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by grammaton 4579 days ago
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.
2 comments
josephlord 4579 days ago
OK, I wouldn't dispute that claim without reading the full paper and the criticism of it properly. Thanks for the clarification.
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darkmighty 4579 days ago
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.
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grammaton 4579 days ago
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.

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