Science Journal hires former Monsanto’s employee to approve GMO articles
A former Monsanto’s scientist is now in charge of approving GMO articles in Science journal. According to earthopensource.org, in early 2013, Monsanto’s former researcher, Richard Goodman was chosen in position of the associate editor of the journal for biotechnology after the famous Séralini study showed huge tumors in rats as a result of Monsanto’s GM maize and Roundup.
The Séralini study was published in journal Food and Chemical Toxicology (FCT) in September 2012 and Monsanto suffered a bad publicity that linked Monsanto’s GM corn and Roundup with organ damage, premature death and huge tumors in rats.
According to Earth Open Source, Dr Jonathan Latham, the executive director of the nonprofit Bioscience Resource Project said that “Unfortunately, the public and the scientific community can no longer trust that peer-reviewed journals reflect the true state of scientific knowledge. Some journals have become a vehicle for a narrow interest group – biotechnology corporations – to control scientific discourse".
How conflict of interest have become a defining problem of modern science
The fact is that most of the scientific researchers have become increasingly dependent on the industry that’s funding the research. “Conflicts of interest have become the defining problem of modern science and limiting them amongst public sector scientists has become a fundamental necessity” said Jonathan Latham, the executive director of the nonprofit Bioscience Resource Project.
But this is not the first time that Monsanto blocks research on GMO safety. As a matter of fact, the giant agribusinesses including Monsanto funds most of the research projects in our schools and universities. In many cases, the few independent scientific community members who publish findings that aren’t aligned with the message of Monsanto’s PR are demonized or risk accusations, threats and loss of their funds and jobs.
As a matter of fact, a very well-respected scientific community member, Dr Arpad Pusztai, was one of the leading scientists in UK that was given 3 million dollar research grant to test GMO safety. The UK government wanted to convince everyone that fear of GMO is based on baseless accusations and fear mongering of few independent news sources.
However, Dr Arpad Pusztai was one of the first scientists that found some very disturbing results on how GMOs were unsafe and can cause pre-cancer cell growth, damage to digestive tracts and liver and auto-immune disorder. But few days later, after his research, Dr Arpad Pusztai gets fired from his job and he is threatened with law suit.
Today’s scientific misinformation and the supposed journalism are combined to create a rigorous deficiency in quality-control process that leads to a biased conclusion and misrepresenting facts
For most of 20th century, the scientific community and the public relied on major publications and scientific discoveries of Magazines such as New Scientist, Science Journal, Lancet and others, to release the latest ideas and discoveries.
But these days most researchers get their grants from companies like Monsanto and most of the time, Monsanto’s funded researchers behave like the judge, the jury, and the executioner feeding un-fettered medical advice or conclusions on studies without establishing any credibility whatsoever – all thanks to a competitive environment that feeds off of the “winner take all” mentality.
Now success is measured by the size of the bank account which leads to not what is good for the public but what is good for the beneficiaries. This is why a near $50 million media advertising campaign by chemical companies win the public’s vote on California GMO labeling and deprive the public from the right to know what’s in their food.
Now that Monsanto’s key people are in charge of approving articles about GMOs on scientific magazines like Science Journal, the future ‘real’ studies about GMO harms are going to be blocked by those who financially benefit from Monsanto and GMOs. However, if journals fail to reform, the scientific community members who carry out the public interests, not the interests of giant agribusinesses should create an alternative publication model that simply publishes non-biased findings of the scientific community members instead of delivering the message big corporations’ PR.
Sources:
http://www.earthopensource.org/index.php/news/148
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