Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Mission Statement



This blog has two main purposes.

The first purpose is to draw attention to attention to a recent paper, “Genetically engineered crops, glyphosate and the deterioration of health in the United States of America” by Nancy L. Swanson, Andre Leu, Jon Abrahamson and Bradley Wallet, that appeared in the Journal of Organic Systems, 9(2), 2014 (you can read it at http://www.organic-systems.org/journal/92/JOS_Volume-9_Number-2_Nov_2014-Swanson-et-al.pdf).   This paper seems almost too good to be true.  But are its data and its statistical analyses of these data correct?  Maybe the greatest weakness of the anti-GMO movement is the willingness of so many of its supporters to believe anything discreditable about GMOs—and not all that glistens is gold, least of all in this field.  Right now I’m trying to get the paper checked by professionals (I’m neither a statistician nor an epidemiologist). If  it will stand up to the level of scrutiny, far fiercer than any other type of academic paper has to face, that any work in this field undergoes, it may well prove to be the smoking gun that will finally convince doubters of the dangerous effects of GMOs and the pesticides that accompany them.

The second purpose is to counter the misinformation and even outright falsehoods that we encounter in pro-GMO propaganda (my favorite among the latter is “We are only doing what farmers have been doing for thousands of years”).  But in particular I want to counter their strategy of Pile-Ons.  A Pile-On is what happens whenever anything appears that might be seriously damaging to GMOs.  Most recent victims were Gilles-Eric Seralini and Stephani Seneff, who committed the additional sin of uncredentiality (more on this in my next post).  When word gets around about the Swanson et al. paper, there’ll surely be another Pile-On, with the same sin involved.  Watch this space!  We’re going to have fun!

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