Glyphosate toxicity study in ‘pay for play journal’ based on flawed experimental design

[HuckleB]

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/04/25/glyphosate-toxicity-study-in-pay-for-play-journal-based-on-flawed-experimental-design/#.U1qEJPldWGd

"A recently published study by a group of French scientists reported that commonly used pesticides like Roundup were up to 1,000 times more toxic than the isolated active ingredient that was tested and evaluated for safety. The team, led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, notorious for a retracted publication that linked GMOs to cancer, claimed that the flawed safety evaluations for pesticides put public health at risk. Their findings were published in BioMed Research International, a pay-for-play journal that does no serious peer review, in February.

In a dramatic turn of events, one of the journal’s editors, Ralf Reski, a plant scientist at the University of Freiburg in Germany, resigned and asked for his name to be removed from the journal’s website after reading Séralini’s article.

“I do not want to be connected to a journal that provides [Séralini] a forum for such kind of agitation,” he wrote in his resignation e-mail to the publisher, Hindawi Publishing Corporation.

Val Giddings, a geneticist and senior fellow at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, summed up the criticisms of Séralini’s study. He explained that the researchers applied pesticides in high concentrations directly to human cell lines, which was considered poor experimental design that did not represent real-world uses of the pesticides:

..."



This ludicrously bad study was touted at DU recently. Come on, DUers. Don't buy into the drama until you've thoroughly looked into the claims.

Thank you.



Link to longer piece: http://www.innovationfiles.org/points-to-consider-claims-about-pesticide-toxicity-are-based-on-discredited-methods/

[DetlefK]

1. Garlic-juice kills cancer-cells when applied in a petri-dish.

Totally true and totally irrelevant for applications.

[HuckleB]

2. Yup! -eom-

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Not to be picky or anything, but Roundup (glyphosate)

isn't a pesticide, it's an herbicide.

[HuckleB]

4. You are quite correct. -eom-

[sharp_stick]

6. Not really wrong. Herbicides are pesticides

Pesticide is used to refer to any substance used for destroying insects or other organisms harmful to cultivated plants or to animals.

That term is further broken down into insecticide, herbicide and lots of others.

From Wikipedia:

The term pesticide includes all of the following: herbicide, insecticide, insect growth regulator, nematicide, termiticide, molluscicide, piscicide, avicide, rodenticide, predacide, bactericide, insect repellent, animal repellent, antimicrobial, fungicide, disinfectant (antimicrobial), and sanitizer.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

7. Fair enough, but it seems to me that in common parlance

pesticide means something that kills unwanted critters, and herbicide is something that kills unwanted plants. So it may be confusing to many people to call glyphosate a pesticide because it could easily be assumed to be a kind of insecticide, and thus misused (even more than it already is). Just a little quibble, I guess.

[sharp_stick]

8. You're absolutely right

I know that most people do use insecticide and pesticide interchangeably. It still pops up as a discussion point at conferences when Toxicologists talk about public interaction and teaching.

In the literature, especially toxicology, the distinction has to be made because of the wildly different ways these chemicals affect different organisms.

That's probably why I go "grammar cop" or maybe that would be better termed "poison cop" when I hear it anywhere near discussion of an article...even one as badly designed as this OP mentioned.

My wife hates it when I correct her on this point so I've had to give up on the "teachable moments" in favor of a happy marriage.

[HuckleB]

10. OK, you win.

[sharp_stick]

5. I have a friend teaching toxicology

at a University. She provided this paper to a journal club of undergraduates without comment and wasn't surprised at how few of them were able to pick it apart.

She used the next week to start introducing them to the concept of critically reviewing articles and the difference between peer review and pay for play journals. Not all articles in the pay for play are bad but you really have to look at them and all other non peer reviewed work with a much more critical eye.

At first glance the paper looks great. All sciencey...it's got the big words, nasty sounding compounds, an Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results with graphs and charts (hell this one even has error bars) and a Discussion. If you don't understand experimental design and the compounds being tested you'd think it's on the level.

[HuckleB]

9. +1

Well, at least it was a helpful teaching tool, then!

[Sgent]

11. It also depends on the journal

PLOS One is "Pay for play" but is fairly good, many others are not.

[HuckleB]

12. About those more caustic herbicides that glyphosate helped replace: By Credible Hulk

http://www.crediblehulk.org/index.php/2015/06/02/about-those-more-caustic-herbicides-that-glyphosate-helped-replace-by-credible-hulk/