Within the past few weeks, a letter written by a Dr. Don Huber to Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack has been making the rounds on the ‘net. The letter was allegedly given to the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, and they claim to have confirmed that it was written by Dr. Huber. You can find the full text of the letter on the FRFA site with the ominous title Researcher: Roundup or Roundup-Ready Crops May Be Causing Animal Miscarriages and Infertility.
The story has been picked up by many bloggers, including Jill Richardson, and even made an appearance on Reuters. I haven’t seen any posts dedicated to a critical analysis of the letter, instead there is a rush to assume that it is correct, despite the lack of citations or other evidence provided for the extraordinary claims in the letter. The story is often accompanied with horrific pictures of dead fetal calves and the words “Emergency!” and “Danger! ” Are we really all in danger? The claims in the letter bring to mind Carl Sagan’s famous statement: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Let’s investigate the claims and determine whether enough evidence is provided.
“This organism appears NEW to science!”
In the letter, Dr. Huber claims that there is a never-before-seen pathogen that is caused by or exacerbated by either glyphosate containing Roundup herbicide or the widely used glyphosate resistance gene. The letter opens:
A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn—suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science!
Right here in the first paragraph is Extraordinary Claim #1. Dr. Huber is claiming that a single pathogen can “significantly impact” the health of corn, soy, and animals. Not impossible, but extraordinary evidence is required to back up the claim because known pathogens are generally very host specific, whether they are bacteria, virus, fungus, or parasite. A corn pathogen will not infect soy. A human pathogen will not infect cows. In cases where a single pathogen will affect multiple species, it affects groups of very similar species, not corn and cows.
What evidence does Dr. Huber provide for this extraordinary claim? None, actually. Just more extraordinary claims that seem to get more and more extraordinary with each paragraph.
Extraordinary Claim #2 is that the “organism is only visible under an electron microscope (36,000X), with an approximate size range equal to a medium size virus. It is able to reproduce and appears to be a micro-fungal-like organism. If so, it would be the first such micro-fungus ever identified.” He leaves us with far more questions than answers. What characteristics, exactly, cause him to compare this claimed pathogen to a fungus? How could it be possible to have a fungus so small? Where are the pictures? How big is the claimed organism and what does it look like? What is the evidence that it is reproducing? What other tests have been done to confirm its existence?
Fungi and viruses – not at all similar
Fungi have some special characteristics that make them easily identifiable. First, fungi are eukaryotes, meaning that they have complex cells with structures enclosed in membranes called organelles, along with plants and animals, but unlike bacteria which lack organelles. Eukaryotic cells range between roughly 10 and 100 micrometers (μm) long. Second, fungi have some characteristics that make them unique compared to other eukaryotes. Like plants, they have cell walls but unlike plants, those cell walls contain chitin instead of cellulose. At minimum, if we want to call something a fungus, it needs to have organelles like other eukaryotes and needs to have those unique cell walls.
Eukaryotic cells are many times larger than viruses. “Scanning electron micrograph of the surface of a mouse cell infected with murine leukemia virus. A large number of virus particles are shown in the process of budding.” By R. MacLeod via The Free Dictionary.
Viruses are completely unlike eukaryotes or bacteria. They have a wide range of shapes but all look quite different from eukaryotic or bacterial cells. Viruses are little more than some nucleic acid surrounded by a protein coat, allowing them to be much smaller than cells, at a range of roughly 0.01 to 0.1 micrometers (μm). Even the largest virus is much smaller than the smallest eukaryotic cell. In fact, viruses are smaller than the any of the organelles inside a eukaryotic cell.
Saying that something is a “micro-fungal-like organism” as small as a virus just doesn’t make any sense. Of course, there’s been other strange things discovered, things that defied existing biological knowledge. Maybe this thing is from space, transported on meteorites. Who knows!? If it is true, then Dr. Huber and colleagues would undoubtedly be lauded for their amazing discovery. But this extraordinary claim requires extraordinary evidence and Dr. Huber provides none.
Electron microscopy – it’s not easy
When I worked for the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) in Beltsville, MD as an undergraduate, I had the opportunity to use an electron microscope to look for viruses in plant tissue samples. Our goal was to identify plant pathogens before plant material got shipped all over the country. The normal procedure was to wait a pre-determined period of time to see if a plant would show symptoms, but if we could ID viruses before symptoms showed we could save a lot of time. Unfortunately, the technique didn’t pan out, at least while I was working there, because the experts weren’t able to find a technique that allowed them to accurately ID viruses with electron microscopy.
Series of images of a snowflake taken by USDA researchers. Click the pic for larger images.
Electron microscopy is very touchy, with many things that could go wrong. Strange artifacts or errors in the images can be introduced by the processing a sample must undergo before viewing, by less than perfect use of the instrument, and by the instrument itself. Consider this series of images of a single snowflake taken at increasing magnification with an electron microscope. As the magnification goes up, the likelihood that meaning could be ascribed to a random bump also goes up.
Paul Vincelli, Professor of Plant Pathology at
University of Kentucky and member of the American Phytopathological Society (APS), has expertise in plant pathogens including viruses and fungi. He has commented on the post Scientists warn of link between dangerous new pathogen and Monsanto’s Roundup by Rady Arnada indicating that he has seen the claimed “micro fungus” research himself. He said he has spoken with another researcher that has seen the electron micrographs, who concluded that the supposed “micro fungus” is actually just artifacts and that “detailed molecular data were needed before concluding that the structures observed were actually organismal.” Hopefully Dr. Huber plans to relase the images soon so additional experts can examine them. You have to wonder why the images haven’t already been released.
Pathogen presence
Extraordinary Claim #3 is that the claimed pathogen “is found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distillers meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.” Why is this extraordinary? There is no control information provided.
We need to know what are the relative concentrations of the claimed pathogen in corn and soy plants grown in identical conditions, preferably in multiple environments of the following categories so we can isolate the effects of the Roundup Ready gene and of Roundup:
- Roundup Ready plants that are treated with Roundup
- Roundup Ready plants that are weeded by hand or other non-chemical method
- non-Roundup Ready plants that are genetically similar to the Roundup Ready plants that are weeded by hand or other non-chemical method (negative control)
Without these comparisons, saying “high concentrations” is meaningless. We also need to know the relative concentration of the claimed pathogen in animals fed these different plant samples under strictly controlled conditions. We also need to know how the presence of the claimed pathogen was determined and whether it was confirmed with any additional tests, such as nucleic acid or protein analysis.
Similarly, the claim that the “organism is prolific in plants infected with … sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soy, and Goss’ wilt in corn” also requires comparison to uninfected plants with and without Roundup and the RR gene. Dr. Huber continues: “The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).” Found in? As in inside the cells? How do you know? Again, where are the pictures?
Cattle, swine, and horses (oh, my)
French dairy cows. Are these ladies luckier with their calves than American cows? Image by Meg Hourihan via Flickr.
Extraordinary Claim #4 is that there has been “escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.” For comparison, the expected rate of spontaneous abortion in dairy cattle is about 2-5%, according to Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Abortions in Dairy Cattle and West Virginia University Extension’s Abortion in Dairy Cows and Heifers, and the expected successful insemination rate is 50% or higher with proper technique.
Don’t you think that if the rate of spontaneous abortion in livestock was skyrocketing that we’d have heard about it earlier? We’d see a huge spike in the cost of meat and dairy if farmers had to artificially inseminate their sows and cows an increased number of times to succeed in a pregnancy and if a high rate of those pregnancies resulted in late spontaneous abortions. What about the relative rates of AI success and spontaneous abortions in countries that use glyphosate and RR crops vs those that don’t? Shouldn’t we see major differences?
Dr. Huber claims that the “micro-fungus” has been detected “in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility. Preliminary results from ongoing research have also been able to reproduce abortions in a clinical setting.” How was the claimed pathogen detected? With “laboratory tests”, of course! Unfortunately, zero explanation is provided of what these tests are, how or where they were conducted, etc.
Anecdotes aren’t sufficient evidence to justify policy changes
We are provided with an anecdote: “450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlege experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlege, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.”
Likely? This single word causes me to seriously doubt that a scientist wrote this letter. This anecdote is clearly not a scientific study because there are no controls and there is no confirmation of whether the feed did or did not have Roundup residues or the mysterious claimed pathogen present. To make conclusions based on a single situation we don’t even have details on is irresponsible at best. It is even more irresponsible to call for changes in national policy based on an anecdote.
Let’s consider this anecdote more closely. Glyphosate has been used as a herbicide since the 1970s. The amount of glyphosate use has increased with glyphosate resistant crops, and the amount of other herbicides used has decreased, at least until glyphosate overuse caused weeds to develop resistance (but that’s another story). As the use of Roundup and other glyphosate products has been increasing steadily, and crops that have been grown in fields that were treated with glyphosate have been being fed to livestock more and more over the years. If there is a link between glyphosate use and the rate of spontaneous abortions in livestock, then we should see a linear correlation between the two. In other words, the spontaneous abortion rate should be steadily increasing as glyphosate use has steadily increased.
Now let’s look at the two types of feed. Dr. Huber claims that 0% of heifers fed hay had abortions while 45% of heifers fed wheatlage (not wheatlege) had abortions. The wheat may or may not have been “under weed management using glyphosate”. Since there are zero genetically engineered varieties of wheat (Roundup Ready or otherwise) we know that the wheat itself was not sprayed with glyphosate because without the resistance gene it would die. Instead, glyphosate may have been used before the wheat was planted or along the edges of the field. EDIT: Wheat is often sprayed with glyphosate after the growing season to help it dry before harvest as well as to kill weed before harvest. Is this enough glyphosate to cause spontaneous abortions? If it was, then there would be a lot more abortions in livestock.
Can we think of anything else that may have caused the claimed abortion rates? Yes. Going back to the extension documents Abortions in Dairy Cattle and Abortion in Dairy Cows and Heifers, we learn that there are multiple causes for increased number of spontaneous abortions in cattle, including undiagnosed genetic abnormalities, heat stress and infection by certain types of viruses, bacteria, and parasites. Feed contamination with a variety of types fungi that produce toxins can also cause abortions in cattle, especially when the cattle are otherwise immunocompromised by things like stress or disease.
This anecdote can be easily tested by having two groups of randomly selected cattle fed feeds that are identical and grown under identical conditions except one has been under weed management with glyphosate and the other was weeded by hand or other non-chemical means.
Who is Don Huber?
We need to examine Dr. Huber’s experience and positions so we can determine whether he has relevant expertise to be discussing both the extraordinary claims made in this letter and his more reasonable claims that glyphosate could have an effect on mineral uptake and disease resistance. Unfortunately, the letter doesn’t lend him much credibility, assuming that he did indeed write it.
The letter is signed “COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber, Emeritus Professor, Purdue University, APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS)”. Dr. Huber retired in 2006 or 2007. He is listed as a faculty/staff member at Purdue but I wasn’t able to find a bio or CV page on the Purdue website (or indeed a bio or CV elsewhere, either, but that may be due to of all the blog posts re-posting the letter that may be pushing other results back more pages than I’m willing to sort through).
The NPDRS is a program called for in Homeland Security Presidential Directive Number 9 in 2004 “to ensure that the tools, infrastructure, communication networks, and capacity required to mitigate the impact of high consequence plant disease outbreaks are such that a reasonable level of crop production is maintained in the US.” It was “a cooperative effort of university, industry, and government scientists sponsored by The American Phytopathological Society (APS) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).”
As far as I can tell, the last activity of NPDRS was in 2008, and their list of recommendations on the USDA page is a broken link (the correct link is here). Dr. Huber completed work on late wilt of corn for NPDRS and was the chair for that project, but is not listed as the coordinator of NPDRS and I could find no mention of him being the coordinator of the APS side of the partnership. Instead, Kent Smith, a USDA employe, is listed as the contact person for NPDRS. Don Huber is not listed as an employee of the USDA at this time.
Dr. Huber is a member of the Emerging Diseases and Pathogens Committee of the American Phytopathological Society (APS). He served as President of the APS North Central Division in 1988, and has served on other APS committees throughout the years, but does not currently hold any leadership positions with APS that I was able to find.
What work has Dr. Huber done?
Photo of Dr. Huber from a 2010 article in No-Till Magazine.
A search on PubMed for DM Huber results in 11 papers (one of which is not this DM Huber), including these two most recent listings:
- Thompson IA, Huber DM, Schulze DG. Evidence of a Multicopper Oxidase in Mn Oxidation by Gaeumannomyces graminis var. tritici. Phytopathology. 2006 Feb;96(2):130-6. PMID: 18943915
- Thompson IA, Huber DM, Guest CA, Schulze DG. Fungal manganese oxidation in a reduced soil. Environ Microbiol. 2005 Sep;7(9):1480-7. PMID: 16104870
I don’t know why PubMed has such paltry results. Web of Science provides 115 results for DM Huber in the Life Science category. None of the papers have any mention of a “micro fungus”. The two most recent are probably the most meaningful for this discussion. Each has been cited 9 times (mostly by the authors themselves).
- Zobiole LHS, de Oliveira RS, Huber DM, et al. Glyphosate reduces shoot concentrations of mineral nutrients in glyphosate-resistant soybeans. Plant and Soil. 2010 Mar;328(1-2):57-69.
- Johal GS, Huber DM. Glyphosate effects on diseases of plants. European Journal of Agronomy. 2009 Oct;31(3 SI):144-152.
Long story short, assuming that at least half of the 115 papers in Web of Science are actually this DM Huber (at least some belong to a DM Huber at the University of Cincinnati), we can say that he is a well published scientist that has published relevant subject matter in some fairly reputable journals for his field, including Phytopathology as recently as 2007 which has an impact factor of 2.2 (out of 5) according to Journal Citation Reports (not great, but not bad, either). Dr. Huber appears to have relevant and recent expertise on the subject of the effects of glyphosate on mineral uptake and disease resistance.
Next steps for “micro fungus”
The claimed “micro fungus” may indeed be a never before seen pathogen, perhaps a virus. At this time, however, there is not enough evidence to require action. More data needs to be collected in well designed experiments that needs to then be subjected to peer review.
Peer review is the “checks and balances” of science. A team of researchers writes up a report of their experimental design and results and submits it to a journal. Before it is published, it is reviewed by a team of scientists who evaluate whether the experimental design is sound, whether the conclusions are supported by the data, whether the statistics were done properly, and so on. Peer review isn’t perfect for multiple reasons, but as of now it is the best form of quality control for scientific research that we have. For a very good discussion of what peer review means to scientists, see Does peer review mean the same to the public as it does to scientists? This is just one part of an excellent discussion of peer review in Nature that should be required reading for every scientist as well as anyone even slightly interested in what scientists do and how to interpret science: Nature’s peer review debate.
Getting a paper through the peer review process is a necessary part of science validation, in part because of its rigid requirements that go above and beyond what one might put in a letter or a blog post. For one scientist’s first person experiences with peer review, see From blog to Science (thanks to Mary M. for the referral). Avoidance of the peer review system indicates that a researcher knows that their work won’t pass muster.
It is through the peer review process that extraordinary claims can begin to accumulate enough evidence to become accepted. There are plenty of examples of researchers who had extraordinary, some would say impossible, claims that have been proven to be true. Here are two of my favorite examples:
Susan Lolle claimed to find some examples of non-Mendelian inheritance in the plants she was studying. It looked like the seeds were “remembering” what type of environment their parents were in, which seems impossible! Other scientists tore her papers up, and pretty much openly laughed at her. She persevered, kept doing more very well designed experiments, and eventually convinced other scientists she had something. Now we understand that epigenetics is a way that DNA can “remember” environmental conditions. It’s a very exciting and still very strange new field of genetics.
Stanley Prusiner claimed to have isolated the cause of mad cow disease, claiming it was a protein that was misfolded that caused other proteins to also misfold. Like Lolle, Prusiner sounded crazy. How could this be possible? Through perseverance and hard scientific evidence, Prusiner proved that he was right and eventually won the Nobel Prize in medicine.
Any scientist who thinks they’ve find something extraordinary can either give up or persevere. If I found something that was unexpected in a preliminary experiment, I’d redo it first. If the same thing resulted, I’d talk to statisticians and experts in the field, make sure my experimental design was top notch. If I still got the strange result then I’d find a well respected scientist in the same field and ask their lab to redo the experiment or at least part of it to make sure it wasn’t just my lab coming up with the weird results. If it then was still happening, it’d be time to publish an impressive paper in Nature or Science with my well respected colleague as a co-author.
Not following this sort of path is a major shortcoming for a lot of scientists who have found unusual things. For whatever reason, there seem to be a lot of examples of scientists finding results about genetic engineering that go against established science that don’t bother going past that initial finding. The example that first comes to mind is Arpad Pusztai. Why didn’t he work on much better experimental designs before going to publish? Why didn’t he talk to some experts in plant studies so he could have had the proper controls? He took his preliminary results from some poorly designed studies and then ran with it and now people wonder why his work isn’t taken seriously. If Dr. Huber wants to be taken seriously with his “micro fungus” claims then he needs to emulate Lolle and Prusiner, not Pusztai.
Conclusions
This letter makes very little sense both in its sheer existence and in its details. Why would a reasonably well published scientist suddenly throw away everything we know about the scientific method to make claims about biologically impossible organisms with no evidence? Why is so little evidence presented and why is the evidence that is presented given as anecdotes instead of hard science? Most importantly, why would he make claims without going through the peer review process to ensure that his claims would be at least vetted by his peers?
Multiple sites have claimed to have spoken with Dr. Huber to confirm that he did indeed write this letter, but I remain skeptical that an experienced scientist would have released something so unscientific. Someone with as much experience as Dr. Huber should know that his fellow scientists (as well as government agencies) would require at least some proof before acting on extraordinary claims. Fred Gerendasy at Cooking Up a Story, wonders if the letter is a fraud. Perhaps the letter is real and he knew that no one with any knowledge of biology would accept the claims, but also knew that many non-scientists would latch on to claims that confirmed their own biases without question.
Dr. Huber’s colleagues at Purdue have responded to his claims about glyphosate use and crop mineral uptake (which I describe in Does glyphosate restrict crop mineral uptake?), but they are conspicuously silent on the “micro fungus”. The absence of analysis of the “micro fungus” claims tells me that his colleagues are politely ignoring this bizarre outburst. I would have done so as well, if it wasn’t for the prolific repetition of the claims on blogs and even news sites. It’s long past time for us to apply the Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science to Dr. Huber’s claims. Hopefully this post will give some balance to the discussion.
Thanks so much for the detailed assessment. I can point to this in discussions that I’m having–which are popping up like whack-a-mole, unfortunately.
Can I offer a better graphical representation of the process of peer review though? Found this on RealClimate when I was looking into that story about the science bloggers getting sued: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/from-blog-to-science/
Thanks, Mary! Glad you liked it. I added a link to that site and expanded the peer review section a bit.
Thank you for articulating an evidential-based analysis of what passes for news these days. Your headline says it all, and it would benefit us all to link your headline to this apparent fraud, a la the “Santorum-Google” strategy.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it fraud without learning more, but it certainly raises questions about academic integrity. For instance, why aren’t any of the researchers actually working on this phenomenon signed onto the letter? Does he have their permission to talk about their research? I know that when discussing preliminary research there is an understanding amongst scientists that you do not tell others about their research – that is pretty basic. I know that if someone I talked to at a conference in confidence about my research blabbed about “Hey this gene is on this chromosome and it works by doing this” I would be very angry. Whether you are talking about regular old genetics and mapping or grand claims about impending disasters from new pathogens, the ethics are the same.
Good point – if there are indeed other researchers working on this then Dr. Huber may have wrongly publicized the research without permission, because if they had given permission then they should be co-signatories of the letter.
Great post, Anastasia, I’m glad you added more about the importance of peer review, and more details about the relative sizes. Biofortified’s form of peer review works!
I have seen to kinds of responses to this from anti-GE folks. The first is that Huber must be trusted because he is an experienced scientist. Galileo Galilei is a poster-scientist for someone who did not accept conventional wisdom and persevered in the face of attacks against his authority and person. However, later in life he refused to give credence to the idea that the moon caused the tides – he instead uncritically accepted the idea that the Earth sped up and slowed down when it rotated, thus making the oceans slosh around. He was completely wrong. The most experienced and knowledgeable scientist can make this kind of mistake when they do not do what is required to back up a factual claim with rigorous research. The difference between Galileo’s belief about the planets orbiting the sun and the moon not causing tides is evidence. Huber neither backed up his claim with evidence that made sense, nor was he involved in the research himself – so this is more hearsay than anything else.
The second response I have seen, now from Jill Richardson at La Vida Locavore is that a scientific criticism of Hubers claims about Glyphosate and this ‘new’ possibly-artifactual pathogen is that it should be seen as part of a pattern of discrediting any scientist who dares to question the biotech industry:
The appropriate response, whether you are a scientist or not, is to ask whether the claims have been validated, peer reviewed, published, confirmed, etc. It already appears that there is significant doubt from other scientists who have seen the electron micrograph images that this is even something real. Jill Richardson should read about some examples of scientists that went to the media with extraordinary claims before validating their research. Start with Pons and Fleischmann.
Sounds unsurprisingly like peer review (Mary M’s linky illustrates this well) (other than the credibility bit, particularly of ideas)
Thanks for the detailed critique Anastasia. I’ve seen this popping up in the usual place on the web this last week or so and simply muttered “bu!!$h!t” to myself. You have been much more methodical and sensible and ….of course….everything you say is absolutely correct.
Hopefully this story will get bigger and bigger and get wider and wider coverage in the coming weeks. Some of the most vicious anti-GM people I know are intelligent people who are just completely ignorant of even the basics of science. The rest are the easily-scared, conspiracy-loving, ignorant-about-science masses. This Huber story is so obviously a complete fabrication that if it gets big enough it could bring down the anti-GM movement when it inevitably gets shown up for what it is.
Well done you!
Jonathan
I must say, though, that there is a danger in widely disseminating a critical analysis of a claim – it can have the unintended effect of making more people believe in the debunked claim than there were before. It should be disseminated amongst those who were disseminating the original claim, though certainly.
Anastasia,
Can you point me to some peer reviewed papers on the following topics:
1. Testing for safety of human consumption
2. Studies that examine overall chemical usage vs. other agricultural systems.
3. Examination of yields vs. conventional breeding
Thanks,
Jon
Jon, I could provide you with isolated papers but as I described in this post, isolated papers don’t tell the whole story. The best you could do is find a few highly cited well respected papers on a given subject and look at their literature review sections which should summarize all of the previous research on the subject. Hopefully another commenter can assist on this – I must be off to grade papers. Apologies.
Those are all good lines of inquiry, and I have done some looking there myself. However, for understanding the key issues in agriculture and food systems they miss the heart of the matter, which is actually energy.
This looks to be a good start regarding energy and food systems: http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2011-02-28/food-getting-fossil-fuels-plate
Don’t break your arms patting yourselves on the back too much. Debunking this is like debunking the rumors that were spread that food safety bill was going to ban seed saving and force farmers to use Monsanto seeds. Yes, a few bloggers and twitters jumped on it, but the majority of the advocacy community did due diligence and looked into the claims. I don’t see any of the major players jumping on the Huber bandwagon – not CFS, OSA, OTA, CU, etc – not a one. So yes, by all means, do as Jonathan says and use this as your flaming sword to bring down the GE-cautious movement (not sure all are anti, just not convinced). Much ado about nothing. But yes, well written post by Anastasia, don’t disagree on that. My understanding is that neither Dr. Huber nor anyone in the GE-cautious community put this in the press, that it was indeed a private letter to Vilsack, and if there is any conspiracy here it is that someone wants an easy target in order to attack credibility of an opponent.
And as for extraordinary claims, I still think it’s extraordinary to claim that glyphosate is benign, as many on your side of the field continue to do. I’d call that an extraordinary definition of the word benign. While glyphosate may not be as bad as some of the other herbicides on soil health, calling it benign is like saying – “oh, it’s only prostate cancer, not pancreatic cancer. Prostate cancer is ‘relatively’ benign compared to pancreatic.” I’d call that an extraordinary use of the word benign. It remains a chemical that is far from benign; if it was it wouldn’t be worth a damn as an herbicide to kill plants, no?
Nothing extra-ordinary about agrichemical marketers shaking the crap off of a diaper so they can call it a napkin.
The FARFA article indicates that they talked directly to Huber about it, so that does suggest that he gave permission for it to be put on the web. If not, I would expect him to have asked them to take it down. Furthermore, he also communicated with Rady at the Food Freedom blog, and with the folks at Food Safety News, which means that he knows that his letter is getting passed around and has given no indication that he did not want it in the press. I am trying to get in contact with him currently, in order to ask him some questions about it, but all indications are so far that he intended it to be publicized. If it was indeed a private letter then it should not have been sent to FARFA, at least without a statement saying not to distribute it whatsoever.
And I guarantee that Jeffrey Smith will add this to his list of claims. So it is indeed important that this be put out there. It is also a chance for a little critical thinking, and though it is easier than other issues, many people still have a hard time at it.
There is also something that you will not see from the ‘major players’ that you list. I predict that none of them will criticize Huber for this, because it will harm their ability to use him as a reference for other claims about glyphosate and GE crops. I seem to remember someone giving that research a glowing review here not too long ago. I notice that in your comment, although you said Anastasia’s post is well written, you avoid criticizing Huber as well. If he did indeed release it to the public, would you agree that he crossed the line? If you believe that criticizing Huber on this is at all likely to be part of a ‘conspiracy’ to attack his credibility, and if you are correct in that the ‘major players’ you listed have all examined his letter and rejected it, then you may also have a more likely conspiracy of silence on the part of these major players.
I should think that given the agreed tendency of rumors to spread around the internet unabated, and how hard it is for truth-seeking organizations to fight those rumors even when everyone who has analyzed it carefully comes out with the same opinion, that they would all find each other as allies in combating misinformation – wherever it comes from. Including and especially when it is inconvenient for their “side.”
When people speak of sides in this debate, I will refer to Treebeard, whom I have referred to for years – way back to when I interviewed Ignacio Chapela on the radio in Davis:
Nobody claims roundup is benign to plants – just more benign than other herbicides to… everything else.
Your cancer comparison isn’t really that great in this respect – both the types of cancer you mention are killers, and killers that cause huge amounts of suffering, elsewhere on the internet I think demands to utilize decomposing porcupines for various unsanitary actions would be warranted by this sort of comparison – glyphosate’s effects on the soil are nowhere near this sort of level of activity (I’d guess that very few herbicides are) perhaps a more apt comparison would be between the common cold and pneumonia, the common cold can suck for a bit, but not so much as pneumonia (frankly I don’t even know that this comparison holds much water, particularly if looking at soil health, as the literature doesn’t really support a huge negative impact of glyphosate use on the soil)
I don’t know who’s doing any patting. As far as I’m concerned it would be lovely if this “micro fungus” goofiness just went away. As I mentioned at the end of this post, I’d much rather focus on the far more interesting claims Huber is making about glyphosate’s effects on mineral uptake and plant disease, which I take on in my next post. But judging by the number of repetitions of this letter that I found while researching this post, there are a lot of people taking this letter at its face value. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if a small chunk of “netizens” accept that there is a virus sized fungus that defies biology but it concerns me that so many people have the seeming inability to think critically and look at an encyclopedia for what viruses and fungus are.
As for glyphosate, in part I agree and I believe I’ve said as much to you before. While glyphosate is relatively benign compared to other herbicides, using non-chemical control methods are preferable, in my opinion, for a variety of reasons including reducing rate of resistance development and reducing input cost. That doesn’t mean I think glyphosate is evil or whatever, just in general I think US farmers are a bit too chemical oriented.
You know you don’t mean that Anastasia – it would be mind bogglingly exciting if an entire new phylum of life were actually discovered, if it were more than rumour, conjecture and some artifacts on plates. Its the kind of thing that is so fantastic you kind of WANT it to be true, just for the possibilities. LIFE, actual proper self replicating LIFE ON THE NANO SCALE. How wonderful.
But as it stands – sadly there is nothing more there than an anomaly on some slides and a seemingly impossible claims, with absolutely no evidence beyond some rather dubious anecdotes to back it up. oh well.
Yes, it would be an amazing and mind-expanding discovery and flip the world of science on its head. Sadly, everyone who has seen the evidence and is not keeping the Big Secret has said it looks like an artifact and nothing more. Yet we keep hearing about it.
Biologists have a pretty good grasp of what it means when something has -cide in its name. I don’t think anyone here is confused about that.
But thanks for coming along to discuss that. Can you also make your way around “organic” food blogs and explain to them that “organic” -cides are not benign? That might be a more effective use of your time. I think their grasp on -cides is somewhat weaker. Here’s a reference to help you out:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0011250
Huh, was supposed to be a reply for Matt.
Anyway, but just to note: Jill Richardson is on the policy and advisory board of the OCA: http://www.organicconsumers.org/aboutus.cfm
Kinda weird to see something in that paper that really puts the whole thing into perspective.
I routinely rub the most environmentally harmful substance investigated in the paper linked (based on EIQ-FUR values anyway) into my 5 month old sons scalp (and occasionally into my cutting boards to keep ’em good and cutty or whatever one keeps cutting boards)
Matt (February 28, 2011 at 2:16 pm) wrote:
« I don’t see any of the major players jumping on the Huber bandwagon – not CFS, OSA, OTA, CU, etc – not a one. »
But http://www.i-sis.org.uk/newPathogenInRoundupReadyGMCrops.php
Excellent analysis. I would add three things : first, it is extraordinary for a private letter saying « This is highly sensitive information that could result in a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies » to go public. Second, can anyone name a facility running a test with two times 1000 (one thousand) heifers, or raising heifers commercially on completely different feed ? And « no abortions » in a herd of 1000 hay-fed heifers ? Pretty extraordinary.
Oooops! To avoid any misunderstanding, the excellent analysis is Anastasia’s.
Ewan – “Nobody claims roundup is benign to plants – just more benign than other herbicides to… everything else.” -um, I think you might look up the definition of benign. There is no logic to “more benign”. You are either claiming it is benign, or not. Croplife, Aphis, and Monsanto employees use the word “benign” repeatedly. I’m not saying glyphosate isn’t a better choice than some other herbicides, but “benign” is not an applicable word.
Mary….On your odd little -cide lecture. No, I do get that organic -cides – hell even organic production – is not in and of itself ‘benign’ and would never call it that. What’s your point exactly? You are suggesting I am making claims about organic that I have not made…hmm…what kind of fallacy is that…better go back to biofortified blog…perhaps a red herring? Organic systems have imperfect products and practices therefore my claim of “benign” being an extraordinary claim is invalid. Yeah, I think that’s a red herring. And OCA, puh-lease. Karl, fill her in.
Karl – I hadn’t heard he sent it to FARFA. They only claim on site they spoke to him to prove authenticity, that doesn’t sound like he sent it to them. I was only half-serious and half-joking about it being a conspiracy. Would be grateful if you do track down how it got to press. Love the Treebeard quote. You are quite the geek – I mean that in the best of ways. On standing up for Huber or critiquing him. I can’t. But not because of some secret handshake brotherhood amongst GE-cautious individuals. I can’t because I haven’t seen the research, and even if I did I am not qualified to criticize them; I am not a plant pathologist.
and Karl, I hear your call for people to be truth-seeking, but other than Anastasia, I have yet to read many people on here who I would call truth-seeking. It’s mostly bashing and making grand generalizations about “anti-GMO” people. I certainly don’t make such generalizations about plant breeders, even ones who are pro-biotech (some of whom are my friends). Nor even of Monsanto employees. Great for you to call for togetherness, don’t feel the spirit here. It’s why I keep promising myself that I won’t post anymore. Don’t even want to feed attention to those on here who just want to grind against organic as luddites and a single-minded community.
So with that, I’ll try to live up to my promise once again….cya
Matt says:
FARFA says:
That sounds like they were sent a copy from Dr. Huber.
“On standing up for Huber or critiquing him. I can’t. (…) I can’t because I haven’t seen the research, and even if I did I am not qualified to criticize them; I am not a plant pathologist.”
If only the Center for Food Safety, Jeffrey Smith, etc would say that when it comes to evaluating the science! I am not a plant pathologist either, and I don’t have expertise in herbicides and their effects on plants and potential fungi, etc. But the Huber letter is something else, as Ewan as pointed out in another post that students with basic biology education can see through its contradictions. But I know you are also not afraid to criticize the work of other scientists when it comes to GE crops, I seem to recall you criticizing calcium-biofortified carrots, for instance.
Whenever I refer to anti-GE people as a group, I try to avoid generalizations and painting them as all the same. I know that the reasons that people have and the arguments they use vary from one to another, from sensible, to crazy. I also never use the term ‘luddite.’ Here is one example where I was referring to how I thought many (key word) anti-GE people would respond to something. While some people who read an comment on Biofortified may feel that all anti-GE folks are the same, or are all ‘luddites’, we also get anti-GE people on here who make broad generalizations about those who are in favor of it as well. We try to keep things as civil as we can, and comments will sometimes get deleted. (I should show you the ones from anti-GE people that I deleted in the last week – huh boy the nastiness) But we cannot and will not parse every phrase to ensure that every comment is sufficiently polite or non-stereotyping nor kick people off simply for feeling a particular way. Notice how comments you make that do the same also appear. We do call out people for their comments on both sides when we feel it goes over the line in some way, but not the kind of conversational infraction that necessitates a deletion.
We are dealing with an impassioned topic, and people seem to need to vent a little. Hey, now I know why you keep comin’ back!
Oh, one final ask, speaking of extraordinary claims. Ewan, Monsanto makes this claim: “Experts agree that we will need to grow as much food in the next few decades as we did in the past 10,000 years combined if we are to sustain our planet.”
– what experts? Where are the facts on this? As much food in the next few decades as we did in 10,000 years. Now is that food you are referring to measured in calories or tons of corn yielded for biofuel and cattle to feed unsustainable consumption? Love to see the math on this one.
I’m going to assume that its an estimate of what will be required to meet growing demands of a huge population – its all well and good to moan about the fact that what is under discussion may well be unsustainable – but the harsh reality is that the West in particular, but also China and India, will (if history is any lesson) have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about crushing less developed nations to meet their demands should they fail to be met internally.
For the math (and I’m no mathematician, but perhaps p-diff could step in and do some wizardry in that respect, I assume he knows his way around the area under a graph (I’m also assuming the area under the population graph would be a meaningful number in terms of this discussion – some long unused part of my frontal cortex appears to think this is the case, so I’ll roll with that until it’s pointed out exactly why this is foolish – and exactly what function of the graph I should be paying attention to) – take a look at the population graph here and it should be relatively clear that the food produced between 10,000 and about 2000 years ago is going to be an utterly negligible part of food production in the last 10,000 years anyway (tricksy right?) – it’s probably also a relatively safe bet that in the past couple of decades we’ve produced more than in the majority of the last couple of centuries (using data from here I did a rough calculation which shows that the number of people years (average mid point population between years multiplied by number of years) between 1999 and 2050 is 385018.5 hundred million, which is comparible to the number of people years between 1850 and 2000 which is more than the number of people years between 1500 and 1850 (252000 hundred million) – this progression will continue to get smaller, The period between 1500 and 0 AD has a 418000 hundred million people year figure as a comparison (and the preceding 10,000 years a figure of 505050 assuming a starting population of 1 million (which may be a vast over estimate – doesn’t really matter, the mid point is going to be ~50 million regardless – the math really doesn’t work as well here as the graph has a big ole bump right at around 800BC – so numbers may be on the high side here)
So you see a stark difference in requirements initially (albeit not one that supports the hypothesis alone) – between 10,000 BC and 1AD as much food was required as was needed between 1AD and 1500 (approximately anyway) – the combined total of which is less than all the food required from 1500 onwards (less than 50% of the value) – food required in the last 50 years (of the calc – so 1999-2050) equates to 40% of the 1500-2050 total and 28% of the last 10,000 years total.
Factor in increased demand for meat (based on the hypothesis that both China and India are heading towards US levels of meat consumption aswell as a growing population in the US etc), the need to reduce hunger and general increased food intake in the past century for the bulk of the population (at least in the West) as compared to pathetic intakes in centuries gone by and I don’t feel that it is too unlikely that the “as much food in the next 50 years as in the last 10,000” is necessarily completely off the mark (you only require that on average food demand in the final 50 years is approximately 4 times that per capita as the average food demand in the preceding 11950 years – anecdotally I’d guess that my own food demand (in terms of personal demand plus the requirement for animal feed) is likely more than double that of my grandparents and that their demand was higher than their own parents or grandparents – so you don’t even necessarily have to go back more than 1% of the total period of time being investigated to reach levels where that difference may already almost be met)
(And that, for anyone who made it to the end, is what I mean when I demand people show me their working… hopefully I’ve clearly layed out not only my working, but my assumptions, and the holes therein (as I don’t have actual data to plug in on calorific intake averages historically, or indeed the increased requirement for animal feed to meet demands for meat) – pick apart at will) Given the long ramblyness of this post I think I shall take up other points in a seperate post after my first coffee of the day settles.
You don’t need me, evidently. 🙂 I looked at a similar pop curve at Wikipedia and had the same ideas about area under the curve, but was too lazy to actually look at them in detail. Off hand, I think this kind of statement is the typical catchy sound bite that promotional people like. It’s not really a good comparison considering diets, nutritional value, food sources, food requirements and life spans have altered completely over that amount of time. It also is highly dependent on predicting the future which, again looking at the first Wikipedia graph under “world population”, has widely differing trajectories depending on who you talk to. Suffice to say, if pop growth continues exponentially, there will be a lot more mouths to feed.
Ewan, Matt,
You also need to factor in technology changes in agriculture over that period of time. For the vast majority of the period, technology progress was essentially static, with pitiful yields.
Dictionary.com: Favorable
I would say that this is a reasonable use of the word, especially in the context that it was used in comparison to other herbicides.
For the record, I would not consider myself to be truth seeking. More of evidence seeking. Truth is too much of a relative term for the observer.
I would also surmise that someone throwing statements like “Nothing extra-ordinary about agrichemical marketers shaking the crap off of a diaper so they can call it a napkin.” around is showing a fair amount of single mindedness as well.
Seconded. It’s all well and good to call for civil discourse but leading by example would help.
Thirded. While I have reached out to Matt, including inviting him to write a guest post at-will, these periodic bashes and blanket statements are tiresome.
I think Matt is confusing “benign” with “harmless.” You certainly couldn’t call something more or less harmless, you can say something is more or less benign.
I dunno Karl, the upgrade from “harmless” to “mostly harmless” was the result of about a decades work (if memory serves) and so I don’t think that you can make blanket statements about such things without taking in to account the feelings of denizens of the ZZ9 plural Z alpha sector.
(I see your arguementum ad Tolkien and raise you one ad Adams)
Karl, This would be an easy thing to confuse, and admittedly, it is the first thing into my mind when I hear the word. For me, it originates with the medical cancer definition in which a benign tumor is one that does not spread, which most people probably lead to the conclusion that it is harmless. Using the word with respect to agricultural techniques is probably not a good idea as that type of definition does not apply.
A photo on one of the websites that had this story had a photo of a newborn calf. The calf was obviously full term, not a spontaneous abortion. The calf in the photo had a severely underdeveloped upper face, underbite and malformed ears. It also had no hair formed. I have necropsied two full term calves born on ranches in Western Montana with no hair formed and examined over a thousand newborn grazing animals, both wild and domestic.
There was a high prevalence of underbite because of underdeveloped upper facial bones, some years over 50%. These malformations are consistent with fetal hypothyroidism and began in spring of 1995 (before wolves were reintroduced here) and became much worse in 2007. Other health problems connected to fetal hypothyroidism are muscle weakness, inability of the cells to produce normal heat and energy, contracted tendons, weak joints, herniated umbilicus, brain damage (called “dummy” young by ranchers), malformed or underdeveloped male genitalia, underdeveloped thymus, enlarged heart, lung damage, no hair formed or malformed hair (or feathers on birds), missing digits or missing or malformed limbs or other bones malformed and many other health problems. In a study of goats deliberately caused to have fetal hypothyroidism, the newborns had obesity at birth, diabetes at birth and high cholesterol at birth in addition to many of the above listed health problems.
To read articles about the malformations we have been reporting in Western Montana and the history of this problem and possible causes, go to http://www.miller-mccune.com/author/joanmelcher/ and read the following articles:
Divining the Secret of Deformed Roadkill
Seeking Chemical Culprits for Those Deformities
Poor Deer Season Spurs Chemical Concerns
Viewing Poisons at Our National Parks
The last article about poisons in parks is important because Glacier National Park, the park in Western Montana had the highest levels of toxins on the foliage, in the snow, in the surface water and in the animals tested. It is likely there are similar levels in other areas of Western Montana and even higher levels where lots of pesticides are used. In our area, Roundup, 2,4-D and Picloram are used in very high amounts on the forests, pasture lands and the most is used in yards (where children play). Many of the male Fox Squirrels, which live on sprayed lawns in urban areas here in Western Montana, have no or malformed scrotums, as do many deer, elk and other grazing animals. That should scare people, but so far no one has paid any attention. I do not know the prevalence of the fetal hypothyroidism symptoms in other areas. If they are anything like the prevalence here in Montana, we are in big trouble as far as future food supplies are concerned and paying for health problems may bankrupt everyone.
The prevalence of underdeveloped facial bones became so high on wild grazing animals in Montana the last four years, many of the young ones did not survive. Of course, the wolves that also live here received all the blame – just check what is happening in Congress regarding wolves. No blame for our use of toxins which caused the fetal hypothyroidism and the debilitating malformations it causes in newborns of all species of vertebrate, including domestic livestock and wild grazing animals. Some wolf pups are also born with underbite and many die of symptoms consistent with hypothyroidism. That is not ever mentioned.
Thank you for your consideration of this serious problem.
I forgot to say we have published one study so far on the reproductive malformations in the white-tailed deer. Hoy, et. al., Genital abnormalities in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in west-central Montana: Pesticide exposure as a possible cause. J. Environ. Biol. 23(2), 189-197 (2002).
Judy, perchlorate mimics iodine and can cause hypothyroid symptoms, particularly in regions of low iodine background (like Montana). Ammonium perchlorate is used as an oxidizer in rocket fuel and there were some big explosions in the 4500 tons that were stored on site at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEPCON_disaster
Large explosions like that could have dispersed thousands of tons of perchlorate into the atmosphere high enough so the wind could have carried it as far as Montana.
The timing looks about right, a few years for the perchlorate to get incorporated into vegetation and affect the wildlife.
I don’t think there are any pesticides that mimic hypothyroid symptoms. There might be perchlorate in salt used for road deicing. Deer are often attracted to roads that use salt, especially in salt-poor regions like Montana.
I don’t think the people posting these images in connection with Dr. Huber’s claims actually bothered to consider whether the specific images matched the story. They likely just found whatever image suited their purposes, and since the purpose of these stories seems to be to scare people, they found whatever gross scary looking image they could.
This story doesn’t seem to be related to the post – perhaps it would be better to start a discussion about this in the forum.
That said, I just have a brief comment about the proposed cause here: pesticides.
While many pesticides can be quite dangerous and some can cause quite terrible health problems at high doses, when used properly many pesticides can be safe for the pesticide applicator and non-target organisms. I can imagine that one or more pesticide applicators in the area where you are seeing animal malformations is improperly trained and using too much active ingredient. I can imagine that a few animals could encounter the pesticide where it was improperly applied and consume it. I can imagine that some of those animals might be female and some of those might be pregnant and the intake of large amounts of pesticides could affect the fetus in some way, although, I agree with daedalus2u in that “I don’t think there are any pesticides that mimic hypothyroid symptoms.” Even though I can imagine ways that a few animals might be born with malformations due to pesticides I can not imagine any scenario that would result in widespread exposure to pesticides at high enough concentrations to cause large amounts of animals being born with pesticide induced birth defects without also seeing other effects such as huge swaths of land where plants have been killed and widespread illness in humans in the area, particularly illness or death in the pesticide applicators. That would also be a huge pesticide bill, I think.
Ms Hoy is well known on this topic. Her main data regarding malformations come from road kills (her husband was a game ranger for many years), although since gaining some fame, she now has others who bring her reports. Her main hypothesis is that the fungicide, chlorothalonil, is a major player along with the synergistic effect of herbicide-fungicide mixes, such as 2,4-D, etc. Some implication is made to the common surfactant Nonylphenol. She claims that drift from the states west of her, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, are the main culprits, although, even Asian applications are implied to be possible sources.
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Certainly, one should consider the possibility she might be right. The area where she lives is in a rain shadow of the Bitterroot Mountains and could possibly be acting as a geographic accumulator of aerial dispersants. The breakdown components of this fungicide have been found to be more toxic than the product itself. Fungicide-herbicide combinations are also implicated elsewhere as problematic.
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Finding additional, non circumstantial, non-self surveyed, information is harder to come by though. In my reading on this, I found only one instance where she or anyone else had actually tested rain/snowfall, wind traps, ground/river water etc (snow at 0.03 PPB). No concrete data is ever mentioned regarding deformations in the general deer/wild life populations. No mention either of any historical data regarding deformations. No other potential hypotheses are considered, let alone explored. She damages her own credibility further with statements like the following (from Clouds of Death):
This statement taken in context of the whole article is made with the clear intention of blaming “chemicals”. The bias and quick draw predrawn conclusions of Ms. Hoy are well known (even among her supporters). While this is potentially an area of interest for further exploration, the reliability of the current “data” leave much to be desired and, IMO, are marginally informative. We hear a lot of criticism about the self driven studies made bio “Big-Ag”, yet this is accepted by the same people without question. Why aren’t we hearing a call for “independent studies” here?
It could not be anything. A fungus cannot be the size he is claiming. The ultrastructures within a eukaryotic cell are visible at magnifications less than that he is claiming is required to see this micro-fungus – polyribosomes are visible at lower magnificantion.
If a retired chemist were to claim that they’d discovered an element between Nitrogen and Oxygen in the periodic table, which causes all manner of adverse cellular reactions in row crops, cows, and bolivian bat mites one wouldn’t go to the trouble of checking that row crops, cows and bolivian bat mites suffer related ailments – you would reject the claim utterly because it isn’t possible to have an element between N and O in the periodic table without utterly reworking everything we know about how the universe works.
I’m wondering if perhaps you moonlight as an electronic monk, it appears the folk of Salt Lake City have nothing on you.
Someone posted these links elsewhere: Investigating Agrobacterium-Mediated Transformation of Verticillium albo-atrum on Plant Surfaces and Tie between Morgellons Disease and fungi?
I’m sorry to say these links don’t really shed any light on the “micro fungus” at all.
The first barrier to overcome is the size issue, followed by the claim that a single pathogen can infect multiple kingdoms (plants and animals), and above all the problem of complete lack of evidence. Neither of these links address fundamental problems with Huber’s claims.
Knight et al found, under laboratory conditions, if there was an existing plant wound and there was enough acetosyringone around and the right type of fungus was present, then Agrobacterium can sometimes transfect the fungus. They propose this might happen in nature but don’t actually do any experiments in a natural environment.
The authors seems to be correct when they say “this study shows that the encounter between Agrobacterium and a plant pathogenic fungus on a plant surface can lead to gene flow in a new, and to date, under investigated way” but this only applies to Agrobacterium that is carried out of the lab inside a plant. Any seeds grown for production agriculture are many generations away from the transformed parent. Can Agrobacterium be transmitted from parent to seed? Perhaps, but unlikely, especially over many generations.
Morgellons is a complex subject but to date there isn’t any evidence that it exists as a specific disease caused by a single pathogen. It might be a collection of similarly presenting skin conditions but more evidence needs to be collected – the CDC is undertaking a large study on the subject. I suggest you read the post Moregellons here at Biofortified for some details.
Citovsky has published some work showing that Agrobacterium can tranfect human cells in culture, he nor anyone else has presented evidence that Agrobacterium can infect a human. There are major differences between cells in culture and cells in the body. Specifically, the cells they tested (cervical cancer, embryonic kidney, and neuronal cells) are extremely unlikely to come into contact with Agrobacterium for what I hope are obvious reasons. I wasn’t able to find any other peer-reviewed research on the subject.
Actually hundreds of studies have linked hypothyroidism during development in vertebrate species to exposure to pesticides.
We saw many mammals prior to 1995 and after, so are certain most of the malformations I listed were not observed on newborns of vertebrate species until spring of 1995. Most importantly, the misalignment of the hemiscrota on male mammals was not reported prior to 1995. This reproductive malformation has been common on many species of mammal since 1995. Perclorate from Nevada would have reached here in two or three days. The animals born in 1989 did not have the specified malformations.
Probably, most importantly, the listed malformations have been observed and reported throughout the Northern Hemisphere and from Africa. The problem has nothing to do with where I live, except we have no factories or other common sources of pollution except very high use of herbicides, fungicides and some insecticides – mostly herbicides and fungicides.
If I post more on this subject, I will post it on the Forum as soon as I find it. I am new here.
Welcome 🙂 It’s always good to have a new person around – each voice expands the discussion. Please don’t be dismayed by any critical comments – in most cases (Ewan and pdiff included, I think) people aren’t being critical of the person who posted something but of the ideas presented, as many of us are rather evidence oriented.
Certainly not meant as a personal attack on my part – and I apologize to Ms. Hoy directly if it was taken as such. I was, however badly I mangled my attempt, trying to set the stage relative to the topic of the original post. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Again, I apologize for any mis-interpretation. Misconstrued intentions are often a damnable quality of the internet for me.
I just spotted this, thought it might be interesting to some folks here:
Here’s a piece of it:
Thanks, I’ll add that as an update to the post Does glyphosate restrict crop mineral uptake?
Good find. We are seeing a growing number of extension experts responding to this “40 disease” claim of Huber’s and it is looking more and more like an ill-supported fringe claim. In order to demonstrate his thesis, he needs to explain why all these effects he is claiming are not found by these other investigators. I looked at some of the literature, too, and the varietal differences in effects were not only different but sometimes the reverse of each other – as in, some roundup-ready soybean varieties fared better (w/glyphosate too) than non-GE varieties.
OMG, I just realized that plant breeding has been linked to 40 plant diseases! Quick, ban it!
To pdiff, I would like to say I did not take any offense at what you said. I am flattered that you read my article. That article was written quite a few years ago and the paragraph you quoted was just one of many unexplained incidents of affects on people here in the Bitterroot Valley after 1995. Another incident was my two neutered male kid goats had significant mammary development at the same time as many people reported little boys of four to eight years old and little girls too, began growing breasts. That is some serious endocrine disruption.
Some tests have been done. I personally couldn’t afford to have very many tests done. Energy Laboratories of Billings, MT found almost a half part per billion of Chlorothalonil in snow water that fell in our yard into glass pans in March of 1999 (cost $150). That was over 5 months after most farmers sprayed it last in states upwind of our county and at that time none was used here according to the County Extension Agent. Fairly high levels of PAHs were found in some of the air monitoring tests I helped with. Frog researchers found slightly over a half part per billion of Alachlor in the Bitterroot River. No Alachlor was being used in Ravalli County at the time the sample was taken in Hamilton, MT in summer 1999. It would take a lot of Alachlor to make a river the size of the Bitterroot River have a half part per billion in it all summer or possibly year around. The Bitterroot River begins in Ravalli County and flows into the Clark Fork in Missoula, MT. The USGS recently did an extensive study of snow, foliage, lake water and animals at high elevations in several National Parks, including the closest one to Ravalli County, Glacier National Park. They found many chemicals, including pesticides and stated the chemicals came from fields to the west (upwind), including Asia. I have also looked into mercury, lead, perchlorate, radiation and other things as possible causes of the very serious symptoms we have observed on individuals of all vertebrate species here, but mostly mammals and birds.
Theo Colborn has written many articles and a book “Our Stolen Future” on the effects of pesticides (umbrella term), including endocrine disruption, especially thyroid hormone and sex hormone disruption. She listed study after study that showed hormone disruption by a variety of pesticides. All I have tried to do is report the increases in malformations and cancer in wild and domestic animals here in Montana. However, the cancer and malformations are not limited to Montana. They appear to be very widespread. If you want to get an idea of how widespread the underbite malformation on wild ruminants is, just pick up a hunting magazine and look at the photos. There are several photos in every magazine I have checked in the last 3 years that show obvious underbite on a variety of wild ruminants. You can also type the word underbite in front of calves, foals, goats, ponies and other domestic animals on Google and bring up many photos and posts on domestic animals with underbite. I grew up on a ranch and so did my Dad. Neither of us saw an animal with underbite prior to 1995. The studies of over thirty thousand white-tailed deer done by Ryel in Michigan in 1969 found none with an underdeveloped premaxillary bone. Looking for facial and tooth malformations were the primary reason for the study.
Everyone here is talking about what was said in Dr. Huber’s email. I haven’t seen anything about the studies done in South America on the effects of Glyphosate on human newborns with regard to the four fold increase in malformations and cancer rates. And on chicks, rats and frogs tested with deliberate exposure to glyphosate. Glyphosate disrupted the retinoic acid levels in developing embryo on all three test animals and caused craniofacial and neural defects, similar to what was happening to human babies born to parents living near fields in Argentina sprayed with Roundup/glyphosate – the reason for all four studies.
Regarding the evidence we (the people who I work with and I) have presented. I listed our study. I have also been working with scientists at Indiana University. They have posted their finding regarding Ravalli County and pesticides wind drifting here on OnCourse. Ruhter and Frost, Baseline Risk Assessment Bitterroot Valley, Montana, May 2008. Their conclusion stated, “Based on the physicochemical properties and chemical structures of the pesticides used in Idaho, these compounds have the potential to bioaccumulate and cause endocrine disruption. Endocrine disruption can result in both skeletal and reproductive malformations. There appears to be a strong correlation with malformation incidence and pesticide use in Idaho. Additionally, based on HYSPLIT modeling, it appears that air transport of long range pesticides used in Idaho potato crops may occur.” This I agree, still isn’t proof, but is evidence. Thank you for the opportunity for discussion of this issue.
Judy,
Per the suggestion of Anastatia, I have started a thread in the forums regarding this topic (Didn’t really know where to put this. Admins, please move if appropriate). You will need to register to reply there. I will reply more specifically to what you have said when I get the chance.
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Ewan can probably address the South American study. Think I have seen it here. What I am recalling is that the sampling done was haphazard and flawed, but I may be remembering something else. I know the glyphosate application to embryos is around here someplace.
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If you have them available, could you post to the forum thread more specific references/links to:
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The base line risk assessment.
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The work by Ryle in 1969.
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OnCourse .
Thanks
Judy,
I knew I saw it here abouts somewhere ….
Paganelli (in Biofortified forums)
It covers most of the studies you mention above. The S.Am. birth defects study wasn’t flawed, as I incorrectly recalled, but it did not distinguish between any particular pesticide types, i.e. herbs, fungs, insects, etc., and specifically, not a particular chemical like glyphosate.
Hi Judy
Here in Europe studies on the toxicology of pesticides are generally done on the pure active ingredient or undiluted product. Not sure of the situation in the US. These are organic chemicals we’re talking about so, as with most organic chemicals, often show toxicological profiles that sound scary in lab tests. You have to remember though that exposure via food residues is tens or hundreds of thousands of times less than the lab exposure rates.
Your quoted half part per billion for chlorothalonil and alachlor have to be taken in context. We are lucky that modern technological developments in science has given us the ability to even detect (let alone quantify) such vanishingly low levels. Proportionately half a part per billion is the equivalent of 1 second in a period of 63 years. Do you really think that could be having the effects you describe?
Jonathan
I wouldn’t dismiss it off hand. While technology has brought us the amazing ability to detect very small amounts of these compounds, it has also brought us the ability to use compounds at very small levels. In the past I have been involved in studies regarding a common herbicide that was found to have demonstrable botanical effects measured at the parts per trillion level, a thousand times smaller than parts per billion. It was truly amazing, IMO.
“In the past I have been involved in studies regarding a common herbicide that was found to have demonstrable botanical effects measured at the parts per trillion level”
Wooahhh! That’s the equivalent of 1 gram in a million tonnes…..or a teaspoon of salt in 6 billion litres of water (which a quick google search and calculation tells me is 2400 olympic swimmingpools full of water!!!). I’d love to read about that. Is it published anywhere?
Jonathan
Pamela J. S. Hutchinson, Don W. Morishita and William J. Price. Season-Long Dose: Response of Potato to Sulfometuron
Weed Science , vol. 55, No. 5 (Sep. – Oct., 2007), pp. 521-527
Excellent stuff pdiff. Thanks for the reference. I can’t get the full article but I’ve read the abstract. Any idea how sulfometuron compares to other herbicides? I really can’t quite believe something so dilute can have such strong effects. Makes you wonder how we’ve survived drinking coffee, passively smoking cigarettes and breathing combustion fumes for so long!
Jonathan,
I will have to submit any answers regarding potency comparisons to others here. Suffice it to say this is an excellent example of why the use of “total pounds of pesticides applied per year” by certain environmental advocates is complete nonsense. Would you rather have a lb of something like this in your backyard or a lb of glyphosate?
Jonathan and pdiff,
pdiff Thank you for your posts on toxicity at very low levels. What was concerning about the half part per billion in the Bitterroot River was the finding of Tyrone Hayes that Atrazine caused male frogs to have female characteristics at one fifth what was found in our river or one part per billion. Our Leopard Frogs completely disappeared, were extirpated when Atrazine, Zylene and possibly other herbicides were used in irrigation ditches to kill weeds, but we still have a few Western Toads, Spotted Frogs and introduced Bull Frogs. I am very concerned about the Western Toad population decline here. Toads have been a favorite of mine since childhood.
Jonathan, I have consulted with many top level researchers in the 15 years I have been photographing and measuring animals. I was told that embryos and fetuses can be seriously affected by parts per trillion or less as pdiff so kindly pointed out in my defense.
I haven’t figured out how to get onto the Forum. I am still working on it.
I used to have a slow land line internet hookup so I received the Baseline Risk Assessment document in hard copy. I received Ryel’s 1969 study of anomalies in Michigan white-tailed deer from a scientist friend. I could not find it on Google. I will post it if I can find it. I could send it by email to you pdiff, if you would allow Anastasia to send you my email address to you, so you could contact me personally.
I have never tried to go to OnCourse since getting fast internet connection, but will when I have time.
Back to the discussion of Glyphosate. Here are links to some of the studies I referred to. I am sure there are lots more I can find when I have time.
http://quarantine.entomol.nchu.edu.tw/ecology/Papers/2009-Chemosphere-Schneider_et_al_2009.pdf
Study of effects of glyphosate on beneficial insect.
http://4ccr.pgr.mpf.gov.br/institucional/grupos-de-trabalho/gt-transgenicos/bibliografia/pgm-e-riscos-ambientais/Relyea,%202005,%20Ecolo%20Appli.pdf
Larval amphibians
http://zoologia.biologia.uasnet.mx/protozoos/protozoa31.pdf
Soil organisms
http://www.rapaluruguay.org/glifosato/Efectos%20teratogenicos%20del%20Glifosato.pdf
Chicks and frog embryos
Judy, I see you have registered for the blog – all you need to do to post in the forum is log in with your new user ID and you can start and respond to discussion threads! Have fun.
Judy, Thanks for the response. Beware, however, that defense can be a double edged sword 🙂
I will leaving further reply to this over on the forum, assuming you can eventually pick up there.
I am fine with the admins passing an exchange of emails (my university email please) as long as we keep the discussion itself public on the forum so that others can read and participate.
Judy,
Tyrone Hayes is a madman. The texts at the links below contain language which many regard as obscene and/or offensive.
http://gawker.com/#!5620781/dr-tyrone-hayes-biologist-cock+fixated-megalomaniac-email-addict
http://agsense.org/atrazine-the-strange-case-of-dr-tyrone-hayes/
I just spoke with a colleague about Tyrone Hayes today, not related to this conversation – I was just saying that I didn’t think we could rely on the existing info about atrazine due to Dr. Hayes’s obvious um, shall we say, creative way of expressing himself (please refrain from making specific claims about persons unless they are known to be true, I don’t believe there has been an official diagnosis on Dr. Hayes).
Coincidentally, the person I was speaking with had a close friend who worked in Dr. Hayes’s lab some years ago before he achieved notoriety and the then student first hand conducted experiments where hermaprhodization was observed in amphibians as a result of atrazine – I didn’t ask what concentrations. I’ll have to see if my colleague can contact his friend to see if that person will do a post here. That would be interesting.
I am doing research on nitrifying bacteria as normal commensal organisms. I have found that many organisms living in “the wild” have a biofilm of these bacteria on their external surface, including earthworms, lobsters, clams, mussels, turtle. My hypothesis is that these are commensal and they help to regulate the basal NO/NOx level by oxidizing ammonia released through the organism surface to the nitrifying bacteria which convert it into NO and nitrite which is absorbed.
Nitric oxide is a pleiotropic signaling molecule. One of the things it regulates is the activity of the cytochrome P450 enzymes by binding to the heme and inhibiting the binding of O2. In mammals, testosterone synthesis is inhibited by NO. Low NO causes high testosterone. High androgens cause growth of pubic hair, which expands the niche these bacteria live in which increases the NO/NOx that they produce.
I have written about these bacteria in the context of the Hygiene Hypothesis. I think that many of the adverse health conditions observed today are due to the loss of a biofilm of these bacteria due to bathing practices.
http://books.google.com/books?id=a3mwmXzpsjkC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA103#v=onepage&q&f=false
Low NO mimics high stress and accelerates growth and increases body size (via stimulating androgens). I think that low NO is the mechanism by which antibiotics in animal feed cause increased body size and accelerated sexual maturity. I think that some of the decline in the age of puberty that has been observed in the last century and a half is due to a loss of NO due to bathing practices. In 1850, the average of menarche was almost 17. Now it is ~12 or less.
Atrazine inhibits nitrifying bacteria. If atrazine in the environment was interfering with the NO/NOx production of a biofilm of nitrifying bacteria on the surface of developing larvae, it could easily cause all sorts of endocrine disruption. It is the P450 enzymes that synthesize, regulate and transduce the signals from all the steroid hormones as well as many other hormones. Disruption of NO/NOx signaling could cause endocrine disruption too, particularly during development.
Nitrification inhibitors would disrupt NO/NOx regulation too.
Eric, I have been called crazy by many, including Montana’s ex-Governor Judy Martz. I simply told her the state of my mind had nothing what so ever to do with the condition of newborn wildlife. I do not use the kind of language Dr. Hayes uses, but he does good work in my opinion so I am willing to overlook bad language.
I posted some information on what my colleagues and I have found concerning endocrine disruption in wild and domestic mammals and birds under Animals on the Forum. I hope that was where it was supposed to go. Thank you for any suggestions, advise or admonitions you might have concerning my post.
The problem with Tyrone Hayes’ work is that other scientists are unable to replicate his findings. And that’s when he shares his data, which sometimes he doesn’t. He also comes up with results which are not dose-dependent and appear actually to resemble homeopathy which is of course bunk.
Anastasia, the fibers in the photograph on the Moregellons post look exactly like the algae I find growing in among the rhizoids (like roots on plants) of mosses when I pull the mosses apart to identify them. One kind is red and another kind is blue just like the things in the photo. I am assuming the “fibers” in the photo are magnified somewhat. I have no idea what the fibers are, but has an expert on algae identification looked at them? It would be quite strange for algae to be growing in human tissue, but I have seen some things that are very strange in nature.
Woah, Judy! You have lots of interesting things to share, but I’d really like to keep this thread isolated to things related to the original post just so anyone visiting this site after the conversation has ended can find relevant material in the comments. Sorry to be the pain in the butt moderator here.
One other note, if you want to reply to a specific comment, you can click on “Reply” next to the comment date/time and it’ll create a sub-thread. That can help with comment flow sometimes, especially with the Sunflowers to help people keep track of what’s new when they visit the page again.
Who says homeopathy is bunk? If homeopathy is bunk, I and a whole lot of rehabbers and livestock owners must have simply preformed magic or bunk (take your pick) when using Homeopathic Cell Salts to remedy underdeveloped bones, contracted tendons, deviated septums on waterfowl, help bones heal in half time it takes without the Cell Salts and so many other things, I do not have time or room to list them. I have before and after photos.
Other people get the same results I do when using the Homeopathic Cell Salts on humans or animals. The hormone disrupting chemicals work (often synergistically) in extremely low amounts to disrupt the cellular function. The Homeopathic Cell Salts work in extremely low concentrations to stimulate normal cellular function. This discussion probably belongs on the other site in Forum, but it was brought up here.
Every reputable scientist. It violates very basic principles of chemistry and physics. Here are a couple of overviews:
On Science Based Medicine
At Homeowatch, a part of Quackwatch
There are no reputable data supporting homeopathy. Anecdote is not evidence and anecdotes are not data.
Hi Bug Guy,
Those were interesting links you posted. I don’t use anything Homeopathic but Homeopathic Cell Salts and the animals are wild so they are pretty stressed anyway. That stuff about stress doesn’t apply with what rehabbers do. I also treat the broken wing with a splint just like I did prior to ever using the Homeopathic Cell Salt, Calc. Phos. 30X. I do know how many days it took for a broken bone to heal on a young bird or mammal without giving the Calc. Phos. 30X, from 9 to 14 depending on the break, and when giving the Calc. Phos. 30X, from 5 to 7 depending on the break (takes half the time to heal). My niece’s broken leg was healed in three weeks (she is human, by the way). She took one tablet of Calc. Phos. 30X and one tablet of Bioplasma four times a day. Her doctor insisted on X-raying her leg because he couldn’t believe it was healed. He had told her at least 6 weeks on crutches.
Prior to learning about the positive effects of Calc. Phos. 30X I got baby animals with crooked legs, contracted tendons or underbite because of underdevelopment of the upper facial bones or overbite because of an underdeveloped lower jaw or other developmental problems, like disrupted feather development on fledgling birds, and no conventional treatment helped. No vet here knew of any way to help them. The young birds or mammals retained their underbite, overbite, crooked legs, contracted tendons, etc. for life, which often wasn’t very long because they were not releasable. Now I give the young bird or mammal the Calc. Phos. 30X. The food and water or milk formula (depending on the species) is exactly the same as prior to using Calc. Phos. 30X. Bones, feathers, bills, jaws, etc. grow to be normal the way the genetics of the animal dictates. The listed problems are epigenetic changes during development. Underbite can be stimulated to grow to be more normal by giving extra Vitamin D3, minerals and electrolytes, but I have not seen any mammal or bird caused to grow to completely normal by anything but the Homeopathic Cell Salts. Veterinarians who tried the Vitamin D3, or other supplements told me they helped a little, but the underbite or overbite never grew to be completely normal like it does when we give Calc. Phos. 30X.
I also give a tablet of the one that contains all 12 Homeopathic Cell Salts, called Bioplasma. The bird, mammal, amphibian or reptile in rehabilitation receives normal food and water or saline electrolytes if they need it (liquid electrolytes work observably better when Bioplasma is given at the same time). For example, an emaciated, dehydrated, almost dead bird, like a hawk, eagle or owl for example, will be standing up and wanting to eat in just 45 minutes after tubing them with the electrolyte/ Bioplasma combination every 15 minutes from time of arrival. They can then eat a small amount of food, like pinky mice, and digest it without dying, because they hydrate much faster when the Bioplasma is given with the liquid electrolytes. Any raptor rehabber you ask will tell you it is usually very difficult to hydrate an almost dead, dehydrated, emaciated bird enough to feed it before it dies. We also add a Calc. Phos. 30X to the combination to stimulate the cells to more actively transfer calcium from the blood into the cells that need it, like the digestive system. Muscles need calcium to work. Every wildlife rehabber who has used the combination was impressed with how fast the bird or mammal was able to eat and function normally. Rehabbers here and everyone we told about this now save and release birds that are far worse than ones we used to not be able to save. We also get to release normal healthy birds and mammals that came to us with serious epigenetic changes (developmental malformations caused by endocrine disruption). I said I have lots of before and after photos. Having said all this, I do not care at all whether or not you believe that Homeopathic Cell Salts help stimulate cells to work better, unless you have a mammal or a bird with a malformation or broken bone – then it would be nice if you gave it some.
The following statement from one of the articles in no way applies to what the Homeopathic Cell Salts have done for wild animals in rehab. “What is really happening, is that the vet who is using homeopathic remedies, is using his authoritative position to convince the animal owner that the animal being treated with homeopathy is getting better.” Rehabbers are not convinced the animal is getting better unless they do get better. Many veterinarians will not work on wild animals, so we usually splint the broken bones, sew up rips in skin and take care of the animals ourselves. Thank you for the links. Now I know why people say the things they do about Homeopathic Cell Salts. I don’t think they are the same as other Homeopathic remedies (which I do not use). I have seen the Cell Salts actually work. Sorry, this is pretty long.
30X means thirty 10 fold dilutions right? Which means that you’re giving the animal nothing at all (well not really, as it isn’t possible to have source water that pure – but if you had utterly pure water and did those dilutions you’re looking at less than one molecule in a volume similar to the solar system (or thereabouts)) – mechanistically this cannot work – if the substance in question was going to help then the concentration in regular water would either have the effect itself, or swamp the effect.
Most likely what is going on is there is a broad recovery window and you’re simply erroneously chalking up recoveries that happen to be early to the rememdy while ignoring those that take the remedy and fall on the other end of the bell curve – likely not on purpose, which is why to prove efficacy you’d have to do a blinded trial (where you haven’t any idea what you’re giving as treatment) – amusingly most of the vetinary literature on homeopathy doesn’t have controls (at least the mastitis study I read, it was a chuckle until you realize that these people left cows to go untreated with mastitis while testing something that cannot possibly work)
Judy, you still are only providing unsupported anectdotes.
I am beginning to suspect that these cell sals are sold under the homeopathic labeling (probably because they were listed in the old homeopathic pharmacopia) because that allows them to be sold without any efficacy or safety testing. Like the Zicam swabs of a couple of years ago that contained functional amounts of an active ingredient – and caused permanent loss of smell in some patients before the produce was removed from the shelves.
You are also claiming that this simple combination of salts cures a wide variety of conditions of different derivations. That is something that is hard to believe. Medicines have a set mode of action and work on a limited set of conditions.
Please provide some peer-reviewed evidence for these cell salts doing what you claim that they do.
According to Wiki, no such animal exists. The article also claims that they (there are 12 salts) are not strictly “Homeopathic” in the contemporary sense because they don’t claim to work based on the “like cures like” paradigm. They are common among homeopath practitioners, however, and are used at the 1:1000 to 1:1000000 level.
That confirms my suspicion that they are like the Zicam swabs and are being sold under the homeopathic umbrella to avoid efficacy and safety testing.
He, He!! I was just waiting for the big “H” bomb to get dropped …….
Sorry had to drop out for a bit. Damn work! Always getting in the way 🙂
Thanks again pdiff. I said I do not use anything but the Cell Salts and the Cell Salts are not like the other Homeopathic remedies in exactly the way you said. Also, the Cell Salts can be given with food. Touching them does not lessen their affect. We gave them to a nursing mother and there was very strong evidence the nursing baby was favorably affected – have photo evidence only. The Cell Salts work like an electrolyte, stimulating the cellular electricity and thus communication between the cells. I did not say they “cure” anything. I said they stimulate the cells to work more normally, and some organs with disrupted growth during fetal development will become what they were genetically programed to be. Unfortunately, giving the Cell Salts postnatally does not make underdeveloped, misaligned or malformed male genitalia grow to normal. Genital malformations occur on the fetuses I have examined at an earlier stage of development than the bone and tendon problems and thus are permanent.
Regarding the comments about adverse affects. I know taking the two Cell Salts I mentioned do not cause adverse affects like you mentioned, because I take them myself and have not had averse affects. I am old enough to have been diagnosed with osteoporosis, quite a ways below the doctor’s magic line. Then I began taking one tablet of each, Calc. Phos. and Bioplasma morning and night. I ate the same foods and did nothing special to help build up bone density. One year later, I had the bone density of a normal 30 year old female. That was when doctors said no one could reverse depleted bone density, only hold it where it was. I am completely comfortable with affects like that. I had a complete turnaround in other symptoms, like I never have headaches now, no joint or muscle pain (I had severe “what doctors call” fibromyalgia and arthritis in my joints immediately prior to taking the Calc. Phos. twice a day and have had neither since about 36 hours after taking the first tablet) and I am still here, despite three doctors telling me I had only 6 month or so to live. Yeah, I know that is an anectdote, but pretty important to me. Did anyone read my post on the Forum under Animals? Do you know anything about epigenetics? Did you know doctors now give prescriptions where the patient inhales small amounts of the drug or puts a patch on their skin, so miniscule amounts of the prescription drug can seep into their system?
Regarding double blind studies, I do not have a laboratory to do studies. I have told scientists and given them before and after photos. I have been rehabilitating wildlife for 40 years. I still give antibiotics for cuts and puncture wounds or compound fractures. The antibiotics work faster and it takes less antibiotics at a time to achieve the fast result when the two Cell Salts are given at least twice a day to the bird or mammal patient.
If the animal is so badly injured or so sick, cancer for example, that its cells working properly can not fix the problem, it will die no matter what we give it, including antibiotics. Cancer is pretty much a death sentence for a wild animal and unfortunately rehabbers are seeing more and more since 2007. We have no idea why.
By the way, I am still taking the two Cell Salt tablets two or three times a day. I am not on any prescription drug, never got osteoporosis again and definitely do not feel my age, if other ladies my age are a gage. I would like for someone to do a double blind test of Calc. Phos. and of Bioplasma. I am sure of what they would find.
Anecdote and testimonials are not convincing evidence. Nothing you have mentioned has been supported by other sources.
Don’t claim that there isn’t money to study things like cell salts, NCCAM (National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine) spends over $100 million a year to study exactly claimed treatments like this.
These salts are commercially sold, so I have to wonder why the manufacturer hasn’t provided any documentation of efficacy or safety. As I mentioned, the money is there. Good peer-reviewed research would be good public relations and a good selling point. If they are effective, the company would have much to gain and little to lose by doing the proper testing.
I think one problem here is that homeopathic can mean two different things:
1) Highly diluted preparations that are so diluted that they effectively consist only of the diluting agent (water, sugar, etc). This is the “correct” definition but that doesn’t stop people from also using the next definition:
2) Any “natural” medicine including herbs, salts, rocks, etc.
In this case, is Judy referring to “natural” remedies or the diluted definition of homeopathy? The websites I could find about “Homeopathic Cell Salts” were full of unverified claims with no citations but I didn’t see anything about dilutions.
The dilution reference I saw was on Wikipedia where they are talking about how the salts are formulated by 1:9 dilutions in lactose repeated 3 to 6 times. The final products are sold as tablets.
Wiki ref
30X, by any homeopathic definition, is 30 tenfold dilutions – it doesnt necessarily define how much is in the start however, so lets assume they use 10kg per Liter – a 30X solution will have 10^-28kg (or 10^-25g which is 0.1 yoctograms – or approximately one tenth the weight of a proton) – I posit that essentially any water anywhere in the world (probably even freshly distilled) will have more of each of the 12 basal salts in it that 0.1 yoctograms per liter – applying this knowledge to the statement
Essentially you are asking us to believe that either you performed magic, or you performed magic.
pdiff is correct, the tablets are in a lactose base. Yes, the original amount of Calcium Phosphate is put in distilled water then shaken (that is the important part), then diluted 10 times and shaken and this process is repeated the number of times needed to make the 3X, 6X, 30X or whatever. The amount of calcium phosphate remaining is minute. The shaking does something to the calcium phosphate and water mixture. I have no idea how they get it into the tablet form. When a scientist with an electron microscope looked at water in which a tablet of a cell salt (they didn’t say which one) was dissolved, he found microscopic crystal like structures that looked a bit like ice and had a negative electronic charge.
Ewan R, I meant we observed a favorable change in the animal when cell salts are given, which I think can be explained scientifically if someone cared to try. I was trying to say we did not preform magic not that we did.
Finally, I would like to say I am not all that enamored with peer review studies. I worked very hard in all kinds of weather to measure white-tailed deer genitalia. A respected scientist (retired) took the measurements and produced a very well written study, which was published in a peer reviewed journal. All we got for our efforts was nothing done by the State of Montana to find the cause of the problem or even admit there was a problem. The people who worked for the state said the Journal wasn’t any good. They said I could not read a ruler. They said deer with no scrotum at six months of age would grow one when they grew up. Our county health board believed them not the peer reviewed study.
No matter how many peer reviewed studies Tyrone Hayes has done, people still say just things as bad and often far worse about his findings. No wonder he becomes a bit irritated. Now I am going to go back to work and not bother you with what I have observed. Thank you for the great discussion.
If you want to use science in your arguments, then you must use the methods of science. It’s not an option. Not a matter of opinion. Not a choice. It’s sound logical reasoning. The scientific method is the Only known, logically self consistent means of objectively perceiving the world around us. Period. Asking someone to believe you outside that framework is simply irrational.
Its too bad. I never thought we could change your mind, but I had hoped you could at least re-examine your own assumptions. Oh well. I guess the pull of the Red Loop was too strong with that one.
Okay, you are talking about classic homeopathy. The whole shaking (succussion) and dilution is central to the concept. It is supposed to impose the solute “memory” onto the water, so that the water “remembers” the solute even when it has been diluted away and thus still carries the “healing” properties of the solute.
As the links provided explained, homeopathy is complete pseudoscience and for it to work, it would violate our basic concepts of chemistry, physics and biology. You would think that after 200 years, homeopathy would’ve produced some good evidence for efficacy, but there is none. None.
Judy, you have a sadly mistaken idea about publications. Getting a study published is only the start of the process. That allows other researchers to see your results and critique them. To try to replicate the work. To examine what you said you did and to see if it is valid. That is something we all go through when we publish. It is the first step in providing evidence, not the final word.
However, for those wishing to look at a subject, examining the literature is the best place to start because the evidence in presented in a solid, understandable and consistent format. It provides information for others to try to replicate the work and it explains not only what you did, but why and why you came to the conclusions you presented.
Human beings are very susceptible to a range of unconscious biases, that is why we developed scientific protocols like double-blind tests. To minimize the risk of these biases influencing the results. Scientists recognize that even though we are fully aware of these inherent biases, we are still susceptible to them and must take steps to avoid the pitfalls that they lead to.
Huh boy, I didn’t notice that this thread turned into a discussion of homeopathy – I agree with Anastasia that this would be best left to the Forum.
Although this is a digression from the topic of this post, it does seem to fit in that Homeopathy is another extraordinary set of claims that require extraordinary evidence (or at least some basic evidence). The very idea of shaking water and diluting it to make something stronger rather than weaker goes against some very basic concepts in science. If diluting something to 1/10^30 times its original concentration (past the point where there are no molecules of that substance left) makes it more powerful rather than weak to the point of having no effect whatsoever – it would be a huge upheaval of our understanding of how the universe works.
It also ignores some very basic things about reality before it even begins – such as, where did that water come from and why does it not “remember” other things it has been in, such as toilets and nuclear reactor coolant and rainbows? Can you make homeopathic poisons just like you make homeopathic remedies? If it is dangerous to take ten sleeping pills, why is it that James Randi frequently upends entire bottles of “homeopathic sleeping pills” without harm – or even getting a little drowsy? How about when this group of people committed Homeopathic Mass Suicide?
In response to the statement that Judy didn’t claim that homeopathic remedies “cure” anything, the first thing I have to say is that this means you disagree with a fundamental tenet of homeopathy – that “like cures like.” The second is, you are saying that it treats a problem – which is the same thing as saying that it cures that problem. Finally, electron microscopes do not measure charge, nor do they detect the bonds between water molecules. Double-blind studies don’t require a fancy laboratory – it just means that one person randomly administers two or more treatments to a patient (human, non-human animal), one a control, and a second person evaluates these patients without any knowledge of what the treatment is. If giving a homeopathic remedy gives better results than antibiotics on their own – you can test – and know that it helps treat their problems.
Now that I have thrown more fuel and flame on this fire, maybe we can dilute this down and succuss it into the forum instead. 🙂
Those of you that are interested in the homeopathy subtopic may find the following article of interest:
Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize Winner, Takes Homeopathy Seriously
Hormesis is more familar to many U.S. scientists. It is important when considering effects of very low doses of glyphosate on neighboring plants.
While Luc Montagnier may be a Nobel laureate, it doesn’t make his support of homeopathy any more valid.
Recent critique of his work “supporting” homeopathy. The primary reason his name is mentioned is to use Argument from Authority.
Actually, look up “Nobel Disease” 😉
I’m not sure if you mean to make the connection, but (despite the claims of many homeopaths) hormesis is nowhere near the same thing as homeopathy.
In the US, something is legally a homeopathic preparation and can be sold as such simply by being listed in the Homœopathic Pharmacopœia of the United States. Get your magic water listed in the HPUS and you can call your magic water homeopathic.
Homeopathy and hormesis have nothing to do with each other. Hormesis is a real effect of real concentrations of real compounds on physiology. Homeopathy is imagined effects of non-existent concentrations of imaginary compounds. Homeopathy is a placebo.
Henry, If you read the actual paper, it is evident that the effect reported is artifact. A spurious effect of electronic noise using low quality equipment. If high quality equipment is used, with high levels of shielding of noise, the effects go away.
http://www.springerlink.com/index/0557V31188M3766X.pdf
You will note that they did not enclose their equipment in a Faraday cage and they used a Sound Blaster card to do the recording. They even say that noise is necessary.
“The use of the 12 V battery for the computer power supply did reduce, but not abolish this noise, which was found to be necessary for the induction of the resonance signals from the specific nanostructures.”
You know enough about ESR to be able to evaluate their equipment. Would you trust ESR measurements done that way?
“Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize Winner, Takes Homeopathy Seriously”
When 500 nobel prize winners say homeopathy is a load of nonsense but then one comes along who says he believes it works, does that mean he’s right?
The following was stated:
H.Kuska reply. His name was mentioned because it was in the title. My actual statement was:
Please note the words
Did you read the article?
I meant that his name was mentioned in the article title as an Argument from Authority. I apologies for the confusion.
I’m sorry, but “most clinical research” does not support homeopathy. The articles often touted as proof for homeopathy are low-power, usually have small sample sizes and often are poorly blinded or controlled. I would suggest that in addition to my link above that you also read through the links I provided to Judy Hoy on the background of homeopathy, the lack of real evidence supporting it and the simple fact that it violates so many basic tenets of science.
Overall, the linked article about Dr. Montagnier is poorly written, uses multiple logical fallacies and as I mentioned before, homesis really does not support homeopathy. Homesis involves small amounts, not amounts so diluted that none of the solute remains. Even when working with real materials that demonstrate homesis, they have no effect at zero concentration or even extremely minute concentrations. From zero, the curve shows an improvement as concentration increases to a maximum effect point, then the improvement falls away to detrimental as concentration further increases.
The following was stated:
H.Kuska comment: One of the powerful features of Google Scholar is that it tells which reviewed scientific papers have cited a particular reviewed scientific paper. The article that I presented gave references for its statements. If one follows the citations and the citations for the citations, etc. I would expect that you will see that this is a real “in progress” area of science. Since spectroscopy is one of my areas of expertise, I will just give one example from that viewpoint:
“Thus, experimental evidence accumulates that highly
diluted homeopathic preparations, i.e. diluted beyond
the Avogadro limit, exhibit particular physicochemical
properties different from shaken pure solvent. The exact
nature of these properties is not yet known; our current
working hypothesis is an increase in the solvent’s molecular
dynamics for homeopathic preparations. All high quality
experimental data obtained so far by several
independent working groups for different homeopathic
preparations, involving studies with high- and low-field
1H NMR relaxation time, 1H-NMR-spectroscopy, and
thermodynamics are compatible with this ‘dynamization
hypothesis.”
Homeopathy has had over 200 years to make “real progress.” It has failed.
I’m not impressed by the linked article, either. The real differences are weak, the number of samples low, the significance levels are low. Looking at the Figures, the scatter of transmission between potencies looks a lot more like random scatter than real differences. The Y-axis range for each is very small, which makes the small fluctuations between samples look much larger.
And it all boils down to them putting foreward a poorly supported hypothesis based on shotgunning around and finding the random samples that hit as significantly different.
I made the following statement:
We have now seen several comments that the “straw man” set up by a “if you mean” statement.
I feel that I clearly stated what I meant. Are there any comments about this effect of glyphosate? How about this for a starter? 1) When someone sprays glyphosate the nearby weeds will be killed, but will weeds farther away be enhanced? 2) Does this enhancement in any way contribute to the development of glyphosate resistent weeds?
Answer to 1) Yes, there can be a hormetic effect of very low concentrations of glyphosate.
Answer to 2) No. Herbicide resistance develops in populations, not individuals. It selects for resistant population members that were already present in the general population. It does not work through manipulation or mutation of individuals. Since the hormetic effects do not kill or reduce fecundity, no selection occurs. Resistance develops when susceptible individuals are actively removed from the population, i.e. killed by higher rates.
The following was stated:
H.Kuska comment: The above is one view of the elephant.
Another view is to ask why are some of the present population resistant? Among individuals in a population, there is such a thing as adaption by exposure to low doses. I assume that everyone here is familar with having to first take low doses of something in order for the body to tolerate a larger dose. One reviewed scientific publication example is:
http://staff.aist.go.jp/yoshiro-saito/Files/2005.NeursLet.383.256-259.pdf
Yes, Henry, cells and whole organisms can adapt. So your plant slowly acquires resistance and becomes full fledged resistant. And how does it pass this on? Note, to be resistant, the progeny must survive a full dose application in a growers field. Also note that, even if we allow for your gradual adaptation and some of the progeny move on to survive, it is still selection that is driving the population process.
Experimental data that I’m aware of on algae support the mutation theory for several herbicides, including glyphosate:
phytoplankton
The following was stated:
Then a link is given to a different paper than the one that I linked to?????????? The paper that he linked to was cited by 44 other papers.
This appeared in the Discussion Section of one of the citing papers that directly relates to the “different paper” that was cited above:
Title: NMR relaxation evidence for solute-induced nanosized superstructures in ultramolecular aqueous dilutions of silica–lactose
I have a copy of the full paper.
I suggest that responders to this (any) thread where a particular reviewed scientific published paper is being discussed, if possible, first look at what the papers that cite the paper have to say and then link to the actual paper(s) that support their comments.
For the NMR paper, a few things that quickly stand out.
n=5 or 6 series for each. Very low statistical power.
I also find it suspect that they give the P values for their regressions (which says if the slope of the line is different from 0), but not the r^2 values, nor the slope of the lines. Both important pieces of information to determine the importance of a regression fit. Without them, regression is mostly meaningless.
Somebody else citing a poor paper doesn’t improve the quality of the paper. It mostly means that the citing paper is most likely poor.
Henry, did you look at the Luc Montagnier paper I linked to? That was the subject of the paper by Dana Ulman that you linked to first. Dana Ulman put Luc Montagnier’s name in the title. The reason he put his name in the title was because Luc Montagnier has a Nobel Prize. Here is a link that is free.
http://www.iberhome.es/boletin/docs/lucmont.pdf
Did you look at the apparatus he used? What is your assessment of the sensitivity and precision of that apparatus. Would you publish results using an apparatus like that?
daedalus2u, thank you for the link.
My first ESR was home made. I had an interesting “incident” with a new faculty member. He was horrified at the look of my ESR and wanted the department to purchase a commercial one. To back that request up he obtained a test sample that his previous commercial ESR was just able to detect. On my home made ESR the line was way off the chart. He said but look at those small lines on the sides of the main line, your instrument is reporting lines that are not there. I pointed out that they were natural abundance C13 lines. (At that that time people were spending big money to enrich samples to study the C13 lines.) This relates to your question because a skillful scientist with homemade equipment can often run rings around a non specialist with a slick looking commercial instrument.
As to whether I would publish with the experimental apparatus as described in your linked paper. From a quick reading it appears that they took the necessary precautions. I would expect that from a French paper as I have grown to admire French science training.
“the bug guy” has some comments about the stastical analysis. The paper was accepted by the reviewers and the editor. If he feels that he has a valid point, I recommend that he submit a follow up paper.
Regarding his comment:
Wow! In the science world that I exist in scientists mainly cite papers because they support the existing work or they are challenging it (other than just for historical purposes). One has to read the citing paper to determine which.
You were making the big deal about the citations in the papers, please don’t try to shift the goalposts.
And yes, I am aware that citations are used for support in a paper. But when a manuscript cites a poor quality paper, it is often because the manuscript is of poor quality. And when you make a big deal about one paper citing the other, I was pointing out that once citing the other doesn’t make it good.
As for writing a followup paper, no need. Anybody with reasonable experience in statistics could see the weaknesses in the methods and not be impressed. I’m surprised that the issues slipped past peer-review, but it isn’t perfect and these things happen.
So far, all you have pointed to are “we found some tiny differences here” in the middle of a bunch of nonsignficant results that the authors have then tried to extrapolate well beyond the strength of the evidence.
The bug guy stated:
H. Kuska reply: The following is where and when I brought up the topic of citations.
March 27 9:40 am
March 27, 2:06 pm
March 27, 2:06 pm
Your original citing quote
was posted at 4:53 pm on March 27. After the above 3 quotes of mine.
Exactly.
And my position still stands, if someone cites a poor paper, then that manuscript itself is suspect.
I simply used examples you provided.
And you have shifted the discussion away from the lack of good evidence for homeopathy and onto my particular turn of phrase while addressing your claimed evidence.
To expand on the links you provided, they do show the common problems with papers claimed to support homeopathy. Small sample sizes, weak statistical analysis, weak results, and conclusions not supported by the results.
If you are trying to develop a grand hypothesis about how homeopathy works in extremely dilute solutions, don’t ignore the two out of three solutes tested that failed to produce any significant differences. Or ignore the single positive solute’s inconsistent results and lack of a dose response.
One might expect a paper discovering something previously unseen and at odds with all scientific thinking would be published in Nature or Science, or at least something with more impact than a mini cooper hitting an elephant.
The following was stated:
H.Kuska comment. Are we discussing the same paper “NMR relaxation evidence for solute-induced nanosized superstructures in ultramolecular aqueous dilutions of silica–lactose”?
The 2 were controls.
Lack of dose response?
I am not trying to develop any hypothesis. The scientists working in the field are. I suggest that you do not utilize “If you are” type statements” I feel that they do not belong in a scientific discussion.
Energy interactions between molecules and parts of molecules is a very interesting field. I worked in this area for a while with the PCILO method (for which my version was available from the Quantum Chemisrty Program Exchange). I also published some papers utilizing it. It would appear that it may be useful for someone to calculate the energy involved for these proposed clusters.
Slight correction, there were three solvent media tested with the same solute. As you can see in Table 1 only one, the Si-Li solution as a media, was significant. But, since homeopathy preparations are supposed to be made with pure water, even that doesn’t support homeopathy.
In a quick look, I checked the wrong figure when I stated no relation, my mistake.
But still, Figure 2 shows erratic results with some of the plotted lines not significant. It is not that hard to get a significant line fit from five or six data points. Again, the lack of r^2 values for the regression results is a problem. Looking at the small range on the Y-axes and the wide range of errors in the plotted points, those are not strong regressions.
Oh, and when you do a regression on a ratio, if one of the value ranges (the T1 values at both dilution ranges of Si-Li) in the ratio is not significant, the significance of the ratio is also suspect.
At best, this is a weak, preliminary result that needs a large amount of additional work to verify and back it up.
One more thing, I also have a problem when authors try to point out “nearly significant” results. It is not significant. Period.
The following was stated: “pdiff
March 27, 2011 at 9:42 pm ·
H. Kuska reply. Thank you for the informative link. I have no problem with the mutation theory for lethal doses. Which is what the paper discusses. The paper also alludes to the area of sub lethal doses, but does not cover that area.
I would like to see a paper that discusses the contribution, if any, of hormisis with low doses.
It appears that the general area of sub lethal doses resistance is called “creeping resistance”.
A Google Scholar search with the keywords “creeping resistance” and glyphosate gives 20 hits.
Interesting paper, Henry. You will note, however, that the process is still selection over multiple generations. My point 2) above holds true. I will concede, however, that selection can happen at lower non-lethal concentrations.
As a side note, take a look at the supplementary material, Figure S3. This shows a classic hormetic response at the lowest, non-zero dose. Also note that, from what I can tell, they conducted their selection at much higher doses (150 – 250 g/ha).
Hi, I am back. I am posting the references I said I would concerning fetal hypothyroidism, low level exposure to pesticides (umbrella term) and male reproductive effects caused by pesticides and other chemicals on the Forum under Animals. And I listed some more important observations after Chlorothalonil began being used in huge amounts. With regard to how resistance or other characteristics are passed on – has anyone considered epigenetics? With regard to how “homeopathic” substances can have an effect and what people think – there are a lot of things being discovered everyday – I think that when this is figured out by physicists, it will blow a lot of minds, based on my observations of effects on critters.
The following was stated:
“Slight correction, there were three solvent media tested with the same solute. As you can see in Table 1 only one, the Si-Li solution as a media, was significant. But, since homeopathy preparations are supposed to be made with pure water, even that doesn’t support homeopathy.”
H.Kuska reply: Table 1 is part of the “work up” not a conclusion.
This is the section that I feel is pertinent:
“For Sil/Lac in saline, similar variations were observed, nearly
significant for T1 (p=0.057; Table 1, Fig. 2) and only as a trend for T2 (Fig. 2), probably due to the larger scatter of values; but the T1/T2 ratio increased significantly (p=0.036), and its slope as a function of dilution remained significant up to the C9–C21 range. Sil/Lac in water (not represented) exhibited trends similar to SL-Sal, but without significant increase in the T1/T2 ratio. However, a very significant correlation was found between the relaxation times of Sil/Lac in water and those of Sil/Lac in saline for the same dilution levels (p=0.001), which did persist in the C9–C21 and C12–C21 ranges (Table 3 and Fig. 4). Such a correlation was absent between pure water and saline. This noteworthy observation suggests that the presence of Sil/Lac affects the relaxation of water and saline in a similar manner, and that this modification remains detectable in the ultrahigh range of dilution.”
Since the editor allowed this statement and since I am impressed with the thoroughness of the author’s discussion, I am willing to accept that this was/is a “noteworthy observation”.
Your quote shows how the authors were fishing for anything to say.
“Nearly significant and “as a trend” are not significant. The P value for the ratio was rather weak (especially for 5-6 point regressions) and even the authors admit that it was significant for only a part of the range. Plus, as I mentioned, when the trends used to calculate a ratio are not significant, the trend from that ratio is suspect.
Not significant means not significant. That means the result is indistinguishable from random chance.
So, this big significant results actually is directly contradictory to homeopathy since the effect could not be detected in plain water, which is what is used for homeopathic preparations.
It’s not really the editor’s job to make such judgments. Meanwhile, I was not impressed by the discussion and I didn’t find it thorough.
Some of what H. Kuska is over my head. What I have observed is that when I give a tablet of Bioplasma with saline electrolytes, the positive effects are observably much greater, leading me to my hypothesis that the homeopathic cell salts are a very effective electrolyte. If the negatively charged crystalline structures the scientists said were formed, go into the cells, then the cells would be able to actively transport positively charged minerals needed by the cells, like calcium, across the cell walls much faster and more efficiently. That would result in the cells working at a more optimum level and the cells, including the immune system cells would be able to do their jobs much better, especially when antibiotics are also given for infections – as I and other rehabbers have observed. Or the calcium would go to the cells repairing a broken bone as fast as the calcium molecules are needed, resulting in the faster healing time I have observed on so many animals, including humans. That way the cells themselves “cure” the problem and much more quickly than without the homeopathic cell salts. The homeopathic cell salts do not “cure” the problem. If the cells are unable to fix whatever is wrong, even with stimulation by the electrolyte combination (saline solution plus the Bioplasma/Calc. Phos. tablets), the problem does not get “cured” no matter how many cell salts/electrolytes are given. Cancer is a prime example. I could not make advanced throat/facial cancer tumors on any of the birds with that problem go away by giving the electrolyte combination. One can always hope though.
Regarding this statement, “One might expect a paper discovering something previously unseen and at odds with all scientific thinking would be published in Nature or Science, or at least something with more impact than a mini cooper hitting an elephant.”
I have discovered how to make newborn animals with underdeveloped facial bones grow to normal. No one believes it, so would not publish my case studies. I have documented underbite on multiple species for 15 years, now over 50% on all ruminant species examined. When we tried to publish in Nature, they said it wasn’t of interest to their readers.
We tried to get the white-tailed deer genitalia study published in a U.S. journal – they wanted us to pay them thousands of dollars to publish it – didn’t have that kind of money – study was done as a public service to save the wildlife. We published in a less expensive international journal.
I totally agree – I would think at least some of what we have found would be of interest to anyone who is alive, has children, likes to hunt and fish or watch wildlife or wants life as we know it to continue on the planet.
Per page charges are fairly standard in academic journals. They are normally paid by sponsoring institutions.
Have you tried getting funding from some environmental organizations?
You don’t do blinded studies – therefore you don’t have even the remotest chance of being published in any (reputable)journal regarding the effects of homeopathic salts – H.Kuska’s post detailing the duties of a peer reviewer would be sufficient to demonstrate this – claiming medicinal type effects without providing a blinded study in which these effects can be observed is a scientific non-starter.
To induce any great changes these negatively charged structures would have to be enormously negatively charged, which would rather raise the question as to why they had never been observed before, this also works under the rather bizarre assumption that cells can’t potentialize their membranes for optimum uptake of minerals (and what if they needed negatively charged ions I wonder – wouldn’t adding all that negative charge impact this?) by themselves – which is a rather bold claim in and of itself.
My comment was more aimed at the article Henry brought up however – it appears to be claiming to have discovered a hitherto unknown phenomenon which is utterly unexpected, it is therefore rather surprising that it turns up in a journal with no real impact factor at all – well, it would be surprising if the results could be at all trusted, but I figure they cant – not unlike earlier bold claims articles linked to previously (the one in question was from whatever journal my colleague guessed with no prompting and was quoted as calling ‘crap’ and something that thankfully he’d never had to stoop to in order to get a publication) – work discovering something like that might, I guess, not make it into Science or Nature, but if the results are meaningful (and I think the bug guy dissects rather well why they are not – trends and almost significances are stock and trade of people who can’t get results but truly believe in their ideas regardless) they should make it into a respected journal – I’m going to assume that an imapct factor between 1 and 2 suggests a journal that isn’t exactly top of everyone’s “to read” list even in the actual field of interest.
the bug guy stated on March 28, 2011 at 9:33 am :
H. Kuska comment. Why would you expect to see an effect in pure water?
Concerning the statement: “It’s not really the editor’s job to make such judgments.”
Here are the instructions for this journal:
To me this indicates that these are the criteria that the editor will use in requesting/requiring revision and/or rejecting a manuscript.
If this paper is being used as evidence for homeopathy, then it should demonstrate an effect under the same conditions that homeopathic remedies are made. Homeopathic dilution and succussion is done with plain (usually distilled) water.
Exactly. It is not the editor’s job to determine if the study is right, but to make sure that they follow the above guidelines, which the paper does.
An author can fully follow the guidelines and still have a faulty paper. Even with my objections to the manuscript, if I had been a reviewer, I would’ve given my comments above with the recommendation, “accept with major revision.” There is adequate work there for it to be published and to stand or fall on its merits.
I forgot to post two very important references on the Forum, but they are also pertinent here, that is if you like children.
References for effects of low doses of pesticides on children.
Weiss, B., Amler, S. & Amler, R. W. 2004. Pesticides, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS, “Pediatrics” 113: 1030-1036 April.
Ontario College of Family Physicians. 2004. ()
Response to Bug Guy,
Conservation Organizations would not touch developmental malformations – asked all I could find, local and national. Don’t have a sponsoring institution, not connected to one, except for working with scientists at Indiana University. University of Montana, supposedly one of the top wildlife research institutions in the nation would not do anything because of politics and funding by state. Almost every individual connected with media or who had a government job, who tried to do something to publicize the problem or have it addressed had a different job within a couple of months. I really feel guilty about that.
2nd try
References for effects of low doses of pesticides on children.
Ontario College of Family Physicians. 2004.
http://www.ocfp.on.ca/English/OCFP
Weiss, B., Amler, S. & Amler, R. W. 2004. Pesticides, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS “Pediatrics” 113: 1030-1036 April. pedsinreview.aappublications.org/cgi/collection/substance_abuse?page=3
/Communications/CurrentIssues/Pesticides/default.asp?s=1
The statement was made: “Author: the bug guy
Comment:
the bug guy stated:
H.Kuska comment. This is what was stated:
Can anyone else explain what they think this means?
Not much, considering that both of those solutions were not significantly different from their controls under direct examination.
To me, that looks like an example of data mining. Their primary test failed, so they started looking for any relationships they could find that would hit the 5% level.
Let us take a look at this. For both the plain water and saline solutions, no significant differences were detected (Table 1) for T1, T2 and the ratio. Especially for plain water, where the authors couldn’t even mention “near significance.” If this was going to be good evidence for homeopathy, that should’ve been significant. Even with the T1-T2 relationship in Table 3, since the final result was still nonsignificant from controls in Table 1, it has little relevance.
Finally, I find it odd that the authors mentioned preforming t-tests in the methods, but don’t present them in the results or discussion.
The comment was made: ” pdiff March 28, 2011 at 9:49 am · Reply
H.Kuska comment: I wonder if we should be running to the Patent Office with a new method of introducing glyphosate resistance in food crops by sub lethal screening. (Let Nature do the work).
Regarding the journal Journal of Plant Nutrition that Ewan’s friend called “crap” (in another thread).
One of the authors is a USDA scientist. United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Cropping Systems and Water Quality Research Unit, Columbia, Missouri, USA
The impact values and ranking are:
Out of interest Henry, how would you rate a 0.512 impact factor?
On selection happening at non-lethal concentrations – I would have actually been pretty surprised to see selection occuring at lethal concentrations, what with them being lethal and all – it seems to me far more likely that a plant would have a mutation which allowed it to reproduce better under relatively low herbicide application than one which instantly gave it full resistance – glyphosate is interesting (as Henry earlier points out) in that the dose response is a little odd when looked at in terms of growth – as far as I’m aware (and this is a little speculative on my part, and my impact factor is a lot lower than even crappy journals…) what happens is that some glyphosate interrupts the production of aromatic AAs – as we all know IAA is made from aromatic AAs and IAA is a pretty powerful plant hormone – you knock it out even briefly and all of a sudden you no longer have apical dominance (amongst other things) which will tend (if I remember plant biology 102, and I rarely do) to increase bushiness and therefore biomass – although given that it drastically alters plant physiology and morphology this likely reduces fitness (as any random change to how a plant works is likely to do) – therefore it is likely that propensity to tolerate glyphosate could be selected for gradually (and we all love gradualnessitude in selection) on the edges of fields (which is why we also all love precision spraying)
Should we all rush to the patent office about selecting for herbicide resistance by spraying sub-lethal quantities on crops? I doubt it – it is in legal parlance obvious – and has also been discussed here, on a public forum, in detail – meaning you’d have a real hard job getting the patent unless it is already filed. It would however, probably work, eventually, given enough time and space and whatnot. Just make sure you’re spraying brand name roundup rather than a generic – it does my retirement fund more good.
Also I wonder how much utility there is in discussing methods by which homeopathy could conceivably work (even if not directly related) when it has been shown in double blinded studies that it doesn’t work.
Funny you mention that as I was just looking at an article talking about using glyphosate at low rates for early harvesting of sugarcane. Apical dominance goes and you get a big boost in sugar before harvest. Never knew that was done commercially.
The statement was made: “Finally, I find it odd that the authors mentioned preforming t-tests in the methods, but don’t present them in the results or discussion.”
H. Kuska comment: I do not know what is happening today regarding complete presentation of supporting statistical data. In my day authors could sometimes provide this type of additional information to the editor for examination by one or more of the reviewers either on their own or by request. Sometimes there would be a note that additional data were available by request or in a repository.
(An almost always comment by Editors in my day was a request to shorten the paper. We had a joke to add something for the editor to cut out so he/she could feel that he/she was doing his/her job.)
he following was asked by Ewan R on March 28, 2011 at 1:58 pm:
HKuska comment: I gave both the 1 year and 5 year information. The rankings were 18 % for 1 year and 61.6 % for 5 years. I assume that a 5 year average is more meaningful. If one year was only 18 % there must of been at least one year above the 61.6 % 5 year value. If above average (61.6 %) is “crap”, I have to wonder about the field. (Maybe this has to do with a definition problem, fertilizer?)
The impact factors are on a scale where even relatively non-impressive wossnames like PLoS One score greater than 5 (if I remember right – I may come and correct myself later) – big name publications score higher yet – 0.5 to 1 is barely registering as far as I can tell.
I’m going to go by the word of a researcher who spent the better part of a decade working on plant nutrition and being published in journals that were considered worthwhile – the percentages don’t necessarily reflect anything other than a poor field – I’m pretty sure I could rank in the top 5 in a 10k run pretty easily if the competition were all toddlers – that doesn’t make me a long distance runner however.
The following was stated in the original article by Anastasia Bodnar on 27 February 2011:
Where does the “out of five” come from?
“it is a measure of the frequency with which the “average article” in a journal has been cited in a given period of time.”
There is a considerable amount of criticism about Impact Factors. One of the major ones is that it is biased against specialty publications
Impact Factor is not scaled to 5, since journals like Nature and Science have IPs around 30.
Referencing IPs for the major journals of the Entomological Society of America (1 yr/5 yr):
Environmental Entomology: 1.154/1.449
Journal of Economic Entomology: 1.296/1.577
Journal of Medical Entomology: 1.921/2.215
Annals of the ESA: 0.939/1.257
Also another journal I regularly follow:
Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association: 0.906/1.033
These are the primary entomology journals in the United States.
I guess one has to take into account also somewhat the landscape – looking at agronomy, plant science and ecology (which is where I’d assume the authors of the paper we’re discussing kinda sideways here would fall) you’re landing slap dab at number 275 in terms of impact value, 367 if you include horticulture and soil science.
To return to the topic of interest the journal of molecular liquids ranks 96/137 journals in its category(s) – which seems a mighty strange place to be publishing results which if correct overturn a lot of what we understand about reality.
In the first instance it is probably not such a massive deal that the journal selected for publishing isn’t right up in the top tiers – the results aren’t game changers, the number of journals focusing on plant nutrition are probably a lot smaller than the list I pulled – although it does amuse me that all I had to do was explain the experimental setup and a veteran of plant nutrition studies guessed the journal – in the second instance it is a big deal – when apparently groundbreaking work is in a lower tiered journal that is, to me, pretty suspicious.
(on a side note for tbg – entomology journals appear to hit impact scores in the range you’ve cited by the 2nd page, so the figures you quote still put those journals in the top 50% – again reinforcing that you have to know the territory as well as the absolute score before making an assessment (and taking into account that these scores aren’t, as you pointed out, the be all and end all – I’d take the word of a specialist in whichever field to point out which are the prestige journals and which are crap over the scores – but without any experts in the field on either count at the moment the scores are the only surrogate we have (well other than professionals in the field who I’ve spoken with directly as already mentioned, shame about confidentiality and all that jazz)
The following was stated:
H.Kuska comment: statistics are not governed by something like a tangent function where a infinite small change changes your value from minus infinity to positive infinity. i.e. a p equal to or less than .05 being called significant and p> .05 being called not significant is just a convenient marker for the 95 % probability. Other areas may require P < .001.
I assume that everyone can recognize that a P=.046 and a p=.044 are essentially talking about the same probability (particularly in smaller data sets) even though a canned computer program may round off and say one is significant and one is not.
http://www.jerrydallal.com/LHSP/p05.htm
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/119/3/608
http://www.facs.org/education/rap/schmitz0207.html
What is normal in physical chemistry for an exciting p-value?
Generally in plant sciences you’ve got so much variation going on that 0.05 is a decent cutoff – as far as I’ve seen medical type stuff requires far more stringent values like .01 or .001 even – I would have thought (perhaps wrongly) that for effects which have far lower variability you’d generally only get excited about results that showed pretty high significance – pdiff can probably weigh in a little more cogently on the nature of p-values, variation and effect size.
The following was stated by Ewan R on March 29, 2011 at 7:51 am :
H.Kuska comment: If one is submitting a highly technical specialized paper, I feel that it is completely logical to submit it to a journal that has an editor and reviewers that can evaluate it on its technical merits. The following is the journal description:
Concerning the quoted
no reference was given. I will be very surprised if there are 137 journals with their main emphasis similar to what I have cited above (in particular things like “self assembly in complex liquids” and other areas that are close to this study.
Sorry Henry – Categories listed in the entry on Web of Science – off the top of my head I believe these were:-
Chemistry, Physical
Physics – molecular (and something else)
I still contend that a discovery which is starkly at odds with what we know about dilutions etc, if supported by the evidence provided, belongs in a journal of somewhat higher standing – perhaps not nature or science but at least whatever the Physical chemist’s equivalent to Plant Cell or whatever is (I’m sure you’d be far more conversant in what the leading physical chemisty journals are than I am, but hopefully you get the picture)
Where something is published is a very bad (and completely non-scientific) way of evaluating its scientific merit.
If you can’t evaluate the scientific merit of something without knowing where it is published, you shouldn’t be trying to evaluate it in the first place.
You need to default to the only scientific position you can have without understanding the science, that of “I don’t know”.
daedalus2u,
Admittedly there is something about referring to publication in a prestigious, peer-reviewed journal that smacks of the “appeal to authority” fallacy. Except for the fact that this is more than your garden-variety authority.
And many of us are not in a position to replicate the experiments involved — the ultimate proof — so authority is about as good as it gets.
Being an authority yourself helps.
I disagree on topics which apparently go against the grain or uncover new evidence (apparently the paper under discussion isn’t doing that (see Henry below) and so I’ll happily admit that I’m off track there – although as far as I am aware this isn’t widely known knowledge and I’d be interested if Henry could provide publicly accessible material (I couldn’t get past the abstract of the first piece and was relying on tbg’s analysis – given the p-values under discussion and the conclusions drawn I’d still assume that the choice of journal was more down to findign someone who would publish rather than going to the best place to put such knowledge) detailing these effects – given however that for the other journal, which I commented on extensively – and is in an area I am familiar with – a colleague could guess by the poor trial design and whacky results precisely which journal it was in your point doesn’t really stand – if people in the field can guess the journal that a bad study is in then it stands to reason to be automatically distrustful of fanciful claims made in that journal – of course one should still look at the article in question (assuming it ain’t behind a paywall).
The following was stated: by Ewan R on March 29, 2011 at 12:03 pm
H.Kuska comment. regarding
Have you read the paper?
This is a follow up study to earlier studies to clean up some of the remaining questions.
The editors can decide if there is a thread better suited for the link below (or just not accept it):
“Volunteer corn has emerged as one of the most common weeds in Midwest soybean production. It’s reemergence as a problematic weed is directly related to rapid adoption of glyphosate-resistant corn and sole use of glyphosate in soybean on soybean for weed control. Volunteer corn can reduce soybean yields up to 40% with densities of 16 plants per square meter. In addition, much of the volunteer corn in the eastern corn belt region of the U.S. also carries a Bt trait for insect protection, since the hybrid corn from which it came from was likely to have Bt traits stacked with herbicide resistance traits. Management considerations for volunteer corn in soybean stem from it’s competitive effect on soybean yield, but also minimizing exposure of insect pests to Bt insect protection traits to slow development of Bt resistant insects.”
Look at the topic of the post. If the comment you want to share isn’t related to the topic of the post, then the forum or another post might be a more appropriate place for it. If you’d like to submit a whole new post about another subject, that’s another option, you can find details here.
Coincidentally, I was just discussing this on Twitter today, starting with this question with the very intent of discussing the problem of using RR corn and RR soy. I’d be happy to discuss this issue in the forum if you are interested.