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Volume 38, No. 2

Rigging "Scientific" Studies

Corp-funded research flaws result in positive results

In 2004, the peer-reviewed British Food Journal published a study claiming that when shoppers in a Canadian farm store were given an informed, unbiased choice between genetically modified (GM) corn and non-GM corn, most purchased the GM variety. The research, which was funded by the biotech industry and conducted by four staunch proponents of GM foods, other findings around the world that show how people avoid genetically modified organisms (GMOs) when given a choice. The controversial article was nonetheless given the Journal’s prestigious Award for Excellence for the Most Outstanding Paper of 2004. It is often cited by biotech advocates as proof that people are embracing GM foods.

Fortunately Stuart Laidlaw, a reporter from Canada’s Toronto Star, had visited the farm store several times during the study and described the scenario in his book Secret Ingredients. Far from offering unbiased choices, huge signs placed over the non-GM corn bin read, “Would you eat wormy sweet corn?” It further listed the chemicals that were sprayed during the season. By contrast, the sign above the GM corn stated, “Here’s What Went into Producing Quality Sweet Corn.” No wonder 60% of shoppers avoided the “wormy corn.” In fact, it’s a testament to people’s distrust of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that 40% still went for the “wormy” option.

In addition to the signs, the “consumer education fact sheets” in the store were nothing more than pro-GM propaganda. And the lead researcher, Doug Powell, was even seen trying to convince a customer who purchased non-GM corn to switch to the GM variety.

Cambridge University’s Dr. Richard Jennings, a leading researcher on scientific ethics, described the study as “flagrant fraud.” But there are plenty more examples of “cooked” research in the much more critical area of GMO safety assessments.

  • When dairy farmers inject cows with GM bovine growth hormone (rbGH), there are plenty of changes in the milk—including an increase of that hormone itself. To allay fears, the FDA claimed that pasteurization destroys 90% of the hormone. In reality, the researchers of this drug (then owned by Monsanto) pasteurized the milk 120 times longer than normal. But they only destroyed 19%. So they spiked the milk with a huge amount of extra growth hormone and then repeated the long pasteurization. Only under these artificial conditions were they able to destroy 90%.
  • To demonstrate that rbGH injections didn’t interfere with cows’ fertility, Monsanto appears to have added cows to their study that were pregnant BEFORE injection.
  • When Aventis CropScience prepared samples to see if the potential allergen in StarLink GM corn was intact after cooking, instead of using the standard 30-minutes, they heated the corn for 2 hours.
  • To prove that GM protein breaks down quickly during simulated digestion, biotech companies use thousands of times the amount of digestive enzymes and a much stronger acid than what the World Health Organization recommends.
  • Monsanto told government regulators that the GM protein produced in their high-lysine GM corn was safe for humans, because it is also found in soil. Since people consume small residues of soil on fruits and vegetables, the protein has a long safe history as part of the human diet. But the actual amount of the GM corn protein an average US citizen would consume (if all their corn were Monsanto’s variety),  would be “about 30 billion-4 trillion times” the amount normally consumed in soil residues. For equivalent exposure, people would have to eat as much as 22,000 pounds of soil every second of everyday.

Methods used by biotech companies to hide problems are varied and plentiful. For example, researchers:

  • Use too few subjects to obtain statistical significance
  • Employ insensitive detection techniques—doomed to fail


  • Organs were never weighed
  • Samples were pooled from different locations and conditions, making it near impossible for compositional differences to be statistically significant.



By Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, author of:

Seeds of Deception,
Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods


Citations for studies are available in Part 3 of Genetic Roulette, by Jeffrey M. Smith, 
