Bill Maher is an astonishingly anti-science anti-vax crank

This week’s Realtime with Bill Maher was just about the most perfect example I’ve seen yet that maybe reality doesn’t have a liberal bias. Due to the measles outbreak becoming a hot-button issue, and the realization that his smoldering anti-vaccine denialism would not go over well, our weekly debate host decided to instead unleash all of his other incredibly stupid, unscientific beliefs about medicine.

This was astonishing. And because his panel, as usual, is composed largely of political writers and journalists, there was no one to provide a sound scientific counterpoint to the craziness. The sole non-crazy person (on this topic) was the conservative guy!
What a turn around for liberalism. It turns out, the problem hasn’t been that conservatives hold the key to anti-science crazy, we just haven’t had a good issue to expose the anti-science of the left wing for a while. Maher goes into a list of things he decides are examples of failures of “Western” medicine (because Eastern medicine has figured out cancer or something).
1. Bill Maher repeats the trope that the vaccine schedule is too much too fast – straight out of the anti-vax denial playbook! Human beings of course can handle thousands upon thousands of antigenic exposures daily. It’s called living on a planet where everything on it is trying to kill everything else all the time. It’s why we have an immune system.
2. Then in a feat of mental gymnastics only an unthinking crank can manage, he jumps into the hygiene hypothesis! He says he’s “not so sure that people who get a lot of them [vaccines] have as “robust” an immune system.” He then goes on to say we’re seeing more allergies and autoimmune disease, maybe vaccines or “environmental factors” are to blame. Now our children suddenly aren’t getting enough antigenic exposures! Our immune systems need to be challenged in order to grow and become strong. This is a fascinating feat of mental gymnastics. The antigen exposure of vaccines is “bad”, but somehow the antigen exposure from, say, measles is “good”. Granted those who have had actual infections develop stronger responses to those infections, there is no evidence that getting these childhood illnesses is protective from other illnesses, or against autoimmune disease. There is no reason to think that exposure to specific viral disease antigens would be protective for autoimmunity, not to mention since the vaccine is viral antigen exposure why wouldn’t it then serve the same purpose? The immune system just doesn’t work that way, and the hygiene hypothesis is about routine exposure to common antigens.
3. He complains none of his doctors have ever asked about his diet, because in his mind, what you eat is the most important thing ever. I can understand this for a couple of reasons. For one, Maher is thin. Generally if patients are thin, seemingly taking care of their bodies, a physician won’t typically interrogate them on their diet. If you then get a screening cholesterol panel that shows a high LDL and low HDL or triglycerides, the physician may start asking questions about diet, recommending exercise, more vegetables, less meat etc. Doctors aren’t here to micromanage your life, we are here to address problems, caution against the more harmful behaviors, and provide general recommendations for which there is good evidence. But in Maher’s mind, which seems to be the mind of the toxin fanatic, the only path to good health is through diet, so a doctor that doesn’t buy into this particular nonsense is a bad doctor. The reality is, there is not great data on which diet is best. There is no evidence that some foods are “super”, or carry some life-extending property. None of the claims made by the promoters of these foods has evidence of the caliber Maher is demanding from vaccines, and most of them have no evidence at all.
A good rule of thumb is, if a website uses the word “super” as a prefix, they’re full of it. Worse, the toxin hypothesis is nonsense. Toxins are not a significant source of human disease (at least not in Hollywood). Humans are extraordinarily good at detoxifying foods, and just because you’re eating plant material – the diet he promotes – doesn’t mean you’re not eating toxins. Plants are full of toxins they’ve developed over the years to prevent pests from consuming them and their fruit. It just happens that when a human eats a tomato, or chocolate, or one of the many plants we’ve genetically-modified through breeding and selection to suit our diets or learned to process since the birth of agriculture, we have an effective means of detoxifying them. Worse they make claims that non-toxic chemicals are actually toxic. Like glucose! The fuel your own body naturally makes to feed your brain is routinely castigated on the natural foody websites as a killer. This is the chemical your own body turns all these super-foods into! The inability to understand basic physiology is just wonderful.
You want non-toxic? Eat meat. It’s just protein, water and fat, just like us (although even a complete non-toxin like water can of course be toxic at high enough exposure). If you’re feeling sadistic and want to see the toxic effect of a superfood, feed these human foods to a non-omnivorous animal like a cat. They’ll get sick. Many of our “super foods” which the morons on these websites sell as “detoxifying” or laud their anti-oxidant properties (another bogus and unfounded diet hypothesis), are actually full of various plant toxins which we have no problem with because we have awesome livers. So thank your liver, and don’t buy into this toxin nonsense.
Finally other reasons he feels like he’s never heard a doctor ask about his diet (because we do) is he’s either not listening, or maybe he just sees a crappy doctor? So whoever is this magical “Western” doctor that Maher sees, please just ask this silly crank about his diet during the next visit so we don’t have to hear this tired nonsense anymore that doctors don’t care about diet. We do, we just don’t buy into the silly unfounded nonsense of the toxin hypothesis which is likely his real complaint.
4. He says “we overdid antibiotics” – This could be a fair point, however, the doom and gloom about antibiotics not working anymore and our whole medical system collapsing is a bit overblown. After all, most of the antibiotics we have developed over the years were discovered, not invented. We have been taking chemicals developed in the environment by various organisms and using them to suit our purposes. However, the targets of those chemicals have been engaged in this evolutionary war for millennia before we ever even got into it. Bacterial resistance is not “new”, or something created just by humans. We have to see this problem as an eternal struggle that’s been going on between micro-organisms for eons, and if we’re going to participate in it, we have to continue to innovate, just as life has, since the beginning. There is no “winning” here. There will never be a time when we can say we have solved bacterial resistance or have a perfect antibiotic, because we’re learning more and more we have to live with our bacteria in our biome, we can’t kill them all. We just have to keep working, keep innovating, and keep learning so we learn to develop antibiotics that are more specific, more targeted, and yes, more cautiously applied so we can continue to benefit from the ability to control these ubiquitous organisms that help us, are part of our normal physiology and function, but also occasionally overgrow and kill us.
5. He points out “not one country in the world does nearly as much surgery we do” – I recuse myself as I have conflict of interest.
6. He complains “I’ve heard on the news endlessly 2 drinks a day is good for you, I think no drinks a day is good for you.” And again Maher would be wrong. For one, no real medical authority has come out and said, “drink 2 drinks a day.” I’m sorry that the news misled you. I have no doubt there’s a bunch of crummy journalism out there that could be interpreted this way, but it’s not the medical establishment’s fault that science and medicine reporting is so full of bogus nonsense. This is still a controversial medical issue. The data from sources like NHANES show that there may be a protective effect for alcohol consumption with 1-2 drinks a day. This has been seen in multiple other studies, and in other countries. The effect is more profound in men. It might disappear if you eliminate co-morbidities (in other words some people may not be drinking because of health issues making the teetotaler data look worse). Ultimately doctors can’t really recommend you drink, but we typically won’t castigate you for drinking 1-2 drinks a day because the health effects are likely small, and for 1-2 drinks a day, their might be a slight cardiovascular protective effect. Prospective trials suggest 2 maybe even too many. So I would rate this as a major straw man argument. As a doctor I would say, 1-2 drinks a day is probably not harmful, but no one should be drinking saying “this is for my health”.
7. He wails we are Ok with aspartame, and GMOs! / and “One word, Monsanto” – and here we have it, Bill Maher’s clearest example of total crankery, his complete hysteria over GMO. There is a moment then when the conservative John McCormack butts in and points out there is no evidence that GMOs are harmful, and Maher and his panel of ignoramuses are shocked into silence, and one panelist gives this weighty sigh and covers her face in horror and Maher simply sighs. No, Bill Maher, it is we that should be asking you to justify your foolishness here, McCormack, the conservative who should supposedly be the one without the liberal bias of reality asked the right question. Where is your data? Where is the proof? There is no evidence, and worse, no even plausible mechanism by which he can describe the current GMO foods on the market to be harmful to humans. Despite consumption of billions by billions, you can’t point out one sickness or death. Instead they can only resort to the classic denialist correlation trope, which is exactly what the anti-vaxers have done for decades. And if someone wants to talk about the Seralini rat study, please don’t bother. Another retracted paper being the sole source of proof for a bunch of denialists, where have we heard this before?
Finally Maher complains, “we can’t ask any questions.” The classic cry of the persecuted crank! The same whiny response you see from the 9/11 truther, the climate science denialist, or any other individual who has found their ludicrous ideas has bought them some much needed societal shame. No on is telling them they can’t ask questions, but when you repeat the same question, that has been answered, and answered, again and again, and you don’t listen, eventually we are going to lose our patience and say enough! The debate is over! Vaccines do not cause autism. Enough with your crankery. Enough with the harm that has come from this bogus skepticism. We have an outbreak now. We are tired of hearing this question which has been answered and the accompanying obstinance has caused real-world harm.
Maher in this episode performs an astonishing Gish-gallop proving, once again, he deserves to be called out for denialism and being an infectious disease advocate. Can we drop the notion that liberalism is somehow protective against anti-science? Do we remember when he tried to blame cell phones for colony collapse disorder? (I couldn’t resist going to the old blog for that) Maher is resentful that his anti-vax nonsense is compared to global warming denialism. This is exactly like global warming denialism because all denialism ultimately comes down to the same tactics. I think we’ve a good example here of conspiracy (in one word! monsanto!), moving goalposts, cherry-picking, and a whole host of logical fallacies in his little Gish gallop (that’s four of five of the classic tactics). Let us dismiss him as a spokesman for science. He’s too easily impeachable as an anti-science crank.

Environmentalists Must Face Down the Anti-Science in Their Own House

How can environmental groups and media outlets maintain that they are advocates of science, and not ideology, when they engage in the anti-science Luddism of GMO fearmongering? The potential of this anti-science behavior to poison their credibility on global climate change is real, as there is an obvious comparison between their flawed risk assessment on GM foods being compared to their legitimate risk assessments on issues of global climate change and pollution.
One of the major arguments of environmental groups on global warming is that there is overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. This consensus, which is represented by the IPCC and supported by the national academies and scientific societies of every country in the world, is that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that human activities add enough of this heat-trapping gas to warm the planet. This is a valid argument. When one finds oneself on the opposite of the scientific consensus of such esteemed bodies as the NAS, the Royal Society, the IPCC, etc., you should be worried. If you don’t have an overwhelming level of evidence and a solid body of literature backing you up, you should consider a period of introspection and self-evaluation, because you might just be a crank or denialist. Most cranks don’t have this capability, instead they have conspiracy theories, and a set of ready-made logical fallacies to throw at their critics like “you’re just a shill for x”, where x is variably big pharma, monsanto, corporations in general, big government, grant money, environmental groups, the democratic party, the republican party, or whatever other bogeyman the crank hates. If they throw in a reference to how they’re just like Galileo, we’ll happily give them the crank stamp and call it a day.
That’s why it’s so disturbing when purportedly pro-science environmental media groups like Grist engage in this exact same behavior. In his promotion of the underwhelming evidence presented recently against GMO corn and soy, Tom Laskawy wrote against the “GMO-lovers” (uggh it’s just like Warmist) “freaking out” over these results.
Umm, no. Freaking out would suggest that a study had been performed that created enough evidence that the extensive literature on safety has in any way been put in doubt. This is not the case. What’s Laskawy’s read of the situation?

OK, everyone have a seat and take a few deep breaths. Go to your calming place. Ready? Good. Because I’m about to talk about a new study that suggests that eating genetically modified crops might not be the best thing for us.

You’ll remember, I’m sure, the recent brouhaha over a French study by scientist Gilles-Eric Séralini that purported to find evidence that a GMO-based diet caused tumors in rats. Critics immediately raised significant questions about that study and the consensus quickly became that it was poorly conceived and executed. It was also the study that caused several science writers to conclude that anti-GMO sentiment was the moral equivalent of climate denial. Good times.

Already we’re in trouble. The study in no way suggests that GM might be harmful to us, because the study doesn’t suggest anything at all. The study authors might make that suggestion, but the results of the study are just as likely to be due to chance as from any effect of GM food, and in the days since I’ve learned their assay of inflammation was only based on redness at gross pathology. In my first read I had been too charitable and thought they had actually performed histology to assess for inflammation, silly me. Similarly, the the Seralini paper was a joke, its press-release promotion was despicable, it was ample demonstration of the ideological bias and political motivation of those performing the study. When science writers like me discuss the equivalence between GMO scarmongering and global warming denialism, it’s not a moral one. We’re criticizing the methods, not their motivations or good intentions. So we already have overstatement of a paper that literally shows nothing, followed by a straw man about how we science writers are just big mean bullies calling them “immoral”. Sorry, we have a legitimate beef with the anti-science methods of the anti-GM advocates, and the methods, not surprisingly, are the same as with global warming deniers. That’s because, when one wants to oppose a body of evidence, the tactics of denialism are pretty much universal, that’s what we’ve been writing about here for the last 6 years.
For the most part we have no issue with the morals of the anti-GM advocates, if anything, they only really have good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This may be why there is is one clear difference between global warming denialists and GM advocates as far as I know. Marc Morano and Steve Milloy tend to confine their insane stupidity to websites and TV appearances, while anti-GM advocates have frequently used violence, including arson, property damage and destruction of scientific experiments rather than engage in dialogue. The global warming denialists might be mean, and routinely slander scientists like Michael Mann, but they have yet to show up in his lab and set it on fire.
Anyway, after a summary of the study, Laskaway continues:

Nonetheless, even critics of the study agree that it was conducted in a rigorous way, and the findings are intriguing and worth pursuing. The researchers did, after all, find high rates of severe inflammation.

Well if you actually read what the critics said in that link you find something interesting, they said, “The paper does not support the claim that GM crops cause stomach inflammation or increased uterus weight.” Who cares if they complemented its design if they felt the results were so weak that it didn’t support it’s own conclusions? If anything, that would be more damning to the study. Nor do I see where they said these results are “intriguing” or “worth pursuing”. Maybe Laskaway is taking the classic, “needs more study”, deflection of scientists seriously. By the way, when scientists say that, it’s usually a more polite way to say, “nice try, but you haven’t proven anything yet”. Then look to see who is exaggerating to see where the bullshit it. Huffpo described this paper as “damning” to GMOs. Um, are we reading the same paper? The author, Carman, on her website refers to the paper as a “landmark study”. A paper that shows nothing has been declared, by the authors no less, to be a “landmark” within days of it’s publication because why exactly? Has it been cited yet? Has it created a new field of study? Has the Nobel committee been calling already? This paper is only intriguing to those who desperately want it to be. To me it’s about as intriguing as roadkill.

But instead of calling for independent, rigorous science to explore the questions the study raised, critics dismiss it as “junk science,” biased by Carman, who is a professor at Flinders University in South Australia but has produced commentary critical of GMOs.

But what if the study didn’t really raise any questions worth answering? If you perform a screen for 100 different variables, and you end up with 5 statistically-significant results, you haven’t actually raised any questions or proven anything. Really, all you’ve done is performed an exercise in statistical probabilities. Without any follow-up analysis, without expansion upon and prospective validation of the findings of the screen, all you’ve done is wasted our time. Don’t make me post the relevant XKCD again, because I will goddammit. This is, also, ignoring the critique which suggests the stomach inflammation assay itself was fundamentally-flawed as they apparently didn’t even do tissue histology for their pathological scale! Basic peer review should have taken care of these problems, and that’s why you have to be so careful about lower tier journals with questionable peer-review and editorial standards.

Critics of GMOs are accused of letting ideology trump science. But watching the scathing, knee-jerk reactions to any new piece of research that shines a less-than-positive light on GMOs, it makes me think that the shrill has found itself on the other foot.

These are not “knee-jerk” reactions to criticisms of GMO, these are reasoned and valid criticisms of shoddy papers, and over-interpretation of data. If there were a legitimate paper showing a risk to GM foods I wouldn’t be pissed off at all, I have no dog in that fight. What irritates me is waking up to find lay-media sources parroting exaggerated claims of a press-release for a paper that basically shows nothing.
And what exactly is the ideology that ties together Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Mike Shermer, Dave Gorski (who thinks the anti-vaxx comparison is more apt), Steve Novella, and Keith Kloor? Could it be skepticism? Respect for science? It sure isn’t politics (Shermer is even a libertarian – ewwwww). None of us works for any of these companies, or receives money from them (although I hear Keith is in bed with Monsanto these days). That won’t stop us all from being called a “shill” in every comment thread in which we express skepticism of the often outrageous, science-fiction claims of anti-GM advocates like Jeffrey Smith. So what’s this ideology that binds us all together on the ludicrous nature arguments made against GMO, other than a hatred of bullshit?
So Laskaway is partially correct, on one side we have groups with a specific and obvious bias with a high probability of ideology clouding their reason on science. On the other side we have the AAAS, the European Commission, the Royal Society, the National Academy of Science Institute of Medicine, and a diverse group of skeptic and science writers from Richard Dawkins to PZ Myers to Dave Gorski and Steve Novella. Feel free any time to take these two weak papers that show nothing, wave them under our nose and call us the ideologues.
This reminds me of Amy Schumer taking on a heckler and warning them to take the draw.

Take the draw.

Pollan and Bittman, the Morano and Milloy of GMO anti-science

Why do food writers think they are competent to evaluate the scientific literature? I know of at least two who, based on their tweets, clearly are not. One is Mark Bittman, who we have previously chastised, and now also Michael Pollan who has been a bit more coy about promoting anti-science related to GMO. Now they’ve both been broadcasting the flimsy results of this paper – A long-term toxicology study on pigs fed a combined genetically modified (GM) soy and GM maize diet – published in the “Journal of Organic Systems”. Why do I feel like I’m reading headlines from Climate Depot or Milloy’s Junkscience? Because it’s the exact same behavior.
For all you budding science journalists out there, here is your first red flag, novel groundbreaking research is rarely reported in a such journals. Not to demean the smaller journals, good science is done there, but the quality of the publications must be one of the first factors taken into account when evaluating the significance of results published in the lay press. Note Reuters and Huffpo both published fluffy repetitions of “press release” evaluations of the study. Neither appears to show any skepticism or depth into the significance of the results, other results within the paper, or whether the fundamental conclusions of the authors are even supported by the data. Let’s do this now.
First, let’s describe the study. It’s a long-term (22.7 week) feeding study in pigs, with two groups of 84 pigs randomly selected to either receive GMO feed or non-GMO feed. During the trial all conditions are controlled, the feeds are found to be nutritionally identical (interesting given how GMOs has no nutrients!11!!!), and were obtained according to standard practices of pig farmers from similar local sources. The pigs were raised to the standard age they are when they go to slaughter, and were then killed and their bodies autopsied. While living the animals were evaluated by weights weekly, level of activity of pigs, level of contentment, skin problems, respiratory problems, eye problems, stool quality, blood biochemical analyses right before slaughter, and mortality. At autopsy organs were weighed and evaluated by veterinarians for evidence of tissue pathology.
Second, the findings. A good science journalist determines these by looking at the data, not by repeating whatever the authors tell them. Looking at the data there were no differences in any of the major variables evaluated by the study, such as weights, veterinary costs, illnesses, or mortality. No significant differences in blood biochemistry were found. At autopsy most organ weights were similar between groups. There was a statistically significant (but likely clinically-meaningless) increase (0.1kg vs 0.12kg) in uterus weights in the GM group. At pathology there were nonsignificant decreases in cardiac and liver abnormalities in the GM group (half as many), in stomach pathology there was one significant finding of more “severe inflammation” (on a 4-point scale from no inflammation to severe) in the GM group. This is the finding that has been amplified as variably “damning” or “concerning” depending on which source is reporting these dramatic new findings.
But since we’re skeptics here (real skeptics not like global warming “skeptics” in scare quotes) we ask, is it really?
Lets take a closer look at the data in table 3. Here are the relevant numbers:
Carmentable3data
While it is clear that along the severe inflammation row there is a difference, look at the moderate inflammation row immediately above it, and see if it changes your mind. What if we were to combine this table into a binary, no to mild inflammation vs moderate to severe? The numbers become GMO 41, non GM 38. Why would I look at it this way? Because pathologic scales of things like inflammation are subjective. (***Update It has been pointed out that the authors also didn’t actually do tissue pathology, instead they just graded how red the stomachs were on gross pathology, which also makes this assay totally meaningless. See full update below***) One should be very cautious about results presented on such a scale representing true differences especially given the next nearest population on the scale is reversed and eliminates your effect when the two groups are combined. Trying to make this objective data to suggest an association is very much trying to cram a square peg through a round hole, and would not fly on most reviewers’ reads of this data, and if I had been a reviewer I would have squashed this on this point alone. The fixation on one single data point in this table to the exclusion of the others and building the conclusions around it is unscientific. One needs to be a lot more cautious given the design of this study. Let me explain.
This is not hypothesis-driven work. They authors did not at the outset say, “we propose stomach inflammation will be greater in GM fed pigs because of x”. No. What they did was feed pigs two different diets and then go fishing for abnormal values. This is not necessarily wrong behavior, scientists go on fishing trips all the time looking to find significant effects. What is wrong is then publishing the results of your fishing trip! This is unscientific.
If you were to study some 20 variables in your study (these authors studied far more variables and I would actually expect more abnormal results then we have), and have a cutoff for significance at the standard arbitrary value of p = 0.05, one would expect, just by chance, that 1 of those variables will be significant. A good scientist then says, “well that’s interesting, let’s see if it’s real”, and then follows this study with a hypothesis-driven study specifically designed to study the apparent effect. When the single effect is then studied in isolation, with appropriate power, one should see if the result you found, perhaps by chance, is a real effect or not.
So what we have in this study is the first half of a valid study (the fishing trip) but no real hypothesis driven research to confirm if this 1 in 20 result is real. There is no molecular data to suggest a mechanism. They don’t further determine if it was the soy component or corn component on the diet. There are no follow up evaluations examining this effect alone, or trying to link ingestion of cry proteins on stomach inflammation. So far, one can only conclude that it’s just as likely that this result occurred by chance as it is to be an actual effect of feeding the pigs GM corn and soy. Now, is that “damning” or “concerning”? Concerning is even a stretch.
Third, it’s important for the good science journalist to interpret these new findings in the context of the literature, and perhaps consult an expert in the field to determine the significance of these results in context of the total knowledge in the field.
One should mention the extensive literature on the safety of GM foods. Other writers including Mark Lynas have evaluated this paper as well with similar conclusions as mine. Additionally, Mark points out the paper’s favorable interpretation of Seralini’s work – a bad sign. The authors appear to have ties to anti-GMO advocacy groups, and even thank Jeffrey Smith (the hysterical anti-GMO fake expert with no scientific or medical training). Andrew Kniss points out that he can’t replicate their result with the appropriate statistical test. I admit, I am confused about exactly how they calculated the p value, as in their methods they describe using t tests, Mann-Whitney and Chi Squared variably based on the distribution or categorical nature of the variables, so half the time reading I was trying to figure out which test they were using at any given moment. I’m still unsure exactly why they chose to do which test in each instance – in table 5 they appeared to switch between a Wilcox and a t-test at random. Although in table 3 they appear to have used a Uncorrected Chi squared based on the footnote, I’m not exactly sure, based on how one could be constructed with different expected values, if this was appropriate. No statistical expert am I, but again this smells a bit like statistical fishing to me. Even so, it doesn’t change the relevance of the results. Even if it does technically pass statistical muster, it’s still just the first step in a real scientific investigation. Another GMO expert suggests given the levels of mold they measured on their GM corn, it could have been a result of their source selling them moldy feed (at levels much higher than are usually found on GM crops).
So, to summarize, in this paper the authors performed a large non-specific screen for potential evidence of harm from GM crops. Of the many analyses performed, one showed statistical significance for severe stomach inflammation on a pathology scale in the GM group, but this effect rapidly-disappears if one groups inflammation based on broader categories. The clinical significance of this finding can only be determined by subsequent hypothesis driven research into this potential effect, but it is equally likely this is a result of random chance.
Or you can skip all the words above and read the XKCD one of Mark Lynas’ commenters suggests

XKCD knows stats

A final note, I’m not interested in comments saying I work for Monsanto, that I’m a corporate shill, blah blah blah. I haven’t worked for, or accepted money from, a corporation in my adult life (excluding Nat Geo sending me beer money for this blog, and working as a valet for Toyota dealership when I was 16). Address the data, the paper, relevant biological arguments etc, or get lost.
**Update**
In reading an additional response to the Carman et. al study, I now change my opinion on this paper from “competently performed but meaningless” to “totally meaningless”.
At issue is a criticism by Robert Friendship in the link above, that the author’s assay for inflammation is basically meaningless. In my initial read of the paper I didn’t notice this sentence “Typical examples of each of the four categories of inflammation are shown in Figure 1. For a severe level of inflammation, almost the whole fundus had to
be swollen and cherry-red in colour.”
I incorrectly assumed the authors had taken sections, performed histology, then assessed inflammation based on a legitimate pathological scale. This was apparently too generous. No, they just looked at the color of the stomach by gross pathology. As Dr. Friendship points out, this is meaningless.

Conspiracy belief prevalence, according to Public Policy Polling is as high as 51%

And it may even be more when one considers that there is likely non-overlap between many of these conspiracies. It really is unfortunate that their isn’t more social pushback against those that express conspiratorial views. Given both the historical and modern tendency of some conspiracy theories being used direct hate towards one group or another (scratch a 9/11 truther and guess what’s underneath), and that they’re basically an admission of one’s own defective reasoning, why is it socially acceptable to espouse conspiracy theories? They add nothing to discussion, and instead hijack legitimate debate because one contributor has abandoned all pretense of using actual evidence. Conspiracy theories are used to explain a belief in the absence of real evidence. Worse, they are so often just a vehicle to direct vitriol and hate. We need less hate and partisanship. We should be able to disagree with a president without saying that he’s part of an agenda21/commoncore/obamacare/nazi/fascist/communist/North Korean conspiracy to make American citizens 3rd world slaves (not an exaggeration). We should be able to disagree with a corporation’s policies without asserting their objective is mass-murder. What is the benefit of this rhetoric? It’s just designed to poison our discourse, and inspire greater partisanship, divisiveness and incivility. Conspiracy theories are often used as a more subtle way to mask vile invective towards whichever group you hate. As you look underneath these theories you see it’s really just irrational hatred for somebody- liberals, conservatives, homosexuals, different races or religions, governments, or even certain professions. This is because at the root of the need for conspiratorial thinking is some irrational, overvalued idea, and often the open expression of the belief would result in social scorn.
I’ve found in my experience, almost everyone carries one really cranky belief that they can’t seem to shake, no matter how evidence-based their other positions are (probably because we are all capable of carrying some overvalued ideas). But it’s worth peering through PPP’s full results to see the nature of some of these associations.
For one, some of these associations I think are spurious, poorly questioned, or just reflect misinformation, rather than conspiracy. For instance:

44% of voters believe the Bush administration intentionally misled the public about weapons of mass destruction to promote the Iraq War, while 45% disagree. 72% of Democrats believed the statement while 73% of Republicans did not. 22% of Democrats, 33% of Republicans and 28% of independents believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Many have questioned the inclusion of this question because, in reality, there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq. So the question of whether we were “misled” or “intentionally-misled” puts us in the murky position at having to guess at the motivations of individuals like Bush and Cheney. Mind-reading is a dubious activity, and I tend to ascribe to the Napoleonic belief that you shouldn’t ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence (also known as Hanlon’s razor). Is it conspiratorial to think maybe they were more malicious than incompetent? While I think that administration really were “true believers”, of course I don’t really know for sure, and I don’t think it’s fair to describe such as conspiratorial reasoning. Instead it’s just the dubious but common practice of guessing at the intentions of others. The generally-similar numbers on the Saddam Hussein/9/11 connection, I believe, just suggests ignorance, rather than necessitating active belief in a conspiratorial framework (keeping in mind the margin of error is about 3% these aren’t huge partisan differences like over WMD).
One of the most disappointing numbers was on belief in a conspiracy behind JFK’s assassination:

51% of Americans believe there was a larger conspiracy at work in the JFK assassination, while 25% think Lee Harvey Oswald
acted alone.

That’s 51% conspiratorial belief, 24% probably showing ignorance of one of the most important events of the last century, and 25% actually informed. This is pretty sad. The movements of Oswald were so thoroughly-investigated and known, the hard evidence for his planning and involvement are so clear, the conspirators so unlikely (the mob/CIA/LBJ/KGB hiring crackpot loser communists for assassinations?), and the fabrications of the conspiracists so plain (asserting the shots couldn’t be made despite it being easily replicated by everyone from the Warren Commission to the Discovery Channel and even improved on, the disparaging of his marksmanship when LHO was a marine sharpshooter, altering the positions of the occupants of the car to make the bullet path from JFK to Connelly appear unlikely, etc.) it’s sad that so many have bought into this nonsense. The historically-bogus picture JFK, by Oliver Stone, may also play a large part in this, and is an example why Oliver Stone is really a terrible person. People that misrepresent history are the worst. If anyone wants to read a good book about the actual evidence that of what happened that day, as well as destroys the conspiracy position, Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi is my favorite, as well as the most thorough.
But there is one redeeming feature of conspiracy about the JFK assassination. For the most part, conspiratorial ideas on the subject aren’t due to some dark part in people’s souls, as for many other conspiracies, but rather the very human need to ascribe more to such earth-shattering events as the assassination of a president than just the madness of a pitiable loser. The imbalance between the magnitude of the event, and the banal crank that accomplished it, is simply too much. There’s no way that a 24-year-old, violent, wife-beating, Marxist roustabout could be responsible for the death of a man like JFK right? Sadly no. The evidence shows even a man that pathetic can destroy the life of a much greater man with a cheap rifle and a simple plan.
The conspiracy theories embedded within this poll that really disturb me because I think they demonstrate the effect of irrational hate are ones such as for whether President Obama is the antichrist (although is that even really a conspiracy?). 13% of respondents believed this, 5% of those that voted for him still answered this question in the affirmative (really? you voted for the antichrist) as opposed to 22% of those that voted for Romney. Do we really need to elevate political disagreement to the level of labeling people the antichrist? Around 9% thought government adds fluoride for “sinister” reasons, and 11% believe in the LIHOP 9/11 conspiracy theory. They clearly think very little of their fellow Americans, and believe some really demonic things about our government. Our government is neither competent enough, or evil enough, to engage in then successfully cover up either of these things. Our top spy couldn’t even hide a tawdry affair.
Other conspiracy theories seem to indicate their is a baseline number of people, at about 15%, who will believe in just about anything from the moon landing being hoaxed to bigfoot. I would have actually pegged this number higher, given my pessimism about rational thought, but that seems to be what we can read from this. However, without being able to see whether or not it was the same people answering yes to each individual absurd conspiracy from reptilians to “government adds secret mind-controlling technology to television broadcast signals”, it’s possible this number is actually much larger. I would be curious to see the data on the overlap between these questions, as the phenomenon of crank magnetism is well known.
Ultimately, I read this data as saying that Americans have a big problem with conspiracy theories entering our political discourse. We should be embarrassed that as many as 37% of us believe that global warming is a “hoax”. That requires a belief is a grand conspiracy of scientists, policy-makers, journals, editors, etc., all acting together to somehow fabricate data for a single objective – often described as world-government control conspiracy to cede our sovereignty to the UN. Somehow, every single national scientific body, all those national academies, all those journals, and all those scientists, all those governments, all working in perfect secrecy according to some master plan (which I’m often accused of being a part of but I’m sure I’m missing the memo), and this is plausible how? The answer is, it’s not, unless you remain steadfastly ignorant of how science actually works and progresses.
Everyone, of any political persuasion, should be embarrassed by the conspiracy-theorists in their ranks. This isn’t healthy thinking, it isn’t rational discourse, and it only serves to divide us and make us hate. Enough of this already.

Anti-GMO writers show profound ignorance of basic biology and now Jane Goodall has joined their ranks

It’s a sad day for the reality-based community, within the critiques of Jane Goodall’s new book ‘Seeds of Hope’ we find that in addition to plagiarism and sloppiness with facts, she’s fallen for anti-GMO crank Jeffrey Smith’s nonsense.

When asked by The Guardian whom she most despised, Goodall responded, “The agricultural company Monsanto, because I know too much about GM organisms and crops.” She might know too much, but what if what she knows is completely wrong?
Many of the claims in Seeds of Hope can also be found in Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods, a book by “consumer advocate” Jeffrey Smith. Goodall generously blurbed the book (“If you care about your health and that of your children, buy this book, become aware of the potential problems, and take action”) and in Seeds of Hope cites a “study” on GMO conducted by Smith’s “think tank,” the Institute for Responsible Technology.
Like Goodall, Smith isn’t a genetic scientist. According to New Yorker writer Michael Specter, he “has no experience in genetics or agriculture, and has no scientific degree from any institution” but did study “business at the Maharishi International University, founded by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.” (In Seeds of Hope, Goodall also recommends a book on GM by Maharishi Institute executive vice president Steven M. Druker, who also has no scientific training). As Professor Bruce Chassy, an emeritus food scientist at the University of Illinois, told Specter, “His only professional experience prior to taking up his crusade against biotechnology is as a ballroom-dance teacher, yogic flying instructor, and political candidate for the Maharishi cult’s natural-law party.” Along with fellow food scientist Dr. David Tribe, Chassy runs an entire website devoted to debunking Smith’s pseudoscience.
And it apparently escaped Goodall’s notice that Smith’s most recent book—the one that she fulsomely endorsed—features a foreword by British politician Michael Meacher, who, after being kicked out of the Tony Blair’s government in 2003, has devoted a significant amount of time to furthering 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Goodall is, of course, not the first scientist of fame and repute to fall in for crankery and pseudoscience. From Linus Pauling to Luc Montagnier, even Nobel Prize winning scientists have fallen for psuedoscientific theories. However, we should always be saddened when yet another famous scientist decides to go emeritus and abandon the reality-based community.
There always seem to be a couple of different factors at play when this happens. For one, such scientists appear to have reached a such a status that it becomes very difficult for others to criticize them. It’s like a state of ultra-tenure, in which you practically have to insult the intelligence of an entire continent before people will object to your misbehavior. The second common factor seems to be that they start operating in a field in which they lack expertise, but seem to assume their expertise in other unrelated fields should allow them to waive in. This appears to be the case with Goodall, as even someone with rudimentary knowledge of molecular biology should be able to see the gaping holes in the anti-GMO movement’s logic.
For example, let’s start with the easy-pickings at Natural News. A recent article by Jon Rapaport entitled “Brand new GMO food can rewire your body: more evil coming” is a perfect example of how the arguments made against GMO foods are based on fundamentally-unsound understanding of biology. The author writes:

It’s already bad. Very bad. For the past 25 years, the biotech Dr. Frankensteins have been inserting DNA into food crops.
The widespread dangers of this technique have been exposed. People all over the world, including many scientists and farmers, are up in arms about it.
Countries have banned GMO crops or insisted on labeling.
Now, though, the game is changing, and it’ll make things even more unpredictable. The threat is ominous and drastic, to say the least.
GM Watch reports the latest GMO innovation: designed food plants that make new double-stranded (ds) RNA. What does the RNA do? It can silence a gene. It can activate a gene that was silent.
If you imagine the gene structure as a board covered with light bulbs, in the course of living some genes light up (activation) and some genes go dark (silent) at different times. This new designed RNA can change that process. No one knows how.
No one knows because no safety studies have been done. If you have genes lighting up and going dark in unpredictable ways, the functions of a plant or a body can change randomly.

Pinball, roulette, use any metaphor you want to; this is playing with the fate of the human race. Walk around with designer-RNA in your body, and who knows what effects will follow.

At this point, I think anyone familiar with the science of RNA interference (RNAi) has slapped themselves in the forehead, for anyone who wants a decent introduction the Wiki does a pretty good job. It’s clear that the author is projecting his own ignorance of RNAi onto the rest of us. Briefly, until about 20 years ago, the so-called “central dogma of molecular biology” was a one way road from DNA being transcribed into RNA which was then translated into a functional protein. Even this is a pretty gross simplification, but it’s fair to say, that prior to the discovery of RNAi, RNA was thought to be little more than a messenger in the cell, serving as an intermediary between the DNA code, and the protein function. Yes, we knew that some RNA had enzymatic function, was incorporated into some proteins, etc., but it wasn’t seen so much as a regulatory molecule.
Then, after a few intriguing findings in plants, Fire and Mello discovered that RNA itself could control the translation of other genes in c. elegans. Almost by accident, they found that if you inserted a double-stranded RNA molecule corresponding to a RNA transcript, that transcript would be degraded and the protein it encoded for wouldn’t be expressed. It was a surprising finding. One would think that what would work would be the anti-sense strand of RNA that would bind the sense strand and somehow inhibit it’s entry into the ribosomal machinery and ultimately interfere with translation. Instead, what they found was double-stranded RNA had a function all of it’s own, with a previously unknown cellular machinery specifically-purposed with processing dsRNA and inhibiting gene function through an entirely different mechansim. Subsequently we’ve also found the RNAi not only can directly regulate the levels of RNA transcripts, but can also regulate gene suppression, and activation directly on promoter sequences on DNA itself.
It’s amazing, decades after the discovery of RNA and understanding of its primary function, we discovered this new and incredibly complex layer of regulation of genetics by RNA molecules involved in everything from development to disease. But what does that mean for us? Should we be worried about gene-regulating RNA molecules in our food?
Of course not! RNAi is an intrinsic function of most eukaryotes. Just about every food you’ve ever eaten in your entire life is chock-full of RNA molecules, including double-stranded inhibitory RNAs involved in the normal biological processes occurring within the cell. If other organisms could affect us by poisoning us with RNA, we wouldn’t last a minute. Weirdly, in GMO paranoia world, however, whatever we consume has the potential to take over our bodies. The basic molecules of all life, that exist in everything we eat, take on new powers once handled by human scientists. The article hinted at as evidence of this risk (but of course not actually cited by the author) that suggests miRNA may have “cross-kingdom” effects, is a great example of crank cherry-picking, as the evidence demonstrating it may be artifact is of course not mentioned. And we shouldn’t be surprised, as it would be a pretty extraordinary hole in our defenses if other organisms could so easily modify our gene expression.
One of the great limitations of gene therapy as a potential therapy has been that it’s extremely difficult to introduce genes, or specifically regulate them with external vectors. If it were as simple as just feeding us RNA that would be something. For better or worse (likely better), your body is extremely resistant to other organisms tinkering with its DNA or cellular machinery.
Ok, but then you say, “Hey, that’s Natural News, we know they’re morons.” Ok, how about Clair Cummings in Common Dreams panic-posting about the GMO threat to our water supply from this week? Great evidence that “progressive” is no insulation from “anti-science”:

Today is World Water Day. The United Nations has set aside one day a year to focus the world’s attention on the importance of fresh water. And rightly so, as we are way behind in our efforts to protect both the quantity and quality of the water our growing world needs today.(Image: EarthTimes.org)

And now, there is a new form of water pollution: recombinant genes that are conferring antibiotic resistance on the bacteria in the water.
Researchers in China have found recombinant drug resistant DNA, molecules that are part of the manufacturing of genetically modified organisms, in every river they tested.
Genetically engineered organisms are manufactured using antibiotic resistant genes. And these bacteria are now exchanging their genetic information with the wild bacteria in rivers. As the study points out, bacteria already present in urban water systems provides “advantageous breeding conditions for the(se) microbes.”
Antibiotic resistance is perhaps the number one threat to public health today.

Transgenic pollution is already common in agriculture. U.C. Berkeley Professor Ignacio Chapela was the first scientist to identify the presence of genetically engineered maize in local maize varieties in Mexico. He is an authority on transgenic gene flow. He says it is alarming that “DNA from transgenic organisms have escaped to become an integral component of the genome of free-living bacteria in rivers.” He adds that “the transgenic DNA studied so far in these bacteria will confer antibiotic resistance on other organisms, making many different species resistant to the antibiotics we use to protect ourselves from infections.”

Our expensive attempts to filter and fight chemicals with other chemicals are only partially effective. Our attempts to regulate recombinant DNA technology has failed to prevent gene pollution. The only way to assure a sustainable source of clean water is to understand water for what it is: a living system of biotic communities, not a commodity. It is a living thing and as such it deserves our respect, as does the human right to have abundant fresh clean water for life.

You heard it, now they’re making up a new category of pollution “gene pollution”.
Let’s go back to some of the basic science here, so again, we can display just how silly and uninformed these Chicken Littles are. When molecular biologists wish to produce large quantities of a DNA or protein, what they usually do is insert the sequence into an easy-to-grow organism like E. Coli, or yeast, or some other cell, and then have the biologic machinery of those cells produce it for us. This is one of the most simple forms of genetic modification, and we use it from everything to making plasmid DNA in the lab, to the production of recombinant human insulin for diabetics. In order to make sure your organism is making your product of interest you include a gene that encodes for resistance to an antibiotic (in bacteria most commonly to ampicillin) so that when you grow your bug you can make sure the only cells growing are the ones that are working for you by including that antibiotic in the mix. Other resistance genes we use are often for antibiotics we don’t use in humans, like hygromycin or neomycin, which is nephrotoxic if injected (but also poorly absorbed).
“That’s terrible!”, you say, “how could we teach so many bacteria to be resistant to antibiotics! Surely this will kill us all!”
Um, no. For one, the resistance genes we use aren’t novel or made de novo by humans, they already existed before a single human was ever treated with an antibiotic. The first antibiotic discovered, penicillin, is a natural product. It’s an ancient agent in an ongoing war between microorganisms. The antidote for penicillin and related molecules was actually discovered at about the same time as we discovered penicillin. Beta-lactamase, which breaks open the structure of the penicillins and inhibits their antibiotic effects was around long before humans figured out how to harness antibiotics for our own purposes. The gene, which we clone into plasmids to make our GMO bacteria work for us, came from nature too. Now if we were growing bacteria in vancomycin or linezolid, yeah, I’d be pissed, but that’s not what’s happening. And even though we still use older penicillins clinically, it’s with full knowledge that resistance has been around for decades, and they are used for infections that we know never become resistant to the drugs, like group b strep (or syphilis). The war for penicillin is over. We lost. Any bug that’s going to become resistant to penicillin already is.
The antibiotic resistance that plagues our ICUs and hospitals doesn’t come from GMOs being taught to fight ampicillin, it comes from overuse of more powerful antibiotics in humans. The genes that are providing resistance to even beta-lactam resistant antibiotics like the carbapenems or methicillin are the result of a more classic form of genetic modification – natural selection.
So what is the risk to humans from the DNA encoding a wimpy beta-lactamase or whatever being detected in water? Zilch. Nada. Zip.
The paranoia over recombinant DNA has persisted for decades despite no rational basis for a threat to humans or other living things. The continued paranoia over rDNA is a sign that the GMO paranoids get their science from bad movies, not textbooks or serious knowledge of the risks and benefits of this technology. rDNA is why we have an unlimited supply of insulin, it’s how we have virtually all of our knowledge of molecular biology, it’s how we even have an understanding of how things like antibiotic resistance work. It’s been around since the 70s and how many times have you heard of it actually hurting a person?
This is the state of the argument over genetically-modified organisms. To the uninitiated this stuff sounds like it might be kind of scary. But with any real understanding of the molecular mechanisms of these technologies, the plausibility of their risk drops to zero. Sadly, Goodall has not only shown a pretty poor level of scholarship with this new book, but also, has fallen in with cranks promoting implausible risks of this biotechnology. It’s unfortunate because she should be respected for her previous work as an environmentalist and a conservationist. This is what is so annoying about anti-GMO paranoia. It makes environmentalists look like idiots, as it distracts from actual threats to the environment with invented threats and irrational fears of biotech. I’m sure I’ll now be accused of being in the pocket of big ag, as I am in every thread on GMO, but I assure you, I have no financial interests, or any dealings with these companies ever. I’m irritated with the anti-GMO movement because it’s an embarrassment. It’s Luddism, and ignorance masquerading as environmentalism. It’s bad biology. It’s the progressive equivalent of creationism or global warming denial. It’s classic anti-science, and we shouldn’t tolerate it.

Anti-GMO study is appropriately dismissed as biased, poorly-performed

The anti-GMO study released late last week has raised so many bad science red flags that I’m losing count. Orac and Steve Novella have both discussed fatal flaws in the research, the New Scientist discussed the researchers’ historical behavior of inflating insignificant results to hysterical headlines. And all this new paper seems to be proof of is that these researchers have become more savvy at manipulating press coverage. The result of this clever manipulation of the press embargo and news-release stenography by the press is predictable. The internet food crackpot army has a bogus paper to flog eternally with Mike Adams predicting the end of humanity, and Joe Mercola hailing this as the bestest study of GMO Evar. Lefty publications that are susceptible to this nonsense like Mother Jones have largely uncritical coverage and repeat the researchers’ bogus talking points. It’s a wonder Mark Bittman, organic food booster and anti-GMO half-wit hasn’t used it for his assertion that the evidence against GMO is “damning”. He substantiates this claim, by the way, by linking an article without a single scientific citation, just links to crankier and crankier websites.
Orac and Steve Novella do a good job dissecting many of the methodological flaws of this paper. Similarly, my read (or reads since this paper is unnecessarily obtuse in its data presentation), is that this paper is so flawed as to be meaningless.
Critically, these rates of tumor formation are well established from the pre-GMO era. This paper is exceptional for a low rate of tumor formation in the controls compared to historical controls and knowledge of tumor formation in this rat strain.
Second, the sample groups were small, and the parameters measured were large, almost guaranteeing false-postive events would outnumber true-positive events. Take a data set like they generated, and then perform subgroup analysis, and false-positive yet statistically-significant events are going to jump out at you like mad. The researchers then indeed seem to engage in this behavior, selecting a single time point to present their measurements of various biomarkers, rather than showing them over time. This is particularly notable in figure 5 and table 3. This is a sign of sloppy thinking, sloppy experimental design, and a failure to understand Bayesian probabilities. If you study 100 variables at random, you are likely to find false-positive statistically significant events about 5 percent of the time, even though there is no actual difference between groups. The pre-test probability of an effect being meaningful should determine whether a test should be performed and reported, and this “fishing trip” kind of experiment should only be the beginning of the process. It’s simply not possible to know the relevance of any of these ostensibly significant results found by subgroup analysis until they are subsequently studied as primary endpoints of a study.
The histology in figure 3 is demonstrative of nothing, and the scary rat tumor pictures notably lack a control rat – and we know the controls make tumors too. So why aren’t any control tumors shown? With the concern for bias throughout this paper I find the entire figure to be of no value, since it’s purely qualitative and highly susceptible to bias. Histology slides should be used to show something meaningful in terms of big qualitative effects, unusual structure, or a specific pathology. If one is to make claims about differences between groups by histology, you still have to subject it to rigorous and blinded analysis. I’ve done it, published on it, etc. It can be done. Worse, we know the controls have tumors, and that in this strain tumors are frequent. Why are the control samples always completely normal if not for biased selection of samples? Don’t show me one kidney, show me all the kidneys. Don’t show me one control slide, show me ten, or ideally the results of a blinded quantitative evaluation for tumors or histopathologic grade.
Similarly with figure 4, I don’t see a significant difference between the fields examined, and looking back at previous papers from the same group none of their ultrastructural evaluation of glyphosphate exposed or glyphosphate-resistant feed exposed cells and animals appears consistent or convincing. I don’t think many people have exposure to EM anymore as an assay, but having performed it, it’s very hard to say anything quantitative or meaningful with it. You’re going to find something in every grid, and it largely serves as a qualitative evaluation of cellular ultrastructure. I’m very wary of someone saying, upon presentation of a couple EM slides, that two groups of cells are “different”, and I’m confused by the assertion that the areas they describe represent aggregates of glycogen. What is the significance of glycogen being more dispersed in one cell versus another? You found some residual bodies, so what? They’re everywhere. Is this really a consistent effect? Show me numbers – summaries from 10 grids. Is there any clinical significance of such a change? The answer is no. If I were a reviewer I would have told them to junk the figure unless they wanted it to provide evidence of no difference between the cells.
In general the paper is confusing and poorly-written. Others have pointed out that Figure 1 is unnecessarily complex and better representation of the same data shows no consistent pattern of effect. I would say, given the sample sizes and effect sizes that the likelihood is the researchers are studying noise. There simply is no signal there, if there were there would be a consistent dose-response effect, rather than in many cases the “low dose” group having more tumors than the “high dose” groups. Without error bars it’s hard to be sure but my read of figure 1, in particular the inset panels, is that there really is no difference between any of the groups in terms of tumor formation.
We also have to consider that in the end, this whole idea is kind of dumb. Is there really a plausible explanation for how eating feed with an enzyme that’s resistant to glyphosate generates more tumors in rats, and so does exposure to glyphosate? Why would this protein be tumorigenic? If indeed the roundup-ready crop may have residual levels of glyphosate on it, and that’s the explanation for the similarity between groups, then aren’t you just admitting you’ve done a completely uncontrolled analysis of exposure to the compound? Couldn’t and shouldn’t this have been assayed? Isn’t this whole study kind of crap?
This paper should not have passed peer-review and represents a failure by the editors and reviewers to adequately vet this paper.