30 January 2003

ROYAL SOCIETY TO OVERSEE UK'S GM CROP TRIAL PUBLICATION

This is a highly disturbing development. The Royal Society have, of course, been involved in a whole series of scandals involving peer review - witness their recent publication of the flawed Monsanto-sponsored 'skylark' research and the accompanying media hype stemming from the Royal Society's press release.

That's quite apart, of course, from the Royal Society's own unrequested partial 'peer review' of Dr Pusztai's research, described by the editor of the Lancet as an act of breathtaking impertinence; the threats and orchestrated attacks occasioned by the Lancet's publication of Pusztai and Ewen's research; not to mention the claim in the Royal Society's last report on GM that Pusztai's research had been replicated which was referenced not to any peer reviewed research but to an opinion piece!!!!

Short of Monsanto itself, it's hard to think of any organisation in the world one could have less confidence in to undertake such a task.

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Peerless logic

Paul Brown
Eco soundings
The Guardian , Wednesday January 29, 2003
http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,7843,883943,00.html
 
A curious development on GMs. The government was planning to publish the results of GM field trials in the Journal of Applied Ecology in the summer. As befits a reputable journal, the editors reserved the right to have the papers peer reviewed - in other words, if bits were not scientifically rigorous they would not be published. So now publication has shifted to the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, where, apparently, such stringent peer review will not be necessary.
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