By Brian Carnell

Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Last Fall, Nature published a study claiming that genes from genetically modified corn had found its way into local varieties of corn in remote regions of Mexico. This study garnered headlines in newspapers and magazines as an example of the dangers of genetically modified organisms. The only problem is that the study was wrong.

Writing for Reason, Ronald Bailey describes how the researchers rushed to judgment and Nature went along for the ride. A review of the Nature study that was published in Transgenic Research in February found numerous flaws in the study saying that,

. . . no credible scientific evidence is presented in the paper to support claims made by the authors that gene flow between transgenic maize and traditional maize landraces has taken place. It is most likely that the report by Quist and Chapela is a testimony to technical failure and artifacts which are common with PCR and IPCR.

According to Bailey, IPCR can lead to false positives because contamination between the sample being tested and the sample it is being compared to is quite common. There are a number of more refined techniques to prevent this, but the original researchers did not perform any of these tests.

The authors of the Transgenic Research review article blast Nature for not applying stricter standards to the study.

What is very surprising, however is that a manuscript with so many fundamental flaws was published in a scientific journal that normally has very stringent criteria for accepting manuscripts for publication . . . It is very disappointing that the editors of Nature did not insist on a level of scientific evidence that should have been easily accessible if the interpretations were true. Consequently, no evidence is presented to justify any of the conclusions presented in the paper.

Bailey notes that one of the authors of the Nature study, Ignacio Chapela, is hardly a disinterested party. He is one of the signers of a 1999 petition to place a moratorium on genetically modified crops and is a board member of Pesticide Action Network of North America which actively campaigns against genetically modified plants. Science has a long history of people with vested interests in particular outcomes finding those outcomes, usually due to wishful thinking and carelessness rather than outright fraud.

Source:

Environmentalist biofraud? Ronald Bailey, Reason, February 12, 2002.

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