Gilles-Eric Séralini, the University of Caen biologist and anti-GMO activist, is under intense pressure to report the full data behind his team’s claim that rats fed for two years with Monsanto’s glyphosate-resistant NK603 maize (corn) developed many more tumors and died earlier than controls.

The rampant problems with this study were noted here early and often, with only the most ardent anti-GM cranks circling the wagons around this work. Their requirement that only people who signed a special document agreeing not to ask other biologists about the results could get the paper during the embargo looked black-helicopters-are-circling paranoid, and Séralini's statement that the European Food Safety Authority were compromised and could not see the data lumped him into crackpot territory by the few who had not already placed him there.

Séralini now claims his experiment was so sloppily designed because he did not expect to find any differences in tumor incidences — no previous tests on GM foods had suggested a cancer risk so he oddly devoted two years of his life to an experiment he now says he expected to fail.  A really odd position for an anti-GMO activist.

Declan Butler at Nature News has the update, along with a nice picture of Séralini posing with his book, part of the PR blitz he continues in hopes he will sell copies before his data is debunked completely.


Credit and link: Nature