OscailtIrish biotech scientist's fraudlent pro-GM paper slammed by leading expertsOpen letter to British Food Journal editor and editorial board
Breaking news: Italian MP, Sgarbi denounces the Statistical Fraud on COVID-19. The speech of the Member of Parliament Vittorio Sgarbi in the session of the Italian Camera, Meeting no. 331 of Friday 24, April, 2020. Vittorio Sgarbi, denounces the closure of 60% of the businesses for 25,000 COVID-19 Deaths, of which the National Institute of Health says 96.3% died NOT of COVID-19 but of other pathologies. That means only 925 have died of the virus. 24,075 have died of other things.2008-06-08T13:29:02+00:00Indymedia Irelandimc-ireland@lists.indymedia.iehttp://www.indymedia.ie/atomfullposts?story_id=85918http://www.indymedia.ie/graphics/feedlogo.gifLet's end the debate over sweet corn, worms and GM foodhttp://www.indymedia.ie/article/85918#comment2298222008-06-08T13:29:02+00:00DeirdreHseems like these "experts" are organic folks and sociologists....and seems Green...seems like these "experts" are organic folks and sociologists....and seems Greenpeace was shifty when moving signs<br />
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Let's end the debate over sweet corn, worms and GM food<br />
March 6, 2008<br />
<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_strauss/20080306.html" title="http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_strauss/20080306.html">http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_strauss/20080306.html</a><br />
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Given a choice would you rather eat a wormy or worm-free cob of sweet corn?<br />
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If this doesn't sound like a question requiring more than a nanosecond of reflection, then you haven't been paying attention to an international row over what might be called "truth in worminess." It has erupted over an experiment conducted nearly eight years ago by three University of Guelph scientists and a local farmer.<br />
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It is a row that now has several dozen international scientists petitioning the journal that published the results in 2003 to withdraw the paper, as well as an award it gave to the article as the best paper published in 2003. It is a row in which English and Irish politicians have used the research to table motions denouncing one of the paper's authors for committing what they characterized as "grossly misleading" research of "a flagrant fraud."<br />
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So here is what happened. Jeff Wilson (he likes to be called Farmer Jeff) offered customers at his Birkbank Farms store a choice between genetically modified (GM) corn and traditional corn he had grown.<br />
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The GM corn had been genetically altered to express the natural insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis, commonly known as BT. The unmodified corn had had various pesticides and fungicides — including BT — sprayed on it.<br />
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In the store, there were explanations about how each type of corn was produced and the relative cost of both. The two corn types were sold at exactly same price.<br />
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When give a choice, consumers bought 680 dozen cobs of GM corn and only 452.5 dozen cobs of conventional sweet corn. Interviews conducted by the Guelph researchers with a small number of the customers afterward suggested that those who bought the GM corn were first impressed with the fact that it looked better than the conventional corn. An analysis revealed that one to two per cent of the GM corn had worm damage, versus 10 to 20 per cent of conventional corn.<br />
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As well, from an environmental perspective, the customers seemed more concerned about the pesticides applied to the conventional corn than the gene movement that had created the GM corn.<br />
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The British Food Journal eventually published these results.<br />
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Did signage skew results?<br />
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But when, you might be asking, are we going to get to the wormy corn question?<br />
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Well, it turned out that when Toronto Star journalist Stuart Laidlaw visited the farm and the store, he noted that a handwritten sign above the non-GM corn said, "Would you eat wormy sweet corn." Another, above the GM corn, said, "Here is what has gone into producing quality sweet corn," and listed fertilizers.<br />
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Laidlaw wrote in his 2003 book Secret Ingredients: The Brave New World of Industrial Farming that the signage was skewed and added, "when one bin was marked 'wormy corn' and the other 'quality sweet corn,' it is hardly surprising which sold more."<br />
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I will come back to this contention later, but on to the controversy.<br />
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In 2006, Joe Cummins — a retired professor of genetics at the University of Western Ontario — wrote a letter that was published in the British Food Journal quoting Laidlaw's book and demanding that the article be removed and its award rescinded. To put Cummins's views in context, since 1988, he has vigorously written and spoken out against genetic engineering.<br />
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In a companion letter, Doug Powell, one of paper's authors and a professor at Guelph, wrote that he didn't think the sign completely prejudiced the study and pointed out that the sign was taken down the next week.<br />
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The journal's editor chimed in, in a note: "A common misconception is that science and research are about facts, whereas in reality, research methodology concerns the unknown, hypotheses, probability, balancing and judging evidence or data. Thus, even in an objective research world, there is a need for interpretation and possibly an element of subjectivity."<br />
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Sounds so reasonable, but all this was taking place within the context of an often-acrimonious debate in Ireland over the possible introduction of genetically modified foodstuffs.<br />
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Another of the paper's authors, Shane Morris — who is Irish and who was working for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency — got involved as a private citizen in the debates, arguments and brouhahas. Morris opined about the topic strongly and often in his GMO Ireland blog and in papers published in scientific journals.<br />
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This enraged anti-GM groups, and personal attacks on Morris now pepper the internet. For example, a press release bearing Cummins's name characterizes the disagreement as: "how a Canadian Government Agent is involved in shoddy research and across border intimidation of public interest organization over GM crops." Others repeat the "flagrant fraud" accusation.<br />
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Another controversy rages as to whether wormy corn signs were left up for much more than a week or, alternatively, if a Greenpeace researcher tried to uncover them after the offending words had been blotted out.<br />
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Wow. My guess is that the 2003 paper may today be the most quoted and discussed Canadian agricultural research paper of all time.<br />
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Similar results without signs<br />
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In this vein, let me point out three things.<br />
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First, the sale of GM and non-GM corn continued the next year at Birkbank Farms, when no offending signs of any sort have been alleged to have been posted. Almost exactly the same buying patterns were reported by the Guelph researchers.<br />
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Secondly, a farm in San Luis Obispo, Calif., recently sold GM corn and non-GM corn together with labels identifying them as such. The owner told a local newspaper twice as much GM corn as non-GM corn was bought. He was quoted as saying customers told him they bought the GM corn because it didn't have to be partially shucked to see whether it was wormy, and thus it looked fresher.<br />
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But my third point is fundamental. Look, in science, when you think a result is wrong, you conduct another experiment that proves that. While the wormy corn sign seems to me to have at the very least been a serious error in judgment, I can't tell whether it was absolutely a fatal flaw with regard to the research findings. And that is partially because I have seen with my own eyes a big Toronto organic store sell produce that was small and deformed and insect bitten. My reading of the overt message the store was sending out was: perfect food is unnatural; if you want to eat naturally, you must dine on food that looks as deformed as this does.<br />
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So I think that somebody should conduct an experiment exactly like the first, except with the offending wormy corn sign removed. Even if there was no controversy, you would want to do this, because only a numbskull would suggest that the tastes and preferences of a small number of people visiting a small farm store in southern Ontario can be generalized to include all humanity's multitudinous habits and preferences.<br />
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Maybe it turns out that Europeans are so set against genetic engineering that they would rather eat half-shucked, worm-ridden, all-natural corn than wormless, unshucked GM cobs. Maybe the Chinese are quite the reverse.<br />
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But the way to resolve this is not to send petitions to journals telling them to remove articles you disagree with. That's what politicians do. What scientists do is take the rather inelegant testing process we know as the scientific method, apply it, and see what falls out.<br />
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What science does is what the scientific signers of the petition against the British Food Journal paper didn't and likely don't want to do.<br />
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Hold off prejudice; test; see what is.<br />
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(Disclosure: In 2000 I was on a fellowship at Guelph in the agriculture department and met all the Guelph people, including Farmer Jeff, involved in this controversy. But I did no work with them, nor for them.) Not suprisedhttp://www.indymedia.ie/article/85918#comment2298582008-06-09T00:10:34+00:00Billy idleThanx Michael for that - keep up the good work. Its sad that in this country whi...Thanx Michael for that - keep up the good work. Its sad that in this country which could do so well out of producing wholesome sustaineable food that the likes of Teagasc, Dept of Agriculture, IFA and the Farmers Journal are so against any type of sustaineable farming that doesn't suit the interests of the giant multinational agribusiness firms such as Monsanto, Bayer etc. You only have to view the stats on Organic farming in this country compared to the rest of the EU to see the the indulgent big business agenda here at every levels. Because barely 1% of land is organcally farmed in this country our import bill for organic food is now running at over 200m euros per annum not to mention the huge organic/low input food market we are losing out on at a european/international level. Contrast this with Austria were 40+% of land is under organic/low input production where the growers/farmers get a much better financial return for their efforts.