About three weeks ago, big news came on French TV: A French research team had fed nothing but genetically modified foods (GMF) to mice for a year. The result was an abnormally high mortality and gruesome tumors on female mice. The tumors looked truly horrible in the close-ups French television conveniently provided. Guess what: Monsanto was named!
The French study quickly made its way to American Greenie talk shows. It happened within days.
Me, at the same time, I made a mental note to extend a bet to all comers on this blog that the study would soon be revealed to be a fake. I know scientific swindles. I especially know French swindles when I see them. They tend to be artless, frankly.
Well, I was busy getting used to a new computer and to new Internet connections at the time. I was tardy in extending the bet. I am glad to report that I won’t have to. This week the French scientific establishment came down on the study and on its authors like a ton of bricks for methodological incompetence verging on fraud (“escroquerie“). That’s according to an article in the daily Le Figaro.
I am glad for it. Someone took this burden off my broad shoulders.
Isn’t it true that if your cause is good, you don’t have to lie for it?
“Isn’t it true that if your cause is good, you don’t have to lie for it?”
Yes. That’s why the egregious mendacity of the Teapublicans is so telling. I don’t understand why scientists would throw their reputations away like that. Were they junior people? Old fogies at the end of their career like me?
Frankly, my best answer is that they are French. The spokesperson, one of the research team leaders, appeared on TV to be in his forties. Even in France, it’s not retirement age!
Hard to believe but the French populace’s level of scientific understanding is worse than the American, controlling for social class, etc. The team wanted to be heroes in their own eyes and they really thought they could get away with it.
In addition, I could tell you stories about the corruption of the French academic establishment that would make you feel like a Virgin Mary. I perceive a sea-change though, one for the better. I believe that nowadays, a large fraction of French academics are in favor of international standards of behavior. I mean American standards, by default.
Language matters! (Another story.)