But just because millions die without healthcare because it’s a for-profit industry surely doesn’t mean that millions will continue to starve just because agribusiness is a for-profit industry. Right? I mean, it’ll all be different, right?

Josh Brown-White is correct here. That organic food study wasn’t bad science. It was bad hype that made the science out to be something it wasn’t. Big difference.

That was my point, Maggie.  The study took organic food out of context and the media rolled with it.  All in all, very convenient study for the headlines that were spawned from it.

The media’s message was clear; Organic food isn’t healthier for you.  End of story.  Great fodder for FUD and it worked in spades.

First, it was not a Monsanto-funded study

I stand corrected that the study was not DIRECTLY funded by Monsanto. But, there’s weasely ways to get around that, isn’t there?

Educate yourself:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/04/local/la-me-donate4-2010feb04

Hey, maybe if you ignore things like this, you too can become a Distinguished Fellow at Stanford AND you can end up sitting on the Board of Directors at Monsanto like George Henry Poste did?

Educate yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Poste

Or, we can simply shove our collective heads in the sand, I suppose. Yep, it’s not like the researchers involved ever helped the tobacco industry FUD machine or anything in the past.

http://tobaccodocuments.org/bliley_pm/22205.html

The fact that you don’t like the results does not make the outcome incorrect.

Once again, (as I’ve said again and again) I haven’t disputed the results of the study. You must have hallucinated that. You make stuff up and it’s easily refuted by reading what I said previously. Try it.

it told a whole story based on a tested hypothesis using a meta-analysis

Kevin, the people behind the study even admit it doesn’t tell the whole story, but the sensationalist stories and headlines pumped by the media didn’t bother with such details. Go back and read interviews with them. I’ll be glad to send links to you and walk you through it if you have questions. Or maybe just take a gander at the links I’ve already presented below and READ through it. No problem.

You are precisely the problem of why the anti-GMO movement

You screwed up again. I’m not anti-GMO, I’m anti-FUD and the way the half-ass study was easily manipulated by the media was pure FUD.

Sorry to deflate you, but I think GMO’s are great in many circumstances.

1) repetition of GMO shill opinions without disclosing the lifelong “trufan” status of those sources.  Martina Newell-McGloughlin, who has a long history of actively lobbying national and international organizations to prevent any labeling or restriction of GMOs, is hardly an unbiased source of criticism for anti-GMO research findings.  Her affiliations, including the millions of dollars of funding she receives at UC Davis directly from Monsanto (as revealed by the Sacramento Bee as early as 2004, in their expose of UC Davis’s many incestuous links to biotech giants) should be disclosed whenever linking to and repeating her “bad science” claims.

2) Failure to address claims that the French study replicated Monsanto’s own tests, merely extending them from 90 days to 2 years.  If such claims are true, that seems like a completely scientifically valid reason to use the same test regimen, and accusations of “bad science” are (at the very least) disingenuous.  It’s difficult to prove a study is flawed if you insist that the study must never be accurately recreated; it’s difficult to prove a study was too short if you insist it can’t be run longer under the same conditions.

3) Failing to link the issue with the French government’s ongoing fight with Monsanto over the legality of GMO maize seems a pretty big omission, too.  The Roundup Rat Study is clearly related to French and EU politics at least in effect, if not in purpose.  Was this mentioned in any of BB’s coverage?  Did I miss it?

4) Failure to mention links between increasing human exposure to Roundup and increasing incidence of infertility and food-related illnesses.  These links are unproven (in humans) but the correlations are troubling and should be part of any discussion of research, glyphosates, and Monsanto.  There has never been any epidemiological study of roundup-ready food effects on the general population and the GMO industry’s ongoing campaign to prevent labeling and the reality of widespread crossbreeding in the wild makes such studies impossible.  People should know there are unanswered questions, and that industry and government have worked together to make sure they can stay unanswered.

5) Failure to mention the many proven cases of Monsanto lying about their products in general and Roundup in particular.  They have been convicted at least three times for falsely claiming Roundup is biodegradable, and they have been legally forced to withdraw advertising materials claiming Roundup is “practically nontoxic” and “safer than table salt”, and at least two Monstanto-funded research labs have been caught red-handed falsifying data that would be submitted to the US government to prove the safety of Roundup and glyophosate.

I’m really not offended by French scientists imposing temporary restrictions on the press.  I am much more concerned by the press regurgitating corporate spin to the public as if it were unbiased coverage.

And although no amount of bad journalism will change whether roundup-ready crops and/or roundup are safe for human use, I would like to have more solid information about the relationship between Monsanto’s 90 day tests and these new 2 year tests.  If the regimen was indeed the same, then clearly any attempts to label this study “bad science” are just the same “merchants of doubt” type propaganda that we’ve seen the tobacco and oil companies use so well.

The single, specific purpose of science is to get at knowledge that we can’t get at just by talking to each other.  We’re built to form beliefs based on who says something and how they say it, and sometimes that works; but it’s a flawed approach, especially with regard to the unknown, and science is supposed to be the antidote to thinking that way.  Once we know the science in a story is bad, giving it further mindshare doesn’t correct the problem, it just introduces more bias one way or another.

If you look at the story from a scientific viewpoint, it doesn’t show that GM crops are harmful, or that they’re not harmful; it doesn’t say anything at all because the science is flawed.  It’s like a corrupted jpeg or a blank page; it contains no info.  Scientifically speaking, all you can say is that if someone has time to read 50 science stories in a year, well, now they only have time to read 49.

100 rats were fed with GMO corn and in the control group 100 rats were fed with non GMO corn. 80% of the GMO corn fed rats got tumors.

What study are you reading from? If it’s the one discussed above, filled with scientific errors, then you’re not even reading the results right.

Not really. There’s disinformation campaigns going on by quacks and scam artists on both sides.

Revoke all patents on living organisms containing DNA or RNA and then see how well monsanto, dow chemical, syngeta and dupont compete in the marketplace without their precious monopoly.

According to the National Academy of Sciences 2010 book about GMO crops, figures 2-7 and 2-8 show that Bt has cut pesticide use by 70-80%.  
If that’s not a victory for the environment, what is? 

Plus, it is funny that bt was always a godsend before it was built into transgenics. Now somehow it is evil.

You are precisely the problem of why the anti-GMO movement has no credibility. You make stuff up, and it is easily refuted. 

Go back and read the Stanford study. I’ll be glad to send it to you and walk you through it if you have questions. No problem. 

You might note that Seralini’s papers rely on self-citation almost exclusively for all claims of GM harm.  That’s a sure sign that something is askew.

As someone that has studied the field for 25+ years, I have yet to read a compelling story that documents harm from these products (other than those also affecting conventionally-bred crops, like resistance to herbicides etc). 

Studies like the one cited before are bad for the anti movement in two ways.  1. they build arguments based on goofy data and 2. Individuals that decide this is quality science are deemed laughable at best in scientific venues. 

There always should be watchdogs, especially where big corps and $$ are concerned– but attack the company, not the good science. Better yet, lower restrictions on the science and regulation so that more can compete against the Big Ag Monsters. That’s the real solution. 

Don’t screw up. even for a “good” cause.
Don’t try to cover it up by bulls*it like this. Even for a good cause.
It is going to backfire. Always. And it’s going to make you and all your future research look bad. 

It’s just hard to believe that someone still hasn’t learned how it will end up??? After all the “whatever-gates” we’ve had…

It’s not one study.  This is a distraction, not the crux of the matter.

I have made this a pet cause. I have been reading and writing about GMO for 12 years. Mostly in Spanish. When I was younger, I wanted to devote my career to develop new, better crops, but it was not an alternative for me, I ended up being a different kind of biologist. I have seen and heard, first had, the lies and stories that some anti-GMO people are willing to spread to stop GMO. I do not want to generalize, many anti GMO people might disagree with me, but they are not insincere. But, I know for a fact that there are others willing to lie in a shameless way and make wild claims that will scare people. I have heard and read, in my home city of Mérida, that GM papayas have “rat genes that cause the bubonic plague”. That bees “infected” with GM pollen will polinize other plants and eating the fruit from those will cause mother to have miscarriages and deformed babies. That urban legend about the KFC chicken coming from vats and causing Alzheimer and cancer: http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/kfc.asp . I smelled a rat right away but some of my fellow sophomores in Biology thought it was true, until I pointed out the inconsistencies. That really scared me. If this obvious hoax could delude kids interested in science, how worse could it be for the average person? A relentless campaign of lies and misinformation destroyed the future of GM in Venezuela. It is illegal to do research on GM there. Technically, recombinant insulin is illegal since the bacteria that makes it has “human genes”, you could land in jail for five years for manufacturing it, if the law enforcers really understood what the law says and were willing to enforce the law. Are Venezuelan farmers doing better because of this? Has this policy ensured we are GMO free? Not at all. We import a lot of our food from Argentina, the world’s greatest producer of GM soy. So, the law is ham fisted and fails at what it is intended to do. But it really scared people and works to cement the association GM=evil.I have seen (real life) debate forums turned into madhouses, when people start making all sort of crazy, delusional claims, like blaming GMO  for deformations in rose bushes in New Zealand and that they are anti biblical, the Babylonians used them and that’s one of the reasons why God wiped them out. I have seen people reject flatly, in a dogmatic way every single possible benefit from GM crops. And this kind of people has been allowed to shape the debate all over. Sadly, the scientists were silent and absent of this debate during a long time. I am extremely happy to see this kind of vigorous response to extraordinary claims. In the case of my city in Venezuela, an experimental crop was burn to ashes, and the responsible scientists choose to remain silent. I heard later they were afraid they could go to jail, even if the anti-GM laws were approved years later. Most likely, they played loose with the permits. In any case, the bigots, the dogmatic and the crazy were left to speak unchallenged. I cannot say that the team here is lying, I have no proof of it. But that is my belief. They are acting in a very shady and possibly dishonest way. Had not I seen the modus operandi of the anti GM crowd, I would be really hesitant to even think that they are lying or rigged the results. But after having witnessed the nasty tricks some of these people use, it is really hard for me this is all a honest mistake.I am glad that the community, my community, is reacting swiftly, and I am glad, Maggie, that you are working hard to make this subject understandable by non-specialists who might be open to a different point of view if explained carefully. When we remain silent the extremists and liars win the debates.PS: To those claiming this is just like the global warming debate: Not at all. The scientific community has nothing like the consensus among whether scientists backing the claim that genetic engineering is dangerous per se.