Illumination 2.0

In discussions around biotechnology and food labeling there have been three recent cases where people have demanded a right to know what's in their food, but then declined a kind offer to learn  when I actually offered to help them.  The right to know is an empty mantra, three words that sound like they are pursuing freedom and information.  However, at their root there is no desire to know-- just a desire to believe. *NOTE 1/4/2014 UPDATE BELOW* Here I'll present Case 1.  Hofstra Debate Follow Up- The debate at Hofstra was quite one sided from my perspective. One side was about fear, Gish gallops and bad activist information, the other side was tethered with science. You can guess the side I was on.  One of the debaters was Bhavani Jaroff, a local chef, radio personality and food activist.  Her debate style was to discuss the most shocking activist statements, parroting garbage science and bad conclusions, following the party line with great preci...

When does the crazy misinformation machine stop? According to this thread over on AgTalk, I'm in the process of being censured, that is, that I'm in the process of receiving a strong formal criticism and reprimand for information stated.  So far, nobody bothered to tell me! Censured? I think they have it backwards. I'm being heavily supported to moving up in our institution.  As the caption above states, I've been interviewing for the Chairman position of the Horticultural Sciences Department, 50-some faculty over locations all over our state, the #2 hort crops state in the country. I've had support throughout my department and upper administration.  In fact, I had to be convinced to do it.  I've actually been in the job for a year, but only as an interim appointment.  The post also claims that I interrupted and badgered Huber, that ultimately he told me off and the audience applauded. Just wait. Let's let this continue to stew for a bit...

When they are trying to tear you down in cartoons, while distorting the scientific message and lauding the deception of a phony, you know you are doing something right. When Huber publishes his groundbreaking story on the new pathogen I'll happily apologize for my skepticism, but I don't think I'll receive the same courtesy.  It is also interesting that the kind hearts of they anti-GM movement now have me planned for a dart board and claim I'm all for hurting children.  Plus, the sophisticated use the word, "retard" The scientifically illiterate hate Folta, but they loves them some Shiva! One of them is lying to you. Once again a reminder that if you can't legitimately question the science, attack the scientist.  My request to Dr. Huber was simple and from a kind place of assistance.  It is unfortunate that the anti-GM movement found it offensive that I'd point out that the emperor literally wears no lab coat. 

Over the last few days the emails have been coming in.  Notes of thanks and congratulations have arrived from all over the state, the nation and the world for publicly exposing Don Huber and his magic organism as fiction.  To recap, I saw him speak live, asked him to share the organism so we could sequence it, and then watched him pirouette through painfully awkward nonsense.  When I get some time I'll post the live audio here. I'm quite uncomfortable here.  Not for throwing someone under the bus for spreading misinformation, rather, that this was just the most recent salvo in an ongoing call-out of Dr. Huber and his mystery pathogen.  The story really starts long ago with efforts over on Biofortified. The criticism against Huber has been rich at Biofortified.org.  My recent foray is simply an extension of previous efforts.  Anastasia Bodnar blogged about this almost three years ago .  Karl Haro Von Mogel spoke with Huber for two hours ...

This is the beginning of the end of this particular sad tale of fear mongering and misinformation. Anti-GMO darling Dr. Don M Huber is on a tour of the Sunshine State, giving two talks in Tallahassee and one in Gainesville.  In Tallahassee he got a rock-star's welcome with coverage on the news describing how dangerous GMO food is, and a meeting with politicians.  On my calendar November 12 had a big red circle on it for some time. Huber was in town tonight to tell his story of poison food and deadly new organisms.  I went with one of my favorite organic & sustainable extension/research faculty and had a GREAT time. I never saw Huber's whole shtick.  It starts out about the failures of biotech and the crisis and danger from glyphosate.  A lot more on the details of his talk later.  Seriously, it was a science abortion. A significant portion of the presentation addressed his mystery organism.  He allegedly has identified this novel not-quite-a...

It's late at the end of a four-day weekend here in Florida and I need a little pity-party.  If accusations could be believed I would be heading home from my Monsanto-funded weekend in Fiji, a little payback for my defense of biotechnology.  Hardly. It is a holiday and I just want to go home from my stupid desk. Frankly, I've had the crap kicked out of me by the anti-GM movement.  I have no ambition to fight anti-science at the moment.  I had the same garbage-gasm after Prop37 died.  What a waste of time and energy. It's 9 pm on Veteran's Day.  I could eat a baby's butt through a park bench.  UF has not been "open" since Thursday at 5 pm because of homecoming, yet over the last four days I went downstate and met with citrus packers, fixed an autoclave and a centrifuge (all parts paid out of pocket), and spent time with the scientists and students that came to lab all weekend. Personally, 12 hours ago I left home when the wife went out on a bike ri...

The anti-GMO movement is corrupt in that it does not change minds with hard evidence, it changes them with fear.  It uses the most powerfully motivating emotion to drive an intellectually bankrupt agenda. In the West, what are our biggest fears? We don't worry about where our next meal is coming from, the well being of our farming industries, or if everyone has enough to eat.  We worry about our personal health, about obesity, degenerative disease, or cancer.  We worry about increasing prevalence of disorders like autism, allergies, asthma, Alzheimer's disease. These are the fears in the industrialized world.  Knowing this, opponents of biotechnology will play off of those fears.  Look at their rhetoric.  Transgenic technologies cause every problem known to man.  As you can see, we never had any of these problems before the use of GM foods. Stay hot Jeff!   from Genetic Roulette China is home to 1.2 billion people and growing. ...

*** NOTE- I prepared this blog entry a month ago after returning from Kauai, the day after I posted the angry messages I received, but neglected to post it.  I really regret that because this was meant to be the contrast to the anger.  This one is about the kind side and a common goal.*** As I watched the island of Kauai disappear in the airplane window I was a little sad at what I left behind.  It is a beautiful place with wonderful people for and against biotech-- for and against Ordinance 2491.  The companies brought me out there because I reach out and try to talk about the science.  When you reach out softly, you can't be surprised when someone kindly reaches back. This picture from the day of the public hearing speaks volumes. You can't tell if the Rivera bothers are arm wrestling or shaking hands from both sides of the issue. Do any of us know?  In reality, we just don't want either one to lose.  photo credit: Dennis Fujimoto/The Gard...

I would not believe it if it did not happen to me.  I get an email, out of the blue, that makes zero sense. Even though I have no idea about what this is, I don't hesitate to invite myself for lunch and talk about trees... So Sue writes me back, looks like lunch time!! She then calls me and it turns out that she's at a conference down the street and there's an opportunity to network with a palm breeder.  He's bred new types of palms high in healthful oils, but they can't grow them in Florida because it is too cold.  These are equatorial trees with no cold tolerance. Still, maybe there's some cool tricks we could do to make it work here. Unfortunately I had to decline because lunch was scheduled for 12:30, but was delayed because the conference was running late. I had an errand to run and then be at a graduate student orientation meeting at 1 pm. I was driving on my way to the errand when my phone rings.  It was Sue, and it turns out that t...

Beware.  The underhanded elements of the anti-GM world are now impersonating scientists and companies in the electronic media. A few weeks ago I received a frantic email from a plant scientist I know needing advice.  I'll give details soon. In general, he was the organizer for a plant biology conference where transgenic (GMO) plants were part of the discussion.  Activists bought a URL similar to the conference URL, then sent emails using a corresponding email account, using his name in an attempt to defame him. They wrote fraudulent emails with harmful content.  The idea was to cause harm to his reputation and the conference. Several emails were sent that may impact his career, and certainly they have caused him substantial grief.  Poor guy.  He's a good guy with a great family and wonderful students.  Yet there are those out there that want to hurt him and damage his career. Today a website showed up on the internet at www.monsantoglobal.com ....

Last month I submitted a proposal to present a workshop at Justice Begins with Seeds, an anti-GMO conference to be held in Seattle Washington.  The conference asked for proposals, I submitted an "Ask a Scientist" Q&A forum, and Anastasia Bodnar, Jon Entine and I were prepared to fly out and attend the conference, potentially at great expense.  The proposal was purely educational. Last week I posted that I had heard nothing from the organizers.  I sent them a note and received a timely reply from Miguel Robles, the person I originally contacted at the organization.  Miguel has always been kind and supportive. He told me that the reason we were not invited to present a workshop was not about GMO per se, but that the "conference is focusing particularly on the global social-economic-political repercussions of genetic engineering."  He then went on to the talking points, mostly about how this is all about money, destruction of small farms, etc.  He mad...

Today I'm listening to the hardcore right-wing radio station in town, the SKY WSKY 97.3 in Gainesville Florida. As I've posted before, although they want the 10 commandments in every classroom and courthouse in the USA, they spend the weekend as the vectors of bearing false witness. They run a series of fake medical radio shows that actually are infomercials for bogus health items. Today I heard the claims of TH121, on a commercial posing as a radio show called "Ask The Doctor" hosted by Charlie Robbins. If by "ask" they mean staged phone calls and if "doctor" they mean the company selling a vitamin and making claims about it, then they are 100% honest. These a-holes really make me mad. They had caller after caller phone in, without ever offering a dial up number. Each caller lost weight, and fast, without dieting and exercise! One caller claimed 9 pounds in three weeks! Then they say that there are no side effects, that is is "saf...

You may remember that I submitted a proposal to give an "ask a scientist" workshop at the Seeds of Justice get together in Seattle, Aug 1-2.  The event has all of the usual suspects that will throw the usual crazy kerosene on the imaginary biotechnology fire. My hope was to get all of the angry anti's in one place and just answer their questions honestly. Anastasia Bodnar, Jon Entine and I were excited to participate, even in a likely hostile forum. Certainly they'd be whipped into a frenzy by Smith, Shiva and the laundry list of non-scientists pontificating as experts.  What a great time to talk to them about science, how we do it, and what it says. So what was their response? Crickets. Crickets. Crickets. No response. Seeing as though we would need to plan, buy tickets, arrange lodging etc, it is not something we could do overnight.  It would be a significant expense for us to participate, but we were willing to take this on if given a forum to do som...

Dear Howard Vleiger, which one is it? Which one is correct? You have stood by your (probably bogus) data from the "Stunning Corn Comparison" on Moms Across America .  Here GMO corn is compared to conventional corn-- but the GMO corn, by your data, has no nutritional value and is full of formaldehyde and glyphosate.  Everyone in the anti-GM world stands by these data as valid (even though they are adulterated soil data-- we don't do those tests on biological matter). Now, you are second author on the "GM is bad for pig stomachs" study ( Carman et al, 2013 , Journal of Something Obscure ).  In this study it is stated in Materials and Methods on page 41: " The GM soy and corn used in this study have been determined to be compositionally and substantially equivalent to non-GM varieties of soy and corn ... which indicates that there should be no phenotypical variation between the GM and non-GM varieties used in this study that could influence the outcom...

To many in the anti-GMO movement the report on pig stomach inflammation could not have been more welcome.  In a time were generating public hysteria is job #1, a flurry of hazard claims based on scientifically bankrupt articles in obscure journals is the best thing that can happen. Or is it? The latest attack on science comes from a report from renowned anti-GM activist Judy Carman.  Number 2 on her 'science' team is Mr. Howard Vleiger, the guy that came up with the stunning corn data that likely are fabricated numbers. So his stellar credibility may follow him here. Their paper has some nice points in that they finally start to use relevant numbers and measure lots of health parameters.  That's good.  What is atrocious is the statistical massage (beating) and the overstepping of the data, as long as some severe flaws in experimental design. These have been discussed elsewhere and I might fill in some of the gaps later. Good Ol' Mike Adams continues his s...

*** I posted this a few years ago and it really fits well in the current climate.  How much are scientists really "paid off" by corporate interests?  How much funding at public institutions comes from corporate sources? *** The scientific consensus of public, academic scientists tells us that: 1. The earth's climate is warming, with at least a component of human cause 2. Evolution explains the diversity of life on earth and continues 3. Transgenic trangenic (GMO) food crops are safe and effective 4. Vaccines are a tremendous, safe cornerstone in public health. 5. Stem cell based therapies show great promise and some application now Every one of these statements is a well supported hypothesis.  Each is based on substantial data from different experiments and models, from many independent labs, worldwide. Critics suggest that such data and conclusions only are present because academic scientists are "bought and paid for" by big corporations.  The ...

A mantra of the anti-GMO movement is that they want independent research, from neutral sources devoid of  special interest. That is, until it is their special interest . The Moms Across America "stunning corn" is old news here. In short, anti-GMO websites everywhere showed that GM corn was full of formaldehyde and had no nutrients. The data presented were so fake that anyone with half a brain could see right through it.  They were soil data, and likely faked soil data. 'Moms' promoted, and rabidly defended, fake results as authentic. Still do. When I questioned them on their websites I was banned, blocked and then criticized. Last week on Mae-Wan Ho's website I offered to personally pay for a replicate of the experiment.  I was greeted by a kind email from Dr. Ho, and clear indication that Howard Vlieger and Dr. Don Huber (the goofy one, not Don J. Huber) were on board for the new test. I was excited to say the least.  They clearly were ready to ...

I'm so excited about the comments coming in on a potential replicate of the "Stunning Corn Comparison" originally posted on Moms Across America. I've asked for a large, transparent and independent series of tests and I'm willing to cover the costs, personally.  It will not be cheap.  The plant science community has stepped up and offered many excellent comments about experimental design in the comments section of previous posts.  I have not heard anything from those promoting the data as real.  This morning I sent the following email to those named in the salutation: Dr. Ho, Mr. Vlieger and Dr. Huber,  I hope that we can move forward with a series of independent, transparent and replicated tests on GM corn grown in glyphosate-treated fields versus non-GM corn.  The data presented in the original data set certainly raised eyebrows and drew criticism.  I was one of the biggest critics.  I don't understand much about the data, such as how co...

The Stunning Corn Comparison promoted by Zen Honeycutt at Moms Across America was certainly stunning.  While Zen, farmer Howard Vlieger and Profit Pro stand by these data as authentic, a codified scientific community sees them as either poor quality, a mistake, (or at worst) fraud. If the results are real and GMO corn is stripped of almost all carbon, loaded with (carbon-based) formaldeyde and glyphosate, plus a Brix of 1%, it would be a remarkable story that would shake the foundation of modern production agriculture. Such findings, if found transparently and in independent, replicated trials, would likely grace the covers of major science weeklys like Science or Nature . It would be huge news, and as a scientist, I am thrilled to test the hypothesis that the previous data are authentic. So excited!  I love to see experimental data replicated!  More numbers, locations, etc, the better I sleep at night! I have agreed to personally finance the analytical ...

As the fields begin to grow and acres of corn blanket the nation, it is a great time to re-think the numbers from the chart shown on Moms Across America .  To recap, a chart claiming to be a chemical analysis of GMO and conventional corn was shown, featuring dramatic differences in nutrient content and chemical contamination. The data, without information of source or method, were widely criticized, including by Yours Truly . However, the person that did/commissioned the test, Howard Vlieger, stands by the data as authentic, along with a host of others, including Zen Honeycutt from "Moms".   UFO Blogger  and the Paranormal Society have lent their scientific analysis and are convinced too. However, in the YouTube video (@7:51) Vlieger says clearly that the data were not repeated , "Just those two samples".  He then goes on to defend the Seralini rat study, so the scientific rigor is not necessarily high here. Let's re-test those results!  Who's on b...