Because a Glasshole would never tell his Surveil-o-matic to activate; they wear them entirely for the pleasure of inactive dead weight. Because Google would never push products on the public with a gradual scope in invasive creep to record more and more of the time. Because normalizing the ubiquitous presence of advertiser-surveillance-ready gear will never lead to growing levels of misuse and abuse (i.e. turning them on outside your own home).
In past posts, I've said I'm proud to be a Luddite --- to critically evaluate the impacts of technology in society, rather than blindly accepting what helps the ultra-rich to control the populate. Yes, I'm still a Luddite --- as should be ever technologically-minded person with forethought and a conscience.
They can be configured and used as an off-line camera --- which indicates they can be configured and used as an on-line megacorporate surveillance tool. If you want an off-line camera, I can point you to a lot of nice off-line cameras that cost <$1500 (or some really nice ones for above that price). As Google (the company that profits from gathering every little bit of information they can about everything to sell to advertising scum) pushes this into the mainstream, do you really think they're interested in promoting offline uses? That they won't have plenty of handy little apps that encourage sending every bit of bandwidth available to surveil everything in sight? Are you a total fucking moron, or just a paid Google shill?
Just wait. Right now, there are battery life and bandwidth limitations to 24/7 surveillance. Also, the device is still in initial publicity stages, thus has to meet PR requirements of not being so grossly creepy that the overwhelming majority of people reject it. But, give Google time to roll this out on mass scale; time for technology to fix the bandwidth and battery issues; and time for the public to adjust to submitting to the next level of all-pervasive corporate control. As for me, I'm going to speak out against intrusive and harmful technologies before they've reached full maturity and unstoppable ubiquity. But you can wait until they come for you, and there's nobody left to speak out...
but... but.. liquidity! Businesses need to be able to make decisions to respond to market needs on 4.13 millisecond timescales! Imagine how much economic damage there would be if the Job Creators had to wait a whole 6 milliseconds (at fiber-optic speeds) for their decisions to take effect!
The barrier is someone giving a damn to take the time to do so. That seems to be a good enough barrier to prevent at least 99.99% of random surveillance camera video from being posted online, and integrated into advertising/surveillance megacorporation databases. Thus, while a small barrier, it appears to be a quite effective one; good enough for a pragmatic guy like me.
Pointing your cellphone camera at your plate and snapping a pic uploads a picture of your food. Blindly waving around your Glasshole Surveill-o-matic captures video of all the other patrons. Can you see the difference between footage of food on your plate versus video of everyone around you? Would you also think it's hypocritical for a venue to permit photography of events, but get angry at someone for snapping shots of strangers in the bathroom?
I consider there to be a key difference between Google Glass type cameras and other small/hidden cameras employed by an individual.
First of all, I am a photographer; I consider the right to photograph to be highly important. I think individuals should have the ability to choose to document the world around them; whether to catch a police officer committing a crime; record the events and relationships in their life; produce an artistic or social commentary on the world around them. Key to this process, however, is that the photographer is responsible for and intentional about the images captured --- and makes a specific, personal decision about what and how to capture and display the images.
Google Glass violates the personally responsible and intentional nature of photographic recording. A Glasshole is not recording me because they have a particular personal motivation to do so --- but only as an unintentional stooge of an advertising and surveillance corporation. I may not even be the intended target of their recording --- just a random face in the background of their half-eaten sandwich. But now Google gets views of me, from a dozen angles, to process through their face recognition algorithms and record into the giant tracking DB in the Cloud. The power over how photography is used in society is no longer democratically distributed over millions of individually responsible individuals, applying their own ethical standards on how to document the tiny slice of the world they see. Rather, Glassholes are encouraged to trade away my privacy, not for their responsible and intentional use of photography, but for mere convenience --- to grant an omniscient view of everything concentrated in the hands of a few megacorporations. This is what I object to.
If Larry Page wants a picture of me eating a sandwich through a publicly-visible window, then I will never object to his right to do so with his own camera, standing on his own two feet outside on the street.
Being technology-centered doesn't mean blindly accepting whatever shiny-shiny your advertising/surveillance overlords push down the pipe. Thinking about and understanding implications of technology might enable you to reach negative critical conclusions about certain uses of technology.
One of the points that severely diminishes the credibility of "Secret knowledge" optical theories, in my eyes, is that they are simultaneously presented as being so secret as to never be recorded and transmitted to the present day, and as being in such wide-spread use that there is evidence to be found in major works over many centuries and continents. As a closely-guarded guild secret for one small, local, and ephemeral school of painters, which died off before being transmitted to the present day, perhaps the hypothesis is plausible. However, the sheer weight and volume of "evidence" presented by Hockney et al., in which optical techniques are a ubiquitous foundation for every vaguely photo-realistic painting since the early 15th century, is impossible to reconcile with those techniques being absent from historical commentary and received tradition.
The mirror splits his field of view, so he can see the canvas where he is painting and the subject being painted at the same time. Instead of having to move his eyes between them and "remember" the correct color (hard to do with extreme accuracy), the mirror allows a direct side-by-side comparison of the paint and subject. "The mirror edge disappears" when the paint color matches the subject (seen in the mirror) color at the edge between.
This "discovery" may not even be a "discovery" about how Vermeer actually worked. While the hypothesis has been around for a long time (this is far from a "new discovery") --- and sounds appealing to the technologically-minded --- there is also moderate counter-evidence to Vermeer having actually worked in such a fashion. While Andersen succeeded in re-creating a Vermeer-like style in this manner, this isn't a unique, unheard-of capability: any painter who goes through the traditional "classical" art education, learning techniques the old-fashioned way with lots of practice, will be able to re-create paintings in Vermeer's (or anyone else's) style. Learning to copy the "great masters" is a standard part of formal art education. Andersen was able to short-cut some of this process (of learning painting technique the "old-fashioned" way) by technological means potentially accessible in Vermeer's time, but that doesn't prove what actually happened.
Why is the burden on me to do more studies? I'm not the one selling a product to get stuffed in a billion people's mouths, and claiming it's so perfectly safe that there's no reason for the least caution and hesitation.
If you can demonstrate how the experimental design would generate a pre-desired result, then you have evidence of actual experimental malfeasance that no one else has been able to find --- you might want to tell some Monsanto scientists who have been looking very hard for that. Sloppy experimental design cripples the statistical reach of the experiment, but, assuming the null hypothesis, is equally likely to produce large opposite results to what you want. Given the previous high profile of the researcher, and the length of the experiment, it would be a bit risky and hard to sweep under the rug if he "discovered" that Roundup-ready corn reduced cancer by 30%. Certainly a lot harder than for Monsanto to quietly roundfile any internal studies with undesirable results.
Yes, you can tell the researcher was interested in making a test case that would be highly sensitive to, and magnify the results of, any differential response. Setting up an experiment to amplify sensitivity to small signals is not a scientific crime. The researcher screwed himself over with the high corresponding background rates. To say this experiment adds "nothing," however, to the scientific literature is a falsehood. It doesn't add much, but a sample size of 200 rats in 10 subgroups of 20 is still more empirical data than a sample size of 0 rats in subgroups of 0 plus ideological assertions that there couldn't possibly be any effect.
The research approach may not be a model for future studies, but at least it highlights an area of research so poorly covered in the pre-existing literature that even this sad crappy result is best-in-class for its particular category. If the rest of the research community had their act together, so there were better comparable experiments that could be cited by GMO-supportive experts like your example Ricroch survey paper, then this experiment would not have become an issue. However, the industry approach of glossing over every concern as quickly and shallowly as possible --- rather than promoting a broad and deep research community that would have already filled the "vacuum" of low-hanging research questions --- highlights the need for external scrutiny and systematic independent research.
Again, what other studies? Even the professional boards that have rejected this study as being cause for immediate alarm about human health recognize that this probes a novel regime not covered in other literature. I don't care if cancer was not observed in entirely different situations, with their own limited statistics (perhaps not as broad as this paper, but far from "never ever ever happens" --- with a sample size of 100 in the GMO-fed group, in the very best case you can't rule out producing cancer in a couple percent of the population, which adds up on large scale). Your own attempt to reference "other studies" fell flat on its face, indicating zero other studies directly comparable to this situation. Let me quote another passage from the Ricroch paper you cited:
Very few published long-term feeding studies use the same animal model or the same crop model. Moreover, the parameters studied varied. Hence no studies have been carried out twice in the same conditions by different research teams. Therefore, improvements in the protocols should be made, particularly focusing on repro- ducibility of data.
In other words, no other studies adequately cover the same range, so further research is needed before blanket statements can be made inferring between experiments.
The effects of cancer might well be magnified in the cancer-prone rats used for this study; and magnified in elderly, less young-and-healthy individuals from the long-term study. So, these rats might be more sensitive to smaller effects that are ruled out in studies of different situations. Just because all prior signs under different conditions indicate the grain doesn't cause cancer is not proof that it can't in this specific instance. To assume so is to assume an ideological, anti-scientific stance (right alongside Monsanto PR goons) --- which does indeed make me, as a professional scientist, angry. I'm not here to defend the paper's results; I wouldn't take a bet that future results won't solidly rule it out. I'm not in a panic to burn any GMO goods in my kitchen. However, engaging in scientific censorship, selectively throwing out research because it doesn't support corporate propaganda needs (rather than on any proper direct scientific grounds) should make any scientifically-minded person angry.
No problem understanding it; nor am I claiming differently. However, research is research, and should be published anyway, if only to show that a more significant result is not obtained. Publishing a low-statistics marginal result, for a research question not directly answered to better precision in other literature (you tried to claim otherwise... but failed; next time, read papers before linking them as "proof"), is extremely common scientific practice --- the prelude to refining results to more conclusively cover the topic of interest. Maybe the journal should have held higher standards for notability when initially accepting and reviewing the paper --- standards that are transparently and consistently applied to all research. Retracting the paper after-the-fact, because Monsanto PR went into a huff and ex-Monsanto-employees high in the chain of command objected, reeks of editorial misconduct. Retractions are typically reserved for cases of demonstrable scientific misconduct or gross error (which have not been demonstrated), not "buyer's remorse" because Monsanto is unhappy with a paper's quality.
Retracting the paper is similar to throwing out data points along a line just because you don't like how they look --- they don't radically change the result of the fit, but they aren't neatly and tidily perfectly aligned with your expectation. The GMO PR industry wants every result to fall in a black-and-white category of "no chance whatsoever of GM causing harm." This is blatantly unscientific. By sheer random chance, some results may fall a bit outside the "null hypothesis". And, perhaps it's not all chance --- maybe there are some GMO effects that show up in very specific situations. You need to do experiments to tell this one way of the other, and not throw out datapoints that lie in the gray area between almost-too-perfect-to-be-true and p < 0.01 significance.
This paper is indistinguishable from random data; and equally indistinguishable from a 30% increase in cancer rate. Ideological rejection of the findings' validity is not the right way to tell where the reality actually lies. Improving research to more precisely cover this range is. Keeping the paper in the publication record does nothing to harm scientific progress and understanding; retracting the paper does nothing to advance science --- this is purely a political/PR grandstanding move by an overly powerful industry that has captured key positions in the scientific and regulatory structure.
I understand statistics well enough to know that "anomalous" isn't a precisely-defined technical term. In my posts above, I have repeatedly indicated that this is a statistically weak result. "Anomalous" is a subjective evaluation --- and, given the extreme attention this paper received, it certainly is "anomalous" enough from the norm to attract the ire of Monsanto's PR machine. However, whether or not this result should be termed "anomalous" is (like pretty much everything you say) a distraction from the main point that there is zero scientifically valid reason to expunge this research from the literature. The forced retraction is politically motivated, itself an example of bad science captured by corporate interests. There's no scientific problem with statistically weak results being left around, as incentive to supersede them with more accurate studies. The statistical inadequacy of this study speaks for itself, and should remind researchers to consider all results within their statistical limitations.
Thank you for proving my point that no such comparable research in this area exists. Otherwise, where this paper discusses the Seralini result --- which it dedicates a paragraph to --- it would have cited other research papers contradicting the claims. Since there are none comparable, it instead cites the commentary/criticisms of the Seralini result by various (industry-captured groups), which all repeat the same Monsanto-produced PR talking points not based on research specifically refuting the study claims.
Yes, there are lots of other studies showing that other GMO products don't have other effects (at least to statistical precision often not much more impressive than the study under question). However, there is nothing to be seen that specifically addresses these results. When you find an anomalous result, the scientific approach to understanding it is to follow up with more detailed research, not brush it off because not-directly-comparable tests of different effects show different results.
Which studies, providing apples-to-apples comparison? Specifically, which studies focusing on long-duration effects, which was a key distinction of this study in comparison to typical shorter-term studies? This study has been recognized as being fairly distinctive for probing this portion of the outcome parameter space, even if only weakly. From Wikipedia on the publication, (bold mine):
As a result of the publication of the Séralini paper, the Belgian Federal Minister of Public Health asked the Belgian Biosafety Advisory Council (BBAC) to evaluate the paper. The BBAC was asked to "inform the Minister whether this paper (i) contains new scientific information with regard to risks for human health of GM maize NK603 and (ii) whether this information triggers a revision of the current authorisation for commercialisation for food and feed use of this GM maize in the European Union (EU)."[58] Responding to the two point mandate, the BBAC committee, whose members are drawn from the Belgian biotech Professoriat,[58] pointed out that "the long duration of this study is a positive aspect since most of the toxicity studies on GMOs are performed on shorter periods," and concluded that:
"Given the shortcomings identified by the experts regarding the experimental design, the statistical analysis, the interpretation of the results, the redaction of the article and the presentation of the results, the Biosafety Advisory Council concludes that this study does not contain new scientifically relevant elements that may lead to reconsider immediately the current authorisation for food and feed use of GM maize NK603. Considering the issues raised by the study (i.e. long term assessment), the Biosafety Advisory Council proposes EFSA urgently to study in depth the relevance of the actual guidelines and procedures. It can find inspiration in the GRACE project[59] to find useful information and new concerted ideas."[58]:9
So, even though the paper was not deemed sufficiently conclusive for human health issue concerns, it is recognized by other scientific experts as covering an experimental region not well-represented in other experimental data. What experiments do you know about, that the BBAC did not, which refute the results?
Would you recommend retraction of all other papers used for subsequent financial gain? For example, every paper published by industry scientists, and subsequently cited by industry lobbyists to justify regulatory policy decisions, on which billions of dollars in sales hinge? You do also realize that lots of other scientists have written popular-market books on their subjects, without being censured from the scientific community? Ever been inside a bookstore and browsed the science section? Ever see a book with "PhD" after the author's name? Did this result in you wanting to expunge the scientific record of any results by the same author?
The standard of "publishing a book or otherwise profiting from publicity" has never been applied as the basis for retraction of published work. Usually, the response is closer to "hey, cool, someone spreading public interest in scientific research! Way to go!". Why suddenly change precedent for this case?
If you want parallels to cold fusion, how about waiting for independent experiments to fail to reproduce the results? Cold Fusion fell apart not because other experimenters said "that can't be; bugger off," but because the results were not replicable when anyone else tried. Any research institution could do likewise in this case --- put together a statistically appropriate sample of ~50 rats in each group, and repeat the experiment. You're free to be skeptical of the researcher's motivations and research quality, but how about backing that up by doing better research instead of throwing around plausible but unsubstantiated allegations?
Back up your crap with numbers, not stereotypes, or bugger off.
Yes, individual farmers can make higher profit margins by not giving all their money to Monsanto to purchase seeds / pesticides / herbicides. However, the total market share of organic products is small --- so, in industry aggregate, Monsanto and Pals make loads more money from smaller margins on larger sales.
The other 96% percent of sales dollars go through the traditional Big Ag chain. From Monsanto's 2010 report, Monsanto's net sales were $10.5B, and ADM reported $68B in net sales --- so, just between these two corporations alone --- ~2.7x the entire organic industry's sales. And there are many others in the chain, making up the 96% of sales not going to organic produce.
Which I read, and noted that this is an editorial hit piece focusing on directly quoting PR from industry groups rather than making substantive scientific criticisms. If you can't tell the difference between an editorial article and actual scientific analysis, then you're hopelessly unqualified to discuss the scientific merits of research. There may have been some substantive criticism in there that I missed --- can you point one that stands out to me? Again, note that "this experiment could have been done better" is not equivalent to "the results are wrong"; nor is limited statistical certainty. The paper author's "extracurricular" activities in hyping up the results for the media do not invalidate the results themselves.
Where are the "retraction-worthy" scientific criticisms, rather than "the paper is sub-optimal and I could have done better"? What makes this work worthy of censoring from the scientific literature, rather than simply ignoring once improved studies come along?
I'll retain pseudonymity and spare you my publications list in high-impact-factor peer-reviewed journals; but, I can tell you that I've seen the process. There are certainly drawbacks, and room for improvements. However, "let the former Monsanto employees high in the journal hierarchy make decisions instead" is not an improvement. The peer review system has its flaws, but is the best system we have right now for checking scientific integrity for publication. Where are the scientific objections to this work --- that you keep changing the subject around whenever I ask for specific examples --- that demonstrate failure of the peer review process, besides industry lobbying groups shouting that peer review has failed?
OK, what scientific issues, which somehow slipped by the initial peer review and subsequent close scrutiny for scientific error? There are certainly ways one could have constructed a more statistically sensitive experiment; some poor choices in experimental design were made. However, that doesn't itself invalidate the findings in any way; it only makes them less statistically precise, in a manner transparently presented in the paper. Selection of rats with a high baseline tumor rate harms signal-to-noise, but that doesn't mean that finding even more tumors on a Roundup-Ready diet or chronic glyphosate exposure is irrelevant --- if these products exacerbate pre-existing inclinations to cancer, that would be a health effect worth looking into.
The study wasn't a brilliant example of experimental design; better choices could have been made for more robust results. But the potential ability to perform a better experiment does not make the results any less trustworthy than what they are. Given the lack of other apples-to-apples comparable experiments in the literature of longer-term exposure in rats, a weak experiment still adds more to scientific knowledge than no experiment covering this range. Where are the "scientific issues" that would require retraction, rather than simply suitably cautious interpretation of results, which should be done for every paper? "Not good enough to be worth much notice" is not a standard typically applied to forced retractions, which are typically reserved for outright fraud or clearly wrong results, for which zero evidence has been presented by the parties mandating retraction.
"Harmless" is a bit of a stretch. The exact acute LD50 dosage isn't known. The EPA classifies it as "Category III toxicity," with Category IV being the lowest --- indicating an LD50 in the 0.5-5 g/kg range, which is not inconsistent with fatalities from a 100ml dose. However, the additives certainly don't help. Since they are always included in the stuff that Monsanto's products encourage immense widespread dumping of, it's probably most useful to generally consider glyphosate plus other stuff in RoundUp together.
Who says I do? I'm not the one saying to rush off and proclaim GMOs as deadly unsafe carcinogens. I'm recommending that the results of studies showing potential harmful effects be independently followed up with more research to determine whether any effect is there. I will take the profit motive into consideration. But why your double standard, simultaneously jumping on the profit motive of this one guy while assuming profit motive --- on the side with tremendously greater profits involved --- isn't an issue worth worrying about?
I'm willing to question the profit motives of both sides --- and insist on verification within the scientific process to resolve outstanding issues, rather than decisions handed down from industry insiders. Are you, or do you think that bigger profits have less corrupting effect than smaller ones?
I don't "prefer" this study to others, and realize that this maize is "safe" according to alternate measurements probing different effects (such as being short-term rather than lifetime-accumulation studies). Where is the apples-to-apples comparison that supersedes this study?
The "specific problems" with the study --- generally, low signal-to-noise ratio due to high background mortality rates of the rats being studied --- are not "scientifically fatal" making the paper retraction-worthy. They limit the statistical impact of the study --- that is what it is. In no other scientific field would you throw out all experiments that lie in the margins between "strong statistical disproof of effect" and "strong statistical proof of effect". There may be results that lie in-between; and, when those results raise concerns, you follow up on them with more in-depth study rather than delete them.
In fact, where are the numerous other studies showing negative impacts from GMO products with >99% certainty? Out of hundreds of studies performed, there ought to be a several demonstrating statistically significant results by pure chance --- unless there is a systematic bias in the system that suppresses any such results. In a scientifically healthy field of study, there should regularly be anomalous findings that encourage independent follow-up study. That this experiment stands out for finding (statistically weak) evidence for GMO crops is itself damning evidence of systematic corruption of results (a common result with large monetary outcomes riding on publications).
If you think such problems can't occur, then you are severely ignorant of past history. Consider the decades over which the Tobacco industry suppressed their own internal research on the clear addictive and carcinogenic effects of smoking, in order to publicly push the blatant murderous lie that links between smoking and cancer were scientifically unfounded. Why do you think this won't happen again, given how profitably it's worked in the past?
Slashdot Mirror
Because a Glasshole would never tell his Surveil-o-matic to activate; they wear them entirely for the pleasure of inactive dead weight.
Because Google would never push products on the public with a gradual scope in invasive creep to record more and more of the time.
Because normalizing the ubiquitous presence of advertiser-surveillance-ready gear will never lead to growing levels of misuse and abuse (i.e. turning them on outside your own home).
In past posts, I've said I'm proud to be a Luddite --- to critically evaluate the impacts of technology in society, rather than blindly accepting what helps the ultra-rich to control the populate. Yes, I'm still a Luddite --- as should be ever technologically-minded person with forethought and a conscience.
They can be configured and used as an off-line camera --- which indicates they can be configured and used as an on-line megacorporate surveillance tool. If you want an off-line camera, I can point you to a lot of nice off-line cameras that cost <$1500 (or some really nice ones for above that price). As Google (the company that profits from gathering every little bit of information they can about everything to sell to advertising scum) pushes this into the mainstream, do you really think they're interested in promoting offline uses? That they won't have plenty of handy little apps that encourage sending every bit of bandwidth available to surveil everything in sight? Are you a total fucking moron, or just a paid Google shill?
Just wait. Right now, there are battery life and bandwidth limitations to 24/7 surveillance. Also, the device is still in initial publicity stages, thus has to meet PR requirements of not being so grossly creepy that the overwhelming majority of people reject it. But, give Google time to roll this out on mass scale; time for technology to fix the bandwidth and battery issues; and time for the public to adjust to submitting to the next level of all-pervasive corporate control. As for me, I'm going to speak out against intrusive and harmful technologies before they've reached full maturity and unstoppable ubiquity. But you can wait until they come for you, and there's nobody left to speak out...
but... but.. liquidity! Businesses need to be able to make decisions to respond to market needs on 4.13 millisecond timescales! Imagine how much economic damage there would be if the Job Creators had to wait a whole 6 milliseconds (at fiber-optic speeds) for their decisions to take effect!
The barrier is someone giving a damn to take the time to do so. That seems to be a good enough barrier to prevent at least 99.99% of random surveillance camera video from being posted online, and integrated into advertising/surveillance megacorporation databases. Thus, while a small barrier, it appears to be a quite effective one; good enough for a pragmatic guy like me.
Pointing your cellphone camera at your plate and snapping a pic uploads a picture of your food. Blindly waving around your Glasshole Surveill-o-matic captures video of all the other patrons. Can you see the difference between footage of food on your plate versus video of everyone around you? Would you also think it's hypocritical for a venue to permit photography of events, but get angry at someone for snapping shots of strangers in the bathroom?
I consider there to be a key difference between Google Glass type cameras and other small/hidden cameras employed by an individual.
First of all, I am a photographer; I consider the right to photograph to be highly important. I think individuals should have the ability to choose to document the world around them; whether to catch a police officer committing a crime; record the events and relationships in their life; produce an artistic or social commentary on the world around them. Key to this process, however, is that the photographer is responsible for and intentional about the images captured --- and makes a specific, personal decision about what and how to capture and display the images.
Google Glass violates the personally responsible and intentional nature of photographic recording. A Glasshole is not recording me because they have a particular personal motivation to do so --- but only as an unintentional stooge of an advertising and surveillance corporation. I may not even be the intended target of their recording --- just a random face in the background of their half-eaten sandwich. But now Google gets views of me, from a dozen angles, to process through their face recognition algorithms and record into the giant tracking DB in the Cloud. The power over how photography is used in society is no longer democratically distributed over millions of individually responsible individuals, applying their own ethical standards on how to document the tiny slice of the world they see. Rather, Glassholes are encouraged to trade away my privacy, not for their responsible and intentional use of photography, but for mere convenience --- to grant an omniscient view of everything concentrated in the hands of a few megacorporations. This is what I object to.
If Larry Page wants a picture of me eating a sandwich through a publicly-visible window, then I will never object to his right to do so with his own camera, standing on his own two feet outside on the street.
Being technology-centered doesn't mean blindly accepting whatever shiny-shiny your advertising/surveillance overlords push down the pipe. Thinking about and understanding implications of technology might enable you to reach negative critical conclusions about certain uses of technology.
One of the points that severely diminishes the credibility of "Secret knowledge" optical theories, in my eyes, is that they are simultaneously presented as being so secret as to never be recorded and transmitted to the present day, and as being in such wide-spread use that there is evidence to be found in major works over many centuries and continents. As a closely-guarded guild secret for one small, local, and ephemeral school of painters, which died off before being transmitted to the present day, perhaps the hypothesis is plausible. However, the sheer weight and volume of "evidence" presented by Hockney et al., in which optical techniques are a ubiquitous foundation for every vaguely photo-realistic painting since the early 15th century, is impossible to reconcile with those techniques being absent from historical commentary and received tradition.
The mirror splits his field of view, so he can see the canvas where he is painting and the subject being painted at the same time. Instead of having to move his eyes between them and "remember" the correct color (hard to do with extreme accuracy), the mirror allows a direct side-by-side comparison of the paint and subject. "The mirror edge disappears" when the paint color matches the subject (seen in the mirror) color at the edge between.
This "discovery" may not even be a "discovery" about how Vermeer actually worked. While the hypothesis has been around for a long time (this is far from a "new discovery") --- and sounds appealing to the technologically-minded --- there is also moderate counter-evidence to Vermeer having actually worked in such a fashion. While Andersen succeeded in re-creating a Vermeer-like style in this manner, this isn't a unique, unheard-of capability: any painter who goes through the traditional "classical" art education, learning techniques the old-fashioned way with lots of practice, will be able to re-create paintings in Vermeer's (or anyone else's) style. Learning to copy the "great masters" is a standard part of formal art education. Andersen was able to short-cut some of this process (of learning painting technique the "old-fashioned" way) by technological means potentially accessible in Vermeer's time, but that doesn't prove what actually happened.
Why is the burden on me to do more studies? I'm not the one selling a product to get stuffed in a billion people's mouths, and claiming it's so perfectly safe that there's no reason for the least caution and hesitation.
If you can demonstrate how the experimental design would generate a pre-desired result, then you have evidence of actual experimental malfeasance that no one else has been able to find --- you might want to tell some Monsanto scientists who have been looking very hard for that. Sloppy experimental design cripples the statistical reach of the experiment, but, assuming the null hypothesis, is equally likely to produce large opposite results to what you want. Given the previous high profile of the researcher, and the length of the experiment, it would be a bit risky and hard to sweep under the rug if he "discovered" that Roundup-ready corn reduced cancer by 30%. Certainly a lot harder than for Monsanto to quietly roundfile any internal studies with undesirable results.
Yes, you can tell the researcher was interested in making a test case that would be highly sensitive to, and magnify the results of, any differential response. Setting up an experiment to amplify sensitivity to small signals is not a scientific crime. The researcher screwed himself over with the high corresponding background rates. To say this experiment adds "nothing," however, to the scientific literature is a falsehood. It doesn't add much, but a sample size of 200 rats in 10 subgroups of 20 is still more empirical data than a sample size of 0 rats in subgroups of 0 plus ideological assertions that there couldn't possibly be any effect.
The research approach may not be a model for future studies, but at least it highlights an area of research so poorly covered in the pre-existing literature that even this sad crappy result is best-in-class for its particular category. If the rest of the research community had their act together, so there were better comparable experiments that could be cited by GMO-supportive experts like your example Ricroch survey paper, then this experiment would not have become an issue. However, the industry approach of glossing over every concern as quickly and shallowly as possible --- rather than promoting a broad and deep research community that would have already filled the "vacuum" of low-hanging research questions --- highlights the need for external scrutiny and systematic independent research.
Again, what other studies? Even the professional boards that have rejected this study as being cause for immediate alarm about human health recognize that this probes a novel regime not covered in other literature. I don't care if cancer was not observed in entirely different situations, with their own limited statistics (perhaps not as broad as this paper, but far from "never ever ever happens" --- with a sample size of 100 in the GMO-fed group, in the very best case you can't rule out producing cancer in a couple percent of the population, which adds up on large scale). Your own attempt to reference "other studies" fell flat on its face, indicating zero other studies directly comparable to this situation. Let me quote another passage from the Ricroch paper you cited:
Very few published long-term feeding studies use the same animal model or the same crop model. Moreover, the parameters studied varied. Hence no studies have been carried out twice in the same conditions by different research teams. Therefore, improvements in the protocols should be made, particularly focusing on repro- ducibility of data.
In other words, no other studies adequately cover the same range, so further research is needed before blanket statements can be made inferring between experiments.
The effects of cancer might well be magnified in the cancer-prone rats used for this study; and magnified in elderly, less young-and-healthy individuals from the long-term study. So, these rats might be more sensitive to smaller effects that are ruled out in studies of different situations. Just because all prior signs under different conditions indicate the grain doesn't cause cancer is not proof that it can't in this specific instance. To assume so is to assume an ideological, anti-scientific stance (right alongside Monsanto PR goons) --- which does indeed make me, as a professional scientist, angry. I'm not here to defend the paper's results; I wouldn't take a bet that future results won't solidly rule it out. I'm not in a panic to burn any GMO goods in my kitchen. However, engaging in scientific censorship, selectively throwing out research because it doesn't support corporate propaganda needs (rather than on any proper direct scientific grounds) should make any scientifically-minded person angry.
No problem understanding it; nor am I claiming differently. However, research is research, and should be published anyway, if only to show that a more significant result is not obtained. Publishing a low-statistics marginal result, for a research question not directly answered to better precision in other literature (you tried to claim otherwise... but failed; next time, read papers before linking them as "proof"), is extremely common scientific practice --- the prelude to refining results to more conclusively cover the topic of interest. Maybe the journal should have held higher standards for notability when initially accepting and reviewing the paper --- standards that are transparently and consistently applied to all research. Retracting the paper after-the-fact, because Monsanto PR went into a huff and ex-Monsanto-employees high in the chain of command objected, reeks of editorial misconduct. Retractions are typically reserved for cases of demonstrable scientific misconduct or gross error (which have not been demonstrated), not "buyer's remorse" because Monsanto is unhappy with a paper's quality.
Retracting the paper is similar to throwing out data points along a line just because you don't like how they look --- they don't radically change the result of the fit, but they aren't neatly and tidily perfectly aligned with your expectation. The GMO PR industry wants every result to fall in a black-and-white category of "no chance whatsoever of GM causing harm." This is blatantly unscientific. By sheer random chance, some results may fall a bit outside the "null hypothesis". And, perhaps it's not all chance --- maybe there are some GMO effects that show up in very specific situations. You need to do experiments to tell this one way of the other, and not throw out datapoints that lie in the gray area between almost-too-perfect-to-be-true and p < 0.01 significance.
This paper is indistinguishable from random data; and equally indistinguishable from a 30% increase in cancer rate. Ideological rejection of the findings' validity is not the right way to tell where the reality actually lies. Improving research to more precisely cover this range is. Keeping the paper in the publication record does nothing to harm scientific progress and understanding; retracting the paper does nothing to advance science --- this is purely a political/PR grandstanding move by an overly powerful industry that has captured key positions in the scientific and regulatory structure.
I understand statistics well enough to know that "anomalous" isn't a precisely-defined technical term. In my posts above, I have repeatedly indicated that this is a statistically weak result. "Anomalous" is a subjective evaluation --- and, given the extreme attention this paper received, it certainly is "anomalous" enough from the norm to attract the ire of Monsanto's PR machine. However, whether or not this result should be termed "anomalous" is (like pretty much everything you say) a distraction from the main point that there is zero scientifically valid reason to expunge this research from the literature. The forced retraction is politically motivated, itself an example of bad science captured by corporate interests. There's no scientific problem with statistically weak results being left around, as incentive to supersede them with more accurate studies. The statistical inadequacy of this study speaks for itself, and should remind researchers to consider all results within their statistical limitations.
Thank you for proving my point that no such comparable research in this area exists. Otherwise, where this paper discusses the Seralini result --- which it dedicates a paragraph to --- it would have cited other research papers contradicting the claims. Since there are none comparable, it instead cites the commentary/criticisms of the Seralini result by various (industry-captured groups), which all repeat the same Monsanto-produced PR talking points not based on research specifically refuting the study claims.
Yes, there are lots of other studies showing that other GMO products don't have other effects (at least to statistical precision often not much more impressive than the study under question). However, there is nothing to be seen that specifically addresses these results. When you find an anomalous result, the scientific approach to understanding it is to follow up with more detailed research, not brush it off because not-directly-comparable tests of different effects show different results.
Which studies, providing apples-to-apples comparison? Specifically, which studies focusing on long-duration effects, which was a key distinction of this study in comparison to typical shorter-term studies? This study has been recognized as being fairly distinctive for probing this portion of the outcome parameter space, even if only weakly. From Wikipedia on the publication, (bold mine):
As a result of the publication of the Séralini paper, the Belgian Federal Minister of Public Health asked the Belgian Biosafety Advisory Council (BBAC) to evaluate the paper. The BBAC was asked to "inform the Minister whether this paper (i) contains new scientific information with regard to risks for human health of GM maize NK603 and (ii) whether this information triggers a revision of the current authorisation for commercialisation for food and feed use of this GM maize in the European Union (EU)."[58] Responding to the two point mandate, the BBAC committee, whose members are drawn from the Belgian biotech Professoriat,[58] pointed out that "the long duration of this study is a positive aspect since most of the toxicity studies on GMOs are performed on shorter periods," and concluded that:
"Given the shortcomings identified by the experts regarding the experimental design, the statistical analysis, the interpretation of the results, the redaction of the article and the presentation of the results, the Biosafety Advisory Council concludes that this study does not contain new scientifically relevant elements that may lead to reconsider immediately the current authorisation for food and feed use of GM maize NK603. Considering the issues raised by the study (i.e. long term assessment), the Biosafety Advisory Council proposes EFSA urgently to study in depth the relevance of the actual guidelines and procedures. It can find inspiration in the GRACE project[59] to find useful information and new concerted ideas."[58]:9
So, even though the paper was not deemed sufficiently conclusive for human health issue concerns, it is recognized by other scientific experts as covering an experimental region not well-represented in other experimental data. What experiments do you know about, that the BBAC did not, which refute the results?
Would you recommend retraction of all other papers used for subsequent financial gain? For example, every paper published by industry scientists, and subsequently cited by industry lobbyists to justify regulatory policy decisions, on which billions of dollars in sales hinge? You do also realize that lots of other scientists have written popular-market books on their subjects, without being censured from the scientific community? Ever been inside a bookstore and browsed the science section? Ever see a book with "PhD" after the author's name? Did this result in you wanting to expunge the scientific record of any results by the same author?
The standard of "publishing a book or otherwise profiting from publicity" has never been applied as the basis for retraction of published work. Usually, the response is closer to "hey, cool, someone spreading public interest in scientific research! Way to go!". Why suddenly change precedent for this case?
If you want parallels to cold fusion, how about waiting for independent experiments to fail to reproduce the results? Cold Fusion fell apart not because other experimenters said "that can't be; bugger off," but because the results were not replicable when anyone else tried. Any research institution could do likewise in this case --- put together a statistically appropriate sample of ~50 rats in each group, and repeat the experiment. You're free to be skeptical of the researcher's motivations and research quality, but how about backing that up by doing better research instead of throwing around plausible but unsubstantiated allegations?
Back up your crap with numbers, not stereotypes, or bugger off.
Yes, individual farmers can make higher profit margins by not giving all their money to Monsanto to purchase seeds / pesticides / herbicides. However, the total market share of organic products is small --- so, in industry aggregate, Monsanto and Pals make loads more money from smaller margins on larger sales.
From an Organic trade industry association hyping how big the organic industry is,
Total U.S. organic sales, including food and non-food products, were $28.682 billion in 2010
and represented ~4% of total food and beverage sales in 2010.
The other 96% percent of sales dollars go through the traditional Big Ag chain. From Monsanto's 2010 report, Monsanto's net sales were $10.5B, and ADM reported $68B in net sales --- so, just between these two corporations alone --- ~2.7x the entire organic industry's sales. And there are many others in the chain, making up the 96% of sales not going to organic produce.
Which I read, and noted that this is an editorial hit piece focusing on directly quoting PR from industry groups rather than making substantive scientific criticisms. If you can't tell the difference between an editorial article and actual scientific analysis, then you're hopelessly unqualified to discuss the scientific merits of research. There may have been some substantive criticism in there that I missed --- can you point one that stands out to me? Again, note that "this experiment could have been done better" is not equivalent to "the results are wrong"; nor is limited statistical certainty. The paper author's "extracurricular" activities in hyping up the results for the media do not invalidate the results themselves.
Where are the "retraction-worthy" scientific criticisms, rather than "the paper is sub-optimal and I could have done better"? What makes this work worthy of censoring from the scientific literature, rather than simply ignoring once improved studies come along?
I'll retain pseudonymity and spare you my publications list in high-impact-factor peer-reviewed journals; but, I can tell you that I've seen the process. There are certainly drawbacks, and room for improvements. However, "let the former Monsanto employees high in the journal hierarchy make decisions instead" is not an improvement. The peer review system has its flaws, but is the best system we have right now for checking scientific integrity for publication. Where are the scientific objections to this work --- that you keep changing the subject around whenever I ask for specific examples --- that demonstrate failure of the peer review process, besides industry lobbying groups shouting that peer review has failed?
OK, what scientific issues, which somehow slipped by the initial peer review and subsequent close scrutiny for scientific error? There are certainly ways one could have constructed a more statistically sensitive experiment; some poor choices in experimental design were made. However, that doesn't itself invalidate the findings in any way; it only makes them less statistically precise, in a manner transparently presented in the paper. Selection of rats with a high baseline tumor rate harms signal-to-noise, but that doesn't mean that finding even more tumors on a Roundup-Ready diet or chronic glyphosate exposure is irrelevant --- if these products exacerbate pre-existing inclinations to cancer, that would be a health effect worth looking into.
The study wasn't a brilliant example of experimental design; better choices could have been made for more robust results. But the potential ability to perform a better experiment does not make the results any less trustworthy than what they are. Given the lack of other apples-to-apples comparable experiments in the literature of longer-term exposure in rats, a weak experiment still adds more to scientific knowledge than no experiment covering this range. Where are the "scientific issues" that would require retraction, rather than simply suitably cautious interpretation of results, which should be done for every paper? "Not good enough to be worth much notice" is not a standard typically applied to forced retractions, which are typically reserved for outright fraud or clearly wrong results, for which zero evidence has been presented by the parties mandating retraction.
"Harmless" is a bit of a stretch. The exact acute LD50 dosage isn't known. The EPA classifies it as "Category III toxicity," with Category IV being the lowest --- indicating an LD50 in the 0.5-5 g/kg range, which is not inconsistent with fatalities from a 100ml dose. However, the additives certainly don't help. Since they are always included in the stuff that Monsanto's products encourage immense widespread dumping of, it's probably most useful to generally consider glyphosate plus other stuff in RoundUp together.
Who says I do? I'm not the one saying to rush off and proclaim GMOs as deadly unsafe carcinogens. I'm recommending that the results of studies showing potential harmful effects be independently followed up with more research to determine whether any effect is there. I will take the profit motive into consideration. But why your double standard, simultaneously jumping on the profit motive of this one guy while assuming profit motive --- on the side with tremendously greater profits involved --- isn't an issue worth worrying about?
I'm willing to question the profit motives of both sides --- and insist on verification within the scientific process to resolve outstanding issues, rather than decisions handed down from industry insiders. Are you, or do you think that bigger profits have less corrupting effect than smaller ones?
I don't "prefer" this study to others, and realize that this maize is "safe" according to alternate measurements probing different effects (such as being short-term rather than lifetime-accumulation studies). Where is the apples-to-apples comparison that supersedes this study?
The "specific problems" with the study --- generally, low signal-to-noise ratio due to high background mortality rates of the rats being studied --- are not "scientifically fatal" making the paper retraction-worthy. They limit the statistical impact of the study --- that is what it is. In no other scientific field would you throw out all experiments that lie in the margins between "strong statistical disproof of effect" and "strong statistical proof of effect". There may be results that lie in-between; and, when those results raise concerns, you follow up on them with more in-depth study rather than delete them.
In fact, where are the numerous other studies showing negative impacts from GMO products with >99% certainty? Out of hundreds of studies performed, there ought to be a several demonstrating statistically significant results by pure chance --- unless there is a systematic bias in the system that suppresses any such results. In a scientifically healthy field of study, there should regularly be anomalous findings that encourage independent follow-up study. That this experiment stands out for finding (statistically weak) evidence for GMO crops is itself damning evidence of systematic corruption of results (a common result with large monetary outcomes riding on publications).
If you think such problems can't occur, then you are severely ignorant of past history. Consider the decades over which the Tobacco industry suppressed their own internal research on the clear addictive and carcinogenic effects of smoking, in order to publicly push the blatant murderous lie that links between smoking and cancer were scientifically unfounded. Why do you think this won't happen again, given how profitably it's worked in the past?