Study Linking GM Maize To Rat Tumors Is Retracted 341
ananyo writes "Bowing to scientists' near-universal scorn, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology has fulfilled its threat to retract a controversial paper which claimed that a genetically modified (GM) maize causes serious disease in rats after the authors refused to withdraw it. The paper, from a research group led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France, and published in 2012, showed 'no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data,' said a statement from Elsevier, which publishes the journal. But the small number and type of animals used in the study means that 'no definitive conclusions can be reached.' The known high incidence of tumors in the Sprague-Dawley rat 'cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality and incidence observed in the treated groups,' it added. Today's move came as no surprise. Earlier this month, the journal's editor-in-chief, Wallace Hayes, threatened retraction if Séralini refused to withdraw the paper, which is exactly what he announced at a press conference in Brussels this morning. Séralini and his team remained unrepentant, and allege that the retraction derives from the journal's editorial appointment of biologist Richard Goodman, who previously worked for biotechnology giant Monsanto for seven years."
seems a bit strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Imo, withdrawing papers makes sense mainly if there is indeed, "evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data". Faked data doesn't help advance science, and should be purged from the record.
But merely questionable conclusions are another story. Science is a back-and-forth process: someone publishes a study purporting to show X, and then someone else criticizes their conclusions, re-analyzes their data, attempts to replicate it, etc. Then they publish their own conclusions, purporting to show not-X. Withdrawing the original study in this case doesn't make sense to me, if it was not fraudulent: we don't typically retroactively go into old journals and blank out the articles that have subsequently turned out to be wrong. We just write new articles with better analysis.
Re:seems a bit strange (Score:5, Insightful)
You are correct.
Weak science and insufficient sample sizes are matters for the journal's referees to suss out and, if necessary, recommend that the journal not publish the paper. The fact that the paper passed peer review should have the journal re-examining their editorial/peer-review policies.
Ultimately, the decision to publish (and responsibility for publishing) a paper lies with the journal's editor in chief.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree. If Elsevier thought the study was too weak, they shouldn't have published it.
Asking the authors to retract it makes it look like they just wanted to save face by not doing it themselves. Didn't work.
The "Nature" post says Elsevier bowed to "scientists' near-universal scorn"; I have no idea what that means. It suggests perhaps that the study was unconvincing. But it's Elsevier's job to screen for that. It's not their job to retroactively delete honest experiments with honest data which have bee
Re: (Score:3)
"have been honestly reproduced"
[citation needed]
(There seems to be a not-uncommon misconception that reproduction of the results by other groups is part of the pre-publication "peer review" -- this is simply not the case. If you're not under that delusion, but think some group has reproduced these results, do share.)
Re:seems a bit strange (Score:5, Informative)
The study wasn't just unconvincing. It was riddled with serious flaws. The first and clearest complaint: they didn't do any statistical analysis. At all. Plus, some of the GMO and pesticide groups lived noticeably longer than the control group. The highest-dose pesticide or GMO group rarely did the worst, and sometimes did the best among the groups.
But perhaps the most damning problem of all is that the very design of the study was such that it was guaranteed that they would be able to find something wrong with the GMO/pesticide groups (at least superficially). This is due to the virtue of having in effect 20 different experimental groups of 10 mice each (10 male, 10 female for 10 different dosages of GMO's or pesticides). And they measured dozens of different things over the course of the study. In essence, if the rats in the GMO/pesticide groups hadn't had (superficially) more tumors, they would have had something else wrong with them more often, just due to random chance.
Whether this execrable excuse of a paper is so terrible due to abject incompetence or outright fraud, it deserves to be retracted. It should never have been published in the first place, but I'm glad the journal has decided to retract it in the end.
Re: (Score:3)
You had the most damning problem of all with your first paragraph. If it ain't got stats, it ain't science. The only science you can do (temporarily) without stats is theory, and that's only science if you're going to test it with experiment... using stats.
If they'd done proper stats it would have taken into account their plethora of experimental groups and ensured that they didn't get any positive results at all.
I didn't believe you that they hadn't done any stats so I looked up the paper. The only one
Re:seems a bit strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, really bad. [discovery.com]
It shouldn't have been published in the first place, but at least they're admitting their mistake.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:seems a bit strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you consider that to be poor science? Because that is essentially what happened here, there were obvious problems with the experiment, and the science was badly done. Elsevier was being kind by saying there was no evidence of fraud, because either it was fraud or incompetence that motivated these scientists to publish.
What they should do is repeat the experiment with a better sample size.
Re: (Score:2)
" a single kid... that is essentially what happened here"
Really? They "essentially" had a sample size of 1 with no control group?
"either it was fraud or incompetence that motivated these scientists to publish"
How do you know their motive?
Re: (Score:3)
Really? They "essentially" had a sample size of 1 with no control group?
Yes. The sample sizes weren't large enough to draw any conclusions. At least read the summary, please.
How do you know their motive?
I don't, which, as I said, means it's possible they are incompetent.
Re:seems a bit strange (Score:5, Informative)
No, it wasn't a sample size of 1 with no control group. But according to one expert, the control group was way too small to derive statistically valid results from. According to UCD researcher Martina Newell–McGloughlin, quoted in the Discovery article [discovery.com] (from 2012), here's what they did wrong:
So yeah, while it's not as bad as the vaccine hoaxers, it was apparently not good research.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
"But no, you don't withdraw published papers for bad science - you release another one proving the original was bad. (Unlike the original Lancet paper, which was discovered to be fraudulent which does demand removal)."
You absolutely do retract published papers for bad science. You don't retract them for incorrect conclusions, but you DO retract them for things like fraud, misrepresentation, unjustified conclusions, etc. I read the paper. It looks like these guys played some fancy analysis games to get so
Re: (Score:2)
Um, no, not really.
You are right, they should do more work on the study and get more data. But any questions about statistical significance and/or experimental design should have been addressed at the peer review stage. And then after that, there is even a final decision by the editor-in-chief to actually publish the study. Bad science or no, the study made it through. It happens all the time. See the arsenic in DNA controversy, or the huge argument over a generalized mechanism for antibiotic killing by rea
Re: (Score:2)
Calling for retraction in the absence of any kind of experimental evidence is not the way to handle this. I am not surprised the authors refused. Retraction has a huge stigma associated with it, and if they weren't deliberately fraudulent, they don't deserve it. The scientific community can scorn all they want, but it means nothing without experimental evidence to back it up.
It's more comparable to the cold fusion of Fleischmann and Pons . Not necessarily scientific malpractice, but the poorly done experiments followed by attempts to cash in on the results drew down the wrath of the scientific community (in this case the authors of the study are trying to make money off a book and movie about the study).
Re: (Score:2)
No, they made a conclusion not supported by the data available. What they *should* have done is expanded the study to include more and more diverse test animals to firm-up the conclusion. They could have retracted their study and re-done it while retaining some dignity.
What they did instead is throw a hissy-fit and then blame a new editor, which strikes me as extreme paranoia at best.
arsenic in dna (Score:2)
Can we say arsenic in DNA?
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6034/1163 [sciencemag.org]
It was only a few years ago, but I guess it has already left the public memory. A group of scientists rush to a hasty conclusion because they want to make a big splash. Science publishes it because they like controversy. A large flurry of criticism from the scientific community, but ultimately a number of papers get published refuting the original findings. We can ask the question...should it have been published? A lot of people think
Re:seems a bit strange (Score:5, Insightful)
One cannot rule out the lesser-sized, but very real industry of trumping up faux problems for the purpose of becoming talking heads.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When you say "lesser-sized" you don't really give any indication of the scale of difference.
The agribusiness industry spends more on public relations than the entire independent research community spends overall. One cannot rule out a very large bias in favor of suppressing anything that might endanger profits. Almost all independent researchers are part of non-profits.
Re:seems a bit strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed let's look at it from that perspective: I'm sure you'd be rather suspect of any study that has received most of its funding from Monsanto. Likewise, would you be in favor of retracting any that reached a very shaky conclusion?
On that same token, would you be suspect of any research study that was funded by any one (or several) companies in the organic lobby? The organic industry is massively profitable, and in fact enjoys much higher profit margins than conventional farming. The organic lobby also dumps all kinds of money into trying to prove that GM crops are harmful, and this particular study was in fact one of those they funded, in addition to this one:
http://www.marklynas.org/2013/06/gmo-pigs-study-more-junk-science/ [marklynas.org]
Seralini is himself an anti-GMO activist who is setting out from the get-go to try to kill GMO farming. This is like having a scientist who also happens to be a catholic minister publishing a study proving that Intelligent Design is true and Evolution is false. Of course I'd retract it. And besides, it isn't even just the publisher who wants it retracted, numerous other independent researchers want the same thing because Seralini himself tried to derail the peer review process:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Likewise, would you be in favor of retracting any that reached a very shaky conclusion?
Except that the conclusion was not shaky. The number and type of rats was what was complained about, not the actual experiment or the results.
Why not advocate expanding these experiments with more and various test subjects instead of making a false claim? Seems to me like you are pro-GMO. Either that or you didn't see the obvious. Your link to a blog post instead of a reputable source has me thinking it's simply pro-GMO propaganda talking, especially when more than half of the blog post is ad hominem.
Yo
Recent History (Score:4, Informative)
When big pharma pays a publisher to publish a fake journal⦠[scienceblogs.com]
The US isn't always wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
Corn is a major export crop of the United States.
Europe government wants to promote food that is grown within the Union. It really makes sense that a European scientist would feel pressured to find evidence against a primary US import.
As the US agriculture system is very efficient at making low cost food.
I know it is trendy to be Anti-American as it must be some conspiracy from big US companies to hide the truth, like with Big Tobacco.
But what if GM Food is actually perfectly safe like the science says it is.
Re: (Score:2)
In this case, I really don't think it is anti-American but anti-GM. There is a very widespread fear of GM. Which, as it happens, I disagree with. But, right or wrong, people are afraid of GM and shouting at their politicians about it.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Fears about GM being somehow more unhealthy or poisonous than regular food are pretty irrational.
However, there are other fears that are more sensible, that have gotten conflated with the health fears, and for some people it's now impossible to separate them:
- Fear that untested modified genes will escape into the environment and mess up the local ecosystem
- Fear that GM crops (roundup-ready!) will increase the use of insecticides, which is a whole other barrel of worms
- Fear that GM foods will give well-co
Re: (Score:3)
Only to someone whose entire knowledge of the subject is "insecticide", rather than BT-produced Cry proteins, which we know an awful lot about, such as how insects react to them (explodes their alkaline guts, which is why they're used) and how humans react to them (which is to say, not at all, since the proteins are digested in mammalian acidic guts that both renders them inactiv
Re:The US isn't always wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I have nothing against the US selling GM food in Europe, as long as every customer can decide for himself, but this is in reality not the case. The problem is that in European countries the labelling requirements for GM food are generally inadequate and do not cover all cases, e.g. there is no labelling for ingredients below a certain percentage, some pre-processed ingredients or meat from animals fed with GM plants. In fact, most of the labelling is so fine-print that it cannot even be read through a looki
Re: (Score:2)
Clap! Clap! +10 insightfull and to the point!
Re: (Score:2)
We don't want to risk the 'if'.
You know, in the USA you can do what you want, usually there is no law hindering you. You wait till you get sued into oblivion when something goes wrong.
In europe we usually have laws. Regarding GM food, most of the people, and luckily also most of the politicians, are against it.
I don't want to wait till we see 'if it is dangerous' or till we see 'if it is harmless'.
I simply don't want it at all.
That is my choice AND my right!
Whew! (Score:2)
Study Linking GM Maize To Rat Tumors Is Retracted
Thank heaven for that! Somebody pass the corn please.
Wrong issues with GMOs (Score:5, Insightful)
Direct health effects of GMO foods are IMHO only the third most important potential concern with GMOs.
The first concern is that whatever you have engineered, it is self-reproducing and could potentially take over a niche in a whole ecosystem, displacing other species or naturually adapted varieties, and you in general could not stop this if it happened. So eco-systems then become fully the responsibility of human biology tweakers.
This seems generally unwise. The consequences of such ecosystem shifts is too complex to be predicted.
A second concern is that each genetic engineering modification needs to be fully assessed separately from all others, due to the complexity of the systems into which they are being inserted. Or at least, very narrow equivalence classes of modifications need each to be individually, and in combination, re-tested for long term effects, viability, viability and effects of likely mutations of the tweak etc, each time they are tweaked.
The cost of such repeated and long term safety testing is well beyond the capability of the companies producing the products, so we can be sure that such rigorous, long term, and repeated (when product is varied) testing is not being done.
Instead, smaller numbers of specific tests on a subset of engineered varieties are generalized in alleged applicability and conclusion, to save money.
So there is still a lot of know unknown and unknown unknown out there, and it is the kind of product that in general, self-reproduces and also expands in range.
Science wins (Score:2)
Science wins and political extremists lose today, and for that progress for humanity is made. Any time a political extremist tries to hijack science to push a political agenda they should be subject to the greatest of scrutiny. Science can and must rise above politics for the greater good of humanity and in this case it did. Here's hoping science can do so in other realms as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Really! Hundreds of studies showing that GMO is harmful? Stop the presses, gather the pitchforks and round up the boys quick! How on earth did HUNDREDS of studies showing GMO is harmful get overlooked by the entire scientific community? You have to be right that Monsanto has orchestrated suppressed this with a worldwide conspiracy across two hundred plus countries with different religions and political views. The world is secretly ruled by Monsanto, they are the world's puppeteers!
Better yet how did a world
Rats! (Score:4, Informative)
When does ambition or the will to believe begin to look more like fraud?
The biggest criticism from both reviews is that Seralini and his team used only ten rats of each sex in their treatment groups. That is a similar number of rats per group to that used in most previous toxicity tests of GM foods, including Missouri-based Monsanto's own tests of NK603 maize. Such regulatory tests monitor rats for 90 days, and guidelines from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) state that ten rats of each sex per group over that time span is sufficient because the rats are relatively young. But Seralini's study was over two years --- almost a rat's lifespan --- and for tests of this duration, the OECD recommends at least 20 rats of each sex per group for chemical-toxicity studies, and at least 50 for carcinogenicity studies.
Moreover, the study used Sprague-Dawley rats, which both reviews note are prone to developing spontaneous tumors. Data provided to Nature by Harlan Laboratories, which supplied the rats in the study, show that only one-third of males, and less than one-half of females, live to 104 weeks. By comparison, its Han Wistar rats have greater than 70% survival at 104 weeks, and fewer tumors. OECD guidelines state that for two-year experiments, rats should have a survival rate of at least 50% at 104 weeks. If they do not, each treatment group should include even more animals --- 65 or more of each sex.
''There is a high probability that the findings in relation to the tumor incidence are due to chance, given the low number of animals and the spontaneous occurrence of tumors in Sprague-Dawley rats,'' concludes the EFSA report. In response to the EFSA's assessment, the European Federation of Biotechnology --- an umbrella body in Barcelona, Spain, that represents biotech researchers, institutes and companies across Europe --- called for the study to be retracted, describing its publication as a ''dangerous case of failure of the peer-review system.."
Yet Seralini has promoted the cancer results as the study's major finding, through a tightly orchestrated media offensive that began last month and included the release of a book and a film about the work. Only a select group of journalists (not including Nature) was given access to the embargoed paper, and each writer was required to sign a highly unusual confidentiality agreement, seen by Nature, which prevented them from discussing the paper with other scientists before the embargo expired.
Hyped GM maize study faces growing scrutiny [nature.com] [Oct 2012]
Another Greenpeace Lie Exposed (Score:2)
Gilles-Eric Séralini has published a whole series of journal articles purporting to expose the dangers of GMOs, glyposate etc.
They are all lapped up and given great exposure by the mainstream media. They are all pointed at with great glee by the anti-GMO crowd as evidence that GMOs are really really bad for you.
They are all junk science that should have never been published.
The source of most of the funding for this work is Greenpeace.
No doubt there will be more crap like this in the future. Hope
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit.
Jeff Smith has no training as a scientist. He's great at teaching yogic flying though. A quick search on him will immediately turn up the fact that he's a charlatan. He is the equivalent of an anti-vaccine leader, someone who is quite successful in spreading fear and false information.
wow! (Score:2)
scientific progress never fails to amaize me.
take that karma!
Actually reading the paper... (Score:3)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637 [sciencedirect.com]
The study involved 200 rats, half female, split into 10 groups.
As I understand it, the greatest 'statistical significance' comes from the female rats.
Taking one part, and closely analysing it.
'Up to 14 months, no animals in the control groups showed any signs of tumors whilst 10–30% of treated females per group developed tumors, with the exception of one group (33% GMO + R). By the beginning of the 24th month, 50–80% of female animals had developed tumors in all treated groups, with up to 3 tumors per animal, whereas only 30% of controls were affected.'
Starting with the first statement. 'up to 14 months, 1-3 rats in some of the groups developed tumors, whereas no rats in the control group or the group fed GMO + roundup did' So, of 7 groups, 2 groups were cancer free.
Going onto the next part.
3 rats got cancer in the control group.
5-8 in the other 6 groups.
But, half of those 6 groups were also fed roundup.
So, a total of between 9 and 15 extra rats got cancer, apparantly, if you multiply up the control group.
But - the whole basis of this paper now rests on two rats.
If in the control group at the 24th month, 5 rats would normally have gotten cancer, and 2 happened to get lucky, the paper largely becomes non-statistically significant.
I am not a statistician.
If normally, half of rats get cancer at 24 months, then you would expect 5 rats, not 3 in the control group to have it.
How likely is it that only three rats would die?
Only if this chance is under 5% does the rest of the paper have any weight whatsoever.
And, Seralini's response... (Score:3)
Here's the Seralini team response to FCT. Basically, Seralini is challenging them to also retract the Monsanto study (e.g., Hammond et al. 2004):
http://gmoseralini.org/professor-seralini-replies-to-fct-journal-over-study-retraction/ [gmoseralini.org]
Professor Seralini replies to FCT journal over study retraction
Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini and his team have responded to the letter from A. Wallace Hayes, editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT), telling Prof Séralini that he intended to retract his study on NK603 maize and Roundup.
Here’s the retraction notice from Elsevier, the publisher of FCT: http://prn.to/1euTk2W [prn.to]
Response by Prof GE Seralini and colleagues to A. Wallace Hayes, editor of Food and Chemical Toxicology
28 Nov 2013
We, authors of the paper published in FCT more than one year ago on the effects of Roundup and a Roundup-tolerant GMO (Séralini et al., 2012), and having answered to critics in the same journal (Séralini et al., 2013), do not accept as scientifically sound the debate on the fact that these papers are inconclusive because of the rat strain or the number of rats used. We maintain our conclusions. We already published some answers to the same critics in your Journal, which have not been answered (Séralini et al., 2013).
Rat strain
The same strain is used by the US national toxicology program to study the carcinogenicity and the chronic toxicity of chemicals (King-Herbert et al., 2010). Sprague Dawley rats are used routinely in such studies for toxicological and tumour-inducing effects, including those 90-day studies by Monsanto as basis for the approval of NK603 maize and other GM crops (Sprague Dawley rats did not came from Harlan but from Charles-River) (Hammond et al., 2004; Hammond et al., 2006a; Hammond et al., 2006b).
A brief, quick and still preliminary literature search of peer-reviewed journals revealed that Sprague Dawley rats were used in 36-month studies by (Voss et al., 2005) or in 24-month studies by (Hack et al., 1995), (Minardi et al., 2002), (Klimisch et al., 1997), (Gamez et al., 2007).Some of these studies have been published in Food and Chemical Toxicology.
Number of rats, OECD guidelines
OECD guidelines (408 for 90 day study, 452 chronic toxicity and 453 combined carcinogenicity/chronic toxicity study) always asked for 20 animals per group (both in 1981 and 2009 guidelines) although the measurement of biochemical parameters can be performed on 10 rats, as indicated. We did not perform a carcinogenesis study, which would not have been adopted at first, but a long-term chronic full study, 10 rats are sufficient for that at a biochemical level according to norms and we have measured such a number of parameters! The disturbance of sexual hormones or other parameters are sufficient in themselves in our case to interpret a serious effect after one year. The OPLS-DA statistical method we published is one of the best adapted. For tumours and deaths, the chronology and number of tumours per animal have to be taken into account. Any sign should be regarded as important for a real risk study. Monsanto itself measured only 10 rats of the same strain per group on 20 to conclude that the same GM maize was safe after 3 months (Hammond et al., 2004).
The statistical analysis should not be done with historical data first, the comparison is falsified, thus 50 rats per group is useless
The use of historical data falsifies health risk assessments because the diet is contaminated by dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (Schecter et al., 1996), mercury (Weiss et al., 2005), cadmium and chromium among other heavy metals in a range of doses that altered mouse liver and lung gene expression and confounds genomic analyses (Kozul et al., 2008). They also contained pesticides or plasticizers released by cages or from water sources (Howdeshell et al., 2003). Historical
Re:maize?? (Score:5, Informative)
who uses the term maize any longer??
Scientific researchers for starters. And anyone who speaks Spanish.
Re:maize?? (Score:5, Informative)
really?? I mean sure it is proper but who uses the term maize any longer?? (for those who are not up to date, maize is the native american term for corn)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize [wikipedia.org]
TL;DR Maize is preferred in formal, scientific, and international usage because it refers specifically to this one grain, unlike corn, which has a complex variety of meanings that vary by context and geographic region.
Re:maize?? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Wasn't Willie Maize the Catcher in the Rye? Or am I thinking about Yogi Berra?
Re: (Score:3)
Billy Maize is the Pitcher in the Rye.
...Slashdot needs a comment filter for bad pun density.
Re: (Score:2)
That's right. Yogi Berra snatched piknik baskets.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:maize?? (Score:5, Informative)
Come to Europe. We grow corn too - but our corn is a different plant entirely.
When European settlers came to the new world, they found a lot of new species they had no names for. So they named them after something familiar from back home. 'Corn' was named because it was the staple crop, just like the 'corn' back home - otherwise known as wheat, or the stuff cornflakes and bread are made from. This is also why you have a robin that isn't even in the same family as the european robin: It has a similar red breast, so it was called a robin.
Re:maize?? (Score:5, Funny)
Well that explains a lot of things - Healthcare, Democrat, Football.
No wonder we're so confused. It's all your fault.
USA! USA! USA!
Re: (Score:2)
Funniest comment of the month and no mod points...
Re: (Score:2)
Looked it up, and... you are right. Cornflakes are made from maize. Huh.
After the processing they look quite unlike their source crop. I just always assumed they were wheat without thinking much about it, having seen a television program with information about their origin. On some research it appears that while the early cornflakes were made from wheat, the recipe has since been heavily revised - one of the revisions being the switch from wheat to maze as the primary ingredient.
I get the impression Kellogg
Re: (Score:2)
And yes, I know I misspelt 'maize' twice.
Re: maize?? (Score:4, Interesting)
But then, this is the man who worked tirelessly to reintroduce circumcision to the US as a preemptive way discourage masturbation, so screw him.
Corn flakes were a variation on that theme. Kellogg was a follower of the ideas of Sylvester Graham (who also invented the "masturbation causes blindness" nuttery). He believed that spicy or sweet foods led to "passions" and "impure thoughts".
Read the definition of corn... (Score:5, Informative)
Gan: Corn is defined as a small hard grain/seed
Wheat is corn
Rice is corn
Rye is Corn
Millet is Corn
Maize is also corn
The term Corn used in supermarkets is actually slang....
If you are going to be a vocab critic then at least get the vocab right!
Re:maize?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maize is the term used in the UK, where corn means, usually, wheat - sometimes barley.
Many dictionaries say that "corn" means the local most common grain crop, and therefore each grain type needs another name for use where it is not the most common.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"Corn outside North America, Australia, and New Zealand means any cereal crop" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize)
That's quite a good reason for being specific.
Also Maiz is the Taino (native american) name for the plant, Maize is a modern derivative of that and the technically correct name.
Re:maize?? (Score:5, Informative)
Cebuano - mais
Danish - majs
Dutch - maïs
Esperanto - maizo
Estonian - mais
Filipino - mais
Finnish - maissi
French - maïs
German - Mais
Haitian Creole - mayi
Italian - mais
Norwegian - mais
Spanish - maíz
Swedish - majs
Turkish - misir
Re: (Score:3)
really?? I mean sure it is proper but who uses the term maize any longer??
Oh dear, you just opened a can of whoop-ass on yourself....
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone outside of the English speaking US.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Here in the UK its called sweet corn, and is shortened to corn on the cob.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very easy to prove that something is unsafe; you simply show meaningful and reproducible examples of harm caused
You can't prove that something is safe because you can't say beyond a doubt that something will never ever cause harm in the future. What you *can* do is show multiple studies that were looking for harm and could not meaningfully find any.
What we know about GMOs is that there are no known examples of harm caused by them that can be reproduced by scientific peers.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, no, you can't. As Popper showed 50 years ago, it is wrong to consider corroboration as a reason, a justification for believing in a theory or as an argument in favor of a theory to convince someone who objects to it.
See, for example,
Karl Popper (1963). Conjectures and Refutations. p.53. ISBN0-06-131376-9.
"Induction, i.e. inference based on many observations, is a myth. It is neithe
Re: (Score:3)
What we know about GMOs is that there are no known examples of harm caused by them that can be reproduced by scientific peers.
You mean like Monsanto's Newleaf Potatoes?
There was first the Dr. Arpad Pusztai study that showed it caused "damage to the intestines and immune systems of rats fed the genetically modified potatoes."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81rp%C3%A1d_Pusztai [wikipedia.org]
Industry and the Royal Society of Medicine declared Dr. Arpad's study flawed and his study was considered discredited.
Then it turns out the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences had conducted a similar study that found similar results. Except this study
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:5, Funny)
GMOs produce toxins. Those toxins have already been shown to stay in the human body almost indefinitely, compromising the human immune system. And, in perfect correlation to the spread of GMOs, all sorts of illnesses are growing and a rapid rate.
They turned me into a newt!
This is why they refuse to do any long-term studies.
I got better.
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh, no, the paper was about GMO corn causing tumors in rats - are you high on weed or something?
Anyway, there is a broad scientific consensus about the safety of GMOs. There are over 600 studies - you can start here: http://www.biofortified.org/genera/studies-for-genera/. Do you want to claim that Monsanto has the entire scientific community locked up in their sphere of influence? That's about as sensible as claiming that human-caused global warming proponents in academia are all part of some liberal conspiracy to implement communism.
Re: "GMOs produce toxins" the only toxins that are being produced are GMOs that have been modified to produce the Bt toxin which is COMPLETELY harmless to humans. The mechanism of action of the Bt pesticide only affects insects - the digestive system of the human is completely unaffected by it. Also, you may not be aware, but Bt is available as a spray and is approved for use even on USDA Organic crops. So even if you're eating organic food, there is a very good chance you're consuming the Bt pesticide.
If you think Bt is unsafe to humans then PROVE IT. Put up or shut up.
Re: 'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You're right. Most of them are on your payroll. They're publicly funded.
You're also right, it's not "science" in the original sense, when most scientists were funded privately by wealthy patrons.
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:4, Insightful)
Hardly no one looks for examples of harm from non-GMO corn either. All corn, really all agricultural products, are heavily genetically engineered, the difference is some is engineered with selective breeding and hybridization, and the other by resequencing. The only reason we pay attention to the latter is there's a contingent of motivated believers who think that "natural" food contains Maggi Health Fairies, and that Big Science and Corporations kill the fairies by Playing God(!!1!@1!). it's really hard to get funding to try studying anything against Big Ag's corporate profit interests
"It's impossible to disprove Darwinism, because the Darwin lobby controls all granting in the life sciences! [evolutionnews.org]" "It's impossible to disprove general relativity, because the government suppresses that truth! [conservapedia.com]"
Re: (Score:3)
Recall, in this particular case, the specific genetic modification in question: glyphosate resistance, allowing massive quantities of glyphosate herbicide to be dumped on everything. This isn't engineering to make bigger, sweeter kernels or boost crop density. Glyphosate kills the heck out of weeds because it's highly biologically active, designed to interfere with metabolic processes --- the kind of thing you might have big a-priori safety concerns about, above and beyond genetic modification to speed alon
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:4, Insightful)
the kind of thing you might have big a-priori safety concerns about, above and beyond genetic modification to speed along selective breeding processes for traits not directly related to dumping massive amounts of toxins onto food products. So, yes, humans have been doing "genetic engineering" for a long time, but less so for capabilities to saturate fields with weird shit that kills all the other plants.
Interestingly, they've been dumping actual shit on plants for a long time before that, which is probably more dangerous than the glyphosate that you are (for some unknown reason) afraid of.
Re: (Score:2)
On what grounds do you base that? Aside from smelling bad, literal shit doesn't seem to cause mass biological devastation. In fact, ecosystems that get a lot of shit tend to be absolutely thriving --- that's why they dump it on plants. Harmful secondary effects of shit are generally due to it being so good for life --- e.g. rapid algal blooms in runoff water, growing so fast that they exhaust other resources (e.g. dissolved oxygen). If I was forced to choose between chugging 100ml of shit or 100ml of glypho
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:4, Informative)
On what grounds do you base that?
Go eat it. See what e coli does to you. These are the kind of irrationalities ant-GMO fanatics get into (I'm not saying you are a fanatic, just that fanatics get caught in these irrationalities).
Using cow manure has killed people in the past, [sfgate.com] and it will continue to kill people in the future if it is used. When glyphosate is used on food, it is safe by the time it gets to the store.
Re: (Score:2)
100ml of glyphosate isn't likely to kill you? Oh, really? Why not ask the Indian farmers who chug the stuff to commit suicide because Monsanto has made the agricultural economy brutally horrible? Oh right, you can't, because they're dead.
A little info for you (from Wikipedia on glyphosate [wikipedia.org]):
Deliberate ingestion of Roundup in quantities ranging from 85 to 200 ml has resulted in death within hours of ingestion, although it has also been ingested in quantities as large as 500 ml with only mild or moderate symptoms.[83] There is a reasonable correlation between the amount of Roundup ingested and the likelihood of serious systemic sequelae or death. Ingestion of >85 ml of the concentrated formulation is likely to cause significant toxicity in adults. Corrosive effects – mouth, throat and epigastric pain and dysphagia – are common. Renal and hepatic impairment are also frequent and usually reflect reduced organ perfusion. Respiratory distress, impaired consciousness, pulmonary edema, infiltration on chest x-ray, shock, arrythmias, renal failure requiring haemodialysis, metabolic acidosis, and hyperkalaemia may occur in severe cases. Bradycardia and ventricular arrhythmias often present prior to death.
Not to downplay the risks of pathogens in shit. However, people have been wallowing around in shit of all kinds for a long time --- there are quite significant associated risks, but it's far from an acute poisoning death
Re: (Score:3)
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how Monsanto isn't required to definitively prove their crap is safe, but everyone else is required to definitely prove that it isn't.
It's not that way for either party and shouldn't be ("definitively prove" is a ludicrously high threshold). This was apparently half-assed research which didn't "prove" anything.
Re: (Score:3)
And, more importantly, having worked at Monsanto should automatically exclude you from being considered from holding an editorial position like this. You mostly have to assume these guys are going to be paid shills who have already made up their mind that it's safe, and he's basically just demonstrated that Food and Chemical Toxicology isn't interested in objective science.
Ignoring that working for Monsanto is one avenue to getting the sort of experience in the field that can make one a good editor, everyone has some sort of conflict of interest. I guess we'll just have to do without editors, huh?
Re: (Score:2)
What does working in a profit-focused megacorporate environment have to do with "experience to make one a good editor"?
He actually worked for a time at a place that turns scientific discoveries into things that benefit humanity. Excluding that group means you're excluding one of the more productive and useful areas of science.
And you might not have noticed this, but a lot of places have figured out how to handle conflicts of interest without firing all their productive staff. An editor of a scientific journal is not notably different than an accountant or a journalist, for example.
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:5, Insightful)
Like it or not, even big companies are innocent until proven guilty. Pending FDA approval, anyway.
In this case it looks like the researchers were out for blood and let their dislike for Monsanto get in the way of doing the science properly—not only did they use cancer-prone rats like it says in the summary, but they didn't do enough replicates to determine if the results were actually statistically significant: the control group definitely got fewer tumours, but given the unreliability of the rat breed's tumour-forming rate it's hard to say that it wasn't just a coincidence. (And using a cancer-prone rat isn't exactly realistic to begin with; tumours grow faster whenever they get cheap and easy nutrients.)
The paper was under close scrutiny immediately when it was published, and not just from Elsevier or Monsanto.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Well, if rats are unsuitable test subjects, might I suggest lawyers, politicians, telemarketers and door-to-door sales people?
Cram a couple of pounds of GMO crap down their gullet every day and see what happens. And, Fox could syndicate it and make a fortune. Think of the boost to the economy.
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't go so far as to assume that the FDA is completely overrun. A little under 50% of drugs fail FDA approval [biotech-now.org] on their first application. FDA rejection is costly, and companies have been increasingly been aggressive about doing their own testing first in order to make sure that they don't languish forever in a nightmarish backlog like the one that the USPTO suffers from. I used to know someone who had exactly the sort of near-executive-level pharmaceutical responsibility; as far as I could tell, a lot of the collaboration between FDA people and companies is actually about trying to expedite testing and safety.
On top of that, you have competitive pressures. Nothing is better for a company if they can discover that their competitors have cheated regulations or produced an unsafe product; the battlefield is aggressive and collaborations usually end in backstabbing. If you can produce evidence that another company lied to the FDA or that their products pose a health risk, it can potentially destroy that company. This is one case where a competitive market can be a positive force if the rules are set up right.
That all being said, the FDA does have corruption issues [cbsnews.com]. The Wikipedia article on on regulatory capture [wikipedia.org] lists some much more perverse cases, though, like how the agency responsible for cleaning up after oil spills was renamed and then restructured into oblivion in the days following the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Re:'no definitive conclusions can be reached' (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because it is reasonable to assume that it is safe based on what we know about biology. Furthermore, there are no real-world indications that it is not. At this point, if you want to claim it's unsafe, you better have some strong data to back it up.
According to objective science, every widely used organism produced by genetic manipulation is safe to consume.
Re: (Score:2)
There's actually a list of GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) at the FDA Website. To my knowledge, GM foods fall under this listing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRAS [wikipedia.org]
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/fcn/fcnNavigation.cfm?rpt=grasListing [fda.gov]
and here's a short listing for GM items listed under GRAS.
http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/fcn/fcnNavigation.cfm?filter=genetically+modified&sortColumn=&rpt=grasListing [fda.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not referring to GRAS. GRAS is stuff that we believe is safe because it has been in common use for a long time without problems. Some GM foods are starting to fall in this category. But GRAS is not a scientific standard.
I'm saying that, from a biological point of view, there is no reason or evidence to believe that GM foods are intrinsically unsafe. The only way anybody knows to produce harmful GM organisms is to deliberately engineer them to be harmful. That means GMOs are generally presumed to be safe
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah! It's time to get this hunt started. We need to start asking the most important scientific question of all:
Does Monsanto weigh the same as a duck?
hard to prove a negative (Score:3)
It's *really hard* to prove that something is safe, you pretty much need to test every possible interaction.
It's relatively simple to prove that something is not safe--you just need to find one thing demonstrating lack of safety and then you're done.
That said, I think there should be some level of due diligence required before bringing a GM food to market. That said, the current alternative to GMOs is irradiating DNA to force it to mutate, which causes way more changes in unrelated areas and offers all the
Re: (Score:3)
So basically we've got an evidentiary double-standard where Monsanto et al get to say "perfectly safe until proven otherwise"
I don't want to call you ignorant, but you should actually look at the tests that are done with GMO crops before they are allowed to be eaten, even by the researchers who made them, and then before they are allowed to be sold. Monsanto actually is required to prove they are safe (within a margin of error, which is all you can do in science). You should look up on Wikipedia and understand the tests that are done before posting again.
Re: (Score:2)
And, they generally use sample sizes similar to the numbers used in this study under question --- the 200 rats studied was a moderately "ordinary" number by industry standards. However, only when the results are unfavorable to Monsanto does this number become grossly inadequate to effectively evaluate the safety impacts of the product; otherwise, it's "good enough within the margin of error."
Yes, this study has low statistical impact from marginal statistics; just like most of the studies proving GMO crops
Re: (Score:3)
And, they generally use sample sizes similar to the numbers used in this study under question --- the 200 rats studied was a moderately "ordinary" number by industry standards.
I don't know where you are getting your numbers. Nature reports 20 total rats were used [nature.com]. The Nature article illustrates a number of other problems with the study, please at least become aware of them before further commenting.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm getting my numbers from the article. The total study included 200 rats, divided into smaller subgroups. 20 refers to one of the subgroups, which is common practice for similar studies. Yes, such numbers aren't great for high-statistical-confidence results; but the conclusion should be "more expanded study is needed" rather than "SHUT UP SHUT UP!" whenever an experiment contradicts Monsanto's agenda. Have you read the articles at all, and compared them to similar studies that "prove" GM foods are safe? O
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, such numbers aren't great for high-statistical-confidence results; but the conclusion should be "more expanded study is needed" rather than "SHUT UP SHUT UP!" whenever an experiment contradicts Monsanto's agenda.
You may be feeling people say that to you a lot, but it's because you are unscientific. Look at the Nature report (linked to earlier [nature.com]), it clearly explains why it was such a bad study. Or do you think Nature is controlled by Monsanto?
If you think that, you would make me smile.
Re: (Score:3)
Note, the "Nature report" isn't itself one of Nature's peer-reviewed articles --- it's a news commentary piece, passing along the views of lobbyists and industry-captured governmental bodies (also staffed with former Monsanto officials). The scientists responsible for peer reviewing the article, when it was initially published, and then again under renewed pressure from industry lobbying groups, found nothing scientifically wrong with the study. Statistically weak results do not invalidate science --- they
Re: (Score:2)
Funny how Monsanto isn't required to definitively prove their crap is safe, but everyone else is required to definitely prove that it isn't.
So basically we've got an evidentiary double-standard where Monsanto et al get to say "perfectly safe until proven otherwise", and we don't get to say "prove it". And then we all get to be the test subjects in the long-term studies.
Except they do have to prove it's safe, to within a certain margin. GM foods generally have a substantially similar composition and nutritional content as existing foods, which means if that food is safe so is the derived food. Believe it or not, but the FDA and equivalent organizations do have regulations for GM foods to ensure they're safe. Of course you can't definitely prove it's safe: that's an impossible burden of proof, because you can't prove anything definitively, in science.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm more of a no witch hunts fanboy.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm firmly in the methodological naturalism fanboy group.
Re: (Score:2)
A p-value that isn't "corrected" is a p-value for an experiment you didn't do. The p-value for the experiment you DID do IS enough. Taking only very slight liberties, it is the probability that a positive conclusion (there is a difference) is wrong.
Of course, if you do the wrong test, your p-value is invalid. Also if you don't "correct" it.