Doug Powell part of organisation which distorts science reporting

[Guest guest]

GMW: Doug Powell part of organisation which " distorts science

reporting "

 

 

" GM WATCH " <info

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 10:53:57 GMT

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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Recently we ran a profile of GM-promoter Doug Powell and he turns up

again in the article below about an organisation that " seems to be in the

employ of industry, particularly industry that pollutes the environment

or exposes people to health or safety risks " .

 

Powell, it may be remembered, stands accused of biasing research, of

abusing his role as a faculty advisor, and of " aggressive if not vicious

attacks on other scientists " .

 

Even criminal behaviour appears to have been glossed over in order to

allow him to move backwards and forwards without hindrance between

Canada and the US.

 

EXCERPT: " CanStats is an American-inspired organization with an

American director, an American agenda, advisors from the American

Enterprise

Institute and a Canadian target audience.

 

" Canadian advisors include Doug Powell from the University of Guelph,

who is a well-known advocate for genetically modified foods. Powell's

food safety network receives funding from dozens of corporations

including Maple Leaf Foods, McCain's Foods, McDonalds, Meat and Livestock

Australia and Monsanto Canada, to name just the companies beginning

with M. "

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Fraser, Reason, and Reactionary Creep in Canada

 

How the Fraser Institute's U.S.-inspired CanStats targets the media and

distorts science reporting.

 

U.S.-style Media Monitor Comes North

 

By Donald Gutstein

 

Thu., Feb. 10, 2005

http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload & name=News & file=article & sid=1831 & m\

ode=thread & order=0 & thold=0

 

The Vancouver Sun has framed the debate over fish farming as " a case of

duelling science. " Beneath the surface of this story is a shadowy

organization working to discredit any science critical of the industry.

CanStats is short for the Canadian Statistical Assessment Service. This

sounds official, but the organization is actually a division of the

Fraser

Institute.

 

Most of us don't have the time or resources to sift through complex

policy papers, the CanStats web site explains. So we rely on the media to

tell us. But what if the media don't get it right because they slant

the coverage?

 

CanStats is there to " point out the inaccurate use of scientific,

technical and social scientific information in public policy debate. " Yet

since it was launched in 2002, CanStats has rarely found inaccuracies in

industry-backed studies. It presents its mission as a public service,

but CanStats seems to be in the employ of industry, particularly

industry that pollutes the environment or exposes people to health or

safety

risks.

 

And the organization has some revealing connections to the U.S. It is

modelled on the Washington, D.C.–based Stats. Stats was created by the

controversial Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has contributed

significantly to the U.S. media's shift to the right. CanStats is

headed by Kenneth Green, who came to the Fraser Institute from the Reason

Foundation, a Los Angeles-based libertarian think tank. The Reason

Foundation gets its money from many of the same sources as Stats.

 

Who's distorting what?

 

In an April 2004 CanStats Bulletin, researcher Jeremy Brown attacked

the CBC – a common Fraser Institute target over the years – for

distorting scientific findings about sea lice on wild salmon. Brown

accused the

CBC of misreporting a press release from the National Research Council

of Canada. The CBC distortion began in the headline to its story, he

alleges.

 

The National Research Council press release was titled " Aquatic

scientists divided on role of sea lice from salmon farms in decline of

native

salmon in B.C. " According to the CanStats bulletin, the CBC headline

read " Sea lice threatens salmon run, says researchers [sic]. "

 

On the face of it, the headline certainly looks like a distortion by

the public broadcaster. The problem is that the CBC was not reporting on

the National Research Council press release, which was issued on March

2. The CBC news item appeared on April 28, nearly two months later. The

NRC was not even mentioned in the CBC story, which was simply a report

on the work of marine researcher Alexandra Morton.

 

CanStats' claim of CBC distortion was itself a distortion. To make a

fallacious point, CanStats appears to have misrepresented the headline of

the CBC item, which referred to a single researcher, Morton, not

multiple researchers, as in the NRC study.

 

Follow the money

 

In the next CanStats bulletin in October, Brown and CanStats director

Kenneth Green repeated its CBC headline error with the word

'researchers' instead of 'researcher.' They went on to amplify the NRC

news

release, which explained that scientists were divided on the role of

sea lice

in declining wild salmon populations. It contained the views of Morton,

they noted, as well as those of Scott McKinley, a UBC professor who

heads an organization called AquaNET. McKinley disagreed with Morton's

conclusions, saying there could be other explanations for declining wild

salmon populations aside from the threat from sea lice from farmed

salmon operations.

 

The CanStats charge was that the CBC was guilty of bias because it did

not include the views of McKinley, once again glossing over the fact

that the CBC was not covering the news release.

 

But if it really wanted to set the record straight, CanStats should

have described AquaNET, the organization McKinley heads. AquaNET is a

consortium of fish farmers, university researchers and government

agencies

working to promote the industry. Why would he admit sea lice are a

problem?

 

The October CanStats bulletin also complained about the unequal

coverage given by the media to critical and supportive farmed salmon

studies.

A January 2004 study that found much higher levels of cancer-causing

PCBs in farmed salmon than in wild salmon received extensive coverage. A

just-released study that found no difference in PCB levels in farmed

and wild populations received no coverage in the mainstream Canadian

press aside from a Vancouver Sun story.

 

CanStats' conclusion? By giving unequal coverage to the studies, the

media were " playing politics " and " support[ing] the cause of alarmists. "

 

Researching the researchers

 

There's another explanation for the disparity in coverage. The study

that received wide coverage was undertaken by credible, independent

researchers from a number of universities using very large samples and

published in the reputable peer-reviewed journal Science.

 

The study that received coverage only in the Sun – and which led to the

Sun's framing as duelling science – was bogus. It was underwritten by

Salmon of the Americas, an industry front group, was not published in a

peer-reviewed journal let alone in any journal, and its details were

not made public. CanStats overlooked these serious flaws in the study.

 

CanStats favourite source in its fish-farming work is Dr. Charles

Santerre, an associate professor of food and nutrition at Purdue

University.

Santerre's oft-repeated claim, almost a mantra, is that salmon, farmed

or wild, is safe to eat since contaminants are well below standards

established by some regulatory agencies (except for the U.S.

Environmental

Protection Agency).

 

In the interests of accuracy, CanStats should acknowledge that Santerre

consults for Salmon of the Americas and his work has been supported by

Monsanto, an international food corporation and biotechnology pioneer.

 

It's not surprising that CanStats provides industry-friendly material

exclusively when one considers the work of its U.S. prototype. Noam

Chomsky and Ed Herman in their classic study of propaganda, Manufacturing

Consent, call the work of organizations like Stats and CanStats flak: by

criticizing and harassing mainstream media, flak organizations can pull

news reporting to the right.

 

Modelled on success

 

Stats and its parent organization, the Center for Media and Public

Affairs (CMPA), have been spectacularly successful in pushing American

television networks and newspapers rightward during 20 years of effort.

Their work has been documented by Chomsky and Herman and by David Brock's

2004 bombshell best-seller The Republican Noise Machine. CMPA receives

funding from a variety of reactionary foundations such as Lynde and

Harry Bradley, John M. Olin and Carthage.

 

Now the project has come to Canada. CanStats was launched with a grant

from the Donner Canadian Foundation, a key organization in the project

to change the ideological fabric of Canadian society.

 

CanStats is an American-inspired organization with an American

director, an American agenda, advisors from the American Enterprise

Institute

and a Canadian target audience.

 

Canadian advisors include Doug Powell from the University of Guelph,

who is a well-known advocate for genetically modified foods. Powell's

food safety network receives funding from dozens of corporations

including

Maple Leaf Foods, McCain's Foods, McDonalds, Meat and Livestock

Australia and Monsanto Canada, to name just the companies beginning

with M.

 

Most recently CanStats went after marine researcher Alexandra Morton.

In November, The Tyee published an excerpt from Morton's essay from the

book A Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Farming. In the excerpt

Morton describes her efforts to find out if escaped farmed Atlantic

salmon can survive in B.C. waters.

 

She examined the stomach contents of dozens of these fish that had been

caught by B.C. fishermen, looking for evidence of wild food. She did

find some evidence to this effect, as well as other indications that the

fish might be able to spawn, which would set the stage for species

invasion.

 

Why target aquaculture?

 

Morton's work was suggestive and certainly not conclusive but that did

not stop CanStats from mounting a stinging attack in its next bulletin

titled A Stain Upon the Science. The article quibbled with Morton's

numbers but concluded that her work was " junk science " and " scare

literature. "

 

In 2004, CanStats published more bulletins on aquaculture than on any

other subject, except for its output debunking global warming. Why might

the Fraser Institute be so interested in defending the interests of

fish farmers?

 

Fraser Institute director Michael Walker says his organization's

research program is insulated from its sources of funding. So it must

be just

coincidence that one of the institute's largest benefactors is the

Weston family, which also happens to own a major B.C. farmed salmon

operation, Heritage Salmon. The Weston's fishery subsidiary is performing

poorly, losing $26 million in 2002 and another $20 million in 2003. It

needs all the help it can get.

 

Donald Gutstein is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication at

Simon Fraser University.

 

 

 

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