Illumination 2.0

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 ...