Its a bit over a year old now, but I happened to run across this Wired story from December 2003 with a familiar them — evil corporations are trying to punish the heroic researchers who expose the inherent problems with biotechnology. But the Wired News story was little more than a fairy tale, sustained by keeping its audience in ignorance.
Consider, for example, one of the beleaguered researchers featured by Wired,
Arpad Pusztai encountered a similar situation with a study he performed on genetically modified potatoes.
“We found that when we are feeding these (young) rats with genetically modified potatoes, their immune system … was not developing so well,” Pusztai said. “Their organs, their guts, their pancreas (and) their liver were not developing as well as the ones which had been fed on the parent line non-genetically modified potatoes. Quite truly I tell you I was very perplexed.”
He “naively” published his work, he said. He was unprepared for the vortex into which the paper threw him.
“I never thought that as a conventional scientist I would have reporters parking and living on my driveway to try to get my views on anything,” he said. “I’m a very polite and humble person and I couldn’t really understand how this happened until somebody explained to me that what I put my foot in was a multibillion-dollar business.”
That is simply an unbelievably inept summary of Pusztai’s story
Pustzai first came to prominence after he published a study in The Lancet claiming that rats who were fed genetically modified potatoes experienced immune system changes. The Lancet published the study over the objections of its own referees assigned to conduct a peer review of Pustzai’s research. A number of those referees, who are usually semi-anonymous, went public with their objections to the Lancet’s publication. Professor John Pickett, for example, who refereed Pustzai’s paper for The Lancet, told the BBC,
Since I understand that a number of us were very, very critical of the work and yet the journal is going to go ahead and publish this information with its conclusions, then we have decided to speak out.
If this work had been part of a student’s study, then the student would have failed whatever examination he was contributing the work for.
An independent group of six toxicologists appointed by the UK’s Royal Society concluded that Pusztai’s research was fundamentally flawed. Its report said,
We found no convincing evidence of adverse affects from GM potatoes.
Where the data seemed to show slight differences between rats fed predominantly on GM and on non-GM potatoes, the difference were uninterpretable because of the technical limitations of the experiment and the incorrect use of statistical tests.
Too often, the media’s depiction of scientific controversies is like this Wired News article — a one-sided fairy tale that leaves out key information that the reader needs to evaluate the claims being made.
Sources:
Professor, Biotech Butt Heads. Kristen Philipkoski, Wired News, December 13, 2003.
GM controversy intensifies . The BBC, October 15, 1999.
Genetics scientist suspended . The BBC, August 12, 1998.
Lancet defies GM study advice. The BBC, October 15, 1999.
GM food study was flawed. The BBC, May 18, 1999.
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Hi
So in 2 days they knew enough of this to show the work was bad and worthy of the sack.
As he said when you cross a multi billion dollar business you lose.
Pity that the kidney failures in USA have gone from 1 000 to 500 000 thanks to Pustzai”s flawed work showing the destruction of the kidney.
Never mind the GMO industry promise to find a cure for damaged kidneys.
I think its called a damaged liver?
An even more SKEPTICAL CHEMIST