Saturday, November 13, 2010

Sloppy Research Regarding GM Crops

I've come to the conclusion that I'm too busy and far too easily distracted to post to Verbatio with any sort of regularity right now.  (That may change if/when SkepSIG starts up though).  I'll still post when something is on my mind, but in general, I won't beat myself up for not posting regularly.  So if I don't post for a few weeks at a time (like now), don't think that I've completely abandoned Verbatio.  Rather, it's likely that I've just been busy or haven't thought of something to post about lately.  But when something comes up, or when I feel like procrastinating instead of studying for an exam (like I'm doing now), I'll be sure to blog about it.

But I digress, onto the matter at hand: those evil genetically modified (GM) crops!  A classmate of mine linked this study, which compared the effects of 3 different GM maize/corn varieties on mice.  What caught my eye from the beginning is that the authors consistently use the term "toxic" or "toxicity" instead of simply "different."  A change in metabolite concentration in the serum or urine is a sign of hepatorenal toxicity rather than just being statistically different from the control.  Rather than state what their hypothesis was (that the GM crops would just be statistically different, or that certain concentrations would be decreased or elevated), they took any change from the control to be a sign of toxicity, rather than simply a difference.  Sloppy science.