Skeptico

The Seralini Rule

I have a new rule for debating anti-GMO people:

If you favorably cite the 2012 Séralini rats fed on Roundup ready maize study, you just lost the argument.

If you cite this study as demonstrating any dangers in genetically modified food, you are either (a) so clueless as not to have spent 30 seconds checking to see if there are any reported problems in the study, or (b) so dishonest in citing a blatantly fraudulent study, that you are not worthy of any more serious consideration. You just lost the debate and you’re done. (Obviously you don’t lose the if you cite the study to demonstrate its flaws, only if you claim the study’s conclusions are valid.)

This is the study: Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize. Here is a summary of the main problems with the study:

• Unscientific study design. For example, only 20 control rats in a study with a total of 200 rats, and no blinding between control and experimental groups
• Large number of small sub-groups - 18 groups of 10 test subjects each making for a complicated experimental design virtually guaranteed to generate some positive results
• Cherry picking - ignoring negative results
• Poor choice of statistical analysis (a “fishing trip”)
• Poor choice in animal model - the rat type is prone to cancers with exactly the same incidence as that reported in the Séralini study whether fed GMO food or not
• No dose-response - a critical component of demonstrating a toxic effect (some rats fed higher doses did better than the others)
• Effects of feeding Roundup ready maize, and the effects of feeding Roundup (ie feeding rats the actual pesticide) were identical - a highly dubious result
• No idea of what the biological reason might be to give the claimed results
• Didn’t allow any outside comment on the paper before its publication and won’t release the data now and so the experiment can’t be replicated

Here are some links to independent scientists who explain the study’s flaws in much more detail:

1. Academics Review: Scientists Smell A Rat In Fraudulent Study
2. Declan Butler writing in Nature.com: Hyped GM maize study faces growing scrutiny
3. Respectful Insolence: Bad science about GMOs: It reminds me of the antivaccine movement
4. Steven Novella: The GM Corn Rat Study
5. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA): Séralini et al. study conclusions not supported by data, says EU risk assessment community
6. Mark Hoofnagle of Denialism Blog: Anti-GMO study is appropriately dismissed as biased, poorly-performed
7. Emily Sohn, a freelance journalist working for Discovery.com: GM Corn-Tumor Link Based on Poor Science
8. Deborah Blum: A rancid, corrupt way to report about science
9. Carl Zimmer: Journalists should not let themselves be played
10. Debora MacKenzie writing in New Scientist: Study linking GM crops and cancer questioned
11. John Entine of the Genetic Literacy Project: Scientists savage study purportedly showing health dangers of Monsanto’s GM corn and Does the Seralini Corn Study Fiasco Mark a Turning Point in the Debate Over GM Food?
12. Dan Charles, NPR's food and agriculture correspondent: As Scientists Question New Rat Study, GMO Debate Rages On
13. Kevin M. Folta: Rats, Tumors and Critical Assessment of Science
14. Scicurious, a postdoc in biomedical research: Under Controlled: Why the New GMO Panic Is More Sensational Than Sense

Compare this fraudulent anti-GMO study with the 600 studies (and counting) in the GENERA database, that show the safety of GM foods. Or if you prefer, 126 with independent funding (although lack of independent funding doesn’t invalidate a study).

Ask yourself: if anti-GMO experimenters are so sure of their conclusion, why would they not design a study that was based on sound scientific practices? Why would they not, in a study with 200 rats, have 100 controls and 100 experiment rats: 100 just fed on GMO food and 100 fed on non-GMO? Why make it more complicated than it needs be and confuse the results? Why not use rats that were less prone to tumors to start with, rather than rats where 80% or so will always develop tumors no matter what? Why not just design a study that would clearly show if there was any difference when rats are fed with GMO maize? The obvious conclusion is that they knew there is really no difference between GMO and non-GMO feed and so they designed a study to obfuscate and confuse.

Why This Matters

Most of the people citing this study this would ridicule climate change deniers for citing a dubious climate study, but when any study suggests GMOs are doing some harm, no matter how dubious the study, they report it uncritically. For example, the “Yes on 37” campaign (to require labeling of genetically modified foods) immediately and un-skeptically cited this study on its website.  Although they played it down a bit after the criticisms appeared, they still left the main claims on their website (still there now) and right before the election, secretly included the bogus claims in their phone bank scripts. What this shows is that such people aren’t interested in facts, but are only interested in pushing their anti-GMO conclusion that must be true no matter what the data shows. The scientific way is to follow the evidence, and change your views if the evidence contradicts what you previously thought. The anti-science way is to form your conclusion, and then twist the evidence to support your conclusion (by for example, designing a study like this one), and to ignore everything else. People who do this are not interested in science and there is no point in trying to engage them in any more debate.

November 28, 2013 – Update

I just learned that Seralini’s paper is about to be retracted by the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal which published it. Their statement says in part:

A more in-depth look at the raw data revealed that no definitive conclusions can be reached with this small sample size regarding the role of either NK603 or glyphosate in regards to overall mortality or tumor incidence. Given the known high incidence of tumors in the Sprague-Dawley rat, normal variability cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality and incidence observed in the treated groups.

Translation: the study does not show that rats get cancer from being fed GMO food.

Watch now how anti-GMO groups will still defend Seralini, regardless, proving (again) my point that they are not interested in facts.

RFK Jr: Government Scientists are Lying

Some people simply can't accept reality. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is apparently writing a book that will prove, prove I tell you, that Thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. This is despite all the scientific studies that failed to show a connection, and despite Thimerosal being removed from childhood vaccines in 2001 while autism continues to rise. How does he explain this contradictory evidence? Simple. All the scientists involved are lying. Seriously. Oh yes and one more thing, he’s not going to publish the book. (Huh?)

Let’s back up a bit. Two weeks ago, Phil Plait wrote a Slate article, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: Anti-Vaxxer. Apparently Kennedy wasn’t happy and telephoned Slate’s health and science editor Laura Helmuth, to complain. Her article about this call, So Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Called Us to Complain … is worth a read in its entirety. I especially liked the way Helmuth asked Kennedy’s representative to email her with details of the supposed error’s in Phil Plait’s article, and he wouldn’t, preferring instead a phone call. Of course, when you don’t have facts evidence or logic on your side, it is better to avoid responses in writing where those shortfalls can be easily exposed.

Anyway, the short version of what Kennedy told her is:

..thimerosal causes autism when injected into children. Government epidemiologists and other scientists, conspiring with the vaccine industry, have covered up data and lied about vaccine ingredients to hide this fact. Journalists are dupes of this powerful cabal that is intentionally poisoning children.

See? Government scientists are all lying. Scientists in numerous countries, presumably. And they are intentionally poisoning children. Intentionally - they mean to do it! Simple really. That’s that then.

Although Kennedy apparently found one scientist who was honest when talking to him:

[Kennedy] spoke to one scientist (he named her but I won’t spread the defamation) who, he said, “was actually very honest. She said it’s not safe. She said we know it destroys their brains.”

I asked the scientist about their conversation. She said there is in fact no evidence that thimerosal destroys children’s brains, and that she never said that it did.

Maybe Kennedy is the one who is lying.

Anyway, just standard conspiracy mongering so far. But there was one bit that did make me sit up and that was Kennedy bringing up the Simpsonwood conference again. That is, the disgraceful piece of dishonest quote mining that I wrote about eight years ago that was pulled by Salon when they realized they’d been duped. Here is how Kennedy explained that inconvenient fact:

“They [the scientists at the conference] panicked. They had a 3.5-hour discussion about how to hide this from the public, which I published in Rolling Stone and Salon. Salon later pulled it, said it was taken out of context. Read those quotes in [Seth] Mnookin’s book [The Panic Virus : The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy], not even in my article, better yet read the transcripts. [My bold]

There you go. RFK says we should read the transcripts and then we’d understand. Thing is, Bobby, I did read the transcript. All 286 pages of it. And the meeting did not conclude that Thimerosal was responsible for an increase in autism and did not discuss any cover up.

I explained all this in my 2005 article about Simpsonwood: Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s completely dishonest thimerosal article. Here’s the short version. There was a day of presentations of data with much questioning and discussion of the meaning of the results. Then the participants were asked to rate the possibility of a causal link (Thimerosal to autism) on a scale of one to six: one being a weak causal link, six strong. From page 189 to 222 of the transcript (remember, RFK says “better yet read the transcripts”) you can read of one attendee after another (with just one exception) grading the likelihood of a causal relationship as being either a one or a two. There was only one exception (Dr. Weil) who gave it a four. Guess which one Kennedy quoted.

Please do read the transcript as Kennedy urges. I did. There was no discussion about how to hide anything. If Kennedy really did read the transcript, then he is lying when he says it shows a cover up.

Kennedy also called Keith Kloor for another hour long monologue. (Apparently Kennedy likes to talk and not listen. Read Kloor’s description - it sounds like a nightmare.) As I wrote at the top, Kennedy told Kloor he has written a book that shows Thimerosal really does cause autism, and the book contains very strong evidence to support this position. Except Kennedy isn’t going to publish it because it would cause mass panic. Read Kloor’s report of his telephone call with Kennedy: It’s the Best of Times to Scare Yourself to Death:

[Kennedy] told me that the book he commissioned has a chapter “we were going to leave out, because it’s so controversial, but the evidence is so strong that thimerosal causes autism,” that he’s keeping it in.

Why would you consider leaving something out if the evidence supporting your position was strong? Wouldn’t that end the controversy? It makes no sense.

But read what followed:

Yet in the next breath he said he wasn’t going to publish the book (even though it has a publisher and is going through edits right now) because it is so explosive that he doesn’t want it to prompt a mass panic:

So Kennedy has the proof, really he has, and if you saw it you’d agree, except he’s not going show you. But read the Simpsonwood transcript and that’ll show the cover up. Except it doesn’t.

Incidentally Kennedy phoned Kloor in response to an article he had written recently, Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Anti-Science? (Duh - clearly yes.) See the unhinged anti-vax comments to that post. I debated briefly with one excitable person posting as Joe Harris - read the veritable Gish Gallop of anti-vax fallacies and talking points. For example, Poul Thorsen means that dozens of scientific studies are wrong. Just Poul Thorsen’s name, all by itself. Except all it actually shows is that RFK was as clueless in 2010 as he was in 2005, and as he is now. Nothing changes.