[grammaton]

For starters, the breed of rat used - Sprague-Dawley - is one that routinely develops cancer and tumors, and is, in fact, used in cancer research for exactly this reason. So the fact that they developed tumors is about as surprising as a sunrise, and the study in question did not have any controls or statistical compensation whatsoever for this fact. Then, of course, there's also the sample size.

[josephlord]

http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0278691512005637/1-s2.0-S027869151200...

I haven't read the full paper but the abstract does mention controls. I have no idea if they were for some reason inadequate or there were methodological errors but you are incorrect to say that there were no controls.

[grammaton]

Let me rephrase: by control, what I mean is not "control group," but "statistical control." Their statistical analysis did not properly account for the immensely increased likelihood of cancers given the breed of rat they chose.

[josephlord]

OK, I wouldn't dispute that claim without reading the full paper and the criticism of it properly. Thanks for the clarification.

[darkmighty]

From their abstract, they don't cite the breed of mice they use, but they do cite that control groups had tumors and cites the tumor rate as compared to control in addition to absolute rates. To me that makes this a non-issue considering the target audience.

[grammaton]

Stop reading the abstract and go read the paper.

"but they do cite that control groups had tumors"

Yes, of course they did - they were the same breed of rat, and as I've already mentioned, they almost invariably get tumors.

"cites the tumor rate as compared to control in addition to absolute rates"

So what? The problem is that with a single trial, and such a small sample size, there is no evidence that any differences in observed cancer rates were not simply due to random variation.

"To me that makes this a non-issue considering the target audience."

No offense, but no one really cares how it seems to you. The whole purpose of the scientific method is to get around individual biases. And what do you mean by "the target audience?" What does that have to do with anything? It doesn't matter who the target audience is - that doesn't excuse a poorly designed study. Seralini's study had a small sample size - one sixth the minimum recommended by accepted guidelines for studies of this type using this kind of animal. He's repeatedly refused to make his full data set publicly available. There's some evidence that rat feed may have been contaminated with GMO derived soy products, which would, of course, invalidate the results completely. There's also some question of multiplicity effects as well. In short, there are plenty of problems with this study, and your cursory examination of an abstract isn't going to dig up some smoking gun that invalidates all of the well deserved criticism.

[yapcguy]

Hold on a second.

The publisher was more than happy to publish the study after it had been scrutinized even though they knew it might be controversial.

Suddenly they change their mind. Why? Does this mean that all papers published by Elsevier or the journal involved should be pulled until further review?

No pun intended, don't you smell a rat?

"the retraction derives from the journal's editorial appointment of biologist Richard Goodman, who previously worked for biotechnology giant Monsanto for seven years."

In a nutshell, after publishing the paper, the journal hired a former Monsanto employee who wrote papers saying GM crops were safe. Don't you think he would want to retract a study which contradicted his own life's work?!

"Richard E. Goodman is professor at the Food Allergy Research and Resource Program, University of Nebraska. But he is also a former Monsanto employee, who worked for the company between 1997 and 2004. While at Monsanto he assessed the allergenicity of the company's GM crops and published papers on its behalf on allergenicity and safety issues relating to GM food (Goodman and Leach 2004)" http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/monsanto-targets-heart-scie...

[feelthepain]

Goodman has since responded to this allegation (it's in the story): "I did not review the data in the Séralini study, nor did I have anything to do with the determination that the paper should be withdrawn from or retained by the journal." The decision was already made by the previous editor. Indeed, despite peer review, papers are withdrawn every day. That's because peer review isn't perfect but the best possible system that's available.