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by yapcguy 4577 days ago
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...

1 comments

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review the data in the Séralini study, nor did I have anything to do with the determination that the paper should be withdrawn from or retained by the journal."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 Indeed, despite peer review, papers are withdrawn every day.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.