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INC TRUTH DIMMOCK MONCKTON FUCKERY FUNDING

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Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills - Wikipedia

Dimmock v Secretary of State for Education and Skills was a case heard in September–October 2007 in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, concerning the permissibility of the government providing Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth to English state schools as a teaching aid.

The case was brought by Stewart Dimmock, a lorry (HGV) driver and school governor from Kent, England, a father of two sons who attend a state school. Dimmock has twice stood as a local election candidate[1] for the New Party and received backing for the case from Viscount Monckton, the author of the New Party's manifesto.[2] Monckton, one of the UK's most prominent climate change deniers, launched an advertising campaign against Al Gore in March 2007 challenging Gore to a public debate on climate change.[3] Monckton has received funding from a Washington-based conservative think tank of which he is chief policy adviser, the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI), to create a film, Apocalypse No, which will parody Gore, showing Monckton presenting a slide show making an attack on climate change science.[2]

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from morris:

Philip Stott is professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London and a leading climate change sceptic. He also edits the Journal of Biogeography.

Climate change denial and pro-GM blogs

Stott edits his own campaigning website, AntiEcohype,[1] which contains a number of his articles on topics such as climate, sustainability, biotechnology and forests. This website was superseded by a blog, EnviroSpin Watch[2]. This blog was in turn superseded as of October 2007 by a new blog, Global Warming Politics ^[3]. At one time Stott also ran a separate 'Pro-Biotech' website. He is a regular panelist on a 'critical environmental programme' (his description)[4] - BBC Radio 4's Home Planet.[5]

Climate activities

Although he presents himself as an expert debunker of environmental myths, Stott does not appear to have had a single paper published in a scientific journal in the fields in which he most frequently applies this 'expertise', eg climate change or tropical ecology. His views are also generally at odds with the scientific consensus on such issues. ^[6]

In a letter to The Guardian[7] on climate change, Stott attacked the scientific consensus as the problem, saying, 'It is surely time in the UK for a more adult scientific openness about the limitations of our current knowledge.' Yet in the case of biotechnology he seems unwilling to acknowledge any limitations or uncertainties. In fact, according to Stott, genetic engineering can already be confidently declared 'an advance vital for human development' and indeed, 'essential for human survival', being the 'finest of all human adaptations'. These quotations come from an article which he describes as 'one of my more balanced pieces' (personal communication).

Prof Stott also claims to use the tools of post-modernism to expose the 'religious' zeal underlying environmental concerns. Despite this anxiety to 'deconstruct' the language of what he terms 'eco-hype', he shows no comparable interest in unpacking the language of 'techno-utopianism' or of 'sound science' myth making. On the contrary, his own writings on biotechnology are full of religious zeal and what can only be termed 'bio-hype'. Here's Prof Stott on the human genome project, 'Today, we shall truly eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 1.17), for two teams of scientists... have come together to announce the decoding of the alphabet of human life. And we shall be as gods".' In another essay Stott talks of 'that Holy Grail of the human genome, our very own alphabet of life' and continues, 'We are truly standing on a great peak and a new country lies at our feet.'[8]

Pro-GM

Prof Stott displays an extreme antipathy towards those with concerns about genetic engineering and presents them as extremists with semi-clandestine political agendas. Asked in an interview to account for the resistance to GM foods in Europe, he claimed:

the real reason for the hysteria is indeed the exploitation of the fears... by extreme environmental groups, who often have little interest in the 'science', but who havesocial agendas of their own. These groups want to 'stop-the-world-and-get-off' and they will abuse and misuse 'science' to achieve their ends. They are avowedly anti-capitalist, anti-development, anti-science, sometimes even anti-farming, and most certainly anti-American, and they want to position America, and its biotech companies, as the 'Great Satan.' Many were at Seattle and Washington DC for the WTO and World Bank protests, and they regularly visit St Louis in small numbers to attack Monsanto, DuPont, etc.[9]

Affiliations and networks

Ironically, Stott's vision of extremists with underlying agendas exploiting the GM debate fits many of those with whom Philip Stott aligns himself. He serves on theAdvisory Forum of the Scientific Alliance, whose founder describes himself as 'a businessman who is totally fed up with all this environmental stuff' and has suggested Tony Blair introduces martial law. He has also founded a People's Alliance - aka The New Party (the name of Oswald Mosley's first political party), which is so far to the right it has been labelled 'fascist'.

Stott contributes articles to Spiked, an online 'magazine' to which he has a link from his EnviroSpin Watch blog.[10] Spiked is part of a semi-clandestine network of political extremists (the LM Group).

Stott also regularly collaborates with a small coterie of right wing contrarians, including Matt Ridley and Julian Morris, centered principally on the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the related European Science and Environment Forum(ESEF). The latter was set up with funding from Philip Morris as part of the tobacco giant's covert PR campaign to undermine industry-critical research .

Stott likes to emphasise that he is 'a totally independent academic' and that he does not take corporate money, but he appears perfectly happy to closely collaborate with those who do. He also authors material for Tech Central Station, founded by the conservative journo/corporate lobbyist, James Glassman.

Stott appeared as a key contributor in the Counterblast TV programme attacking organic farming, presented by Roger **Bate as director of ESEF. According to Stott, "The idea that [organic] can replace other forms of agriculture is a dangerous lie."[11]

Even though his anti-environmental conclusions correspond precisely with those of the pro-corporate right, Stott claims to be a 'Guardian reader' and that he 'comes from the left'. It is hard to marry such claims with someone who refers disparagingly to the Society Section of The Guardian as 'tear-stained'; labels subject areas like Development Studies 'dubious'; and implies environmentalism is socialism with a green face: 'Environmentalism has become the main vehicle for the resurgence of command-and-control ideas after the collapse of the socialist model in the wake of the Cold War. Discuss...'[12]

At the end of May 2001 theU.S. Embassy and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where Stott worked at the time, hosted a Conference entitled: Seeds of Opportunity: The role of Biotechnology in Agriculture. Stott was the conference chairman. According to the conference blurb, 'Participation will be broad-based, including ... representatives from... environmental groups'. In reality, however, not a single representative from any environmental group spoke at the conference which was heavily weighted in favour of GM.

Indeed, the only environmental group known to have been invited to contribute, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), withdrew because of doubts about the accuracy of the information it had been given. According to Graham Wynne, Chief Executive of the RSPB: 'When we received the details, the balance of the conference content was different to that which had been understood at the time of the invitation to speak.'[13]

Although he constantly deprecates 'ad personam abuse', Stott dismisses the RSPB as the ' "Our feathered friends are more important than anything else in the world!" brigade', labelling the million-member organisation 'nerds with binoculars'! (The 'Real' Green Dictionary - Philip Stott 2001) He also dismissed Dr Arpad Pusztai as a 'maverick' during a BBC Radio 4 programme, The Moral Maze. This piece of 'ad personam abuse' is particularly ironic given that Stott's views are seriously at odds with the scientific consensus on a number of issues.[14]

The environment correspondent of the Guardian, John Vidal, has described Prof Stott - in Stott-like vein - as 'an alarming academic' who pushes George Bush's agenda(The Guardian, June 6, 2001). The director of the Environmental Research Foundation, Peter Montague, is equally blunt: 'It is evident that Professor Stott has abandoned his role as a serious scholar and has become a cheerleader for the biotech industry.'[15]

Stott has been an Advisory Committee member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation since 2009.

Notes

  1. ↑ Forests, AntiEcohype website, accessed 3 Oct 2009
  2. ↑ Home page, EnviroSpin Watch website, accessed 3 Oct 2009
  3. ↑ Home page, Global Warming Politics blog, accessed 3 Oct 2009
  4. ↑ Philip Stott, It's time to visit the 'Home Planet' again..., EnviroSpin Watch blog, Tuesday, February 01, 2005, accessed 3 Oct 2009
  5. ↑ Home page, Home Planet website, accessed 3 Oct 2009
  6. ↑ see Jeff Harvey's comments on Prof Stott's lack of relevant scientific credentials
  7. ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,458853,00.html
  8. ↑ (Biotechnology: Mary Shelley or Galileo?)
  9. ↑ Johan Bakker, Some Straight Talk About GMOs - Interview With Professor Philip Stott, Agriculture Online, 3 July 2000, archived on Monsanto website, accessed 3 Oct 2009
  10. ↑ http://greenspin.blogspot.com/
  11. ↑ Philip Stott, The ‘Organic Myth’, AgAir Update ("an international agricultural aviation publication"), undated, accessed 3 Oct 2009; the same quote is available as a headline and within the article at The Organic Myth: The Idea that it can replace other forms of agriculture is a dangerous lie, BBC Online, 31 Jan 2000, accessed Oct 3 2009
  12. ↑ (These comments were all taken from just one page of Stott's blog)
  13. ↑ Ref needed
  14. ↑ see Jeff Harvey's comments http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/Disgrace.html
  15. ↑ [http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/3187

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Martin Livermore is the Director of the Scientific Alliance.

Background

Livermore was formerly a PR man for the biotechnology company DuPont, as well as for the agrifood giants Unilever and Dalgety. After leaving DuPont in 2001, he set up his own consultancy, Ascham Associates. He claims to have 'extensive networks in the food chain, public sector, NGO and think tank communities'.

The links on Ascham Associates' website are revealing. They include: CropGen, the Sustainable Development Network, Philip Stott's Anti-Ecohype site, Tech Central Station Europe, the International Policy Network, the Scientific Alliance, EuropaBio, Agricultural Biotechnology in Europe, and Spiked Online.

Livermore works closely with people involved in many of these organisations and plays a part in some. For instance, Livermore is a Fellow of the International Policy Network and has recently contributed a chapter to an IPN book attacking the Kyoto protocol edited by Kendra Okonski. He is on the Advisory Forum of the Scientific Alliance along with Philip Stott, Vivian Moses of CropGen, and Spiked contributor/ suppporter BillDurodie. Sense about Science list a 'Mr M Livermore' amongst those from whom it has received .

According to Livermore's firm Ascham'financial contributions', 'Having had considerable experience in dealing with a wide range of stakeholders, including CSOs (Civil Society Organisations), in the biotechnology sector, we are in an ideal position to help companies manage such relationships sensitively and positively wherever possible.' However, in August 2000 Livermore's activities in this area gave rise to adverse publicity for his then employer DuPont when The Guardian reported Livermore's unsuccessful efforts to lobby such organisations. Livermore was trying to encourage them to withdraw from the Five Year Freeze coalition which wants a freeze on the commercial growing of GM crops. 'A UK representative of DuPont has sparked the behind the scenes row,' The Guardian reported, 'by attempting to persuade four of the largest and most influential partners in the five-year freeze to withdraw their support'. Annoyance was caused by Livermore's suggestion that these organisations, which had arrived at their position of support for the Five Year Freeze democratically, did not reflect 'the opinions and best interests' of their members. A spokesperson for Unison, Britain's biggest trade union, commented that Livermore's approach was 'based on insufficient knowledge and understanding of the issues'.

Livermore has written a number of letters to the national press in support of GM crops in the name of the Scientific Alliance. In late October 2003 The Times reported that, 'More than 100 leading scientists have made a once-in-a-generation appeal to Tony Blair to save British science'. The Times also referred to the signatories as 'leading scientists' and '114 eminent researchers' (Scientists test Blair and find him wanting). Among the 'eminent researchers' who had signed the letter to the Prime Minister was one listed as 'Dr Martin Livermore Plant Scientist; Independent Consultant'. Not only is Livermore not 'eminent' and without a doctorate, he is not a 'researcher' in the accepted sense of the word and his training was in chemistry, not plant science.

The letter to Blair was organised by Sense about Science. The following letter appeared in The Guardian on 3 November 2003.

Letters to the Editor

GM science

"The best scientists will work with industry," proclaims Professor Chris Leaver (Scientists complain GM debate was mishandled, November 1). In which case, the ones who wrote to Tony Blair must be luminaries. The letter's signatories read like a roll call of special interests. Take, for instance, Dr Martin Livermore. He runs an agri-food PR consultancy, prior to which, he did PR for DuPont. He is also part of the anti-environmental Scientific Alliance, as are several other signatories. Yet more belong to the biotech industry funded, pro-GM lobby group, Cropgen. Roll over, Gregor Mendel. A new breed of scientist is at work. Jonathan Matthews, GM Watch

Affiliations

Notes

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Professor Vivian Moses has worked tirelessly to promote GM crops and food in the UK, most notably through his role as Chairman of the panel of scientists of CropGen, the biotech-industry funded lobby group. He is on the advisory panel of Sense About Science, as well as being a Scientific Advisory Forum member of the Scientific Alliance. He has written articles on GM for a number of publications, including Spiked.

Vivian Moses formally retired in 1993 and is now emeritus professor of microbiology at Queen Mary & Westfield College, University of London, and visiting professor of biotechnology at King's College, London. He is also Emeritus/Founding Director of The Centre for Genetic Anthropology at UCL. Throughout the 1960s, and for about 12 years in total, he was a staff scientist of the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, funded by the Atomic Energy Commission, at the University of California, Berkeley. His research there was on bio-organic chemistry, principally control of macromolecular synthesis in microbes.[1]

From 2000-2002 Vivian Moses played a co-ordinating role in the EU project Educating The European Public For Biotechnology,[2] which looked at "the sources of informative material available to the general public" in the light of their importance in terms of the "present and future economic and social significance of biotechnology, together with current consumer attitudes".[3] Among the participants in the project was Peggy Lemaux of UC Berkeley.

Vivian Moses has said that although the "public should be allowed to make their own informed choice about GM foods, it is essential that the biotechnology industry takes the lead in helping educate people on this issue."[4]

The final report of the EU project, "Biotechnology: Educating The European Public" gives specific mention to CropGen, the lobby group which Moses chairs, as a "particularly noteworthy initiative... undertaken by a group of agricultural biotechnology companies active in the UK" who founded "CropGen to make the case for crop biotechnology."[5]

As part of this mission, the CropGen website features a number of questions and answers. For instance, one question asks, 'What are the long-term aims of all this research into GM?' (question 68). CropGen's answer is, 'To continue to use our new knowledge carefully and thoughtfully for the benefit of mankind and the environment'. But several of Moses' publications display considerably more candor about the essential purpose of biotechnology. This is perhaps evident even from their titles, which include "From Cells to Sales", "Entrepreneurial professors", Biotechnology: A Guide for Investors, Exploiting Biotechnology, and Biotechnology: The Science and the Business, which he edited with Ronald Cape.

In their introductory chapter to Biotechnology: The Science and the Business, Moses and Cape describe many definitions of biotechnology as unrealistic and 'rather noble in character, expressing lofty aspirations' while failing to convey that 'biotechnology is not some academic activity, a kind of consequence of innovative laboratory experimentation or a kind of social crusade, but is itself an intensely industrial and commercial matter'. Moses and Cape add, 'Perhaps if pushed, we might describe biotechnology as making money with biology..' (p.1; emphasis in original). Biotechnology, they emphasise, 'is about selling'.[6]

In another of his books, 'Exploiting Biotechnology', Moses describes biotechnology similarly, as 'fundamentally about making money with biology'. Alternative definitions are described as both 'elaborate' and 'a bit woolly'.

He is equally frank in Exploiting Biotechnology about the extraordinary extent of the commercialisation of biology: 'By the end of the 1970s a number of commercial companies were already working directly to generate saleable products based on the new knowledge'. Their corporate laboratories, Moses tells us, 'were almost indistinguishable from the best in the universities... And the scientists, too, were indistinguishable, hardly surprising as most had joined from university laboratories and many who remained professors accepted part-time consultancies with the companies.' (p.2) At no point does Moses appear to consider that this situation may in any way be problematic.

Notes

  1. ↑ See, for example, W. L. NICHOLAS, ELLSWORTH C. DOUGHERTY, EDER LINDSAY HANSEN, OSMUND HOLM-HANSEN, and VIVIAN MOSES, The Incorporation of 14C from Sodium Acetate-2-14C into the Amino Acids of the Soil-Inhabiting Nematode, caenorhabditis briggsae, Journal of Experimental Biology 37,435-443 (1960)
  2. ↑ Educating the European Public for Biotechnology, BOKU website, accessed 6 May 2009
  3. ↑ "Educating the European Public for Biotechnology", BOKU website, accessed 6 May 2009
  4. ↑ Vivian Moses, cited by Andy Rowell in "The alliance of science: 'Independent' groups share pro-GM common ground", The Guardian, 26 March 2003, accessed 6 May 2009
  5. ↑ "Biotechnology: Educating The European Public", BOKU, Coordinator: Prof Vivian Moses, May 31 2002, p. 223
  6. ↑ Vivian Moses and Ronald Cape, Biotechnology: The Science and the Business, CRC, 1999, p.2

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http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Scientific_Alliance

In 2001, Foresight Communications helped launch the Scientific Alliance which claims to offer a rational scientific approach to the environmental debate "in response to the growing concern that the debate on the environment has been distorted by extreme pressure groups". The Scientific Alliance is a UK-based organisation of industry-friendly experts which states that it is "committed to rational discussion and debate on the challenges facing the environment today" [2], and populated by many of Britain's most prominent biotechnology enthusiasts and climate change sceptics. The last of it's key principles states "Aims to ensure that proposed environmental policy is based on actual environmental damage, not speculation" [1]

:{:{The website of the Scientific Alliance seems designed to downplay any sense of extremism. Its colours are muted. The prose style is generally measured and its logo combines a microscope with a pair of scales. However, a careful reading of the views it projects reveals something less than balance.}::{ The Alliance is frequently critical of the scientific consensus on issues that do not fit}:

Contents

Origins

According to The Scotsman, the Scientific Alliance was originally set up by quarryman and director of the British Aggregates Association, Robert Durward, and political consultant Mark Adams.[3]. (British Aggregates Association is another client of Foresight Communications). Durward says he is "a businessman who is totally fed up with all this environmental stuff... much of which is unjustified, such as the climate change levy. We also have the aggregates tax, which will put the UK quarry industry out of business." [4]

According to The Scotsman, Durward has spoken out on many issues, including the 'witch-hunt' against drunk drivers, the 'media-fuelled circus of Kyoto', and the 'bluster emanating from the collective witch-hunt referred to kindly as the green movement'. He has also written,'Perhaps it is now time for Tony Blair to try the "fourth way": declare martial law and let the army sort out our schools, hospitals, and roads as well. Who knows, they might even manage to put the 'great' back into Britain.'[http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?id=83662003&tid=733

The Scientific Alliance's old phone number was also the contact telephone for both the British Aggregates Association and Cloburn quarry in Lanarkshire. The domain name for the Scientific Alliance was initially registered to Cloburn quarry. though this was changed in 2002. Two years after its launch The Scotsman newspaper reported that on contacting the Alliance to ask about Durward's role, 'after some uncertainty, the switchboard it shares with a number of other firms denied any knowledge of Mr Durward's existence. Matthew Drinkwater, the one person responding to calls to its offices, could also be contacted by ringing the offices of Foresight Communications.'

The Scientific Alliance are advised by Foresight Communications. The executive handling the Scientific Alliance account is Mark Adams OBE, who was a private secretary for parliamentary affairs at No. 10 for nearly four years. He also worked as private secretary to Tony Blairfor six months after the 1997 election.[5]Adams has subsequently gone on to become Director.

Conferences

The alliance has organised a series of conferences along with other corporate front groups. In November 2002 it organised a conference on GM called Fields of the Future. The conference chairman was Lord Taverne of Sense about Science, and Tracey Brown of Sense about Science helped to find speakers for the event. In 2003 Bill Durodie, who like Brown is part of the Living Marxism network, joined the Scientific Alliance Advisory Forum. One of the speakers at Fields of the Future was Professor Brian Thomas from Horticultural Research International. An article based on Thomas's speech appeared on both the Scientific Alliance website and that of Spiked, a website run by the former editor of the magazine Living Marxism(later LM). Tracey Brownand Bill Durodie are also Spiked/LM contributors.

In November 2004 the alliance organised a one-day seminar Cautionary Tales: Rethinking Environmental Decision Making and Risk Assessment. Key sessions were "Organic Farming and Pesticides", "Wind Power and its Risks", "Mobile Phones: Public Fear and New Technology" and a series of workshops addressing the precautionary principle.

In December 2004 the alliance teamed up with the George C. Marshall Institute to publish a paper criticising the science of global warming and the Kyoto treaty.

In January 2005 the alliance hosted a half-day conference for climate change sceptics, Apocalypse No - Assessing catastrophic climate change. Speakers included David Bellamy, S. Fred Singer, Richard S. Lindzen, Nils-Axel Mörner, Benny Peiser, and Colin Berry. [6]

Pro-nuclear activities

At the Labour Party Conference in 2004(?), the Alliance held a pro-nuclear meeting with the Nuclear Industry Association[7].

In a Letter to the Editor of the Financial Times, Mia Nybrant of the Scientific Alliance finds "worrying that the British government has chosen to ignore the advice of many eminent scientists on the issue of nuclear policy, including those of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineers". She considers the government's decision to abandon fuel reprocessing evidence of its "neglectful attitude to the nuclear programme and highlights genuine problems with its energy policy". She believes that "a comparatively efficient and emissions-friendly alternative has yet to be discovered". She also laments the "blind faith" of the "anti-nuclear argument" which relies on the "ability of innovation to make renewables economically viable." (Financial Times, September 1, 2003)

Advisory panel

The Scientific Alliance maintains an Advisory Forum which includes the following:

Networks

Some of the key links are as follows:

Martin Livermore of Independent Science Communications, a PR consultant formerly with Dupont, is also a Fellow of the International Policy Network.Professor Michael T. Wilson of Horticulture Research International is advisor to Lord David Sainsbury's company Diatech and one of the world's leading climate sceptics.Professor Vivian Moses of King's College London runs the pro-biotech organisation CropGen and is therefore linked to Lexington CommunicationsMike Wilson and Vivian Moses are also part of Sense About Science.Wilson, Moses, Livermore and other leading GM proponents, including Tony Trewavas, ex-living Marxists Bill Durodie and Philip Stott serve on Alliance's Advisory ForumDr. Sallie Baliunas, George Marshall Institute Senior Scientist, is also associated with Global Climate Coalition; the right-wing Hoover Institution; ESEF; Anapolis Center, and theAmerican Enterprise Institute. Also the Wise Use group, the Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow and Tech Central Station

Against organic farming

On organic farming, for instance, the Scientific Alliance says:

'Many scientists maintain that the organic movement follows ideological principles which are not supported by science. Indeed, Dr Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, has argued that if all farming were to be organic, productivity would be so low that almost all forests around the world would have to be destroyed to make way for agricultural land. If the whole world went organic, it could support only 3-4 billion people, with a high risk of pest and disease epidemics.'

Organic farming, then, if widely adopted, would bring ecological catastrophe, mass starvation and in all probability pest and disease pandemics. Not mentioned is the fact that, since leaving Greenpeace nearly 20 years ago, Patrick Moore has spent much of his time countering environmental concerns as a paid front man for Canada's lumber industrialists. As well as running a website, the Scientific Alliance regularly organises conferences on environmental issues.

Staff

Current Scientific Advisory Forum (accessed January 10, 2008)

The Director of the Scientific Alliance is Martin Livermore

Scientific Advisory Forum (as of Nov. 2003)[8]

Former member: Philip Stott

Contact

The Scientific Alliance

Golden Cross House

8 Duncannon Street

London, WC2N 4JF, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (020) 7484 5094

Fax:+44 (020) 7484 5100

info@scientific-alliance.org

Web:http://www.scientific-alliance.org/

External links

References

  1. Jump up↑ "[1]"

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from SMC

Another letter writer demanding retraction is Prof. Mark Tester. Like Moloney and the JIC, Tester is a firm favourite with the SMC, featuring in three of this year's SMC's media releasesand in many more over the years. He was already a favoured expert a decade ago when the SMC wasaccused of orchestrating a spin campaign to discredit a BBC drama on GM crops. The University of Adelaide staff directory broadens out Prof. Tester's academic profile in a way the SMC never has: "His commercial acumen is clear from his establishment of private companies and successful interactions with multinational companies such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Pioneer-DuPont." 

Many other letter writers also have undisclosed industry links. Take, for instance, Martina Newell-McGloughlin. She identifies herselfas the director of the International Biotechnology Program at the University of California/Davis, but fails to mention that the Program is funded by the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Bayer. Another letter writer and a colleague at UC Davis, Kent Bradford, has consulted for Monsanto. Lucia de Souzawrote to the journalwith Leila Macedo Oda on behalf of ANBio – the Brazilian Biosafety Association, without mentioning that ANBio's funders include Monsanto, Bayer, and DuPont. 

Then there are the letter writers who fail to mention their previous employers, like Andrew Cockburn, Monsanto's former director of scientific affairs (Europe and Africa); L. Val Giddings, former Vice President of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation; and Sivramiah (Shanthu) Shantharam, former Syngenta man and until recently head of the biotech industry's main lobby group in India.  

Even letter writers who at first glance seem like they must be entirely independent of the biotech industry can turn out to have links. Take, for instance, Erio Barale-Thomas, one of the few toxicologists to criticize the Seralini paper in the journal. Barale-Thomas, who says he writes on behalf of the Administrative Council of the French Society of Toxicological Pathology, takes Seralini to task for his failure to declare a conflict of interest in his paper, namely that Seralini is president of CRIIGEN, an independent research group with concerns about GM, which contributed funding to the research. Yet CRIIGEN's contribution to funding the study was declared in the paper, while Barale-Thomas does not disclose in his letter his own biotech interests. He is not only principal scientist at Janssen Biotech, but immediately prior to that he worked for the GM crop and agrochemical giant Bayer CropScience (1998-2003). 

Another French scientist among the letter writers is Prof. Marc Fellous, whose declared connections are academic posts in the sphere of human genetics. What he doesn't mention is that he heads up the French Association of Plant Biotechnology, which lobbies for GM crops and has been so aggressive in its attacks on Seralini that last year he successfully sued Fellous for defamation. 

Science or ideology?

Another letter writer is the pathologist:{Sir Colin Berry. Like Trewavas, Berry is an advisor to theScientific Alliance, an organization which campaigns on environmental issues, particularly climate change, energy policy and agriculture. It is pro-GM, pro-nuclear and sceptical about climate change. Its director, Martin Livermore, runs an agri-food PR consultancy, prior to which he did PR for the GM giant DuPont. The Alliance was established by the lobby firm Foresight Communication with money from right-wing business interests. }:

Trewavas is one of only a couple of scientists who not only signed onto the Prakash, Chassy, Miller letter but also sent their own letter of complaint to the journal. Trewavas concludes it like this: "this paper and this journal have dealt the value of evidence-based knowledge a serious blow and it can only be rectified if the paper is withdrawn by the authors with an apology for misleading the public and the scientific community alike… Ideology and politics must be kept out of scientific study or we all suffer."

It is revealing that critics like Berry and Trewavas claim to champion an evidence-based approach while operating out of lobby groups that attack the scientific consensus on issues like climate change. Berry, incidentally, is also a shareholder in the company that owns the aggressively libertarian online magazine Spiked, which also promotes climate scepticism.Fiona Fox, the director of the Science Media Centre, was a long-time affiliate of the :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{anti-environmental LM network that are behind Spiked. 

The network around AgBioWorld also contains people with similar attitudes on environmental issues. These include Henry Miller, who co-wrote the article accusing Seralini of fraud, and AgBioWorld's co-founder Greg Conko of the Exxon-fundedCompetitive Enterprise Institute, which specializes in denialist "straight talk on global warming." 

Given this, it is ironic that AgBioWorld's Seralini petition was set up in the name of "the scientific community." Similarly, Maurice Moloney says in his letterto Food and Chemical Toxicology that he thinks he can speak "for the vast majority of the biological sciences community." But as we have seen, Moloney and many of the other letter writers link to a narrow and heavily commercialised sector of the biological sciences, albeit one with powerful backers. And some in this community have links to extremist lobby groups more concerned with ideology than evidence. 

Peeling the GM onion

Identifying the real forces behind the front-men and carefully selected experts of "the scientific community" can be like peeling back the layers of an onion. Take Anthony Trewavas, the scientist who first helped get the cancer-prone rat claim into circulation. In 2001 Prof. Trewavas was named in the High Court in London as the source of a letter published in a Scottish newspaper that made libelous claims against GM critics (Greenpeace wins damages over professor's "unfounded" allegations). Trewavas subsequently denied being the author of the libel letter published under his name, though he did admit circulating the material, which he said he had got from AgBioWorld. He said it had been written by a "lady in London" but "she" later turned out to bea front for the same Monsanto PR people who covertly directed the campaign that resulted in Nature's apparent retraction of Chapela's GM maize paper. 

Trewavas, a long-time associate of Prakash and AgBioWorld, also played a notable role in that campaign. In that case, Trewavas encouraged people to demand Chapela be fired by the University of California, Berkeley, unless he handed over his maize samples for checking: "We should be asking Berkeley to request Chapela to release his samples so that they at least can be checked... Refusal to do so should then be used to request Berkeley to relinquish Chapella's [sic] position." Such calls to arms against Chapela were mostly posted on the AgBioWorld listserv. This use of the listserv eventually enabled Monsanto's covert orchestration of the campaign to be exposed. 

The attack dog in the night-time

Interestingly, as the attacks on Prof. Seralini and his paper spread across both mainstream and social media, AgBioWorld's listserv went missing. In the two months following the publication of Seralini's paper, not a single bulletin went out on the listserv that played such a pivotal role in achieving retraction of the Mexican maize paper. 

AgBioWorld's sudden silence calls to mind a famous exchange in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes:

Detective: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Detective: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident." 

With Seralini, it's the curious silence of Monsanto's attack dog that suggests that this time the covert PR war is being conducted by other means.

If the silence of AgBioWorld's listserv is suggestive, so too is the attempt to silenceGMWatch. Within days of the publication of the Seralini paper, our website came under major DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. The contours of the attacks followed the peaks of the controversy, with the two biggest and most debilitating attacks coinciding with days on which the major rebuttals of Seralini's paper were published. The GMWatch website had by then become a clearing house for rapid responses in English to the attacks on Seralini. We have no proof as to who was behind the attacks – that's hard to establish with DDOS. But oddly enough, an article in the Guardian about the retraction campaign against Quist and Chapela noted, "Just before the [Mexican maize] paper in Nature was publicly challenged, the server hosting the accounts used by its authors was disabled by a particularly effective attack which crippled their capacity to fight back." 

More than a decade later history seems to be repeating itself in the covert war over GM crops.

{Jonathan Matthews is the founder and director of GMWatch and has written numerous articles on the politics and spin around GM crops. He's a contributing author toThinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the Assault on Democracy,eds Dinan and Miller (Pluto Press). Additional research: Claire Robinson, co-editor, GMWatch.*}:

*Spinwatch plans to publish a separate piece looking at some of the study's European critics, including science academies and the European Food Safety Authority.

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Professor Anthony Trewavas is often the expert of choice whenever a critical perspective on organic food and farming is required by the UK's media. From the media's perspective Trewavas presents as a prominent scientist who has written extensively on organic farming, including two articles in the prestigious science journal Nature. However, Trewavas is also a scientist with a history of propagandising on behalf of GM foods and against organic farming and there is ample evidence that in the course of that crusade he has put into circulation many statements which are both extreme and unsupported.

Greenpeace libel

In October 2001 "Professor Trewavas,  Professor of Plant Biochemistry at the University of Edinburgh" was named in the High Court in London as the source of a letter making libellous allegations against Lord Melchett and Greenpeace in relation to organic farming and GM foods.Greenpeace wins damages over professor's 'unfounded' allegations - (Education Guardian, Monday October 8, 2001)

A published apology in the Scottish newspaper, the Herald, on the 6th October confirmed that, "On 3 November 2000 the Herald published a letter it had received from Anthony Trewavas." The conclusion of the libel case led to critical comment on the fact that Prof Trewavas was not only a leading Fellow of the Royal Society but is even listed in the Society's media directory as an expert available to help journalists get their science stories right. (see: The Ecologist vol 31 no. 10 p.11," ISIS News, Institute of Science in Society, Private Eye 1040, p.4)

In response to this adverse publicity, Prof Trewavas, in letters to the Herald and others, has sought to deny responsibility for the libel letter published under his name. However, Trewavas has admitted to encouraging others to circulate the material in question as widely as possible, and to sending the material to, amongst others, a newspaper editor and a PR operative with this intent. More recently it has emerged that the original author of the material that Trewavas circulated was another PR operative involved in a [deceit3.html Monsanto dirty tricks campaign].

Citing right wing propaganda as science

The libel case is, in fact, only the latest controversy centering on Prof Trewavas and his views and activities. Take, for instance, the advice he gave to US scientists on a listserv supporting GM foods in April 2000, where he describes critics of genetic engineering as "bloody minded, anarchist and frankly merely destructive." According to Trewavas, opponents of the technology are interested solely "in destroying US agribusiness". In the same message Trewavas describes the international environmental group Greenpeace as "controlled by extremists/nihilists and other subversives... whose only interests [sic] is in destroying business/damaging trade and who have no solution to world population problems except to let people die." He also advises enlisting the help of far right US congressmen like Jesse Helmsby alerting them, "that a subversive organisation directed from europe is attempting to destroy US agriculture and US farming."  advice to US scientists from: "Tony Trewavas"

In the same piece Trewavas advises GM supporters to take every opportunity to contact the media to attack the critics and put forward pro-GM views and Prof Trewavas certainly cannot be faulted for failing to take his own advice! As part of his tireless crusade, Trewavas has even had two articles attacking organic farming published in the journal Nature. However, both are simply opinion pieces involving no original research and the arguments he presents and the sources he draws upon are open to very serious question.

The second of the two Nature pieces is taken apart in ORGANICS ENTER THE SCIENCE WARS Angela Ryan.[1]  The inadequacy of Trewavas' scholarship is equally apparent in the first, 'Much Food, Many Problems' [Nature 402, 231 (1999)]. Here, for example, he presents his readers with a litany of alarming claims:

"Going organic worldwide, as Greenpeace wants, would destroy even more wilderness, much of it of marginal agricultural quality15.""Mycotoxin contamination [of organics] , and infection from the potentially lethal Escherichia coli O157, are additional problems15.""average crop yields [for organics] on a variety of soils are about half those of intensive farming15-17"

The reference given by Trewavas for all three points is, "15. Avery, D. in Fearing Food. Risk, Health and Environment (eds Morris, J. & Bate, R.) 3-18 (Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 1999)". Anyone who actually follows up this reference discovers that it's to a piece by the controversial US journalist and commentator, Dennis Avery -author of the book, 'Saving the planet with pesticides and plastics' - who just happens to (a) work for the biotech-industry-funded Hudson Instituteand (b) have no credible scientific credentials. What's more, all Avery's highly partisan claims about organic agriculture in Fearing Food: Risk, Health and Environment lack any specific references to supporting evidence! In other words, Trewavas' trail of evidence for this series of damaging claims leads nowhere but to the assertions of a highly dubious commentator.

Indeed, the article by Avery to which Trewavas repeatedly refers appears in a book edited by two notorious pro-industry propagandists connected to a corporate front funded by Big Tobacco! Nor is this Trewavas' only connection to the book's editors, Morris and Bate, and their pro-corporate propaganda. In early 2000 Trewavas appeared as a witness against organic farming in the Counterblast TV programme put together and presented by Roger Bate in his role as Director of the tobacco-industry funded European Science and Environment Forum.

Needless to say, Prof Trewavas is not entirely disinterested in his simultaneous promotion of GM crops and crusade against organic farming. Trewavas is himself a GM crop researcher. He also serves on the Governing Council of the John Innes Centre, a plant biotech institute which has itself been mired in controversy over its pro-GM propagandising.

So while Trewavas issues lurid warnings about organic farms acting as "repositories of disease", in reality it is Prof Trewavas himself who is in real need of a health warning!

GM Maize paper

He played a leading role in Nature's unprecented withdrawal of a published paper on GM maize in November 2001.

Roles

Links

Notes

  1.  ORGANICS ENTER THE SCIENCE WARS (original URL) http://www.i-sis.org/isisnews/i-sisnews11-18.shtml ISIS News No 11/12 October 2001, Institute of Science in Society, www.i-sis.org Available:http://members.tripod.com/ngin/trewavas.htm#ORGANICS%20ENTER%20THE%20SCIENCE%20WARS

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wikiPUNK?

Anthony J. Trewavas is a Professor at the University of Edinburgh[1] , best known for his research in the fields of plant physiology and molecular biology. His lifetime research has concerned what is now recognized as plant behavior.He was born in 1939 and his secondary school education was John Roans Grammar School, Blackheath, London which he left in 1958 with five A levels. He obtained both his degree and Ph.D in Biochemistry at University College London before performing post doctoral work at the newly-constituted University of East Anglia. He moved to the University of Edinburgh in 1970.

:{In 1972 he was invited to be first Visiting Professor at the prestigious Plant Research laboratory in Michigan State University. At the time this was laboratory was regarded as the foremost laboratory dealing with plant research. He also after invitation spent periods of time as Visiting Professor at other Universities in the Americas and Europe usually providing up to 20 lectures. He is the author of some 250 scientific papers and three books both as editor and author. He was made Professor :{Emeritus}: in the University of Edinburgh in 2004. Plant behavior is simply the response to signals.He main research contribution as the leader of the Edinburgh Molecular Signalling Group, has been in the role of calcium in signal transduction during plant development.[2] He is an elected :{Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1993), the Royal Society of Arts (1995), the Royal Society of London}: (1999), the Centre for Future Studies

(2001) ^[3] Academia Europea in 2002 and received the "corresponding membership" award from the American Society of Plant Biologists in 1999,[4] a prize given to one non-US biologist per year.[5] He is named by the Institute for Scientific Information as in the most highly cited author group in the field of animal and plant Sciences.[6] He is a past or present member of the editorial boards of the publications, Trends in Plant Science, Botanica Acta, Plant Physiology, What's New in Plant Physiology, Biochemical Journal "Molecular Plant", "Plant Signaling and Behaviour", Plant, Cell and Environment.}:

His most recent research concentrated on imaging cytosolic calcium distributions inside cells subjected to signaling. For this a flexible confocal fluorescence ratio was constructed in 1988-1990 to image calcium redistribution during contact sensing, stomatal aperture control, pollen tube and rhizoid growth, moss development and photomorphogenesis. Plants were also transformed with the gene for the calcium sensitive luminescent protein aequorin, allowing measurements of cytosolic calcium in whole plants and bacteria. It was this research that led to his election to the Royal Society of London. Plants have also been transformed with genes for calmodulin to better assess the role of calcium in development. The group also cloned plant calcium channels and MARCKS, an actin/calmodulin binding protein.

He is author of three books the most recent published in 2014 by Oxford University Press is entitled Plant Behaviour and Intelligence. This book covers the fundamental principles of plant behavior and how it is clearly intelligent in characteristics. It has been described by the leading science journal "Science" as Botanical Brilliance,

Professor Trewavas is one of the United Kingdom's strongest supporters of genetically modified food crops believing that agriculture must be based on evidence not superstition that often characterizes opposition to it. His strong support and knowledge has led him into helping with some legal actions over GM crops perhaps the most noticeable concerned a libel action that Greenpeace took against The Herald newspaper published in Glasgow in 2000 and is described below.

In 2000 Greenpeace took out a libel action against the Herald newspaper in Glasgow on two claims made in the newspaper. These were that the farm of the Head of Greenpeace, Lord Melchett, was not organic despite the Greenpeace policy being for organic farming. Secondly the claim that Greenpeace received money from industry.The Herald’s solicitor contacted Professor Trewavas to see if he could help fight the action and he provided the following material.

Firstly, excerpts from Farming News published in July 1999 in which David Richardson, Founder of LEAF stated that he knew Melchett’s farm was not organic and a week later a letter from Melchett in Farming News accepting that it was not and blaming the health of his manager for the failure to transfer to organic farming. Secondly, a document which had been sent to Professor Trewavas from Greenpeace. This 6 page document published monthly cost £100/copy and detailed environmental news as it related to industry. 

As Head of Greenpeace, Lord Melchett rightly wished to embed environmental concerns into industry and was responsible for its initiation and publication. However the front page of this document listed the large number of industries which took copies starting with Shell BP. When the case came to the High Court in October, The Herald's lawyer presented this information which Greenpeace legal representation refused to accept and indicated taking the issue to jury trial. The Herald’s legal representative decided that this would result in further very high costs and agreed to pay a nominal, small, sum in damages. Greenpeace insisted the amount because of its smallness should remain undisclosed, since disclosure might imply the allegations were essentially correct. Within a few weeks of the decision Lord Melchett was ejected from Greenpeace altogether, along with his policy of trying to green industry and he ended up in The Soil Association. The publication ceased forthwith. Two weeks later an account of the issue was published in The Herald by Professor Trewavas. Because of his close involvement in providing evidence to The Herald, several anti-GMO organisations tried by careful selection of material to erroneously imply he was the source of the initial material. In fact the claims the Herald published, originated in the USA. NOTE NO CITES

Publications

References

  1. Jump up http://www.biology.ed.ac.uk/research/institutes/plant/pages/staff_pages/T_Trewavas_staffpage.htm Staff Page: Tony Trewavas
  2. Jump up http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/ebot40/main.html
  3. Jump up http://www.futurestudies.co.uk/
  4. Jump up http://www.aspb.org/
  5. Jump up "American Society of Plant Biologists Awards Winners". American Society of Plant Biologists. Archived from the original on 2 July 2007. Retrieved 2007-07-01.
  6. Jump up ISI author number A0597-2002-C

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