The media have stoked irrational distrust of science in many fields over the years, from vaccines to climate change. But today, such fear mongering is most evident in the coverage of genetically modified foods, with many journalists turning people against them, according to freelance journalist Keith Kloor.
At Collide-a-Scape, his blog for Discover magazine, and elsewhere, Kloor has made a beat out of policing bad journalism related to GMOs. In the last couple of months alone, he’s taken on some of the biggest names in the media for spouting nonsense about their alleged dangers despite the fact that scientific authorities from AAAS to the World Health Organization have vouched for their safety. [Clarification: The WHO has vouched only for the safety of the GM foods already on the market, and emphasizes that “it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods.”]
Kloor’s latest salvo was directed at Michael Moss, an investigative reporter for The New York Times who was interviewed by his colleague Marcus Mabry following protests against the biotech company Monsanto and the discovery of unapproved GM wheat in an Oregon field at the end of May. Asked why Americans haven’t shown much concern until recently, Moss said:
I think it’s been under the radar a bit. In increasing mood, people are concerned about it. Those [anti-Monsanto] rallies over the weekend were amazing. So many people hit the streets and I think part of the thing happening here is people are realizing, this is really scary stuff. I mean, Just consider the name, right. Genetically modified organisms. This isn’t like taking one apple and crossing it with another and getting a redder, shinier apple. This is extracting genetic material from one living creature and putting it another. And that’s really disturbing to people.
Kloor’s incredulous response was spot on:
Is Moss for real? Instead of perhaps educating the public about genetic modification and why it isn’t scary at all, he’s reinforcing the biggest bogeyman fear of all, the one that inspires every Frankenfood headline.
Just a few days before skewering Moss, Kloor went after CNN’s Jake Tapper for his coverage of the Monsanto protests, which quoted the organizers’ assertion that 2 million people participated and cited a paper published last fall that claimed that a diet of GM corn and/or a widely used weed killer increased the likelihood of premature death in rats. While Tapper noted that CNN couldn’t confirm the count and that scientists widely criticized the paper, Kloor argued that those caveats would likely be lost on most viewers. He also faulted Tapper for quoting Monsanto, rather than independent authorities, attesting to the safety of GMOs.
A couple weeks before that, Kloor censured New York Times food writer Mark Bittman for serving up “bad science” by citing advocacy organizations instead of scientists while arguing that GMOs present a danger to human health (last fall, Kloor leveled the same charges against Michael Pollan).
A few weeks before that, Kloor was on the heels of Reuters for its uncritical coverage of a paper that made the sweeping claim that Roundup, Monsanto’s popular herbicide, “can remarkably explain a great number of the diseases and conditions that are prevalent in the modern industrialized world,” such as “inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, depression, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, multiple sclerosis, cancer, cachexia, infertility, and developmental malformations.” The paper, Kloor wrote, was “such a mashup of pseudoscience and gibberish that actual scientists have been unable to make sense of it.”
A month before that, it was The Guardian that found itself in Kloor’s crosshairs after posting an anti-GMO video advertorial from the advocacy group Friends of the Earth without labeling where it came from and explaining what it was. Kloor called it “propaganda dressed up as journalism,” and the The Guardian soon took it down.
The list goes on and on, and journalists haven’t been the only recipients of Kloor’s ire. He’s also lambasted environmental activist Vandana Shiva for comparing the planting of GMOs to rape, and pilloried alternative health guru and talk radio host Gary Null for portraying GMOs as “seeds of death.”
This is a highly misleading article. You won't get the World Health Organisation "vouching for the safety" of GM foods; they are a lot more savvy than that. What they actually say is, "it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods. GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health". This is completely different from "vouching for the safety" of GM foods and puts the onus onto the risk assessors, who can only judge by the frankly weak tests that industry does on its own GM foods.
I've come to expect higher standards of journalism from you all and I hope you will correct this article accordingly.
#1 Posted by Dave Wood, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 01:04 PM
So we should doubt the findings of an experienced and highly credentialed toxicologist (Prof GE Seralini) and the peer reviewers of a scientific journal, and believe instead a journalist, Keith Kloor, on the merits of Seralini's paper on the toxic effects of GM maize and Roundup?
Unfortunately the critics of this paper had undisclosed conflicts of interest, which have been revealed by journalists who were actually doing their job rather than simply repeating the smears against the paper put about by the UK's Science Media. The SMC is a PR outfit funded by firms with GM interests and various research institutes which depend on the GM industry for their funding. For a more balanced view of the Seralini study and the story of how the SMC launched an orchestrated campaign against the study, people can visit gmoseralini.org and read the article for Spinwatch, Smelling a corporate rat, by Jonathan Matthews.
#2 Posted by Lise, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 01:13 PM
David, fair point. I should've been clear that the WHO has only vouched for the safety of the GM foods currently on the market, and I've added a clarification.
Lise, many reputable scientists and scientific organizations criticized the Seralini paper. Some may have had conflicts of interest, but certainly not all.
#3 Posted by Curtis Brainard, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 02:25 PM
You guys are missing the points. GMO's are problematic because:
a) the results of mixing one species' traits into the genome of another creates unpredictable expressions within the created organism. This organism can then proliferate creating a genetic/biological pollution, contamination problem.
b) the organism is patented. The company who creates the organism owns the intellectual property of your food. The farmer no longer owns and sells the physical products of his land, he has to license that which grows on his land in order to avoid litigation. This cost passes down to the consumer and the legal intimidation tactics of these companies pushes non tampered alternatives out of the market.
c) the usefulness of these traits (mainly used to grant immunity to a proprietary pesticide/herbicide) are limited by their ubiquity. Land which is exposed to chemicals over the course of time breed pathogens which are immune to those chemicals. Superbugs and superweeds are already here, causing an escalation of conventional pesticide/herbicide use and the introduction of new GMO products which are immune to more toxic chemicals like those derived from agent fricken orange (see the reports on 2,4-D herbicide resistant crops, recently given a green light in Canada:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/16/dowagrosciences-herbicide-idUSL2N0DX0OL20130516 )
d) the companies involved in the proliferation of this technology have a history, and it is not one concerned with the public good. It's one concerned with not losing "one dollar of business":
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0101-02.htm
even as "Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in that creek turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin as if dunked into boiling water."
The science may have worthy contributions to make to our civilization, but we cannot entrust something which is at the foundation of not only our food supply, but all life on earth, to the people who seek to capitalize on the part of it they "own". They will not give an honest estimate about the amount of good their 'innovation' will do, they will not disclose how much harm it will cause, and they will seek to entrench it and supplant other alternatives - particularly natural ones who have no giant corporate litigation department to push relentlessly on their behalf.
Life is not property. It is a public good who's science must be explored in the public interest. Are we going to let those who claim to own the seeds own the future?
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 02:27 PM
Curtis, you are wrong. I repeat, the WHO does NOT vouch for the safety of GM foods, including those already on the market. It says:
"GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health."
The WHO's wording leaves the liability with the risk assessment agencies, which in turn only use industry data on the safety of the GMO to assess safety.
Please list the organisations you say do not have conflicts of interest that criticised the Seralini study. The French academies? Their 'report' was revealed by Academician Paul Deheuvels as a put-up job organised by a small lobby within the academies. You can google this. EFSA? The same body that previously approved this and other GMOs as safe on the basis of short 90-day rat studies done by industry? The German government, which is responsible for the EU approval of Roundup herbicide?
I prefer to listen to the hundreds of independent scientists who have defended the Seralini study. Here are just some of them:
http://gmoseralini.org/faq-items/what-was-the-reaction-to-the-study-2/
The truth is a lot more interesting, and a lot more 'dirty', than the likes of the Science Media Centre and the GM lobbyists like us to think.
#5 Posted by Dave Wood, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 03:01 PM
You can see some better work on the pluses and minuses of gmo crops (but not their property effects) here:
http://www.nature.com/news/case-studies-a-hard-look-at-gm-crops-1.12907
and why Vanada Shiva may equate the loss of farmers' control of seeds through compulsion to the loss of a woman's control of consent through compulsion here:
http://gos.sbc.edu/s/shiva3.html
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 03:13 PM
I think this article has lost all sense of perspective and respect for science. It praises the journalist Kloor as some kind of hero for failing to understand a peer-reviewed scientific paper that links Roundup to ill health effects and damning it as “such a mashup of pseudoscience and gibberish that actual scientists have been unable to make sense of it.”
I can tell you that plenty of scientists, including, presumably, those who peer reviewed the paper as well as those who wrote it, understand the paper very well and none within my acquaintance view it as "pseudoscience and gibberish". Kloor does not deserve being made into a hero for his lack of knowledge and understanding.
Please have some respect for hard-working scientists and do some reading on the sad history of toxics that were kept on the market for decades by 'doubt manufacturers' like Kloor.
Here's a fact that you may like to follow up in order to begin your education. Peer-reviewed scientific studies published long before this latest 'controversial' paper have already linked exposure to Roundup and glyphosate to: cancer; ADHD; birth defects; reproductive disorders; neurological disease; and DNA damage. A quick trawl through PubMed will tell anyone that much.
#7 Posted by Pete, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 03:13 PM
It's really a funny niche. As you can see from the prior comments it's a swamp of misinformation--you need hip waders to even begin to get in. You'd think with all the food chatter there would be more people taking at look at the facts instead of just reading the opinion pieces by chefs and food writers, and conspiracy theorists.
But even most of the science writers barely touch it--expect when something like the Seralini paper launch clued everyone in to something awry. Even Michael Pollan called Seralini a fringy French scientist after that.
I'm glad to have someone taking a harder look at this topic. But I wish there were more people doing it regularly. Plant science facts are as important as climate science facts as far as I'm concerned, but get a lot less ink (or electrons, I suppose).
#8 Posted by Mary, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 03:30 PM
More on Monsanto property tactics by real journalists who talked to real farmers in America who've felt really violated by Monsanto.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805
And the control they've exerted, with supreme court sanction (one of them used to be a monsanto attorney, nothing to see here), over the future of their seed proliferation and the difficulty finding pure strains like "traditional, heirloom soybeans" here:
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15825
Which, of course, leads to the resistance issue since GMO companies recommend you don't plant their GMO seeds in every field, every year, so that weak pathogens can get a chance to proliferate their genes (stretching out the effectiveness of the GMO and their partner chemicals) but GMO tactics and GMO pollution make the supply of non-contaminated strains hard to find.
And even if you have purchased, to your knowledge, non-contaminated product, you can still get sued for planting it and selling it. These are some worrisome developments.
#9 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 04:01 PM
@Mary, Come on then, come up with some of these facts you are so keen on. Or would you rather stick with slurs and sticking silly labels on people?
#10 Posted by Pete, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 04:29 PM
@Pete: Join us for facts at Biofortified--which is now back up! We love to talk plant science facts there. http://www.biofortified.org/blog/
#11 Posted by Mary, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 05:28 PM
Keith Kloor is not interested in the science or journalism on the issue of GMOs. He consistently pollutes the internet with false, misleading and biased information from biased sources. In the past year he hasn't published a single article representing the public health community and public health concerns of this technology--instead he consistently gives the microphone to biased industrial PR reps of agricultural interests and other junk scientists advocating for industrial GMOs. If Keith Kloor is your idea of good science journalism, you are supportive of blatantly biased journalism, corruption of the media with marketing and propaganda, censorship, and banality rather than investigation of the truth and accurate unbiased reporting to educate the public on complex science. It is a sad day for journalism today, indeed.
#12 Posted by dogctor, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 07:08 PM
I'd like to know how anything I wrote was conspiratorial considering I was pulling from Monsanto's historical and litigative record.
I see a lot of people getting snooty over the coverage of a bad french study and the use of the word rape, because "only extremists would make mistakes like that". Usually these centrists do this contrarian dance where they get to point at both sides being stupid (using false equivalence to make the case) or both sides having points (because false balance requires it) and thiis Kloor fellow appears to write in that style.
Problem is, these same "avoid the extremes" folk recently consigned much of the world to growth killing austerity over an excel error:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/reinhart-rogoff-austerity_b_3343688.html
and made the case for torture of 'the enemy' in my memory:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2001/11/04/time-to-think-about-torture.html
Being dead center doesn't make you smarter, doesn't make you immune to fallacy, doesn't mean you don't act on your values, doesn't stop your prejudices from overwhelming the evidence, and doesn't make you better.
It does make you snobby, from what I can see.
The problem is, there is a side which is usually right, open minded, thoughtful, cautious, and critical.
And those folks are liberals. They do admit their mistakes, they do give proper voice to the other side's arguments, they are examining the evidence and trying to put together a truer picture of the world.
And meanwhile, centrists are half the time giving respectable voice to the bad arguments of the right (with reservations, of course) and half the time punching hippies when the opportunity presents.
I punch back. If you can't deal with my words and information without resorting to comments about 'hip waders' then blow away little centrist. You're wrong about gmos, you're wrong about the severity of the climate change problem, and you will continue to be wrong about so many issues so long as you chose to be on the side 'that doesn't pick sides'.
The evidence is on one side, and it ain't yours nor the goofballs at the libertarian think tanks whom you think are good company.
Cheers.
#13 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 07:34 PM
There are already Crop Cops. My particular favourite is GM Watch, revealing the misleading spin of the GM industry.
#14 Posted by Madeleine Love, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 07:37 PM
Curtis, thanks for posting this. Your assessment of Keith Kloor is right on. He plays a vital role in calling other journalists to task when they focus their coverage on a tiny fraction of fringe scientists, rather than the scientific mainstream and vast majority of scientific research which finds currently approved GMOs safe.
We should all hope for better journalism that captures the state of scientific debates (including the weight of evidence on each side) rather than amplifying scary yet discredited findings.
#15 Posted by Ramez Naam, CJR on Wed 5 Jun 2013 at 07:55 PM
Ramez Naam, you are mistaken if you really believe that "the vast majority of scientific research ... finds currently approved GMOs safe". There are two reviews of the scientific literature on GM foods, including commercialised ones already in our food supply, that conclude that some studies find the GM food that was tested safe; and that other studies find harm. The difference? The studies finding the GMOs were safe were mostly conducted by the GM companies applying to sell the products in question.
The citations:
Diels, J., et al. (2011). "Association of financial or professional conflict of interest to research outcomes on health risks or nutritional assessment studies of genetically modified products." Food Policy 36: 197–203.
Domingo, J. L. and J. G. Bordonaba (2011). "A literature review on the safety assessment of genetically modified plants." Environ Int 37: 734–742.
I look forward to your considered view of the studies featured in these reviews.
#16 Posted by Lise, CJR on Thu 6 Jun 2013 at 03:19 AM
Ramez Naam may be deluded by the Snell review, which looked at various studies with GM foods and concluded they were safe. Oddly however, the review only accepted at face value the studies that concluded safety, while dismissing as unreliable the studies that concluded harm. The review also included studies that didn't look at health effects but 'performance indicators' like milk yield.
Weird science indeed, but I guess it was felt that this 'review' was needed to counteract the unfortunate findings of the other previous reviews, which concluded that quite a few studies conclude GMOs are unsafe. And yes, that includes GMOs already in our food supply.
The Seralini study was one of very few long-term studies on the health effects of a GM food already in our food supply--and it found severe organ damage and increased tumours and premature death in the GM-fed rats. The criticisms of this study have been answered many times, notably by the authors of the original study in the same journal. I wonder if Kloor has read that paper, or indeed whether he has read much scientific evidence on GMOs at all.
#17 Posted by Pete, CJR on Thu 6 Jun 2013 at 03:31 AM
I thank you, Curtis and Keith, for your persistence in supporting sound science and in calling science journalists to better understanding and reporting on agricultural biotechnology. I appreciated this article and I appreciate those blogs by Keith Kloor about the status of reporting about agricultural biotechnology.
Drew Kershen
#18 Posted by Drew Kershen, CJR on Thu 6 Jun 2013 at 01:17 PM
Thimbles, I'm with you on this subject, but strongly disagree with your assertion about a deductive/argumentative/scholarship superiority of certain political crowds. Libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, et al., are not automatically on the side of business, nor habitually opposed to liberal causes. Monsanto's protected status via Fed law — or any fascistic arrangement between business and govt — are extremely un-libertarian and non-free market. And it takes only an honest, critically thinking individual to realize that the pro-GMO side of this issue is almost entirely made up of corporatist politicians, bureaucrats, and businessman — and other shills for corporatism and wacko-science among the MSM and intelligentsia.
#19 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Thu 6 Jun 2013 at 10:18 PM
Shame on the Columbia Journalism Review for this one-sided story about GMOs, and holding up a blowhard with a mission as an exemplar of science journalism. Any scientist not paid off by the industry will tell you that there is no scientific consensus on the longterm safety of GMOs either for human health or the environment for one simple reasons-- the studies have not been done. Government agencies have based their assessment that these foods are safe on assurances by the companies and have required no independent research.
Until this changes, whether they are safe or not is anyone's guess. It is the job of a good journalist to point this out!
#20 Posted by Richard Schiffman, CJR on Sat 8 Jun 2013 at 08:30 AM
Shame on the Columbia Journalism Review for this one-sided story about GMOs, and holding up a blowhard with a mission as an exemplar of science journalism. Any scientist not paid off by the industry will tell you that there is no scientific consensus on the longterm safety of GMOs either for human health or the environment for one simple reasons-- the studies have not been done. Government agencies have based their assessment that these foods are safe on assurances by the companies and have required no independent research.
Until this changes, whether they are safe or not is anyone's guess. It is the job of a good journalist to point this out!
#21 Posted by Richard Schiffman, CJR on Sat 8 Jun 2013 at 08:32 AM
Hear hear, Richard.
#22 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 12 Jun 2013 at 06:38 PM
I don't quite find Keith Kloor all wet on this issue, but he is at least somewhat off base.
There is, I believe, a difference between moving a gene from one plant species raised for food to a fairly similar one versus a transgenic insertion in a much more "distant" second species.
Kloor seems to be operating on an outdated "1 gene = 1 result" model of genetics, not recognizing that one gene in conjunction with various, different, others, can code for multiple results.
He also ignores indications that allergic reactions to the origin species may accompany transgenic insertions.
He also doesn't ask questions about whether or not we should look at epigenetic issues in transgenic insertions. (Of course, more pseudoscientific opposition to GMOs doesn't look at all these issues, either.)
The big business concerns about Monsanto and GMOs? Folks, those are serious concerns, but they're not scientific issues. "Focus," please.
I don't look for "the middle," I look for what's scientifically supportable.
I don't fear most GMOs. I do have concerns about a few.
And, to "unfocus" on the science side ... I do have concerns about Monsanto's increasing monopoly.
#23 Posted by SocraticGadfly, CJR on Tue 18 Jun 2013 at 03:17 PM