Slashdot Mirror
Fraud Detected In Science Research That Suggested GMO Crops Were Harmful (nature.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Three science papers that had suggested that genetically modified crops were harmful to animals and have been used by activist groups to argue for their ban have been found to contain manipulated and possibly falsified data. Nature reports: "Papers that describe harmful effects to animals fed genetically modified (GM) crops are under scrutiny for alleged data manipulation. The leaked findings of an ongoing investigation at the University of Naples in Italy suggest that images in the papers may have been intentionally altered. The leader of the lab that carried out the work there says that there is no substance to this claim. The papers' findings run counter to those of numerous safety tests carried out by food and drug agencies around the world, which indicate that there are no dangers associated with eating GM food. But the work has been widely cited on anti-GM websites — and results of the experiments that the papers describe were referenced in an Italian Senate hearing last July on whether the country should allow cultivation of safety-approved GM crops. 'The case is very important also because these papers have been used politically in the debate on GM crops,' says Italian senator Elena Cattaneo, a neuroscientist at the University of Milan whose concerns about the work triggered the investigation.
If I had billions to lose, I would also cast doubt upon the scientific claims.
Never mind that Marge only knows one spice.
It is difficult for the ordinary non-scientist to differentiate good science from falsified science. So, even though recreation is the gold standard of scientific validity (and is what eliminates the need for "faith"), for mere mortals it winds up being a matter of either:
1) accepting whatever it is "most" scientists seem to believe, on the premise that they believe this because more studies support than refute.
2) managing to somehow get good numbers on how many studies support vs refute, and going with whichever number is greater.
3) trusting their own biases, and pouncing on whichever studies affirm them, regardless of their relative number.
The one thing the plain man cannot do is judge for himself whether or not a scientific study was done right, nor can he trust anyone else's appraisal of this since every study is attacked by someone as having been done wrong.
The article never uses the word "fraud" and merely states that the papers in questions are being investigated.
This article is going to further cloud the issue and I fear its going to give Monsanto and its ilk free reign to continue their abuse of the local seed supply. The issue has never been about GMO itself, its been about how GMO is used. Genetically modifying crops to produce more, be resistant to fungus, or have a longer shelf life is a net positive and is nothing more than a more advanced form of selective breeding. Its when you use it to introduce resistance to toxic chemicals that you start to have a real problem. That resistance not only allows to overuse of toxic chemicals (to the point of saturating the local environment), you also introduce a form of addiction where the farmer becomes dependent on the chemical. This addiction dooms the farmer to a form of indentured servitude and will eventually result in their exiting the market due to unsustainability.
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
Then why are people opposed to GMO crops? If you disagree with some corporation's tactics then oppose that, don't oppose GMO crops.
I am so sick of big-conspiracytheorists paying for this crap. You are all sheeple!
In all honesty though, the article just seems to mention some minor inconsistencies in the work, not that it was all completely wrong. Clickbaiting much, slashdot?
...
The Narrative is dying.
Which could mean anything from bleeding edge source code for warhead chips was stolen (where you would actually want to do something about it)... to someone was able to guess a poorly secured WiFi password. What if the printer had something on it that created repeatable smudges? How dare they use the same printer!? Another thing, does anyone like all those space photos from Hubble? Talk about photo shopped for science!
Presumably, you are referring to glyphosate resistant crops. If you think glyphosate (or some other GMO-related chemical) is "toxic", why are you arguing against GMOs and not what is actually toxic? Oh, yes... because both the US and the EU regulatory agencies have determined that it is, in fact, not toxic as used in agriculture and permit its continued use. Now, this issue may be revisited by the courts, but until then, the science is settled, at least from a legal point of view.
Saying that farmers become "addicted" to glyphosate is disingenuous and manipulative. What happens is that GMOs actually result in lower costs and higher yields, so farmers that don't use it can't compete (unless they manage to sell into the "organic" market). In different words, what you are actually saying is that GMOs and glyphosate work as advertised.
Face it, you have lost the scientific and economic arguments. GMOs and glyphosates are generally considered safe and they are (by your own reasoning) effective at what they promise to do, namely increase productivity.
Now, having said that, I am perfectly sympathetic to wanting to eat "natural" vegetables without any GMO or herbicides involved in their production. But unlike you, I don't fool myself into believing that that is a rational preference; it's the same kind of preference I have for natural fiber over synthetics, and wood over plastic. And when I indulge in that preference, I'm willing to pay the higher price for the vegetables myself, instead of trying to bamboozle others with fake scientific arguments about "toxicity" and "addiction".
This information is released prior to the completion of the study. It also says that "images in the papers _may_ have been intentionally altered" (emphasis added). No scientific journal, such as Nature, should publish, even in this unofficial gossipy manner, these kinds of as yet unverified claims, especially regarding such a controversial issue, prior to the completion of the study and before there is something more to report than "incomplete" and "may have." At best, they should provide the information to peers for further review and study, before publishing anything. If even after that all they have is "incomplete" and "maybe," they should wait until the full study is complete and verified by unbiased (as can be found) parties. There's also a statement that can be construed as intentionally misleading: "The papers’ findings run counter to those of numerous safety tests carried out by food and drug agencies around the world." First "around the world" is hyperbole. Secondly, saying these studies were carried out by "food and drug agencies" is misleading. The FDA doesn't test anything themselves and relies on what are undoubtedly biased studies from the Corporations who produce GMOs. The FDA has already declared universally that GMOs are "generally recognized as safe," so that they automatically are weighed likely safe prior to assessment of the vendor's findings. Who can believe a giant corporation would publish anything against their products, especially those that make ungodly sums for them? I'm not sure if there are any government entities have ever tested GMOs at all, much less completely. There may be, but then, why not name them in this article rather than intentionally state vaguely a rather crucial point behind this article. Even if there are, what proof is that, at all, that such studies are reliable?
Science is not exempt from Dogmatism and Groupthink, as is the case with all human institutions. The Italian researchers may not even know how often their thinking is pre-empted (what water? says the fish). Alice Dreger wrote a book on runaway bias in soft sciences:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/books/review/galileos-middle-finger-by-alice-dreger.html
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
No Way!!!!!
would take about 2 the reaper BSD's 4re there? Oh,
Is not whether there are currently proven harms in any existing GM Organism.
The real problem is the following:
0. Every GMO case (and ecological context it is introduced into) is unique.
1. Therefore unanticipated issues may be novel with each case.
2. Problems could include direct toxicity or reduction in nutrient value or what have you.
3. Or problems could be ecological, in that the newly introduced artifical variety may outcompete a native organism, and or may change the balance of an ecosystem.
4. AND HERE'S THE KICKER
If ever such a thing as 2. or 3. occurs, it is occurring in a self-reproducing organism, which like all organisms, tries to proliferate itself across as much of the environment as it can (that's what life does, in general). You may not be able to put your genie back in the bottle. You may have achieved a widespread, unstoppable change or harm to an ecosystem (of difficult to guess in advance scale and severity).
Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... , granted, a science-fiction novel, but Sci-Fi authors are often scientist-class thinkers with a decent amount of foresight and imagination. The kind of people you need to include in your risk assessments.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Does it make sense to ask "are electrical circuits safe?" Circuits are designed, and some designs are safe and others are dangerous.
Likewise there is no such category of things "genetically modified crops" that you can treat as one thing from the point of safety, because each genetically modified organism is an unique artificial construct. You could genetically engineer potatoes to contain ricin for example, and that thing would be unsafe by design. Heretofore nobody has found harmful GMO foods because they are the product of safe design process which protects the investment needed to bring a GMO product to market.
Some day in the future it may be possible to do something like desktop genetic engineering. If the cost of creating a genetically modified crop drops enough, and enough people try their hand at it, then eventually someone's going to make something dangerous. This might even be intentional. But at present when you look for GMOs you're looking for screwups.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The problem with the entire GMO issue is that it is not just the introduced metabolites that need to be assessed because the secondary effects of them being in the organism are just as important. For example, what if I change my plants to allow me to use more of a chemical that makes them more productive, but then that chemical causes people in the region to have higher exposure levels and it is found to be a possible carcinogen?
Possible but not probable? Well actually it has already happened, even if Monsanto el al and the W.H.O. disagree on the matter. What can you do in that case, other than note the disagreement and err on the side of caution by subscribing to the opinion of the entity that you feel you can trust most? That isn't paranoia, or even politics, it is pragmatic risk management.
I dont share that view. But Europe, Africa and Asia believe you have to prove a GMO safe before it can be used. I personally dont share that belief.
And then there is the Lenape potato. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Perfect example of why at least some testing needs to be done before releasing new varieties on to the market....
BTW the Lenape was a hybrid bred with old school techniques. No GMO.... So I guess we need a label saying Warning Hybridized Bred Product on anything that contains something that is a hybrid. Of course that means effectively 100% of all food (other than wild fish.)
If we weren't tricked into buying it because it's not labeled, that might help a bit. The deception alone is enough to ruin trust, and then how do we know this study refuting the other studies aren't again, manipulated by the pro-GMO side?
Whether someone chooses GMO or not based on health reasons, philosophical ones, or simply just to save the small farmers from the big Farm Corporations, we ought to have that choice. Having that choice removed through deception and treachery won't win any confidence.
Really????!!!
I am so shocked.
Think that is bad, take a look at the global warming data once.
Someone wants those carbon taxes on all countries REAAAAAALLY bad me thinks with manufactured B.S. data.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
What I hear is you're not dumb enough to drink the kool aid yourself and you sure as hell ain't going to feed it to your kids, but you got no problem telling the other "lesser" folks to drink up. Its all a big conspiracy blah blah blah. Its somehow in their best interest.
Until Monsanto execs feed their kids the crap they promote, how bout yall just shut the fuck up.
....in our family we have figured out that certain GMO foods make us sick. Now, I don't get sick, but my wife and children both get sick from two things here in the US: wheat products and milk. When we switched to organic, grass fed no pesticides, no herbicides milk....suddenly no problem. If we eat in countries that don't have GMO foods, no problem. I don't know where in the chain the GMO food is causing a problem, I just can see that it does. We have slowly gotten a small group of people who all have this same problem. It's very strange, but it's very GMO related. Maybe 90% of the population hasn't seen it yet, but there is definitely something tainted to the GMO food. I wouldn't have believed, but it sucks when my family goes to a place that says they don't have this in their food, and then they are sick later, only to find out that they didn't realize they were using something that was a GMO item. Anyway, just offering a point of discussion. I am a believer that something is not right with it and I also try not to eat it at all if I can help it.
Yeah I agree.
This is about like when they were trying to get what we today call processed cheese called embalmed cheese.
Otherwise there are a few things I think they ought not do
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/...
I hope they are not still trying to make drugs with open air outdoor farms.
I doubt they are.
But I really don't know the current state of things my subscription to popsci lapsed many years ago. And most of the talk ive heard on gmos has been this stupid labeling discussion.
Just make sure gmos don't qualify as organic and most everyone will be happy. Because most people who don't buy organic really don't care all that much about it and will be quite content with higher yields, larger fruit and possibly more flavorful food.
On the other hand when I see something that is labeled 100% beef I don't expect there to be horse meat in it.
Even though it is probably just as safe as beef. Its not something we are used to. so I don't want it in there so I kind of understand how the gmo label people may feel.
Gmo I am most want to see?
Roses that still smell like roses.
Most commercially grown roses are bred to be pretty and no longer have that rose smell. Its currently handled with a spritz of rose scent at the flowershop. Wouldn't it be nice if they just smelled like they were supposed to?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
"Pigs on the GM diet were 2.6 times more likely to get severe stomach inflammation than control pigs. Males were more strongly affected. While female pigs were 2.2 times more likely to get severe stomach inflammation when on the GM diet, males were 4 times more likely. These findings are both biologically significant and statistically significant." ref
why don't you label it as GM. It's a selling feature!
GMO isn't the problem, even if that's not really an accurate term. Mosanto has already done harm and has been total dicks. It's not the science, it's the greedy bean counters and managers that push products out before thorough long term testing can be done.
I thought I was reading climate depot
The parent's point was about poisoning the countryside with glyphosate, not eating it.
Broad-spectrum pesticides are extraordinarily unsafe to use in agriculture, a form of nuking from orbit. Killing off half the life in your land just to give your desired crop an edge shows utter disregard of how the web of life is interconnected in the soil.
Such deliberate devastation is complete insanity, the exact opposite of careful custodianship of the environment.
The annual Plant and Animal Genome Conference was just held in San Diego. I was there to see Monsanto and others describe very easy gene editing. They can now change a single DNA base, or take a base out, or add in up to about 5000-7000 bases. That allows them to stick in a whole gene.
Another company described being able to change A SINGLE DNA base in a plant. This changed the loop structure of a protein and made the plant Roundup resistant. This smallest of changes can (and will sooner or later) happen by itself naturally in nature. They were able to show that no other changes were made to the plant. While Roundup may be toxic, you can't believe that the plant with this small change is suddenly toxic.
These new techniques are about more than Roundup.
Current plant breeding takes years of very tedious and expensive work. Let's say you are a plant breeder, and you see that some pest is wiping out a region's crops. You find a lousy variety (maybe a wild relative) of the crop that has a gene that makes it resistant to the pest. You then have to do at least 10 cycles of breeding (called back-crossing) of descendants of the lousy plant and your elite plant to move only that version of that gene over to your elite plant. You may be growing up hundreds or thousands of plants at once. Now, you don't want all of the other lousy genes, but some of them get dragged over anyway! You have to live with some of that. This is standard "natural" breeding folks. NOT GMO. It's very time consuming.
To be able to say "this wild relative has this version of a gene that makes it resistant to a certain pest", and then be able to quickly make that change to your elite breeding stock is truly awesome. Maybe you only have to change a couple of bases. This tech is here right now! You call it GMO, but it's just faster and cheaper. There are many of people in the world that die every year because their crop failed. This new tech will save lives. Will you stand in the way?
Some tests were bad so all tests are bad so GM is safe, I'm sorry but that argument is not logical and doesn't work.
There is also the fallacy that something not yet found doesn't exist because it hasn't yet been found, when the truth is that it can take decades to spot the bad effects of food items.
The truth is we won't know what many of the side-affects of GM will be for decades and by then it could be too late and those side affects could be carcinogenic or cardiovascular or rare diseases.
The makers of GM are not interested in peoples well-being, they are interested in making profits, the fact that GM co's have sued farmers when those farmers crops have been contaminated with GM crops says it all.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
It was discovered that one in six biology papers were unsupportable by the data and may have been wrong for the same reasons that this one is claimed to be.
Finding falsity in papers is done by the fossil fuel industry, whether they ARE false or not, because there's a shitload of money at stake.
And, from the summary:
and results of the experiments that the papers describe were referenced in an Italian Senate hearing last July on whether the country should allow cultivation of safety-approved GM crops.
Because RR crops increase use of Roundup, and Monsato sells that.
The environment will take care of itself. All that matters to me is that I have food.
My stance is rational and logical.
We've been genetically modifying our food for thousands of years by artificial selection and selective breeding.
If you don't want to eat GMO food, then don't. Although you can die with the rest and take the anti-vaxxers with you.
If you want to eat corn-on-the-cob that's the size of a green bean then that's your prerogative.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
When researchers start with the answer, the "research" conducted almost certainly finds that answer to be true.
That's the state of academia today. It is a political beast, not a scientific one. Believe their findings at your peril.
Yeah, but you have to get poisoned by them for a number of years, and watch your entire family die before the courts will acknowledge this and require Monsanto to say "sorry".
you also introduce a form of addiction where the farmer becomes dependent on the chemical. This addiction dooms the farmer to a form of indentured servitude and will eventually result in their exiting the market due to unsustainability.
Specifically talking about roundup ready corn and soybeans here, as that is what I have experience with (and is most of what we deal with here in the US...roundup ready wheat is not nearly as popular, at least in my area). In that context, your comment quoted above is not the case at all. Roundup has always been a cheap and effective way to kill plants, and the introduction of roundup ready crops simply provided another option that happened to be the more economical than most current herbicides and seed used. You basically have four factors:
-Cost of seed
-Cost of herbicide
-Yield of seed
-Effectiveness of herbicide
Combine all of those and you can estimate a profit. In most cases, roundup ready crops gave much better margins, despite having lower yields. Before roundup ready crops, seeds with better yields but more effective herbicides were generally used, and if Monsanto prices either of those too high, their competitors will swoop in and take their business with other herbicides and seed (they actually have done this in some ways already...better options are appearing).
Yes, Monsanto is really shitty about protecting its 'seed copyrights' and apparently does all sorts of other nefarious, especially overseas. And you are absolutely correct in that the environmental concerns are the primary factor. However, 'chemical saturation' is not the main environmental concern with GMO crops. Roundup itself is an old tried and tested chemical, and it breaks down quickly and does not appear to be an issue (though other herbicides may be). The problem I see is in the past ~20 years since the adoption of roundup ready crops, we've seen significant increases in the population of weeds that are immune to roundup, and even some that are definitely more resistant to it than they used to be. Another factor worth mentioning is that pollen from GMO crops is continually called into question with honey bee population decline (though I have no idea personally how big of a factor it is).
There is a big 'chemical saturation' issue that has come to light in recent years. Excessive use of fertilizer (processed or natural) is creating a lot of runoff that wreaks havok on lakes and rivers by feeding toxic algae blooms. But that can happen with any type of crop farming, including organic.
As our way of thanking you for your positive contributions to Slashdot, you are eligible to disable Slashdot 2.0.
In roses, the senescence pathway is tightly tied to the scent-production pathway. The result is that as roses have been bred to last longer (for shipping, florist use, etc.), the scent has been directly destroyed as a side-effect.
I think that part of the problem is that people are mixing up the issues with GMO, herbicides, and pesticides etc.
For example, "roundup resistant" crops are GMO in a way that allows them to flourish while the roundup pesticide kills unwanted plants. Thus, you can drench an area in roundup and your crop will still happily grow. The problem is not in the GMO, but there may be an issue with the chemicals - e.g. roundup - that are used in conjunction with the GMO plants.
A lot of GMO is basically an accelerated and/or more scientifically advanced way of doing what otherwise would require a long-term breeding program.
That's not to say that GMO doesn't have issues. I'm personally not a fan of things like certain transgenic tomatoes or other fruits that are made to appear "ripe" for longer periods of time, but realistically they're watery and much less flavourful than their predecessors. At the same time though we have transgenic fruits that can be made to live on-the-shelf longer after they're ripe.
Scarier may be things like the "fish tomato" (which didn't make market) where they were attempting to make longer-lived fruits by combining DNA from non-fruits. That's something that we can't do naturally and could have serious repercussions for people with allergies, etc.
How do you know it's GMOs causing it? You said yourself that when you switched to "organic, grass fed, no pesticides, no herbicides milk" - suddenly no problem. You've just lumped GMO into the same category as "organic" and assume the health results are a result of it being GMO.
You realize that it may just be the pesticides and not necessarily the GMO-ness of the food? You're aware that food can be *both* GMO and organic, right? Organic simply means that no pesticides or chemical fertilizers were used in the production.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
There is no GMO wheat on the market.
There are no GMO cows on the market.
Actually, even that is a common myth. Organic growers are allowed to use both pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Just not all of them. And, like most religious strictures, the rules are a little bit arbitrary. They don't like to mention it because a big part of their customer buy-in is because most people erroneously believe that "organic" means "pesticide free." In reality, one of the most common pesticides in organic is the same pesticide that the anti-GMO people freak out about when it's produced by GMO plants. It's super dangerous when plants produce it, but it's totally safe for us to spray it onto organic crops.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Does it make sense to ask "are electrical circuits safe?" Circuits are designed, and some designs are safe and others are dangerous.
All designs are dangerous, once built, if used improperly.
A crayon, for example, can be put into somebodies eye.
So can an electric circuit.
All safety testing by GMO seed and herbicide developer companies committed fraud in their safety testing and lied about it. All the junk anti-science safety test data are hidden under proprietary trade secret rules to conceal the fraud and hide the toxic effects. Meanwhile all the pro-GMO shills paid by the biotech industry and public university scientists with grants by biotech troll the published papers and Internet sites criticize any document that exhibits data of GMO and herbicide toxicity. The mainstream media, including Nature, National Geographic, Discover, and most news sources have been either bought out by biotech companies, or outright threatened with loss of advertising money or frivolous lawsuits claiming libel. Censorship by corporate bullying. Decide for yourself, readers are challenged to try to obtain any safety test studies done by biotech companies and you will find these unavailable under proprietary trade secret rules, but must be publicly available.
Also, you can decide for yourself by reading "Seeds of Deception" by Jeffery Smith, and "Altered Genes, Twisted Truth" by Steven Druker. Download the following publicly available peer reviewed independent studies that the biotech industry tried to silence: "Republished study: long-term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize" Séralini et al, European Sciences Europe, showing toxicity from GM maize, Roundup, and the worse, GM maize sprayed with Roundup. "The Séralini affair: degeneration of Science to Re-Science?" Fagan et al, European Sciences Europe, documenting the illicit attempt by the biotech industry to retract the Séralini et al paper. "Genetically engineered crops, glyphosate and the deterioration of health in the United States of America" Swanson et al, Journal Organic Systems, showing the very strong correlation of the rise of use of GE crops and glyphosate usage since 1995 and the epidemic of chronic deadly diseases as a result, including cancers, organ failures, hepatitis C from the cauliflower mosaic virus used to produce GE plants, all told, 22 total specific diseases. "Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases III: Manganese, neurological diseases, and associated pathologies" Samsel and Seneff, Surgical Neurology International and "Glyphosate, pathways to modern diseases IV: cancer and related pathologies", Samsel and Seneff, Journal of Biological Physics and Chemistry, both papers explain how these 22 disease are caused by glyphosate (Roundup) acting as a manganese chelation agent, anti-bacterial agent to kill the soil microbes and the gut microbes that prevent diseases. The authors found additional evidence linking glyphosate to more cancers. The last paper documents how the authors obtained the actual approval test documents submitted to the US EPA by Monsanto which showed toxic effects, rigged testing, fraud, fabricated data, and filed away as proprietary trade secret by the EPA. Monsanto knew as far back as 1981 that glyphosate is toxic but hid the data to sell tons of the product to spray on all Roundup tolerant crops and is now used on non-GE crops as a drying agent prior to harvest. Glyphosate residues can be found in lakes, streams, rivers, drinking water, animal organs, human urine and breast milk. This is an absolute human health disaster brought to you by the biotech industry and promoted by governments.
Decide for yourself by doing your own research reading, and remember to follow the money and beware of conflict of interest.
A reader