GM-free Scotland

News | November '07 | Slapp on free speech

In 2004, the results were published of an experiment carried out by a Canadian University assessing the practicalities of growing and selling fresh GM (Bt) corn-on-the-cob compared with conventional produce sprayed with pesticides. The crops were grown together on a single farm and sold in the farm's own shop. Total costs for each type of corn were recorded and customer preferences were assessed when the two were offered for sale side-by-side.

The British Food Journal which published the paper described it as outstanding and gave it an award for excellence. AgBioView described the paper as “scholarly”. The Institute of Science in Society referred to the contents of the report as a “shoddy study” in which the results and methods did not appear to have been described fully and truthfully. GM Watch, after getting sight of a photograph of the two corn-types being offered for sale in the farm shop, produced an article about the paper entitled “Award for a Fraud”. The 'fraud' referred to the fact that the Bt cobs had a sign above them describing them as 'quality sweet-corn', while the conventional cobs had a sign above indicating they were 'wormy'. The 'scientific study was declared by GM Watch to be a “carefully crafted propaganda exercise”. The Soil Association referred to the paper, in more reserved tones, as “deliberately misleading”. GM-freescotland.net described the contents of the paper as “hearsay dressed up as facts” (if you want to know why, check out MISCONCIEVED WORMS – News, November 2007). One Cambridge University researcher on scientific ethics summed it up as “flagrant fraud”.

The controversy continued with a cross-border SLAPP. Or, two, or three, or maybe four ...

The third-named co-author of the paper, Shane Morris, an Irishman now employed as a senior consumer Analyst by the Canadian Government, took issue with GM Watch's suggestion that the research was a 'fraud'. His immediate reactions seem to have included: denial that the 'wormy' sign had been there; denial that he had been in the country or employed by the Canadian University at the time; blaming Greenpeace Canada for tacitly approving the study; and attacking the credibility of the journalist who took the 'wormy' photograph. (If you want to read the GM Watch article on Morris campaign to defend the research, check out www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=62&page=1.) When all this failed to impress, Morris resorted to SLAPP.

Note. SLAPP stands for 'Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation'. It is litigation used by large organisations, or sometimes even individuals, to intimidate and silence less wealthy critics by so severely burdening them with the cost of a legal defense that they abandon their criticism. SLAPP can, of course, be attractive to lawyers because clients actually encourage them to run up large costs. SLAPP litigation is legal in countries which have determinedly pro-corporation governments.

Morris issued a string of legal threats.

The first SLAPP was to GM Free Ireland regarding a letter from the organisation to the Irish Times in which the GM Watch article was mentioned; the letter was not published, but was reproduced on the GM Free Ireland website.

The second SLAPP was to GM free Ireland's Internet Service Provider regarding that same letter.

Under this duress, GM-Free Ireland published a correction acknowledging that the organisation had no legal basis to make the claim of fraud, and pointing out that:

no findings of fraud were ever made by the British Food Journal in regards to the claims in the publication in question

the paper in question remains published as a valid piece of scholarly research

the academic award for the paper remains valid.

(COMMENT. These statements are all true, but none of them actually mean that a fraud has not occurred, only that no-one has invested the money and time needed to ascertain the truth .)

The third SLAPP was to the Internet Service Provider of the GM Watch website. The company, concerned that the term 'fraud' could be libelous, took the site down until the offending word had been changed (the title now reads 'The GM Propaganda Lab Award 2006').

And the fourth SLAPP targeted GM-Free Ireland again. Morris told the organisation “You will note that the GM Watch website in the UK has been disabled. As a matter of urgency, please remove all GM Watch material on GM-Free Ireland's website that you have reproduced in connection with me ... Also please remove all references to “fraud” and myself including those you cite from GM Watch ... If this is not done by close of business today, August 17, 2007, I will have to further instruct my legal representative on the matter.”

GM Free Ireland refused, except for updating the title of the quoted GM Watch article.

This sort of action on the part of Shane Morris seems to be a far from isolated incident.

Morris has a history of targeting GM-Free Ireland through his personal, Irish, pro-GM blog. Other Irish critics of GM have also been attacked by Morris's shoot-the-messenger-type letter-writing campaign to the newspapers. GM-Free Ireland has noted a number of incidents where Morris has used intimidation, defamatory allegations and harassment to interfere with sponsorship of Irish green group activities.

Unexpectedly, the whole story has now taken an interesting new twist.

AgBioView (which Andy Rees describes as “probably the leading biotech website”) announced that “What the opponents of Powell's work pointedly failed to mention is that after the first week of the study the signs they complained about were taken down. Only then did the formal data-gathering phase begin – using machine-printed, laminated placards.” The first named author of the paper, Douglas Powell, dismissed the allegations of the 'wormy' and 'quality' signs. He said the signs were changed weekly, that they were in the language of consumers (OUR COMMENT It is difficult to see why this should disqualify the signs from biasing the experiment), and that they were “not intended to manipulate consumer purchasing patterns”. Morris, on his blog, wrote “There are lots of pictures and video footage of the store that show no misleading signs during the data collection period”, and provided his own photographs of this proof. These pictures can be dated as taken right in the middle of the data collection period.

However, when a lecturer in the School of Computer Science used his computing skills to examine all the pictures provided, he came to a very different conclusion. He looked at the original, very clear, photograph taken by the journalist who first revealed the scandal, and put it alongside the images from Morris's blog, which are taken from a bad angle and are blurry. After stretching to compensate for the angle, and overlaying the different signs, it is clear that they all contain the same, hand-written, words.

(You can see these yourself at www.gmwatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=97&page=1).

The whole affair has released a volley of complaints.

Canadian Professor, Joe Cumins, had a letter published in the British Food Journal pointing out the “methodological bias” and several examples of a lack of full and honest reporting, alongside a letter from the paper's first author, Doug Powell, who argued that full reporting was not relevant. Prof. Cumins, The Soil Association and the unimpressed Cambridge ethicist (see paragraph 2) have asked the Journal to retract the paper (it hasn't). The Institute of Science in Society has written to the Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs and to the Canadian Government department, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, (copied to seven appropriate MPs and three appropriate MEPs) requesting that the Canadian Government instruct its agent to stop his SLAPP activities and withdraw the flawed paper in the interests of “safeguard(ing) the standards of good science”. The Soil Association has written to the High Commissioner of Canada and the Irish Ambassador in similar terms.

OUR COMMENT

The on-going, brutal suppression of Buddhist monks and members of the public in Burma seeking democracy for their country has become cloaked in secrecy by the shutdown of the internet there. Shocking. But are members of the EU to be subject to the same restrictions by an official of a government on another continent?

You could add some letters of your own. For example, your MP, MSP and MEP have a duty to be very active on your behalf to safeguard your democratic right to free speech without fear of SLAPPs from foreign powers.

SOURCES

About Us | Contact Us | 2007 GM-free Scotland