GMW: Royal Society attacks Lancet editor - again!

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GMW: Royal Society attacks Lancet editor - again!

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Mon, 20 Jun 2005 22:35:26 +0100

 

 

 

 

 

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1.'Scaremongering' Lancet accused of causing harm to health and wasting

millions

2.Royal Society - GM WATCH profile

 

COMMENT

 

The Royal Society have never forgiven the Lancet's editor, Richard

Horton, for publishing Pusztai's research on " scientific merit " , after it

had successfully come through a particularly stringent peer review

process.

 

According to the Guardian, the Society's Biological secretary even

threatened Horton as to the consequences if he proceeded with

publication,

but Horton stood his ground.

 

Now they are baying for Horton's blood once again, launching a whole

series of mud-slinging attacks, after Horton called the Society a shrill

and superficial cheerleader for British science, which is about spot

on.

 

The Society's attack dog, over the top response, displays everything

that's most distasteful about its McCarthyite tendencies, which just

happen to be exercised, almost invariably, in support of corporate

science.

 

The Society's disturbing record is given in the GM Watch profile below

this article.

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1.'Scaremongering' Lancet accused of causing harm to health and wasting

millions

By Mark Henderson

The Times, June 18, 2005

 

Nobel prizewinners in the Royal Society attack on editor over

publication of flawed research

 

BRITAIN'S premier medical journal is endangering public health by

publishing unfounded scare stories, 30 of the country's leading

scientists

say today.

Poor editorial judgment at The Lancet has fuelled panic over issues

such as the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, hormone replacement

therapy and genetically modified (GM) crops, the eminent medical

researchers charge in a letter that the journal has refused to publish.

 

The signatories, thirty fellows of the Royal Society, two of whom are

Nobel laureates, accuse it of favouring " desperate headline-seeking "

over sound science, to the detriment of public health. " Under the

editorship of Richard Horton, the publication of badly conducted and

poorly

refereed scare stories has had devastating consequences for individual

and

public health, in the UK and abroad, and carried a high economic cost, "

they say.

 

The letter, seen by The Times, responds to a Lancet editorial last

month that criticised the Royal Society as a " shrill and superficial

cheerleader for British science " that no longer makes major

contributions to

medicine.

 

Fellows of the national science academy were outraged by the attack,

which they saw as a cheap shot from a journal with a record of publishing

research with serious flaws. Last year, The Lancet partially retracted

the 1998 study led by Andrew Wakefield that triggered the MMR vaccine

scare. Dr Horton admitted the study was " entirely flawed " . Many

scientists believe the paper should have been rejected by the journal's

referees.

 

It has also been criticised for publishing research by Arpad Pusztai

that claimed to show that GM potatoes produced worrying biological

changes in rats. A Royal Society committee found it was based on poorly

conducted experiments.

 

The letter suggests that the decision to publish such research stemmed

from a desire to attract headlines and not from balanced assessment of

the best evidence. " The remarkably poor editorial judgment responsible

for this policy is reflected again in the present egregious,

error-strewn and wholly unwarranted attack on the Royal Society, " it said.

 

Professor Mark Pepys, of the Royal Free Hospital, London, who drafted

the letter, said: " The Pusztai and MMR papers are the two most serious

examples. The MMR study was not well reviewed — it was a disgracefully

bad piece of work and the decision to publish it was clearly

scaremongering.

 

" It has had terrible effects: children have died of measles, mumps is

now out there, it has ruined the vaccination programme for MMR and cost

the British taxpayer millions to repair the damage. " Other signatories

include Sir Paul Nurse and Sir Aaron Klug, who have won Nobel prizes

for their work, Sir Walter Bodmer, one of the world's leading

geneticists, and the neuroscientist Dame Nancy Rothwell.

 

Sir Walter said: " At the very least, people in glass houses should not

throw stones. I have given up taking The Lancet, which I used to read

regularly. "

 

Dr Horton said the journal had decided not to publish the letter as it

had accepted similar ones from Lord May of Oxford, the President of the

Royal Society, and Professor David Weatherall, chairman of a committee

named in the editorial.

 

He said that it was part of The Lancet's job to scrutinise institutions

such as the Royal Society, and defended his journal's record and

integrity. " I can't see why trying to generate a debate about the role

of the

Royal Society should have been received with such outright hostility, "

he said.

 

" I can't believe the people who have signed this letter have looked

into the contribution of The Lancet to public health in any detail, or

appreciate the breadth of what we have achieved. I find these suggestions

insulting to those scientists around the world who have chosen to

publish in the journal. "

 

The MMR and GM papers have not been the only sources of controversy

during Dr Horton's eight-year editorship of The Lancet. In 2003 Professor

David Purdie, of Hull-York Medical School, a leading authority on HRT,

criticised a Lancet study suggesting that the treatment could double

the risk of breast cancer as " unbalanced and inflammatory " .

 

An accompanying editorial that urged women to stop taking HRT in light

of evidence about its health risks caused further outrage among

doctors, who said that it would dissuade thousands from taking a

medication

with proven benefits.

 

Later that year Dr Horton called on the Government to ban all tobacco

smoking, a move ridiculed by the Royal College of Physicians and even by

the anti-smoking group ASH. They felt the extreme tone would undermine

efforts to secure a ban in public places, which has wide support in the

medical community.

 

The journal was also criticised last year for, on the eve of the US

presidential election, publishing a statistical study estimating the

death

toll from the Iraq war at 100,000.

 

Dr Horton has been praised widely, however, for the high profile his

journal has given to health issues in the developing world, particularly

those concerning children.

 

He has also won plaudits for his scrutiny of the pharmaceutical

industry, though his stance has made enemies. The Lancet has been

fiercely

critical of drug companies that cover up tests revealing side-effects or

sponsor doctors' attendances at conferences.

------

2.Royal Society - GM WATCH profile

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=113

 

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and claims to be the world's

oldest scientific organization.

 

The Royal Society gives as its primary objective the promotion of

'excellence in science'. However, Moira Brown, a professor of

neurovirology

at Glasgow University, sums up the view of a number of critics when she

describes it as 'a self-perpetuating elite'.

 

Set up as a product of royal patronage, the Society's funds have

traditionally come from the public purse. More recently it has begun to

receive substantial funds from transnational biotechnology corporations,

such as Rhone Poulenc and Glaxo Wellcome, as well as from corporations in

the oil, gas and nuclear industries (see, for example, The Royal

Society Annual Review 1998-99, p.26).

 

Curiously, the Society justifies such donations by saying that it will

ensure it can 'formulate balanced judgements about the use of science

to solve national, social, economic and industrial problems...

independent of vested interests'. But the biologist and social

scientist Dr Tom

Wakeford sees it somewhat differently, 'British citizens are paying

taxes to fund an organisation that actively promotes the interests of

multinational biotech corporations, under the guise of independent

science.'

 

Fellows of the Royal Society often have extensive commercial interests

of their own, or depend on corporate funding for their own research

activities and successes. The Royal Society's former Vice President and

Biological Secretary, Sir Peter Lachmann, for instance, has been:

 

a scientific advisor to SmithKline Beecham;

a non-executive director for Adprotech plc, a biotech company which he

helped spin out from SmithKline Beecham; and

a consultant to Geron Biomed, which markets the cloning technology

behind Dolly the sheep

The Society's former President (1995-2000), Sir Aaron Klug, joined the

Scientific Advisory Board of GeneProt, which has a commercial

relationship with Novartis, in June 2000, ie while still the Society's

President.

 

For 300 years a key principle of the Society was not meddling in public

controversies. Its journal Philosophical Transactions carried a notice

in every issue stating, 'It is an established rule of the Royal

Society... never to give their opinion, as a Body, upon any subject.'

But by

the 1960s the notice had quietly been dropped, and by the late 1990's

the Society's then President, Sir Aaron Klug, was boasting, 'We have

contributed early and proactively to public debate about genetically

modified plants.' (President's Address, The Royal Society Annual Review

1998-99).

 

In September 1998 the Royal Society issued its first report on GM

crops, entitled `Genetically Modified Plants for Food Use'. Its expert

group

broadly concluded that the use of GM plants had the potential to offer

benefits in agricultural practice, food quality, nutrition and health.

 

Almost every member of the group was a known supporter of GM foods. The

chairman was Peter Lachmann - later accused of threatening the editor

of The Lancet in an effort to prevent the publication of Dr Arpad

Pusztai's research showing adverse effects on rats from GM potatoes.

 

Other contributors holding positions within the Society were Aaron Klug

(President), Brian Heap (Foreign Secretary) and Rebecca Bowden

(Secretary). Others involved in drawing up the report included Ed Dart of

Adprotech - the biotech company which Lachmann helped found - and also a

former R & D Director of Zeneca Seeds, Neville Craddock of Nestlé, Phil

Dale

and Mike Gale plus two other colleagues from the John Innes Centre,

Derek Burke, Chris Leaver, Alan Malcolm, and Noreen Murray.

 

A year later the Royal Society was a key contributor to the 'white

paper', Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture, issued jointly by seven

national academies of science. The paper emphasized the potential of GM

crops to relieve hunger and poverty. The team which represented the

Royal Society on this occasion was constituted by Aaron Klug, Brian Heap,

Mike Gale and Michael Lipton, with Rebecca Bowden once again as

Secretary. Gale, Heap and Lipton were also part of the team that

produced the

pro-GM Nuffield Council report that included an appendix highly

critical of Dr Pusztai.

 

The Royal Society and its leading Fellows were key players in the

attacks on Dr Pusztai from the time he went public with doubts about the

safety of GM foods. In February 1999, for instance, nineteen Fellows of

the Royal Society condemned Pusztai, in all but name, in a letter

published in the national press. Among the signatories was Peter Lachmann.

 

Three months later in May 1999 the Royal Society published a partial

'peer review' of Pusztai's then unpublished research. This review was

based not on a properly prepared paper, like that Pusztai and his

collaborator Ewen later had peer-reviewed and published, but on a

far-from-complete internal report intended for use by Pusztai's

research team at the

Rowett Institute.

 

Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, described the Royal Society

review as 'a gesture of breathtaking impertinence to the Rowett Institute

scientists who should be judged only on the full and final publication of

their work.' Peter Lachmann responded with a letter to The Lancet,

attacking both The Lancet and the British Medical Association for

`aligning' themselves `with the tabloid press in opposition to the

Royal Society

and Nuffield Council on BioEthics'.

 

The Royal Society's review was organised by members of a working group

appointed by the Society in coordination with the Society's officers.

The Royal Society claimed that anyone who had already commented on the

Pusztai affair had been excluded from this decision making process in

order to avoid bias. However, William Hill, Patrick Bateson, Brian Heap

and Eric Ash, who were all involved, were all among the co-signatories

of the letter condemning Pusztai that had been published in The Daily

Telegraph back in February.

 

In addition, four key people involved, including the Chair of the

working group, Noreen Murray, as well as Brian Heap, Rebecca Bowden

and Sir

Aaron Klug, were all part of the earlier working group that had issued

the Royal Society's 1998 report supporting GM foods.There were other

issues of bias. For instance, William Hill, the chair of the Pusztai

working group, was also the deputy chair of the Roslin Institute, famous

for genetically modifying animals and for cloning Dolly the sheep. Roslin

in turn had links to Geron Biomed for whom Lachmann consulted.

Similarly, Noreen Murray was the wife of the co-founder of Europe's first

biotechnology company, Biogen.

 

Undaunted by the Royal Society's attack on their unpublished work,

Pusztai and his co-researcher, Prof Stanley Ewen, submitted their final

paper on their experiments to The Lancet. It was sent to six reviewers,

double the normal number, and a clear majority were in favour of its

publication.

 

However, prior to publication the Lancet's editor Richard Horton

received a phone call from Peter Lachmann, the former Vice-President

of the

Royal Society. According to Horton, Lachmann called him `immoral' for

publishing something he knew to be `untrue'. Towards the end of the

conversation Horton says Lachmann also told him that if he published

Pusztai's paper, this would `have implications for his personal

position' as

editor.

 

The Guardian broke the news of Horton being threatened in November 1999

in a front-page story. It quoted Horton saying that the Royal Society

had acted like a Star Chamber over the Pusztai affair. `The Royal

Society has absolutely no remit to conduct that sort of inquiry.'

Lachmann

denied threatening Horton although he admitted making the phone call in

order to discuss the pending publication.

 

The Guardian also talked of a GM `rebuttal unit' operating from within

the Royal Society. According to the journalist Andy Rowell, who helped

research The Guardian article, Rebecca Bowden, who had coordinated the

Pusztai peer-review and who had worked for the Government's

Biotechnology Unit before joining The Royal Society in 1998, admitted

to the

paper, 'We have an organization that filters the news out there. It's

really

an information exchange to keep an eye on what's happening and to know

what the government is having problems about … its just so that I know

who to put up.'

 

The attacks on The Lancet editor and his decision to publish Pusztai's

paper continued. Sir Aaron Klug, vigorously opposed the publication of

Pusztai's research, saying it was fatally flawed in design because the

protein content of the diets which control groups of rats were fed on

was not the same as that of the other diets. Pusztai commented: 'In

fact, the paper clearly states that ALL diets had the same protein

content

and were iso-energetic. I cannot assume that Sir Aaron is not

sufficiently intelligent to read a simple statement as that, so the only

conclusion I can come to is that he deliberately briefed the reporters

with

something that was untrue.'

 

Richard Horton remained unbowed. `Stanley Ewen and Arpad Pusztai's

research letter,' he wrote, 'was published on grounds of scientific

merit,

as well as public interest'. What Sir Aaron Klug from the Royal Society

cannot `defend is the reckless decision of the Royal Society to abandon

the principles of due process in passing judgement on their work. To

review and then publish criticism of these researchers' findings without

publishing either their original data or their response was, at best,

unfair and ill-judged'.

 

The attacks continue unabated. Peter Lachmann's successor as Biological

Secretary of the Royal Society, Patrick Bateson, told readers of the

British Association's journal Science and Public Affairs that The Lancet

had only published Pusztai's research 'in the face of objections by its

statistically-competent referees' (June 2002, Mavericks are not always

right). Bateson, presumably deliberately, inverts the fact that

Pusztai's Lancet paper successfully came through a peer review process

that

was far more stringent than that applying to most published papers.

 

In an article in The Independent, giving the Royal Society's views on

why the public no longer trusts experts like themselves - 'Scientists

blame media and fraud for fall in public trust' -Pusztai's work is

categorised as 'fraud'. Pusztai's peer reviewers, we are told in the

article,

'refused it for publication, citing numerous flaws in its methods -

notably that the rats in the experiment had not been fed GM potatoes, but

normal ones spiked with a toxin that GM potatoes might have made.'

Almost every word of this is straight fabrication. There was no fraud.

Rats

were fed GM potatoes. The publication of Pusztai's Lancet paper was

supported by a clear majority of its peer reviewers, etc. etc. It is

particularly ironic that such a travesty should have been published in an

article reporting the Royal Society's concerns about the reporting of

science in the media.

 

In February 2002 a new Royal Society report on GM crops was published

as an update to the Society's September 1998 report. The expert group

which produced it was much more broadly based than in '98 and the report

took a noticeably more cautious line. 'British Scientists Turn on GM

Foods', ran The Guardian's headline on a report which included an

admission `that GM technology could lead to... unpredicted harmful

changes in

the nutritional status of foods'.

 

The expert group was chaired by Jim Smith, who had sat on the Society's

Pusztai working group, and tucked away inside the report was a

paragraph on Pusztai. Once again, it was designed to mislead.

 

The first part of the paragraph read: `In June 1999, the Royal Society

published a report, review of data on possible toxicity of GM potatoes,

in response to claims made by Dr Pusztai (Ewen and Pusztai, 1999). The

report found that Dr Pusztai had produced no convincing evidence of

adverse effects from GM potatoes on the growth of rats or their immune

function.'

 

The Royal Society report references the phrase 'claims made by Dr

Pusztai' - claims it said it had reviewed - to the article published by

Pusztai and Ewen in The Lancet in 1999. In fact, however, the Royal

Society's partial review of Pusztai's research was published months

before The

Lancet article appeared. The Royal Society thus conceals the fact that

it had only ever reviewed part of Pusztai's data, condemning him ahead

of publication of his actual paper.

 

The 2002 report continued: `It concluded that the only way to clarify

Dr Pusztai's claims would be to refine his experimental design and carry

out further studies to test clearly defined hypotheses focused on the

specific effects reported by him. Such studies, on the results of

feeding GM sweet peppers and GM tomatoes to rats,and GM soya to mice and

rats, have now been completed and no adverse effects have been found

(Gasson and Burke, 2001).'

 

But the Gasson and Burke paper, to which these further feeding studies

are referenced by the Society, was not a piece of primary research but

an `opinion' piece written by two pro-GM scientists, Mike Gasson and

Derek Burke. Worse, one of t he two further studies mentioned had not

even been published, except by way of summary, ie it had never been fully

peer-reviewed. In other words, the Royal Society uses an unpublished

and un-peer-reviewed study to attack Pusztai, two years after it had

condemned him for speaking to the media without first publishing

peer-reviewed work.

 

In response to criticism, the Royal Society admitted that the work in

question remained unpublished but said this was not a problem because,

`it had been discussed at international scientific conferences'. By

this definition, however, Pusztai's research would have been equally

validated before the Society ever launched its partial review as it

had been

presented at an international conference prior to the Society's review.

Curiously, the Royal Society has also described the opinion piece by

Gasson and Burke as 'primary research,' even though it is a literature

review involving no lab work.

 

Andy Rowell, author of a book that deals extensively with the Royal

Society's role in the Pusztai affair, writes, 'the fundamental flaw in

the

scientific establishment's response is not that they try and damn

Pusztai with unpublished data, nor is it that they have overlooked

published

studies [supporting Pusztai's concerns], but that in 1999, everyone

agreed that more work was needed. Three years later, that work remains to

be undertaken... [A] scientific body, like The Royal Society, that

allocates millions in research funds every year, could have funded a

repeat

of Pusztai's experiments.'

 

The Royal Society's support for GM has involved more than issuing

reports and condemning Pusztai. The Society has also sought to assert

control over how the media reports scientific controversies. In 1999 it

issued its Guidance for editors, which begins by quoting the Press

Complaints Commission Code that, 'newspapers and periodicals must take

care not

to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted material', and warns,

'Editors must be able to demonstrate that the necessary steps have been

taken'.

 

'Journalists', the guidelines state, 'must make every effort to

establish the credibility of scientists and their work'. To assist

them in

this, the Royal Society said it would publish a directory that provided a

list of suitable scientists to advise journalists on their stories. The

implication is that the nominated expert in the field would be able to

comment both on the scientific issues and the validity of the views of

the scientist in question, giving a sense of their orthodoxy and

legitimacy.

 

When the Royal Society's directory was made available online, it was

criticised in The Times: 'At best, it can be seen as undemocratic

nannying tendency. At worst, sinister news manipulation by scientific

spin-doctors who cannot even agree among themselves on many issues or

who may,

in order to conceal incompetence or hidden agendas, try to play down a

serious threat to public health and safety.'

 

Stephen Cox, for the Royal Society, told The Times, 'There is no

censorship involved, but the scientific community feels under siege from

hostile press coverage of such issues as GM foods and cloning'. Among the

experts the Royal Society listed for issues to do with GM foods and

genetic manipulation were Mike Gale and Anthony Trewavas.

 

The idea of a directory of approved experts for journalists was

eventually taken over by the industry-funded Science Media Centre (SMC),

housed within the Royal Institution (RI). The Royal Society's Guidance

for

editors was similarly replaced by Guidelines on science and health

communication prepared by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) in

partnership with the Royal Society and the Royal Institution. The British

Medical Journal is amongst those who have noted the SIRC's intimate links

to the food and drinks industry.

 

In addition, to the SIRC and the SMC, the Royal Society has also worked

closely with another lobby group, Sense About Science (SAS) - the

directors of both the SMC and the SAS are part of the Living Marxism

network.

 

Both the Royal Society and Sense About Science have set up working

groups on the issue of the reporting of science and peer review. The

Sense

About Science working party is chaired by the Royal Society's former

Vice President, Sir Brian Heap. Pat Bateson, the Society's Biological

Secretary has been assigned to liaise with the SAS working party as has

Bob Ward, its senior manager for press and public relations. Peter

Lachmann is also on the SAS working party which meets at the Royal

Society.

 

Simultaneously the Royal Society has established its own working party

on peer review. It was this that prompted The Independent article about

how the Royal Society was battling scientific fraud and innacurate

reporting in the media. A Fellow of the Royal Society and member of its

working party, Prof Harvey, was quoted a The Scotsman article on the

working party, saying Pusztai had been reported as 'right' when he was

'wrong'. Harvey also referred to Pusztai's 'spurious results'. Andy

Rowell

commented in The Guardian, 'already this investigation looks like it

will be used to attack those who have published science critical of

commercially sensitive areas'.

 

As details of Britain's official `public debate' on GM were finalised

in autumn 2002, Lord May, who succeeded Aaron Klug as President of the

Royal Society, spoke out about the danger of its being 'hijacked' by

'lobby groups'. Part of the official process was a science review.

Most of

the meetings set up to assist the science review panelists in their

work took place at the Royal Society or the Royal Institution.

 

Dr Les Levidow was among a number of scientists who complained about

partisan chairing and other problems of bias at the meetings held at the

Royal Society: Dr Levidov complained that far from an open debate on

the science, what occurred at the Royal Society 'policed the scientific

debate through assumptions and emphases favourable to GM crops'. He

concluded, 'If there is to be an open debate on scientific unknowns and

difficult issues in risk research, then it will need to be organized

elsewhere.'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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