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The quality of anti-GMO research

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Loren Pechtel

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Loren Pechtel said:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/anti-gmo-research-may-be-based-on-manipulated-data/

article said:
Seralini is back with a study purportedly showing that GMO-based food is harmful to cows. But the journal he published it in allowed its domain registration to expire, meaning the paper (and every other one in the journal) has simply vanished.
Click to expand...

That's some high quality journal!!
Click to expand...

Really?

Of all the problems with methodology in anti-GMO research, you choose to focus on the fact that he published in a journal that allowed its domain registration to expire? Of all the valid objections you could make against the anti-GMO position, you feel it necessary to spend an entire thread discussing this?

You really need to start consuming less right wing propaganda, at least until your understanding of what constitutes a valid counterargument improves.
 
Here, let's talk about something more substantial:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...2b-11e5-bdb6-6861f4521205-20151002-story.html

Like all anti-science movements, anti-GMO must inevitably posit conspiracy theories in order to explain why the majority of relevant experts disagree with them.

Agribusiness does indeed seek to influence the discussion (e.g. the Genetic Literacy Project), and anti-GMO people will use things like the above article to "prove" that the scientific consensus has been manufactured by a sinister conspiracy run by Monsanto. Let's put that into perspective, shall we?

The oil industry is far and away the wealthiest industry with the most political influence. Oil companies have been shattering profit records year after year in recent decades. Their influence over governments (particularly the Republican party) is simply massive. With all their wealth and all their political influence, they have been doing everything in their power to manufacture a false consensus against anthropogenic climate change. They hire fakey scientists to populate fakey labs, so that their work can be published in fakey journals, and all of those scientists, journals, and labs are funded by the oil industry. They have spent a fortune and goodness knows how many man-hours trying to influence the consensus opinion of climatology regarding anthropogenic climate change.

So what has been the result of this very real conspiracy to manufacture a false consensus about climate change?

Well, there are a variety of different ways one could measure consensus, but the measurement most favorable to the oil companies' position is that a whopping 3% of climatologists have any serious questions about the currently accepted climate model, and frankly their objections are fairly minor. This is why FOX News keeps citing climate "research" by economists (e.g. Ross McKitrick) instead of climatologists to make their case to their viewers.

So with all their wealth and political influence, the oil companies have managed to get the scientific consensus down to 97%. If they had any effect on the consensus of climatologists at all, the effect is probably too small to measure meaningfully.

So if the entire oil industry (probably with help from the coal industry) was only able to budge the consensus by at most 3%, we are supposed to believe that Monsanto has actually succeeded in manufacturing a false consensus when the entire oil industry failed to do the same thing?

The conspiracy theory posited by the anti-GMO nuts is simply not credible.

If Monsanto was successful in manufacturing a false scientific conspiracy, why hasn't the oil industry copied their tactics and used their greater wealth and greater political influence to do the same thing with climatologists?

Can we talk about something like this instead of the fact that someone committed a clerical error and allowed a domain to expire?
 
Refresh my memory, this Seralini is that french guy who wrote that infamous paper about mice, cancer and Monsato, right?
Why does he still have a job? Is it because they are afraid to fire him because it will interpreted as proving his point?
 
barbos said:
Refresh my memory, this Seralini is that french guy who wrote that infamous paper about mice, cancer and Monsato, right?
Why does he still have a job? Is it because they are afraid to fire him because it will interpreted as proving his point?
Click to expand...

Yes, it is all part of the conspiracy run by Monsanto to generate a false consensus. :thinking: :p ;)
 
Underseer said:
Here, let's talk about something more substantial:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...2b-11e5-bdb6-6861f4521205-20151002-story.html

Like all anti-science movements, anti-GMO must inevitably posit conspiracy theories in order to explain why the majority of relevant experts disagree with them.

Agribusiness does indeed seek to influence the discussion (e.g. the Genetic Literacy Project), and anti-GMO people will use things like the above article to "prove" that the scientific consensus has been manufactured by a sinister conspiracy run by Monsanto. Let's put that into perspective, shall we?

The oil industry is far and away the wealthiest industry with the most political influence. Oil companies have been shattering profit records year after year in recent decades. Their influence over governments (particularly the Republican party) is simply massive. With all their wealth and all their political influence, they have been doing everything in their power to manufacture a false consensus against anthropogenic climate change. They hire fakey scientists to populate fakey labs, so that their work can be published in fakey journals, and all of those scientists, journals, and labs are funded by the oil industry. They have spent a fortune and goodness knows how many man-hours trying to influence the consensus opinion of climatology regarding anthropogenic climate change.

So what has been the result of this very real conspiracy to manufacture a false consensus about climate change?

Well, there are a variety of different ways one could measure consensus, but the measurement most favorable to the oil companies' position is that a whopping 3% of climatologists have any serious questions about the currently accepted climate model, and frankly their objections are fairly minor. This is why FOX News keeps citing climate "research" by economists (e.g. Ross McKitrick) instead of climatologists to make their case to their viewers.

So with all their wealth and political influence, the oil companies have managed to get the scientific consensus down to 97%. If they had any effect on the consensus of climatologists at all, the effect is probably too small to measure meaningfully.

So if the entire oil industry (probably with help from the coal industry) was only able to budge the consensus by at most 3%, we are supposed to believe that Monsanto has actually succeeded in manufacturing a false consensus when the entire oil industry failed to do the same thing?

The conspiracy theory posited by the anti-GMO nuts is simply not credible.

If Monsanto was successful in manufacturing a false scientific conspiracy, why hasn't the oil industry copied their tactics and used their greater wealth and greater political influence to do the same thing with climatologists?

Can we talk about something like this instead of the fact that someone committed a clerical error and allowed a domain to expire?
Click to expand...

A good point overall, but one could argue that Big Oil cannot succeed with climate change denial because the objective data needed is accessible to independent academic scientists. With GMO, scientists must obtain permission from GMO crop manufacturers before publish any data involving their products. While companies have recently made contracts with specific Universities that allow their researchers to do studies without the company having any say once the research is done, the companies still get to decide which Universities and organizations get to do research and can revoke the agreement for further research if they don't like what's they are putting out.
 
barbos said:
Refresh my memory, this Seralini is that french guy who wrote that infamous paper about mice, cancer and Monsato, right?
Why does he still have a job? Is it because they are afraid to fire him because it will interpreted as proving his point?
Click to expand...

Likely he hasn't done anything as an official part of his job as Professor at the University of Caen that warrants their sacking him; it seems that his GMO activism is private and independent of his Endocrinology work at UNICAEN, and it's likely more trouble than it is worth for the university to fire him. French employment law makes sacking someone for external activities very difficult; simply showing that his anti-GMO work could harm the reputation of UNICAEN would likely be insufficient grounds to dismiss him, and would lead to a long and expensive court battle - which while Seralini might have no problem finding funding for it, would cost UNICAEN money they could ill afford.

Certainly it wouldn't affect his income or lifestyle much if the university sacked him, as he makes a LOT more money from his anti-scientific activism, through his organisation CRIIGEN, than he earns as a professor.

Making an expensive but ultimately hollow gesture that would increase the attention on the university for all the wrong reasons, and provide lots of free publicity for CRIIGEN and Seralini, is not in the university's best interest.

His research on estrogen synthetase is unrelated to GMOs, and as far as I am aware, is neither controversial nor unreliable; If universities sacked every professor with a crazy hobby, there wouldn't be many professors left.
 
ronburgundy said:
A good point overall, but one could argue that Big Oil cannot succeed with climate change denial because the objective data needed is accessible to independent academic scientists. With GMO, scientists must obtain permission from GMO crop manufacturers before publish any data involving their products. While companies have recently made contracts with specific Universities that allow their researchers to do studies without the company having any say once the research is done, the companies still get to decide which Universities and organizations get to do research and can revoke the agreement for further research if they don't like what's they are putting out.
Click to expand...

Very mushy wording in that article. The language makes it seem as if the studies which can be conducted are narrowly restricted when in reality the restrictions lie with studies that effectively operate as reverse engineering experiments.

One would be left wondering how Seralini or any of the dozens of contemporary scientists were able to conduct unfettered toxicity or carcinogenicity studies without risk of lawsuit or murder by big-Agra.

To carry the software analogy further - they're not regulating security and pen testing as much as they're preventing potential competitors from using security or pen testing as a guise to copy or disassemble the original source.
 
ronburgundy said:
Underseer said:
Here, let's talk about something more substantial:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...2b-11e5-bdb6-6861f4521205-20151002-story.html

Like all anti-science movements, anti-GMO must inevitably posit conspiracy theories in order to explain why the majority of relevant experts disagree with them.

Agribusiness does indeed seek to influence the discussion (e.g. the Genetic Literacy Project), and anti-GMO people will use things like the above article to "prove" that the scientific consensus has been manufactured by a sinister conspiracy run by Monsanto. Let's put that into perspective, shall we?

The oil industry is far and away the wealthiest industry with the most political influence. Oil companies have been shattering profit records year after year in recent decades. Their influence over governments (particularly the Republican party) is simply massive. With all their wealth and all their political influence, they have been doing everything in their power to manufacture a false consensus against anthropogenic climate change. They hire fakey scientists to populate fakey labs, so that their work can be published in fakey journals, and all of those scientists, journals, and labs are funded by the oil industry. They have spent a fortune and goodness knows how many man-hours trying to influence the consensus opinion of climatology regarding anthropogenic climate change.

So what has been the result of this very real conspiracy to manufacture a false consensus about climate change?

Well, there are a variety of different ways one could measure consensus, but the measurement most favorable to the oil companies' position is that a whopping 3% of climatologists have any serious questions about the currently accepted climate model, and frankly their objections are fairly minor. This is why FOX News keeps citing climate "research" by economists (e.g. Ross McKitrick) instead of climatologists to make their case to their viewers.

So with all their wealth and political influence, the oil companies have managed to get the scientific consensus down to 97%. If they had any effect on the consensus of climatologists at all, the effect is probably too small to measure meaningfully.

So if the entire oil industry (probably with help from the coal industry) was only able to budge the consensus by at most 3%, we are supposed to believe that Monsanto has actually succeeded in manufacturing a false consensus when the entire oil industry failed to do the same thing?

The conspiracy theory posited by the anti-GMO nuts is simply not credible.

If Monsanto was successful in manufacturing a false scientific conspiracy, why hasn't the oil industry copied their tactics and used their greater wealth and greater political influence to do the same thing with climatologists?

Can we talk about something like this instead of the fact that someone committed a clerical error and allowed a domain to expire?
Click to expand...

A good point overall, but one could argue that Big Oil cannot succeed with climate change denial because the objective data needed is accessible to independent academic scientists. With GMO, scientists must obtain permission from GMO crop manufacturers before publish any data involving their products. While companies have recently made contracts with specific Universities that allow their researchers to do studies without the company having any say once the research is done, the companies still get to decide which Universities and organizations get to do research and can revoke the agreement for further research if they don't like what's they are putting out.
Click to expand...

If the agribusinesses successfully manufactured a false consensus using this tactic, the relevant scientists would be screaming bloody murder. Instead, the majority of scientists from the relevant field insist that there is no consensus on negative health effects from GMO crops.

In fact the only legitimate complaint I've heard is that it increases the likelihood that the relevant pests will develop pesticide resistance, however not using GMO involve using even more of those pesticides, so not using GMO would accelerate the evolution of pesticide resistance even faster.

Anyway, the point I was making with my argument is that science works and that scientists are not influenced by attempts to artificially manufacture a consensus. If your counter-argument was the reason for a false consensus, then we would be hearing something very different from scientists on this topic.

Heck, scientists are still bitching about the time when the automobile industry tried to influence scientific consensus on environmental lead.
 
fromderinside said:
Yet here we are confronted with Round UP, the reason for much agri GMO, definitively shown to be carcinogenic.
Click to expand...

No; not 'definitively shown'; Not even close. http://academicsreview.org/2015/03/iarc-glyphosate-cancer-review-fails-on-multiple-fronts/

Popular opinion holds that it must be dangerous; but the basis for this seems to be that lots of people are saying it; It is not a claim that withstands actual scrutiny.

IARC has been widely criticised for adding Glyphosate to category 2A 'Probably carcinogenic', as the evidence supporting that classification is weak; Even that listing falls well short of 'definitively shown to be carcinogenic', which would require a category 1 listing - along with such lethal substances as Alcoholic beverages, Hormone replacement therapy, Oral contraceptives, Nail varnish, wart/verruca treatments, Baby oil, Plutonium, Outdoor air pollution, Chinese salted fish, and Sunlight.

If you are wary of Glyphosate residues in your food, then you should run screaming from a glass of beer.
 
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