Bishop Hill More dark arts from environmental journalists?
;)
Paul Thacker. Image from, erm, the Harvard Center for EthicsJudith Curry is looking an article at PLOS by Paul Thacker and Charles Seife about freedom of information as it applies to universities. The authors are focusing on attempts to investigate industry funding of researchers in the area of genetically modified organisms, but also cover well-known FOI requests for information from climatologists. They tread a fine line between trying to argue that it was OK for Michael Mann's work to remain secret and arguing that in general it should be open to concerned citizens.
There is an interesting twist to the tale, when Thacker and Seife discuss a Keith Kloor article about a University of Florida GMO researcher named Kevin Folta, suggesting that Kloor had failed to mention that Folta was a paid consultant to Monsanto:
The article also does not report on an email titled “CONFIDENTIAL: Coalition Update” from the researcher to Monsanto in which the scientist advised Monsanto on ways to defeat a political campaign in California to require labeling of GMO products.
In fact the email concerned turned out not to be written by Folta at all, and the authors were forced to issue a correction, but by that time the damage had been done, as Folta explained in a comment:
My alleged monkeywrenching of the California GMO labeling initiative as a Monsanto secret PR agent has now spread Twitter and is now installed as a permanent part of the “can’t trust scientists, can’t trust Folta” narrative.
This story caught my attention because Thacker's name was a familiar one: he was involved in some of the early attempts to denigrate McIntyre and McKitrick - see CA stories here and here. Around the same time he seems to have played fast and loose with some quotes during an interview of Judy Curry in order to try to score some points against Roger Pielke Jr.
Keith Kloor, in the comments at PLOS seems similary unimpressed with the standards of Thacker and Siefe:
Alas, I feel strongly that Thacker and Seife similarly misrepresented my reporting by suggesting that I had left key information out of both my stories.
Let's hope the Folta incident really was an unfortunate error.
Reader Comments (53)
Incidentally I am not pro or anti. I am just someone with a healthy distrust of scientists and a keen nose for BS. But lo and behold; the 'consensus' on GMO seems to be a bit like the consensus on many other things - shonkily biased by vested interests. See..
http://www.enveurope.com/content/pdf/s12302-014-0034-1.pdf
"A broad community of independent scientific researchers and scholars challenges recent claims of a consensus
over the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In the following joint statement, the claimed consensus
is shown to be an artificial construct that has been falsely perpetuated through diverse fora. Irrespective of
contradictory evidence in the refereed literature, as documented below, the claim that there is now a consensus on
the safety of GMOs continues to be widely and often uncritically aired. For decades, the safety of GMOs has been a
hotly controversial topic that has been much debated around the world. Published results are contradictory, in part
due to the range of different research methods employed, an inadequacy of available procedures, and differences
in the analysis and interpretation of data. Such a lack of consensus on safety is also evidenced by the agreement of
policymakers from over 160 countries - in the UN’s Cartagena Biosafety Protocol and the Guidelines of the Codex
Alimentarius - to authorize careful case-by-case assessment of each GMO by national authorities to determine
whether the particular construct satisfies the national criteria for ‘safe’. Rigorous assessment of GMO safety has been
hampered by the lack of funding independent of proprietary interests. Research for the public good has been
further constrained by property rights issues, and by denial of access to research material for researchers unwilling
to sign contractual agreements with the developers, which confer unacceptable control over publication to the
proprietary interests The joint statement developed and signed by over 300 independent researchers, and reproduced and published below, does not assert that GMOs are unsafe or safe. Rather, the statement concludes that the scarcity and contradictory nature of the scientific evidence published to date prevents conclusive claims of safety, or of lack of
safety, of GMOs. Claims of consensus on the safety of GMOs are not supported by an objective analysis of the
refereed literature."
Well well!
JamesG, you seem to have become entrapped by the idea that a public/published "consensus" is a useful way to interpret science publications and pronouncements.
JamesG, I was being ironic. Noting how Rabett unhesitatingly whipped out statistics to show 'women' behaved like a tribe or a political bloc when it came to GM.