Wednesday, March 24, 2010

WSJ: Feeding the Propaganda of Pro-Corporate Activists http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12092-wsjs-platform-for-pro-gm-propaganda

A week ago the Wall Street Journal published a letter by Dr Henry I Miller in response to an article it had published about the degradation of the peer-review process. According to Dr Miller, "Some of the worst of these flawed papers have conveyed false alarms about the safety of gene-spliced (or 'genetically engineered') plants, which subsequently have been extensively reported in the popular press." 

Miller pointed in particular to two highly flawed papers that had appeared in respectable journals and wrote, "These kinds of failures of peer review and editorial judgment corrupt the traditional process by which new scientific knowledge is obtained and reported, and they inflict irreparable harm on the reporting and archiving of scientific developments for policy makers, the media, the public, and the scientific community." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704416904575121942096732482.html#articleTabs=article

The only problem with this is that very little that Miller claimed about the two studies is actually true. As a result, Claire Robinson of GMWatch wrote to the Wall Street Journal to quote chapter and verse as to why Miller's account of the two papers was simply wrong. She received no reply from the WSJ and as far as we can tell the letter hasn't been published.Why wouldn't the Wall Street Journal want to correct such misleading claims, particularly given that Miller had even labelled one of the published papers "a sham"? One possible answer is suggested by the following article on the site of the industry-backed lobby group the American Council for Science and Health: "ACSH Presents the First Henry I. Miller Award". http://www.acsh.org/events/eventID.41/event_detail.asp

No comments:

Post a Comment