Rats, Tumors and Critical Assessment of Science
My email box exploded with new messages. A flurry of notes contained a link to a new peer-reviewed paper, a work showing that rats fed “GMO” corn developed massive tumors and died early, compared to controls. Immediately I smelled a Seralini paper. A click on the link did not disappoint-- it's Seralini again. I was electronically whisked to a PDF of the whole text and began to read. Within minutes I was blown away by the lack of rigor, poor experimental design, attention to controls and loose statistics. Most of all, I was blown away by the conclusions drawn by a study with tiny numbers of subjects in a rat line known to grow endochrine tumors. The anti-GMO interests were quick to anoint this new work as a rigorous pillar of exceptional science, a hard-science detailing of the danger of transgenic food. They want this to influence public policy. I was really impressed by how the scientific media and the science blogosphere pounced. The best names in the busin