is, in my view, unacceptable. If you and your colleagues of the editorial board had some questions about the conclusion of Séralini’s study, the only scientific attitude would have been to ask for additional studies. Retracting data creates questions and suspicion and it is not a scientific attitude.

 

[bilby]

Thanks you for your thoughts. Can I ask do you have any relevant qualifications in this area?

Yes, I do. Do you?

Do you also think the original Monsanto study, of which this was a repeat, was crap too. If not why not?
Here is what a former member of Food and Chemical Toxicology, itself had to say

Dear Colleague,
As a former member of the editorial board of Food and Chemical Toxicology I feel ashamed about your recent decision to retract Séralini’s paper previously accepted for publication after a full review process which, I tend to believe, had been performed seriously as usual for a journal of high quality like FCT. Indeed one of the arguments supporting your decision seems to be, if I am well informed, the number of animals per group. Evidently all your referees knew that but did not consider that as an argument to reject the paper. As clearly stated elsewhere your decision is not in line with FCT’s editorial rules.

I also feel ashamed because your decision gives support to those who argue and even claim that scientific research (especially in bio-sciences) is less and less independent and more and more subject to industry pressure. Your decision which can be interpreted as a will to eliminate scientific information that does not help supporting industrial interests is, in my view, unacceptable. If you and your colleagues of the editorial board had some questions about the conclusion of Séralini’s study, the only scientific attitude would have been to ask for additional studies. Retracting data creates questions and suspicion and it is not a scientific attitude.

Note that he does not say that it is a good study; he is instead concerned that its withdrawal might give ammunition to nutty conspiracy theorists. That concern appears to have been well founded.

When there is one highly questionable study in support of one's position, and dozens of correctly designed studies that show the exact opposite result, a reasonable person reverses that position. Debating with unreasonable people is futile; the best that can be done is to simply point out that they are wrong, each and every time they pop up, so that undecided third parties are not misled by their unsupported claims.

 

[thief of fire]

Please delete, double post

 

[thief of fire]

Yes, I do. Do you?

Not particularly. What qualifications do you have?

And do you think the Monsanto study was crap too? If not why not?

When there is one highly questionable study in support of one's position, and dozens of correctly designed studies that show the exact opposite result,

I'm fairly certain that there are in fact not dozens of studies on this GMO corn.
How many do you know of, and what are they?
I know Monsanto did the same study, but they refused to release all the data.

All that this re-publication achieves is to lower the standing of ESE as a journal

.
It puts the data back where the public can examine it, and make up their own mind. That is the point.

 

[bilby]

Not particularly. What qualifications do you have?

And do you think the Monsanto study was crap too? If not why not?

When there is one highly questionable study in support of one's position, and dozens of correctly designed studies that show the exact opposite result,

I'm fairly certain that there are in fact not dozens of studies on this GMO corn.
How many do you know of, and what are they?
I know Monsanto did the same study, but they refused to release all the data.

All that this re-publication achieves is to lower the standing of ESE as a journal

.
It puts the data back where the public can examine it, and make up their own mind. That is the point.

Before the minds of the public can reasonably be 'made up', first those members of the public have to learn the underlying science.

If they are too lazy to learn the biochemistry and molecular biology necessary to understand the issue, then they can choose between taking the word of those who have done the hard yards; or being incapable of making an informed decision at all.

Despite the popularity of the lie that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, the opinions of the uneducated are not actually worth the same as anyone else's.

You admit to being unqualified to have an opinion; and yet you push your opinion in public. Why do you do this?

If you genuinely care about the subject, why not learn the science first? If you can't or won't learn the science, then your opinion is less than worthless.

 

[thief of fire]

You admit to being unqualified to have an opinion; and yet you push your opinion in public. Why do you do this?

I just reported this without giving an opinion. You pushed an opinion, yet you don't appear to have any qualification, in this specific area. otherwise I assume you wouldn't be so evasive about just what qualifications you really have.
You also made a false claim about "dozens of studies". Yet there are not dozens of studies on the corn.

If they are too lazy to learn the biochemistry and molecular biology necessary to understand the issue, then they can choose between taking the word of those who have done the hard yards;

Here you will find dozens of scientists who support Seralini's study.
http://www.gmoseralini.org/introduction-to-scientists-support-seralini/

 

[bilby]

I just reported this without giving an opinion. You pushed an opinion, yet you don't appear to have any qualification, in this specific area. otherwise I assume you wouldn't be so evasive about just what qualifications you really have.
You also made a false claim about "dozens of studies". Yet there are not dozens of studies on the corn.

If they are too lazy to learn the biochemistry and molecular biology necessary to understand the issue, then they can choose between taking the word of those who have done the hard yards;

Here you will find dozens of scientists who support Seralini's study.
http://www.gmoseralini.org/introduction-to-scientists-support-seralini/

Your opinion on the topic was well documented at freeratio.org; your reporting of this now is not a neutral and disinterested decision to put information 'out there' in an unbiased way, and pretending that it is, is disingenuous.

You admit to being unqualified to have an opinion, and yet you believe this re-published garbage to be somehow important - a belief that by your own admission, you cannot have reached through a study of the subject matter.

Promoting an unsupported belief is preaching, and contravenes the TOU of this board.

You have a belief; you have found a study that supports that belief - a study the quality and validity of which you are not qualified to assess - and you are pushing that as confirmation of your belief, while ignoring the massive weight of evidence that opposes your position (evidence which you reject, despite being equally unqualified to assess its quality or validity). This is a textbook example of confirmation bias; Your agenda is based on nothing more than fear of the unknown, but you nevertheless fervently push it at every opportunity.

 

[thief of fire]

Promoting an unsupported belief is preaching, and contravenes the TOU of this board.

You could practice what you preach.
1.You made an unsupported claim that there were dozens of studies that show the opposite of this study. Yet you have no evidence to support that. You seem too embarrssed to admit what your "qualifications" are.
2.You made an unsupported claim you have relevant qualifications, yet you are evasive when asked what they are.
All you have done is derail the thread.

 

[thief of fire]

Can a Moderator please remove the posts here which do not discuss science, and that make false or unsupported claims, so that the science can be discussed.
Thank you

 

[Jarhyn]

Jesus fuck, can we not have this thread again?

The study was crap (and anyone with a class on statistics has the qualifications necessary) to know that when you do a study on rats, first you need to use a HUGE sample size, and two, you need to not use a variety of rats that spontaneously develops tumors more than half the time, particularly when the development of tumors is how you claim to gauge toxicity.

The signal-to-noise ratio for this type of rat when doing any study on tumor incidence rates is just too high, especially when you only use ten of the damn things in each group. It's like rolling a dice ONCE, and guessing the outcome that one time, and the. Using that to justify a proclamation that you can see the future!

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to go eat some delicious GM corn chips. You know what actually kills people? Starvation. I'll put up with being a little less hardy if it means I get to eat at all.

 

[travc]

Just reading the abstract and figures (including tables), this study seems quite weak. Table 2 is the main results, and it underwhelming... as well as being pretty crap 'clarity' wise. The decision to report number of 'pathologies' instead of number of specimens with particular pathologies is is just wrong, since the pathologies aren't remotely independent. They do give the number of specimens "out of the initial ten" in parenthesis, which is somewhat useful... but the small sample size and high occurrence rates in the controls probably makes those results non-significant statistically (I'm not doing the math, but I am pretty familiar with looking at this sort of table... significant is almost always obvious.)

There are also a lot of other really sketchy (as in 'stupid or dishonest, pick one') bits.
Why don't they show the controls on their timeseries plots?
Why do they just throw out deaths after the mean survival time as "died of aging" for mortality analysis? Dying of cancer is how an awful lot of rats "die of aging" without any sort of GMO (or roundup) exposure.
I could go on, but I try to avoid reviewing papers even when it is my (unpaid) job/duty

All that said, the biggest problem is quite simple and obvious...
The results from the three different classes of treatments (GMO, R, GMO+R) don't make any sense. If you're going to say that the differences between controls and treatments are real (an not just noise), you also have to say the differences (or lack thereof) between treatments are real too... There is no apparent dose effect. GMO alone or roundup alone look pretty damn similar. And WTF is with GMO+R having less effect than GMO or R independently?
There needs to be a plausible mechanism of some sort which explains this weirdness... Otherwise the simple "you're just seeing noise" is by far the most likely conclusion IMO.

 

[bilby]

Promoting an unsupported belief is preaching, and contravenes the TOU of this board.

You could practice what you preach.
1.You made an unsupported claim that there were dozens of studies that show the opposite of this study. Yet you have no evidence to support that. You seem too embarrssed to admit what your "qualifications" are.
2.You made an unsupported claim you have relevant qualifications, yet you are evasive when asked what they are.
All you have done is derail the thread.

All that you ask has been done to death on freeratio. There is no value in repeating this discussion here; it appears that your goal is to recruit others to your position, not to discuss the science - which you admit to being unqualified to discuss.

If I have obstructed that goal, then I am happy to have done so.

If you want to discuss the science, go learn some, and if, having done so, you still feel that this paper is worth your time, come back and make your case.

 

[thief of fire]

Just reading the abstract and figures (including tables), this study seems quite weak. Table 2 is the main results, and it underwhelming... as well as being pretty crap 'clarity' wise. The decision to report number of 'pathologies' instead of number of specimens with particular pathologies is is just wrong, since the pathologies aren't remotely independent. They do give the number of specimens "out of the initial ten" in parenthesis, which is somewhat useful... but the small sample size and high occurrence rates in the controls probably makes those results non-significant statistically (I'm not doing the math, but I am pretty familiar with looking at this sort of table... significant is almost always obvious.)

There are also a lot of other really sketchy (as in 'stupid or dishonest, pick one') bits.
Why don't they show the controls on their timeseries plots?
Why do they just throw out deaths after the mean survival time as "died of aging" for mortality analysis? Dying of cancer is how an awful lot of rats "die of aging" without any sort of GMO (or roundup) exposure.
I could go on, but I try to avoid reviewing papers even when it is my (unpaid) job/duty

All that said, the biggest problem is quite simple and obvious...
The results from the three different classes of treatments (GMO, R, GMO+R) don't make any sense. If you're going to say that the differences between controls and treatments are real (an not just noise), you also have to say the differences (or lack thereof) between treatments are real too... There is no apparent dose effect. GMO alone or roundup alone look pretty damn similar. And WTF is with GMO+R having less effect than GMO or R independently?
There needs to be a plausible mechanism of some sort which explains this weirdness... Otherwise the simple "you're just seeing noise" is by far the most likely conclusion IMO.

I'm not sure if you are aware of the background to the study.
Monsanto did a study, (or maybe they did 10 studies, we don't know), and it (or one of them) passed peer review and satisfied the FDA that there were no problems with the corn, and that it was basically equivalent to unmodified corn.
Seralini and his team repeated this study. And suddenly the study is not good enough!!
When Monsanto released the study they did, they refused to release all the data, so we don't know if problems may have been evident. Maybe they found problems which they did not report, for the reason they weren't relevant to a toxicity study.

Seralini and his team found things that could be signs of serious problems. We don't know until a study looking for more serious problems is done.
What they did recommend is that further studies be done.

Conclusion
Our findings imply that long-term (2 year) feeding trials need to be conducted to thoroughly evaluate the safety of GM foods and pesticides in their full commercial formulations.

Which is why I asked the other poster in this thread if he also thought the Monsanto study was crap.
People who want to claim there is no problem with the corn need to explain why Monsanto's toxicology study is ok, but this one is not, and why we don't need to do longer studies.

 

[bilby]

I'm not sure if you are aware of the background to the study.
Monsanto did a study, (or maybe they did 10 studies, we don't know), and it (or one of them) passed peer review and satisfied the FDA that there were no problems with the corn, and that it was basically equivalent to unmodified corn.
Seralini and his team repeated this study. And suddenly the study is not good enough!!
When Monsanto released the study they did, they refused to release all the data, so we don't know if problems may have been evident. maybe they found problems which they did not report, for the reason they weren't relevant to a toxicity study.

Seralini and his team found things that could be signs of serious problems. We don't know until a study looking for more serious problems is done.
What they did recommend is that further studies be done.

Conclusion
Our findings imply that long-term (2 year) feeding trials need to be conducted to thoroughly evaluate the safety of GM foods and pesticides in their full commercial formulations.

Which is why I asked the other poster in this thread if he also thought the Monsanto study was crap.

You admit to being unqualified to judge the validity of the study.

Why are you now making judgements that you admit you are not qualified to make?

Why should anyone take your comments seriously?

You quite explicitly don't know what you are talking about; you said as much yourself.

 

[thief of fire]

Jesus fuck, can we not have this thread again?

The study was crap (and anyone with a class on statistics has the qualifications necessary) to know that when you do a study on rats, first you need to use a HUGE sample size, and two, you need to not use a variety of rats that spontaneously develops tumors more than half the time, particularly when the development of tumors is how you claim to gauge toxicity.
.

So, are you saying Monsanto's study was flawed as well? Because Monsanto used these rats and these sample sizes. Monsanto only did it for 90 days though.

If you wish to know why these rats were used this might be helpful
Commentary: Update on Animal Models for NTP Studies
Abstract

Based on recommendations of participants at the National Toxicology Program (NTP) workshop “Animal Models for the NTP Cancer Bioassay: Strains and Stocks—Should We Switch?” some modifications to the NTP rodent cancer bioassay were made. The B6C3F1 remains the mouse model used in the cancer bioassay. The use of multiple strains of mice will be explored through a new branch within the NTP, the Host Susceptibility Branch. Several rat models were evaluated; the Harlan Sprague Dawley rat is currently being used in the NTP studies.

 

[Togo]

Out of curiosity, why is this study crap? Is there a particular reason why bilby is rejecting it, as someone who has qualifications in this field?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Out of curiosity, why is this study crap? Is there a particular reason why bilby is rejecting it, as someone who has qualifications in this field?

The study is crap because the sample size was too small and they used the wrong rats--they set up a situation where the noise would swamp any signal and then turned around and reported that noise as signal.

Either they are idiots or they set out to fake it.

I'm reminded of the old advertising campaign that said "In nationwide blind taste tests two out of three preferred Pepsi to Coke" (or something like that, I won't swear to the wording.)

Note that it says "tests", not "test". In other words, they did a bunch of small tests. Given the 2 out of 3 it makes it likely the test size was 3. And note that they didn't say that all of the tests found 2 out of 3.

Suppose we are looking at the same thing, they just omitted the tests where the noise didn't produce the desired result.

 

[Jarhyn]

As an aside, the Monsanto study was better because a 90 day timeframe has the benefit of not extending the timespan through to the period in which cancer becomes certain:

If a rat of this species gets cancer at a certain percent chance every month, and increased cancer is what you are looking for, short time frames are more reliably able to show not-noise, since the noise effect is cumulative.

Better still, however, is to use rats that do not get so much cancer. Note that they didn't publish when the rats in the groups died of cancer, only if they did. It is only meaningful if the cancer rats in the test groups died significantly sooner than the control group, given that all members of both groups would get cancer given enough time.

What this tells me, is that they did several analyses, and selected the full-lifespan results and excluded the histogram because it was the only set of results that supported their politically charged conclusion.