Illumination 2.0

I'm speaking at the Trottier Symposium in Montreal and was asked to submit an abstract. The symposium topic is "Trusting Science- Do You" So I prepared this: Marketing a Mistrust of the Safest Food Supply in History Breakthroughs in breeding and genetics have radically improved plants and animals used for food. Introduction of modern technology to production practices makes farming more efficient.    Improved chemistries allow us to produce more with less, with greater sensitivity to the environment. However, in the midst of the safest, most abundant and most diverse food supply in human history, there is a rising perception of its danger.    The suspicion has not been driven by science. Instead it is a well-funded marketing ploy to push food dollars to boutique choices, and sell lifestyle-oriented selections that promise, but don’t necessarily deliver, improved health and performance.    A multi-billion dollar industry has emerged to provide these higher- cos

You'd swear by the hate-filled rhetoric that I just threw a pillowcase of kittens and an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker into a wood chipper.  Why?  A scientific paper with manipulated data?   No. A public presentation with information contrary to the scientific literature?   No.   Statements to the media that are untrue?   No.   What did I do to earn their ire?   I found some funds to teach science.  For the last 12 years science communication has run parallel to my research and teaching.  Every year I provide a talk to our grad students about how to not just do science, but then how to share science.  In 2012 I was traveling to quite a few places and answering lots of questions.  I was turning down lots of gigs because I had no budget to do it.  So when a group would offer an honorarium (big organizations can afford to do), I would not accept it personally.  Instead it would go into an outreach account to pay for future outreach opportunities.  When asked about my speak

After yesterday's interactions there is no question that the recent events by USRTK and activist groups are simply a drive to fight scientific literacy, and dissuade students and newly minted academics from entering the discussion.  The libel, defamation and reputation harm we endure, along with veiled threats and undue criticism, stand to repel scientists from simply teaching science, and most of all, from participating in a public dialog.  Facts sometimes can be inconvenient to activist agendas, so they must eliminate or marginalize the teachers.  Here on a sunny Sunday, I present a story you may not know... but it has eerie parallels to today's discussion about the attacks on science and reason.  Nikolai Vavilov was a brilliant scientist and gifted geneticist, years before genetics was even a discipline.  His tireless collections of plant species, incredible observations and excellent science were decades before his time.  His collections of seeds are among the world’s

I just received this from an undergraduate student at University of Arizona.  I redacted the specifics about her research work as an undergrad, but I will add that she's a Hispanic female interested in graduate school in my lab. This is the saddest damn thing I've read in a long time, and a symptom of what comes from Ruskin's digital McCarthyism.  Dear Dr. Folta,  I recently saw your AMA on reddit concerning the USRTK group, and how their obtaining of your personal and private communications has begun to influence your life, and the narrative that has been developed by them concerning your work. Being somewhat familiar with your work, it was shocking to hear the lengths that any group would go to in order to give your work a bad name.... this was the part about her research, so I'll omit that for her privacy.  ....Your experiences that you have shared make me worry for the future of this area of science. I think that outreach and public education in scientif

Over the last few years, in addition to my job as a researcher and a department chair, I have been fumbling through the Talking Biotech science communication program .  It started as a series of talks to "teach the teachers" designed to help students, faculty and staff become conversant in how to talk about, and teach, biotechnology concepts. The program used to be called Bio Talknowledgey, but I had to ditch that name because I could never remember how to spell it and sent people the wrong URL all the time. But as time went on, this has evolved into a slick, effective and well in-demand program that is a lot of fun to deliver.  It is not just biotech, as the same concepts have been applied to other areas as well, such as climate, vaccines and even evolution. The program is expanding to cover other aspects of communication training too. The program and its funding were discussed in Nature today , by Keith Kloor, and I felt that some additional clarification might be

This week’s podcast is an important analysis of two published reports. First, the results from the famous Rothamstead wheat trial show that their transgene does not confer resistance to aphids, inconsistent with their laboratory findings.  While this outcome was considered to be a successful, reliable answer, it was billed as an abject failure on anti-biotech activist websites. Today we revisit the issues of publication and peer-review, and the story of the threats of vandalism against the experiment.  We then will speak with Prof. John Pickett from Rothamstead Research Institute. We’ll discuss the lab work the trials, and future directions. The second part of the podcast discusses the recent publication from Adyydurai et al that claims transgenic soy produces abnormal amounts of formaldehyde, relative to non-transgenic controls.  The conclusion comes from a computational approach that was never experimentally validated.  Since, I have extended an offer to test their hypothesis,

The paper published in Agricultural Sciences by Shiva Ayyadurai presents a hypothesis that transgenic soybeans are high in formaldehyde and deficient in glutathione.  The story is covered in the two previous blogs.  I reached out to Dr. Ayyadurai and suggested that he come to Florida, we grind some beans, and actually do the test.  There has been no response, but he is certainly out playing up his findings as factual confirmation of formaldehyde in soy.  Read the headlines of the websites below: That is not what the report claims, but it is what the authors want it to claim.   No data were presented on formaldehyde levels. Again, overstating what the report says.  In both cases they emphasize "peer reviewed", showing the danger of predatory publishing.  A credulous, scientifically-illiterate activist media basks in the joy of the conclusion-- even though it has no basis in reality.  The intent is to frighten people about good food.  What does t

Last week Dr. Shiva Ayyadurai published a systems biology paper in Agricultural Sciences.  The report left much to be desired, and was critically analyzed here.    The anti-GMO activist community exploded with the news that "GMOs are full of formaldehyde", of course not realizing that the paper represented a deeply flawed and testable conclusion, that was not tested.  Nowhere in the existing literature, where tens of thousands of plant products have been analyzed, did anyone find actual measurements that match the predictions. When your computer prediction is wrong, then why publish it?  Because it did exactly what it set out to do-- create fear and controversy around technology that folks like Ayyadurai and his spouse, the fabulous Fran Drescher, fail to appreciate.  Fran and Shiva have been vigorously defending the work online, with Drescher even making the bold (tired) claim that scientists are all just working "4 monsanto".  She's even been so bold as

Critics of agricultural biotechnology claim that there is no transparency and no independent evaluation of transgenic crop products.  Of course, there are many, many cases where academic labs are recruited to perform independent analyses.   When independent results do not match the company results, the project is DOA, at least temporarily.  When the independent results do match, and those scientists report them, they are admonished as shills of Big Ag.  The implication is that companies do not fund research, they fund the manufacturing of favorable results. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.  This came about because I found a website listing USA public universities and the funds donated to them by ag companies.  This is all public record.  The surrounding text said that university results could not be trusted because of financial influence. Who else should pay for the company's research?  The bottom line is simple, independent research is valued because

If you developed a computer program that integrated internet data to predict the location of Munich, and the program told you it was squarely in the Gulf of Mexico, right off Florida, it does not mean that Munich is in the Gulf of Mexico, right off of Florida.  It means that your program, your assumptions, or your input data are wrong. These things are quite testable.  When you decide to not challenge those data, but instead publish a map showing that Munich is squarely in the Gulf of Mexico, opposing all other data and the claims of millions of rather dry Germans, it does not mean that you are brilliant.  It means you have absolutely no clue, or more likely, have some reason you want a major German metropolis to be a two-hour boat ride from Tampa.   When you are the map publisher that actually prints the deceptive map, what does that say about your integrity as a reliable information source?   If your computer algorithm predicts a major European city is closer to The Eve

It was Nazi guy and photographic sour-puss Joe Goebbels that might have said,  “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."  Nobody really knows for sure that it was The Goebbler, and ironically this quotation has been ascribed to everyone from Hitler to Martha Stewart.  It does encapsulate the phenomenon spawned by the 2011, long-debunked paper by Aris and LeBlanc, claiming to detect the BT protein (presumably from transgenic crops, but that control was never done) in fetuses and pregnant mothers. There have been a number of brilliant discussions of why this work is not credible, posted here , here , here . here  and here .  I even discussed it here .  One of them is from New Zealand and the other from a French dude, two classes typically not immediately disqualified as corporate lackeys.  But those facts don't get in the way of GMO Free USA, a group that latches on to any report it can manipulate, regardless of its

Over the last few years you'll find that a substantial number of my twitter posts are followed by the objections of a certain veterinarian from from Long Beach, CA.  I'm not naming her here because I don't want anyone searching for her professional or business information to find this page. This is an appeal to others to take a high road in dealing with her, and if possible, to not engage with her.  Why is it a problem?   She comments on my blog posts. She slams me on her blog. She systematically checks all of my tweets and chimes in on a large number of them, using fallacy to negate key points. She has dug for, and has broadcasted personal financial information, obtainable because I am a public scientist , then s he claims I'm paid by Monsanto and not a public scientist.  She's endlessly tries to tarnish my reputation as an independent voice of science, as an expert in genomics and someone that can faithfully interpret the literature for the general public.