Independent Science News has just published a revelatory new article by Jonathan Latham, PhD: “The Puppetmasters of Academia (or What the NY Times Left out).”

Synopsis: Earlier this year, a US group called US Right to Know (USRTK) set in motion Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests directed at public university scientists it suspected of working with (and being paid by) the biotech industry and/or its PR intermediaries. A new front page article (NY Times Sept 5th) by Eric Lipton reports on similar FOIA emails obtained from University of Florida professor Kevin Folta and others. However, Lipton’s focus on individual academics like Folta obscures the fact that the emails (some available online as links to the NYT article) expose a vast network of academics employed by industry to promote GMOs and defend them from scientific criticism. Also missing read more…

Independent Science News has published a new article by Jonathan Latham, PhD., the Executive director of The Bioscience Resource Project: Growing Doubt: a Scientist’s Experience of GMOs.

Synopsis in Jonathan Latham’s own words: I am a scientist who once made and used GMO crops for research. Twenty years of experience has taught me important lessons about them. One concerns the lack of scientific integrity of GMO risk assessments. Careful study of the documents shows that applicants (mostly companies) are gaming the system in numerous and interesting ways; at the same time, government regulators are allowing them to do so. None of this would matter if GMOs were inherently safe, but they are not. They even have dangers that are rarely discussed, but which should be more widely known. These two understandings have led me to conclude that no GMO currently on the market would pass an honest risk assessment, even by the rather low standards that most national regulations and laws require.

Read the entire article at: http://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/growing-doubt-a-scientists-experience-of-gmos/

UPDATE: The Cornell-Gates Foundation’s Alliance for Science’s Ithaca “Ask Me Anything About GMOs” Event was an interesting public relations exercise — but depolarizing it was not. To understand how the Monsanto-linked event went from Greenstar to the Unitarian Church to the Gong Show you can read Jonathan Latham’s dated Event updates. NOTE: You need to read the entries by starting from the bottom of the page for the first entry, and moving up with the page to the last entry — which includes a link to a complete video of the “Ask Me Anything About GMOs” Event — questions, answers, non-answers, gongs and all.

CANCELLED but REARRANGED FOR THE UNITARIAN CHURCH on the same date and time: Thurs 10th Sept, 6pm. (See links in this text to keep updated on the event and the issues). Jonathan Latham will be discussing this event, the Cornell Alliance for Science, and the incredible GMO propaganda machine on Tuesday 9/8/2015 at 4:30pm on WRFI (88.1 FM). Also, earlier the same day with Jim Murphy at 7:25-8am. Keep up with the evolving story at http://bsr.wpengine.com/greenstars-gmo-event/.

Sheldon Krimsky, Tufts University Professor of Urban & Environmental Policy & Planning, recently published an excellent and data-laden analysis of GMO health risks:

Krimsky, Sheldon. “An Illusory Consensus behind GMO Health Assessment.” Science, Technology & Human Values (2015): 0162243915598381.

Certain prominent scientists and policymakers claim there is a scientific consensus on GMO safety and call anyone whose opinions differ “anti-science” or a “GMO denier.” Such advocates believe “that genetically modified crops currently in commercial use and those yet to be commercialized are inherently safe for human consumption and do not have to be tested.”

Krimsky uses several methods to critically assesses this claim read more…

New publication: The Twin Research Debate in American Criminology

by Jay Joseph, Claudia Chaufan, Ken Richardson, Doron Shultziner, Roar Fosse, Oliver James, Jonathan Latham, and John Read

Published in Logos (Vol 14) 2015.

Summary: Classical twin research has been one of the most influential research methods in all of biology. Twin research is based on the proposition that human twins can be either monozygotic (genetically identical) or dizygotic (share 50% of their genes) and this genetic difference can be used to infer the magnitude of a putative genetic component contributing to any physical or behavioural trait. Based largely on many thousands of such studies, which usually show that monozygotic twins are significantly more alike than are dizygotic twins, the scientific community at large has concluded that there is a strong genetic component to many human attributes. Characters for which such conclusions have been reached include practically every familiar physical and mental illness (including heart disease, diabetes, Parkinsonism, ADHD, etc.) and also human behaviours such as IQ, voting preferences, and criminality.

The flaw in this logic, which is outlined in this paper, is that this twin methodology makes use of improbable assumptions. Most notable of these is that the environments of monozygotic and dizygotic twins are identical, and in particular that the environments of monozygotic twins are not more alike. This particular assumption is called the equal environment assumption (EEA). This assumption has never been proven. On the contrary, it can clearly be shown to be often false. This casts grave doubt on ALL twin study findings.

The genetic explanations extrapolated from twin studies have almost never been supported by actual positive findings of significant gene variants in human populations (e.g. Manolio et al., 2009). This failure provides another reason to suppose that the twin method is flawed and we propose that this faultiness lies with the equal environment assumption. In other words, the explanation for the higher similarity of monozygotic twins compared to dizygotic ones is not their genes but their more similar environments.

In this paper, we examine the specific flaws in the EEA from the perspective of criminology, but equivalent or identical arguments apply to all twin research. The scientific implication is that most human variation results from environmental variation in physical, chemical, and social factors (or chance) and not from variation between genes or genomes, and that all twin research is effectively worthless. More broadly it also follows that society has been erroneously led by genetic researchers into a genetic determinist mindset that bears little relation to reality.

Manolio T. et al. (2009) Finding the missing heritability of complex diseases. Nature 461: 747-753.

Neoliberal Ebola: The Agroeconomic Origins of the Ebola Outbreak by Rob Wallace, PhD has just been published on Independent Science News.

Synopsis: The West African Ebola virus outbreak of 2014/2015 killed over 11,000 people. The outbreak has been assumed in the Western media and elsewhere to be caused by a novel Ebola virus strain. The scientific evidence, however, does not suggest the strain responsible is in anyway unusual. So, if not the virus itself, what else might explain the outbreak?

The regions affected by Ebola are undergoing environmental disruption, social upheaval and often impoverishment as a result of land use changes and “investment.” Funded by European and other international sources, large parts of West Africa are being transformed by landgrabbing, systematic plunder and forest decimation. However, this agroeconomic story has been lost from most media accounts. This is profoundly unfortunate. Not only is it an important story in its own right, it is also a better explanation of the origins of the Ebola outbreak. Equally crucially, it has implications for agriculture and the prevention of future disease outbreaks worldwide.

The author Dr. Rob Wallace is an evolutionary biologist and public health phylogeographer currently visiting the Institute of Global Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Read this important article at: http://www.independentsciencenews.org/health/neoliberal-ebola-the-agroeconomic-origins-of-the-ebola-outbreak/

For more on the topic see https://farmingpathogens.wordpress.com/