Monsanto – Séralini affair

[HRIP7]

Via Twitter (H/T to Brian John and altermondeleo):

#Monsanto geeks have put a defamatory article about #Seralini onto #Wikipedia. Can't remove - it's locked. Wiki protects Monsanto. Weird!!

This seems to be about the edit war currently raging at Séralini affair (T-H-L). Anyone care to have a look?

[The Devil's Advocate]

Seems they tried to speedy an article on a highly notable dispute about a study on genetically-modified food by claiming it was an attack page and after repeated edit-warring over the speedy tag the article got semi-protected. Basically a bunch of the anti-GMO types are crying bloody murder because the article notes that a bunch of established scientists say the study is flawed. The anti-GMO crowd have a very deep-seated hatred for Monsanto so, naturally, some of them presume it is a grand conspiracy. At best, one could argue that the article should have a different name, but it is a widely-used term for the controversy.

[EricBarbour]

It was created by one Jinkinson, who has a really weird edit history. The article started as an outright Monsanto hit-piece.

Then Dusha100 showed up and started massively rewriting it. Good candidate for Monsanto paid editor. His first edit. Then more POV warriors showed up, many of them familiar from climate-change arguments.

If Runjonrun (T-C-L) isn't Jon Entine (T-H-L), you can eat my hat.

Ho hum. Nothing new here.

[iii]

TDA more or less nails it. This whole area has the potential to open up another front in the unending "Science Wars", this time with the twist that the science deniers are mostly coming from the political left rather than the political right. Showing anti-GMO protestors arguments such as those promulgated by Mark Lynas has the potential for much lulz.

The sad thing is that there really are very problematic aspects of the way the modern food supply system is set up in terms of pollution, sustainability, and health. However, the question as to whether a given crop is "genetically engineered" or not is essentially a red herring. There are a few cynical types who have jumped on the anti-GMO bandwagon because it has a kind of traction that talking about the problems of water run-off, carbon footprints, or potential microbial contamination cannot seem to match, but fetishizing certain trait selection techniques over others on the basis of skepticism about whether single gene manipulation in a laboratory is "safe" or "healthy" is a rather pitiable argument.

[Cla68]

The vehemence of the anti-GMO activists amazes me. WP will be a battleground for them in their war on genetically modified foods. However, I'm sure WP's administration has an adequate handle on it, as they always have in all controversial topics.

[lilburne]

Mostly this is a political thing. The GMO industry would have been better delivering crops that were suited to subsistence farming first, instead of developing crops that required their own brand of fertiliser or pesticide. But you can see the nonsense being pushed when there are simultaneous and conflicting arguments such as "You can't save the seeds from these crops as they are sterile" alongside "They will cross pollinate with other types".

All of this nonsense obscures the science. Currently I'm undecided, I don't have enough background knowledge of the science, so my anti-corporation bias is going to kick in.

[The Devil's Advocate]

It was created by one Jinkinson, who has a really weird edit history. The article started as an outright Monsanto hit-piece.

Then Dusha100 showed up and started massively rewriting it. Good candidate for Monsanto paid editor. His first edit. Then more POV warriors showed up, many of them familiar from climate-change arguments.

If Runjonrun (T-C-L) isn't Jon Entine (T-H-L), you can eat my hat.

Ho hum. Nothing new here.

I think you have Dusha and Jinkinson's motives mixed up.

[IRWolfie-]

Mostly this is a political thing. The GMO industry would have been better delivering crops that were suited to subsistence farming first, instead of developing crops that required their own brand of fertiliser or pesticide. But you can see the nonsense being pushed when there are simultaneous and conflicting arguments such as "You can't save the seeds from these crops as they are sterile" alongside "They will cross pollinate with other types".

All of this nonsense obscures the science. Currently I'm undecided, I don't have enough background knowledge of the science, so my anti-corporation bias is going to kick in.

I agree that it''s mostly politics. I don't see any obvious reason how it could be harmful, it's not like someone is going to accidentally splice in the gene for cyanide production into a plant. Monsanto isn't perfect, which fits into the conspiratorial anti-corporate anti-authoritarian mindset. The whole idea of getting patents and making farmers sign agreements so they aren't allowed use the seeds to grow another batch of seeds appears to be unethical, but the "GMO isn't safe" nonsense just detracts from the legitimate criticisms.

[SB_Johnny]

I don't see any obvious reason how it could be harmful, it's not like someone is going to accidentally splice in the gene for cyanide production into a plant.

Oddly enough, that's actually one of the more likely mishaps... a lot of plants produce cyanide in response to stress (in fact some of them produce a shitload of it), as any livestock or horse farmer will tell you. I've lost a few goats to those plants over the years.

Not that they wouldn't test for that before putting something on the market, of course, but your comment is a perfect example of why it's better to leave this sort of discussion (and encyclopedia article writing) to people who have some level of expertise and clue.

[Anroth]

March Against Monsanto at AFD

KEEP for God's sake! This is clearly more than a list, although it's a bit sparse at the moment. Research, rewrite and expand but do NOT delete. It would compromise Wikipedia's political neutrality if what many would see as blatant censorship was to go ahead.

[Zoloft]

I invite Glacierman (T-C-L), watching this topic as new member Angelmountain5, to pull up a seat and post here.

[EricBarbour]

If anyone wants to summarize this situation, please do so. There's a lot of editwarring around GMO and Monsanto that I've been
unable to document fully. A big part of that is the lack of arbitrations, mediations, RFCs and the like in the area. (And a lot of the
hits for "Monsanto" on noticeboards are about that Christopher Monsanto (T-C-L) character, who was constantly trying to delete articles
about obscure programming languages. Nothing to do with the Monsanto company, far as I can tell.)

[Anroth]

If anyone wants to summarize this situation, please do so. There's a lot of editwarring around GMO and Monsanto that I've been
unable to document fully. A big part of that is the lack of arbitrations, mediations, RFCs and the like in the area. (And a lot of the
hits for "Monsanto" on noticeboards are about that Christopher Monsanto (T-C-L) character, who was constantly trying to delete articles
about obscure programming languages. Nothing to do with the Monsanto company, far as I can tell.)

Its not really worth your time. Its a bog-standard 'Big corp Vs activist group' dispute. See 'big oil fracking' for similar issues. Monsanto has massive ethical issues (their agreements with farmers, third world dealings etc) which have been discussed in plenty of places. However as a corp they are pretty savvy about how to effectively manage their online profile. Up to and including editing the wikipedia entries themselves.

The problem is their opponents on wikipedia tend towards the frothing-at-the-mouth activist. And since most people (in the US) dont care about GM food. And the FDA has lacklustre regulation regarding labelling. Its not something in general people are informed about, or feel the need to go edit wikipedia.

Besides, given the average wikipedian editor is male, 18-30, tech-literate - I am guessing the consumption of heavily processed GM food is off the charts

[IRWolfie-]

I don't see any obvious reason how it could be harmful, it's not like someone is going to accidentally splice in the gene for cyanide production into a plant.

Oddly enough, that's actually one of the more likely mishaps... a lot of plants produce cyanide in response to stress (in fact some of them produce a shitload of it), as any livestock or horse farmer will tell you. I've lost a few goats to those plants over the years.

Not that they wouldn't test for that before putting something on the market, of course, but your comment is a perfect example of why it's better to leave this sort of discussion (and encyclopedia article writing) to people who have some level of expertise and clue.

I know many plants produce cyanide, that's why I picked that example.

[HRIP7]

Groupuscule (T-C-L) has put together a page outlining their concerns over how Wikipedia (mis)represents the scientific consensus on genetically modified food.

Some users on Wikipedia are misrepresenting scientific assessment of the safety of genetically modified foods. An accusation such as this cannot be made lightly and must be investigated seriously. If the investigations show results, the response must also be serious.

We will begin by analyzing the sources currently provided in support of the following claim:

There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops pose no greater risk than conventional food.

We will demonstrate that many of the sources provided are used inappropriately, and that they themselves misrepresent the factual basis for their claims. Our analysis will not rely on original research, but on assessment of the quality of the sources—and of how they relate to the claim. Thus, we will limit ourselves to examination of the sources themselves and to secondary literature that comments on these sources directly.

[IRWolfie-]

Groupuscule (T-C-L) has put together a page outlining their concerns over how Wikipedia (mis)represents the scientific consensus on genetically modified food.

Some users on Wikipedia are misrepresenting scientific assessment of the safety of genetically modified foods. An accusation such as this cannot be made lightly and must be investigated seriously. If the investigations show results, the response must also be serious.

We will begin by analyzing the sources currently provided in support of the following claim:

There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops pose no greater risk than conventional food.

We will demonstrate that many of the sources provided are used inappropriately, and that they themselves misrepresent the factual basis for their claims. Our analysis will not rely on original research, but on assessment of the quality of the sources—and of how they relate to the claim. Thus, we will limit ourselves to examination of the sources themselves and to secondary literature that comments on these sources directly.

I'm not sure whether this guy is a hack or deliberately misrepresenting the sources.
For example, with User:Groupuscule/GMO#WHO.2C_date_unknown (T-C-L) he puts in bold the parts about controversy in the public sphere, and confuses it with scientific controversy, while ignoring the parts like "GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved."
He also confuses safety with gene transfer. He is also confusing whether more studies were needed at the time some of the sources where made, with whether there is consensus about safety (Scientists point out the limitations in their work, what Groupuscule is doing is exactly what Climate change deniers do, he looks for some issue with a source, and then uses that to justify dismissing the source entirely).

Another example, he quotes "Following the comparative safety assessment approach, the safety of a GMO is established relative to a conventional counterpart, which implicitly presumes the safety of the latter. This is based on the fact that whilst conventional foods usually have not been tested for safety, their history of safe use indicates that a positive balance has been found between the potentially negative and positive effects of the many substances present within these foods", and acts as though it is somehow is a score against GM food. Clearly the safety of conventional food is always going to be the benchmark from which GM is judged (and the claim he is disputing is "There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops pose no greater risk than conventional food.")

He's trying to analyse sources, seemingly outside his expertise (I assume he isn't a scientist), and failing badly. It isn't for no reason that original research is frowned upon on wikipedia when people can't verify expertise.

[iii]

• The poor quality of these sources raises serious ethical questions about the editors who invoked them to support the claim of scientific consensus. Pamela Ronald and Henry I. Miller, the authors who actually use the phrase “broad scientific consensus”, have used especially flagrant misrepresentation and ought to be investigated and perhaps censured by their academic institutions (University of California and Stanford University).
• Based on the inadequacy of these sources alone, Wikipedia should not claim that there is a “broad scientific consensus” on the comparative safety of genetically modified foods.
• We need to ask serious questions about the users who are fanatically promoting the "broad scientific consensus" claim on Wikipedia. Will they acknowledge this report on their sources? Will they find new sources of similar quality? Will they produce high-quality sources to support their claim? And most importantly: was their misrepresentation of these sources (and omission of others) naive or deliberate?

This looks remarkably similar to the conspiracy theorizing that characterized the arguments of Wikipedia's cadre of global warming deniers.

[IRWolfie-]

• The poor quality of these sources raises serious ethical questions about the editors who invoked them to support the claim of scientific consensus. Pamela Ronald and Henry I. Miller, the authors who actually use the phrase “broad scientific consensus”, have used especially flagrant misrepresentation and ought to be investigated and perhaps censured by their academic institutions (University of California and Stanford University).
• Based on the inadequacy of these sources alone, Wikipedia should not claim that there is a “broad scientific consensus” on the comparative safety of genetically modified foods.
• We need to ask serious questions about the users who are fanatically promoting the "broad scientific consensus" claim on Wikipedia. Will they acknowledge this report on their sources? Will they find new sources of similar quality? Will they produce high-quality sources to support their claim? And most importantly: was their misrepresentation of these sources (and omission of others) naive or deliberate?

This looks remarkably similar to the conspiracy theorizing that characterized the arguments of Wikipedia's cadre of global warming deniers.

Both of these individuals also have articles, so it's a BLP violation for Groupuscule to accuse them of academic fraud. Yep, the GMO and climate denial comparison has been made several times by many different people, they don't seem to like that much. There is a large misconception that only Republicans are anti-science. For republicans their nemesis is big government, to the Anti-GMO crowd its big industry. It's interesting to note that a number of the editors came to the topic area directly after editing the BP articles for some time.

[jinkinson]

Hi, this is Jinkinson, the guy who created this article.
I would like to be the first to say that the article, when I created it, was pretty lousy and very much not in line with the way Wikipedia articles are supposed to be structured. But it is much better now, thanks to Jytdog, Arc de Ciel, and all those other guys.
Was it a "monsanto hit-piece" when I created it? Sort of, however, to use Wikipedia terms, it is only fair that we do not give undue weight to opinions that aren't supported by most of the evidence. And as I noted when I originally created the article, there are a lot more studies saying that GMOs are safe than those like Seralini's (see Snell et al. 2012 (found here: http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/ ... l_2012.pdf, which is based on 24 studies).
Also, yes I do have a really weird edit history.

[Wer900]

Hi, this is Jinkinson, the guy who created this article.
I would like to be the first to say that the article, when I created it, was pretty lousy and very much not in line with the way Wikipedia articles are supposed to be structured. But it is much better now, thanks to Jytdog, Arc de Ciel, and all those other guys.
Was it a "monsanto hit-piece" when I created it? Sort of, however, to use Wikipedia terms, it is only fair that we do not give undue weight to opinions that aren't supported by most of the evidence. And as I noted when I originally created the article, there are a lot more studies saying that GMOs are safe than those like Seralini's (see Snell et al. 2012 (found here: http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/ ... l_2012.pdf, which is based on 24 studies).
Also, yes I do have a really weird edit history.

I ran a piece on this earlier, and don't want to get into the whole GMO war again. I am not opposed to GMOs in general. I am opposed to people making claims of their greatness and the unqualified statement of "scientific consensus"—for what it's worth, the latest NAS report on the subject stated that the yield increases have been mild to moderate, and that pesticide-use patterns (I'm looking at you, Roundup) have changed to allow pest resistance. This cannot be characterized as anything but lukewarm.

Regarding Roundup itself, that has been shown to be harmful a number of times, and its use is encouraged by GMOs. The real problem is not GMOs themselves, but the ways in which they are made by Monsanto, DuPont, and others to accept more and more pesticides rather than innately destroy or curtail the pests.

[Poetlister]

Hi, this is Jinkinson, the guy who created this article.
I would like to be the first to say that the article, when I created it, was pretty lousy and very much not in line with the way Wikipedia articles are supposed to be structured. But it is much better now, thanks to Jytdog, Arc de Ciel, and all those other guys.

Welcome, Jinkinson.

Of course, the way things are supposed to work on Wikipedia (but rarely do) is that someone writes a crude first draft of an article, and then other people come along and improve it. If you're very lucky, the right sort of people come. Otherwise, either it languishes in more or less your rubbish version or it gets into an even worse state, though it may look prettier.

[HRIP7]

Hi, this is Jinkinson, the guy who created this article.
I would like to be the first to say that the article, when I created it, was pretty lousy and very much not in line with the way Wikipedia articles are supposed to be structured. But it is much better now, thanks to Jytdog, Arc de Ciel, and all those other guys.
Was it a "monsanto hit-piece" when I created it? Sort of, however, to use Wikipedia terms, it is only fair that we do not give undue weight to opinions that aren't supported by most of the evidence. And as I noted when I originally created the article, there are a lot more studies saying that GMOs are safe than those like Seralini's (see Snell et al. 2012 (found here: http://www.foodpolitics.com/wp-content/ ... l_2012.pdf, which is based on 24 studies).
Also, yes I do have a really weird edit history.

Welcome.

[EricBarbour]

Update: the journal that ran Seralini's paper is retracting it, after more than a year of madness and chaos.

The part that really cracks me up: on Metafilter, they recommend reading the Wikipedia article, as a "summary". Not realizing what an editwarred mess it is (although it's a lot more neutral than it was last year).

[enwikibadscience]

I don't see any obvious reason how it could be harmful, it's not like someone is going to accidentally splice in the gene for cyanide production into a plant.

I don't think most people know enough about science and plants to catch sarcasm at this high an insider level.

[enwikibadscience]

TDA more or less nails it. This whole area has the potential to open up another front in the unending "Science Wars", this time with the twist that the science deniers are mostly coming from the political left rather than the political right. Showing anti-GMO protestors arguments such as those promulgated by Mark Lynas has the potential for much lulz.

The sad thing is that there really are very problematic aspects of the way the modern food supply system is set up in terms of pollution, sustainability, and health. However, the question as to whether a given crop is "genetically engineered" or not is essentially a red herring. There are a few cynical types who have jumped on the anti-GMO bandwagon because it has a kind of traction that talking about the problems of water run-off, carbon footprints, or potential microbial contamination cannot seem to match, but fetishizing certain trait selection techniques over others on the basis of skepticism about whether single gene manipulation in a laboratory is "safe" or "healthy" is a rather pitiable argument.

Talk about red herrings. The technique safety? Oh well, to heck with the actual trait.

Still, the place to argue those red herrings is en.Wikipedia edit wardom. The comments here, at Wikipediocracy, are beginning to suggest editors might be getting their science from Wikipedia. I advise against this.

The focus, imo, should be the idiocy that produced the edit wars in this article and on all controversial topics, the little boys' club of editors with vested opinions backed by nothing producing articles in areas where they lack knowledge, when these areas are already badly covered with made up science in cyber blogdom. Generally where the boys are forming their opinions prior to writing for en.Wikipedia.

[enwikibadscience]

I don't see any obvious reason how it could be harmful, it's not like someone is going to accidentally splice in the gene for cyanide production into a plant.

Oddly enough, that's actually one of the more likely mishaps... a lot of plants produce cyanide in response to stress (in fact some of them produce a shitload of it), as any livestock or horse farmer will tell you. I've lost a few goats to those plants over the years.

Not that they wouldn't test for that before putting something on the market, of course, but your comment is a perfect example of why it's better to leave this sort of discussion (and encyclopedia article writing) to people who have some level of expertise and clue.

I think IRWolfe was being sarcastic at a very high insider level.

[enwikibadscience]

If anyone wants to summarize this situation, please do so. There's a lot of editwarring around GMO and Monsanto that I've been
unable to document fully. A big part of that is the lack of arbitrations, mediations, RFCs and the like in the area. (And a lot of the
hits for "Monsanto" on noticeboards are about that Christopher Monsanto (T-C-L) character, who was constantly trying to delete articles
about obscure programming languages. Nothing to do with the Monsanto company, far as I can tell.)

Its not really worth your time. Its a bog-standard 'Big corp Vs activist group' dispute. See 'big oil fracking' for similar issues. Monsanto has massive ethical issues (their agreements with farmers, third world dealings etc) which have been discussed in plenty of places. However as a corp they are pretty savvy about how to effectively manage their online profile. Up to and including editing the wikipedia entries themselves.

The problem is their opponents on wikipedia tend towards the frothing-at-the-mouth activist. And since most people (in the US) dont care about GM food. And the FDA has lacklustre regulation regarding labelling. Its not something in general people are informed about, or feel the need to go edit wikipedia.

Besides, given the average wikipedian editor is male, 18-30, tech-literate - I am guessing the consumption of heavily processed GM food is off the charts

I was possibly frothing at the mouth to disagree with you, as I think it is worth everyone's time to be able to pull the scientific issues out of this, but you avoid the science and cover the crap rather well.

[enwikibadscience]

Groupuscule (T-C-L) has put together a page outlining their concerns over how Wikipedia (mis)represents the scientific consensus on genetically modified food.

Some users on Wikipedia are misrepresenting scientific assessment of the safety of genetically modified foods. An accusation such as this cannot be made lightly and must be investigated seriously. If the investigations show results, the response must also be serious.

We will begin by analyzing the sources currently provided in support of the following claim:

There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops pose no greater risk than conventional food.

We will demonstrate that many of the sources provided are used inappropriately, and that they themselves misrepresent the factual basis for their claims. Our analysis will not rely on original research, but on assessment of the quality of the sources—and of how they relate to the claim. Thus, we will limit ourselves to examination of the sources themselves and to secondary literature that comments on these sources directly.

I'm not sure whether this guy is a hack or deliberately misrepresenting the sources.
For example, with User:Groupuscule/GMO#WHO.2C_date_unknown (T-C-L) he puts in bold the parts about controversy in the public sphere, and confuses it with scientific controversy, while ignoring the parts like "GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved."
He also confuses safety with gene transfer. He is also confusing whether more studies were needed at the time some of the sources where made, with whether there is consensus about safety (Scientists point out the limitations in their work, what Groupuscule is doing is exactly what Climate change deniers do, he looks for some issue with a source, and then uses that to justify dismissing the source entirely).

Another example, he quotes "Following the comparative safety assessment approach, the safety of a GMO is established relative to a conventional counterpart, which implicitly presumes the safety of the latter. This is based on the fact that whilst conventional foods usually have not been tested for safety, their history of safe use indicates that a positive balance has been found between the potentially negative and positive effects of the many substances present within these foods", and acts as though it is somehow is a score against GM food. Clearly the safety of conventional food is always going to be the benchmark from which GM is judged (and the claim he is disputing is "There is broad scientific consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops pose no greater risk than conventional food.")

He's trying to analyse sources, seemingly outside his expertise (I assume he isn't a scientist), and failing badly. It isn't for no reason that original research is frowned upon on wikipedia when people can't verify expertise.

I don't put time and effort into my blog, I just grab the first science article on the main page and go after it.

Serious enquiries into the science writing at Wikipedia require your name, credentials, and peer reviewed arguments. But there are few editors at Wikipedia, and certianly not the encyclopedia as a whole, that deserve this level of attention and scrutiny.

[enwikibadscience]

Hi, this is Jinkinson, the guy who created this article.
I would like to be the first to say that the article, when I created it, was pretty lousy and very much not in line with the way Wikipedia articles are supposed to be structured. But it is much better now, thanks to Jytdog, Arc de Ciel, and all those other guys.

Welcome, Jinkinson.

Of course, the way things are supposed to work on Wikipedia (but rarely do) is that someone writes a crude first draft of an article,

.... then the crude first draft gets cemented forever in cyberspace by wiki mirrors...

and then other people come along and improve it. If you're very lucky, the right sort of people come. Otherwise, either it languishes in more or less your rubbish version or it gets into an even worse state, though it may look prettier.

[enwikibadscience]

Update: the journal that ran Seralini's paper is retracting it, after more than a year of madness and chaos.

The part that really cracks me up: on Metafilter, they recommend reading the Wikipedia article, as a "summary". Not realizing what an editwarred mess it is (although it's a lot more neutral than it was last year).

The retraction might be fun!

What cred does metafilter have?

[DanMurphy]

Let me save you the trouble of reading the anti-GMO zealots response to the retraction:

[enwikibadscience]

Let me save you the trouble of reading the anti-GMO zealots response to the retraction:

The image doesn't show, but it appears fom the meta thing you posted that the retraction was non-standard. A quick look makes it appear face-saving. There will be blood. Among the comments.