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News | December '07 | LET'S PLAY SHOOT-THE-SCIENTIST

Modern science has two cornerstones. One is repeatability. If your experiment fails to give similar results on replication, your materials and methods are unsound. The second is acceptance for publication after peer review. This helps define what is acceptable as good science, and delivers some quality control over the materials and methods used. It also provides a system for scientific findings to be openly added to our pool of knowledge.

Science of publishable quality is time-consuming and expensive. Acceptance by journals also requires full disclosure of the materials used. None of these is attractive to industry and so it seems to have been allowed to develop a habit of undermining the cornerstones with a system of its own.

Right at the beginning of commercial GM history, rat feeding trials were performed on the 'FlavrSavr' transgenic tomato to demonstrate its safety before being sold to humans. The study was voluntary, apparently performed to give US regulators enough safety-type data to stop them asking questions. Three experiments were carried out which were described as 'repeat' experiments although the tomatoes fed in each case were different. The first one found no evidence of harm, the second one found evidence of harm in some of the test animals, and the third demonstrated harm in all the animals (tests and controls),. This lack of repeatability didn't demonstrate the safety or harm of GM tomatoes, only unsound, possibly incompetent, technique. However, the safety question it was trying to address was never answered. The episode wasn't used as a basis for developing robust repeatable feeding trials for future use, it was used as an excuse to reject the need for any such testing, and invent the infinitely flexible concept of 'substantial equivalence'.

There are signs that the early mis-use of non-repeatable 'safety testing' was not an isolated incident.

After a trial of the GM oilseed rape, GT73, caused significant decreases in rats' weights, Monsanto said there were technical problems. It repeated the study. The second study found that the GM-fed rats had larger liver weights. Monsanto said this trial should also be ignored as it was “inconsistent” with the first trial. When a third study found no problems, GT73 was approved by the European Food Safety Authority.

Independent studies of course are not as controllable as in-house ones. Where repeatability is only too likely, but industry doesn't want to give it a chance to happen, it will go to some lengths to get its way.

Trials conducted for the UK Government in Scotland in 1998 found that rats fed GM potatoes developed immune reactions in their gut wall. In this case, poor expertise couldn't easily be used to explain away the results. The scientist, Dr. Arpad Pusztai, was suspended, gagged and eventually dismissed. The Lancet recommended that Pusztai's study be repeated: this has not been done.

The assassinate-the-messenger vendetta waged on Dr. Pusztai has made him acutely aware of the “disastrous” effect which the biotech industry is having on science. He comments “In this industry-financed system corruption is spreading, with devastating effects on peoples' trust in scientific results and the trustworthiness of the scientists.”

Recently, he has identified “a relatively new and more sophisticated strategy in the armoury of the GM biotechnology industry and its promoters for discrediting anyone who is known to be sceptical about the merits of genetic modification/engineering of agricultural crops.” The new trick is to invite “one of the high-profile (GM) sceptics to write an article or essay on genetic engineering for a prestigious journal but reserving the journal's right for 'minor' editing of the article before it is published.” It seems that this 'minor' editing, in the right hands, can become very major editing indeed.

Russian scientist, Dr. Ermakova, was recently duped by Nature Biotechnology into submitting an article (not a paper) describing her experiments which showed a high mortality in rats pups after their mothers had been fed GM soya. Without her knowledge, the Editor printed it alongside a scathing, and not necessarily sound, criticism from four well-known and very vocal pro-GM scientists none of whom had any expertise in the experimental area.

A similar attempt was made on Dr. Pusztai by The Brown Journal of World Affairs. The assistant editor approached him as a “distinguished figure in international affairs scholarships to write about subjects pertaining to (his) areas of expertise”. He was asked to write an article for inclusion in a section on “How do the potential benefits of GMOs weigh against the potential trade disputes, environmental harms, and ethical and political conflicts GMOs bring? And what duties and responsibilities should producers of GMOs follow as use of their products increases globally?”. The article was to be aimed at a “non-scientific yet academic audience”. In line with his professionalism as a scientist and first-hand experience of the modus operandi of the biotech industry, Dr Pusztai wrote an article describing the damage to science being wrought by industry funding. The article was fully referenced with some 45 citations which he considered “essential for increasing the credibility of the paper”. However, the Journal then started trying to edit the piece, accusing Dr. Pusztai of presenting disorganised, rhetorical, unsubstantiated opinions. In the end the article was rejected.

Dr. Pusztai concludes from his unhappy exchange of e-mails with The Brown Journal that there could only have been two explanations for his treatment. One possibility is that the assistant editor exceeded her authority by commissioning an article from a controversial scientist. By the time it came to the attention of the editor-in-chief he had to find a way to stop it. He did this by fabricating poorly concocted reasons (and by sending the assistant editor away to India). The other, in Pustai's view more likely explanation, was that “it was a conspiracy ... In this new strategy, the journal editor sets up a honey trap by offering, indeed almost begging, the possibility (for someone the journal wants to discredit) of publishing an article in their prestigious journal ... In the next phase ... the journal recommends to reorganize the originally submitted paper draft and he slowly and gradually edits out all the important GM-sceptical bits of the article ... the author who by then has spent months of his precious time on the manuscript, will almost always try to save his article to get it published ... feels forced to agree to the bit-by-bit editorial changes. The result is that before he can realize it the tone and the direction of his paper is irretrievably changed and his message is lost.”

You can read the whole exchange between The Brown Journal and Dr. Pusztai at http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/a.pusztai/. His final comment is “Whatever happened, and I leave it to the reader to decide, I refused to co-operate with these people whose main aim must have been to please and further the goals of the potentially dangerous GM industry.”

The latest victim in this shoot-the-scientist game, is Professor Christian Velot, a researcher in molecular biology in Paris. After organising (in his own time) conferences on biotechnology for the wider public, which pointed to the level of risk and uncertainties in the technology, he found his research funds for 2008 were confiscated, student assistants initially allocated to his research team were redirected to other units, he was told that his research team would no longer be part of the institute as soon as the funds for the current research ran out at the end of 2009, and that he would have to leave the premises even before that time. (There is an e-petition which you can add your name to, in support of Prof. Velot and the independence of science at http://sciencescitoyennes.org/spip.php?article1638#sp1638).

Both Dr Ermakova and Professor Velot were signatories to the Institute of Science in Society's briefing to the European Parliament on the safety of GM in June 2007.

The Institute of Science in Society notes “There have been far too many cases where industries have interfered with the normal process of science and science publishing and often with the journals playing a far from professional role (see, for instance Science in Society 36 2007, 'Science and Scientist Abused' and 'Biotech Canada SLAPP Scandal'). The industries have sought to prevent researchers from publishing results that were contrary to what the sponsor wanted to hear, they have asked academics to put their names to papers they hadn't written, they refuse to make data available to the regulators or the scientific community or even ... to the investigators ... this prevents others from discovering exactly what was done and allows them to publish only the favourable results.”

ACTION

You have a chance to take democratic steps to raise awareness about this issue. Ask your MP to add his name to Michael Meacher's Early Day Motion to debate the efforts to silence or misrepresent scientists whose research indicates possible human health problems from GM crops. You can do this through www.writetothem.com. The Early Day Motion is:

EDM 425 SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INTO GM CROPS 28.11.2007

Meacher, Michael

That this House regrets the continuing attempts to silence
or misrepresent scientists whose research indicates possible
human health problems from GM crops, as in the case of Dr
Irina Ermakova who was misled by the editor of Nature
Biotechnology into submitting an article to the journal to
be published under her name, with the article in fact
published under the editor's name with criticisms by four
well-known GM supporters not seen by Dr Ermakova prior to
publication; deplores the continuing efforts by an employee
of the Canadian Government, Shane Morris, to close down
websites in the UK and Republic of Ireland which have, along
with Dr Richard Jennings of Cambridge University, said that
research which claimed that consumers prefer GM sweetcorn
published by this employee and others and given an Award for
Excellence, is a flagrant fraud; and calls on the Government
Chief Scientist to protect the integrity and objectivity of
science by reasserting the right of scientists to have their
views published by journals without underhand interference
by journal editors, and for the Chief Scientist to encourage
journal editors to withdraw papers they have published which
subsequently turn out to be grossly misleading or even
fraudulent.

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