Revealed: Rothamsted scientist's role in destruction of key GM research
GM-Free Cymru, 20 May 2012
It has been revealed that Professor John Pickett, the team leader
behind Rothamsted's controversial GM wheat trial, was one of the leading
players in the destruction of a GM safety experiment more than 13 years
ago. He did not need to pull up a GM crop.
There is more than one way to skin a cat, and more than one way to kill off a research project.
In 1998 Dr Arpad Pusztai and his colleagues at the Rowett Research
Institute in Aberdeen discovered that for some reason rats which
consumed GM potatoes in a carefully controlled feeding experiment
suffered from health damage (1). With the permission of the Director of
the Institute Dr Pusztai gave an interview to Granada TV which was aired
after a lag of seven weeks, on August 10th. In the brief interview the
researcher voiced his concerns about his findings and said that he
wished to complete the research and maybe instigate a follow-up project
to confirm his data. He said afterwards that – as a responsible
scientist – he wanted to alert the public to the possible dangers of
eating GM food. All hell was let loose. There was a media frenzy, and
politicians and the GM industry joined forces to denounce Pusztai as
incompetent and irresponsible. The scientific community went into damage
limitation mode, and set about the systematic destruction of Pusztai's
research project and his reputation. His laboratory was closed, his team
members were all dismissed, and Pusztai himself was sacked. His papers
were confiscated, and for a time he was not allowed to speak to the
press or to other scientists. The events of 1998 - 99 are too convoluted
to recount in detail – but the Royal Society, which should have
supported a highly respected and fastidious senior scientist, instead
set about a carefully planned campaign of vilification dressed up as a
"scientific review process." This was absolutely out of order, and
completely unprecedented. To this day we do not know the full background
to this, but there were certainly very powerful political and
commercial interests involved; it is clear that neither the GM industry
nor the British government could cope with the idea that GM crops and
foods might in some way be harmful (2).
Throughout this period of sustained attack Dr Pusztai maintained his
dignity while lesser scientists – including many Fellows of the Royal
Society – prowled and snarled around him and lied about his work in
briefings to the media. To this day they have never found anything
fundamentally wrong with his research, and none of them have ever sought
to repeat it – probably because none of them has the competence (3).
There were several consequences to "The Pusztai Affair." One was that
Arpad Pusztai – the small man mercilessly attacked by the scientific
establishment – became the first "GM martyr" – lauded throughout the
world simply because he spoke the truth. Another consequence was that
the Royal Society became a laughing stock (4) because of its pathetic
and frenzied attempts to find fault with Pusztai's project – which had
after all been set up after a competitive tendering process and whose
protocols had been subject to intense and ongoing peer review and
scrutiny.
Third, it has been argued persuasively that this episode did
irreparable harm to the reputation of British science, which had all too
visibly allowed itself to be swayed by political and commercial
pressures into a systematic misrepresentation of a careful and deeply
worrying (from a public health point of view) piece of safety research.
And fourth, the furore caused a mild concern about GM crops and foods in
the UK to deepen into a solid antipathy, which continues to this day.
Where does John Pickett come into all of this? It is well documented
that he was one of the Royal Society team who set out to destroy
Pusztai's experiments and his reputation. It is not known what role he
played in 1998, but in 1999 he was one of the reviewers of the paper
written by Pusztai and Stanley Ewen which was later published in The
Lancet. Pickett was the only one out of 6 reviewers who opposed
publication, and when he discovered that the paper was to be published
he initiated a spoiler article in The Independent newspaper under the
headline "Scientists revolt at publication of flawed GM study". The
article claimed that the paper had failed the peer review process. That
was a lie. Below (5) there is a brief background to this affair.
It is deeply ironic that Pickett should now be involved in a
high-pressure PR campaign orchestrated by the Rothamsted Research Press
Office and Sense about Science under the title "Don't Destroy Research",
since that is exactly what he and his colleagues set out to do in 1999.
He has claimed that the Rothamsted GM wheat trial is "valid" because it
is publicly funded and because it was grant aided through the normal UK
research funding process. He has also claimed that those who threaten
to "decontaminate" the GM wheat crop would be behaving undemocratically,
since his project has gone through all of the appropriate regulatory
procedures. And yet all that was also true of the Rowett Institute
project led by Arpad Pusztai, which Pickett attacked with such vigour,
presumably because he thought there was something wrong with it.
Commenting for GM-Free Cymru, Dr Brian John says: "We find it more than
a little entertaining that this man is now pleading with protestors to
enter into a scientific debate, and to allow his GM wheat trial to
continue to completion. He is the very same person who joined a pack of
Royal Society rottweilers back in 1999 to discredit an honest and highly
respected senior scientist, to deny him the means of communication, and
to shut down his research programme. He even broke academic convention
by seeking publicly to "spoil" a learned article after himself taking
part in the supposedly anonymous review process. Does he really expect
anybody to take him seriously when he pleads "Don't Destroy Research"?
In 1999 Richard Horton, the Editor of The Lancet, wrote of the
"breathtaking impertinence" of the Royal Society Fellows who sought to
put pressure on him to stop publication. We are tempted to use language a
great deal more colourful than that, but since this might be read by
sensitive souls, we will refrain.
Contact for further info: Dr Brian John, GM-Free Cymru. Tel 01239 820470
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