Massive Data Do Not Support Huber's Claims
Dr. Don Huber is traveling North America warning audiences of a
mysterious organism that causes diseases in plants, humans and livestock. He talks to famers and concerned
food-oriented audiences. He does NOT
present to scientific conferences, as scientists and their professional
organizations do not recognize his claims, and confront him with questions that cannot be answered without invoking hand-waving explanations and elaborate conspiracies.
I have a problem with anyone manipulating the gullible for
personal or political gain, especially when they use fear to motivate
action. After seeing Huber scare the
pants off an audience in Gainesville, FL, I have taken up the mantle of holding
him accountable for his bad science and manipulating people for his twisted
motivations.
Today it occurred to me how we know, conclusively, that there is no mystery
organism. No doubt. Evidence of absence in this case is tantamount to absence of evidence. It is just that massive.
Today's technologies have uncovered massive DNA/RNA sequence data from humans, plants and livestock, the organisms Huber claims are infected. In all of the petabytes of public information, there has been no identification of any mystery microfungus. If anyone were to discover a new organism by accident-- it would be a huge story.
Huber's mystery pathogen is fiction. Here's why.
Since the mid-2000s we've seen the price of DNA sequencing
drop incredibly. The technology allows
scientists to obtain massive genetic information from any organism. Animal, plant, whatever.
When we sequence a plant or animal we routinely find sequence
that does not fit into the genetic blueprint of the organism. These sequences can be assembled separately and compared
to databases. They are the bacteria,
viruses, fungi and other critters that represent the ecology of the sequenced
organism. In other words, when we take
apart the airplane we find all the hijackers.
My lab did this on accident.
In our 2010 paper in Plant Genome we surprisingly identified a list of organisms resident to a greenhouse strawberry plant.
We found evidence of snails, probably from eggs on the plant! We’re talking sensitive technology. Most of all, we found evidence of bacteria
and fungi that are not even problems, or thought event to be present, in Florida. They are all here, just not an
issue for whatever reason. That’s a
great find.
Back to Huber.
Soybean, especially production soybean, has been massively studied and
intensely sequenced. Commercial corn,
cotton, etc have been analyzed ad nauseum and there is more data in public
databases than can be imagined. In all
of the data, in all of the reports, in all of the understanding of gene
function and gene detection—
There has not been one report of a mystery organism.
There is no sequence that has been found that is assembled
into a creature representing a new kingdom of virus-fungus or whatever the hell
he’s talking about.
This absence of evidence cannot be ignored. While typically absence of evidence is not compelling, in this case it can be clearly stated that in the massive accountings of DNA and transcriptome (RNA) data, there has been no reported evidence of a mystery organism. If it was there, it would have been detected, the research would have been published and the scientists would be fighting about who would get to sniff the cork.
Huber has provided no organism (despite requests), no culture protocols, and no evidence that it
exists. There are no scientists
confirming his allegations and after nine years the only suspect is a fuzzy
electromicrograph of a cellular Bigfoot that is likely an artifact or familiar
structure.
On the other hand, the massive sequencing of agronomic
genomes shows no evidence that it exists, which by default says it does
not.
