MIT Scientist Exposes Monsanto

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http://covvha.net/mit-scientist-exposes-monsanto/

I haven't watched the video of her speech at Autism One yet, but I will later when I have time.

Anyways, read the article. Cliffs: Glyphosate (Roundup) destroys our guts and helps cause autism.

I will believe THAT when I see it in a vetted peer-review study in a reputable scientific journal.

The website at the other end of your link has a well-known reputation for being a playground for conspiracy theorists, fear-mongers, and other woo-woo nutjobs.

Actually, the quoted computer scientist thinks that the aluminium in vaccines causes autism after glyphosate makes the gut more permeable to it and prevents it being excreted.

@Fnord: the claims she made are, strictly speaking, peer reviewed. However, they are mostly published in a journal called "Entropy" with an impact factor of 1.5. The subject has nothing to do with entropy. Whilst it may strictly be peer reviewed, it certainly isn't a prestigious journal, and claims of this magnitude would be. More information

Not all of her papers are published in journals as prestigious as "Entropy", though. The one she particularly emphasises was published in "Medical Hypotheses". This journal has historically resisted peer review. Whilst it officially started using it in 2012 after being criticised for publishing AIDS denialist papers with no substance, I wonder how many papers it rejects...

Her papers are alarmist and sensationalised. They use BuzzFeed style headlines (“Is Cholesterol Sulfate Deficiency a Common Factor in Preeclampsia, Autism, and Pernicious Anemia?”), alarmist phrases like "the incidence of autism is alarmingly on the rise" and indeed "It can now no longer be denied that the incidence of ASD is alarmingly on the rise in the U.S." (they cite an article for this claim but that article doesn't say that at all...). This key paper does not have a results section or a methods section. As you'd expect from such a paper, it doesn't provide any new data, merely stating the results of other people's papers and then "hypothesising" with no attempts to verify those hypotheses. Then, to cap it off, the "discussion" section doesn't cite any articles!

Here are some reviews of the effects of glyphosate on human health:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22202229
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22683395
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21798302

Some key sentences:

While absence of evidence is not inherently evidence of absence, the absence of evidence does indicate that (1) there is currently no empirical evidence; (2) more research is needed; and (3) any current "evidence" is limited to personal opinions and obscure statistical manipulation, and can easily be dismissed and ignored.

Although in this case, there is "evidence of absence".

Just skimming the article I saw claims that MMR vaccines were a significant contributor to rising autism rates-something that really has been disproven. Another claim was that autism is a form of encephalitis...

The general pattern of argument seems more on the conspiracy theory level than application of the scientific method in the pursuit of knowledge about reality.

Round-Up causes autism - oh crap

We're on a sandy rural property where poison ivy tends to grow. Guess what I kill it with. And yes we're on a well.

A computer scientist is studying autism and pesticides? wtf

Having taken a number of statistics courses myself, it makes sense. Comp sci people know their math and numbers and can cross reference and correlate mass amounts of data with computer algorithms. I see nothing wrong with a Comp sci person plugging in the numbers and seeing what they come up with. Same with economists or anyone else with knowledge of the mathematics & processes required to determine cause and effect correlations.

The cliffs of what I've read about it is that glyphosate does damage to the gut, which in turn helps cause ASD symptoms.

I've been wondering lately if all of this means that a contributing factor to ASD could be some sort of fault in the enteric nervous system throughout the digestive tract. It could be that it's hypersensitive to bacteria & neurotransmitter levels or something along those lines. There's got to be some sort of connection to the operating processes of the enteric nervous system w/ all of this gut-brain link stuff. IMO.

As for using roundup… don't. At all. Don't touch it, breathe it, ingest it etc. Avoid it as much as possible. Even completely discarding the possibly ASD connection, there are a lot of horror stories out there about all sorts of illnesses and neurological problems caused by roundup. Google/youtube and see for yourself. It's pretty awful stuff - far worse than poison ivy.

They don't know enough about science to determine what is plausible.

For example, purchases of organic food in the USA have shot up over the last 20 years, just as the rate of autism diagnosis has, but nobody is seriously suggesting that eating organic food causes autism. The number of pirates correlates very closely in a negative fashion with global average temperature, but nobody seriously claims that pirates prevent global warming.

Besides, that isn't what she does - she talks about what other people are doing, makes biochemical hypotheses, and then provides no analysis or research of her own! If she did, then she wouldn't have to resort to publishing in these shoddy journals.

Obviously correlation does not equal causation. I'm sure she knows this, too.

I don't know her or her work.

But from your posts, it sounds to me like you have a bit of a special interest in telling others their work isn't sufficient - that they're not "real" scientists. Here's an idea: Rather than constantly cut others down as if you are The expert on what is and isn't science, why do you go study and prove or disprove something and share your efforts with the scientific community? You'd think you'd get more satisfaction out of that than constantly trying to negate the work of others.

I don't know if chemical herbicides cause autism, but it's not surprising that they are harmful. How could they be toxic to plants but fine for us?

One thing that most people don't realize is that aluminum is very common in the environment. It's the most abundant mineral in the Earth's crust and is found in just about all soils. We are all exposed to aluminum every day. If aluminum was really responsible for all these problems associated with it, then there is hardly anyone who wouldn't already be suffering from those problems.

You certainly wouldn't get away from it by only eating organic foods since it will undoubtedly contain every bit as much aluminum as non-organic foods.

Failure due to Fallacy of False Authority.

This serves only to damage whatever is left of any credibility that the Anti-GMO / Monsanto-Haters may have once had.

Subject dead. Close the thread.

You're projecting in bad faith, and I'd appreciate it if you'd not tell me what I do and don't like doing.

I have a special interest in educating people about science and dangerous pseudoscience. Vaccine conspiracy theories are dangerous pseudoscience. That isn't hyperbole, people actually die because of this claptrap that you're quite happy to promote because the person saying it also shares your unfounded fear of non-organic food.

It's similar with GMOs. Now don't get me wrong, there are lots of reasons to hate on Monsanto, but Roundup supposedly having huge, sweeping effects on human health isn't one of them. Generally speaking, Roundup is superior to the alternatives, which contributes to its widespread popularity. As posted above, we do not currently have any reason to suspect that it might be harming human health. If the likes of NaturalNews had their way and there was a huge public uprising against it, we'd end up with other pesticides, which are either worse for the environment, worse for consumers health, or, perhaps least pressingly, worse at actually doing their job.

I point out when people are wrong, which some people manage to be with alarming regularity, but I also admire the work of many scientists, and, where appropriate, I praise it. I'm particularly fond of the work of Dunning and Kruger, as well as Tversky and Kahnemann, which I recommend anyone checks out. I like the Cochrane Collaboration and Ben Goldacre. I like Christian Both and Marcel Visser, but when you start spouting unsubstantiated pseudoscience then it isn't particularly relevant to bring that up.

Generally, second year undergraduates do not get funding to perform publishable pieces of work. My work on the amount of exposure preferred by waterfront molluscs in Wales was never going to be of interest to anyone but myself, and my study of how grass length affects arthopod diversity was always too limited by time (though the results were consistent with the literature, which doesn't conclude what you'd instinctively suspect). I'm currently working on a literature review on how climate change is affecting and will affect animals' ranges and migrations, which may explain my love for some of the aforementioned scientists, but I don't intend on publishing that either.

But regardless, you are in no position to be lecturing anyone on how they are in no position to make valid criticisms of bad science.

Now, if you'd be willing to respond directly to any of the criticisms made, or if there's anything you'd like explained to you, I'd be happy to help and I'm sure others would too. Alternatively, you can keep throwing your toys out of the pram every time someone points out that something you said didn't stack up.