{"id":69468,"date":"2017-09-04T17:58:37","date_gmt":"2017-09-05T00:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=69468"},"modified":"2017-09-04T17:58:37","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T00:58:37","slug":"cerberus-goes-giddy-on-glyphosate-fake-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/09\/04\/cerberus-goes-giddy-on-glyphosate-fake-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Cerberus goes giddy on Glyphosate fake news."},"content":{"rendered":"

By Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada.<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Commenting on my article entitled The AluthParlimenthuwa\u201d Debate on Glyphosate\u201d that appeared in the Lankaweb ( https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/09\/02\/the-aluthparlimenthuwa-debate-on-glyphosate\/<\/a>),\u00a0 a writer who uses the fake name Cerberus\u201d has gone shopping for free\u00a0 on the internet and comes back to tell us that glyhosate causes not only kidney disease, but also many other diseases. In my article I warned the reader that 90% of the internet news, especially on controversial topics\u00a0 tend to be dominated by\u00a0 fake news\u00a0 (adorned by sensationalism). Try the internet news on Sri Lanka and the Eelam wars and you will see how much of it is fake news fully illustrated with Channel-4\u00a0 movies and even fake tribunals attempting\u00a0 to try those who put down one of the most ruthless terror groups in the world.<\/p>\n

The controversy on Glyphosate is no different.\u00a0 Much of the stuff on the internet is\u00a0 put out by individuals and groups who have an axe to grind,\u00a0 find a place in the lime light,\u00a0 make money or enhance their agenda.\u00a0 Cerberus even names Stephanie Seneff, one of the most thoroughly exposed cases of a fake expert\u201d producing fake science\u201d about Glyphosate. Stephanie is a computer engineer who in her retirement\u00a0 had started a health start-up business\u201d\u00a0 promising to get you to live healthily up to the age of\u00a0 110 years if you subscribe to her program. Of course, this program needed some publicity. What is the best way to get some publicity? Well, why not attack the public whipping horse\u00a0 Monsanto? Why not claim that she is an MIT scientist\u201d and write a research paper\u201d on Glyphosate? But who will publish her paper when she has no data, and no\u00a0 credentials in health science or chemistry?<\/p>\n

But just then a Chinese businessman Mr. C\u00a0 (who also has an office\u201d\u00a0 in Switzerland) had launched a new set of journals\u201d\u00a0 with the look\u201d of serious scientific journals. These journals\u00a0 have a simple business policy of publishing anything as long as a page charge\u201d of 1500 Swiss francs were paid,\u00a0 up front and no\u00a0 more questions are asked!\u00a0 The journals\u201d were created to siphon off money from the need of many Chinese University graduate students (and third-world faculties) to publish research in international journals\u201d.\u00a0 Mr. C\u00a0 can\u00a0 provide them a European\u201d journal based in Switzerland, but not requiring the stiff standards demanded by proper peer-reviewed scientific journals run by learned societies. Such peer-reviewed journals are run not only by learned societies, but even by very well-established publishing houses like McMillan, Wiley or World-Scientific (based on Singapore) and in such cases they have the backing of a peer. Thus World Scientific\u00a0 uses Imperial College,\u00a0 University of London as their\u00a0 peer reference. But the journals founded by the Chinese businessman Mr. C\u00a0 had none. Instead, it listed distinguished Nobel laureates\u00a0 as editors of its journals even without permission from the so-named individuals! One of Mr. C’s journals was named Entropy\u201d, while another was named\u00a0 International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health\u201d shortened to IJERPH.\u00a0 So Stephanie Seneff and her co-author opted to send their\u00a0 article \u201d to Entropy\u201d.\u00a0 Seneff et al\u00a0 claimed that\u00a0 Monsanto\u2019s line of Roundup Ready genetically modified (GMO) seeds and glyphosate are\u00a0 causing\u00a0 most of the diseases and conditions associated with a Western diet,\u201d including gastrointestinal disorders, diabetes, heart disease, depression, autism, infertility, cancer, and Alzheimer\u2019s disease.\u201d Of course, this was the main theme of her Liveto110\u201d business. What better publicity\u00a0 can she have for her business\u00a0 than this;\u00a0 her article\u201d was immediately picked up by the ant-Monsanto lobby and\u00a0 flashed around the globe via many many Eco-heroic\u201d websites\u00a0 of the sort that Cerberus is quoting! These sites gave the impression that MIT research\u201d proved it! Even Reuters fell for the bait and\u00a0 was part of\u00a0 the fake news that became news.<\/p>\n

But the limelight shown on the journal Entropy\u201d by all this revealed the nature of\u00a0 the journals launched by Mr. C. His journals were blacklisted and included in Beals list\u201d\u00a0 of predatory journals\u201d\u00a0 that I mentioned in my original article in the Lankaweb where I gave the link to a report\u00a0 on predatory journals (see the report in http:\/\/science.sciencemag.org\/content\/342\/6154\/60.summary<\/a>). Even otherwise, if Cerberus had done some more homework instead of falling into the very first trap on his route\u00a0 he would have found that respected science journalists like Keith Kloor and Paul Raeburn have written full exposures of the paper and the Reuters article in question. In effect it is NOT a study (no data is presented); the MIT\u201d comes from Seneff’ affiliation with computer science.\u00a0 That has nothing to do with health science, genetics or chemistry. Here is a sample of\u00a0 what Kieth Koor (discover magazine)\u00a0 wrote, given\u00a0 at the following link:
\nhttp:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/collideascape\/2013\/04\/26\/when-media-uncritically-cover-pseudoscience\/#more-11062<\/a>
\n<begin quote>
\nAnti-biotech activists, like their fellow travelers in the anti-vaccine movement, are masters at pseudoscience. As I\u2019ve previously discussed, the really clever GMO opponents put a veneer of science on their propaganda. One recent example that an anti-GMO website approvingly pointed to was so obviously absurd that I was sure it\u00a0 would be ignored by media. It\u2019s a paper that suggests a chemical in Roundup, a widely used Monsanto herbicide, can remarkably explain a great number of the diseases and conditions that are prevalent in the modern industrialized world,\u201d such as inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, depression, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer\u2019s disease, Parkinson\u2019s disease, ALS, multiple sclerosis, cancer, cachexia, infertility, and developmental malformations.\u201d [UPDATE: As someone puts it on Twitter, the paper reads like it was scribbled on Glenn Beck\u2019s chalkboard.\u201d]
\nThe paper is by two authors with dubious credentials and is such a mashup of pseudoscience and gibberish that actual scientists have been unable to make sense of it. As one of them also noted, the paper is published in a low-tier pay-for-play journal.\u201d
\nThe authors of the paper conclude that glyphosate, an ingredient used in Roundup may be the most important factor in the development of multiple chronic diseases and conditions that have become prevalent in Westernized societies.\u201d This sweeping claim, combined with where it\u2019s made and the backgrounds of the authors (one who works in computer science), should trigger alarm bells in anyone with a functioning brain, particularly journalists on the look-out for a good story\u201d.
\n<end quote>
\nAlas, Cerberus swallowed\u00a0 this\u00a0 bait-hook-line-and sinker, and regurgitated the stuff\u00a0 as his comments
\non\u00a0 my article! We can go through each and every one of the websites and links given by Cerberus and show how they are anchored in utter pseudoscience and fake news. But we don’t need to.\u00a0 Anyone who can put forwards a thoroughly de-bunked person like\u00a0 Stephanie Seneff with a straight face has to be thoroughly uninformed or a true believer who has forfeited all of his\/her critical faculties. As for Dr. Thierry Vrain, I have already written about him, and so have others, explaining how\u00a0 and why Vrain\u00a0 began to espouse his fictions.\u00a0 Cerberus can unearth them\u00a0 for them himself.<\/p>\n

Stephanie Seneff mentioned most of the illnesses she could think of, but did not know about chronic kidney disease. Most interestingly, the paper by Jayasumana, Sanath Gunatilleke, and Mrs Senanayake (the Kelaniya lady who claims to\u00a0 get her scientific information from God Natha and made notorious by Dr. Nalin de Silva) also chose to publish their research paper\u201d in one of the journals (IJERPH) launched only a year before by our infamous Chinese businessman. They also DID NOT HAVE ANY DATA in support of their claim that glyphosate, arsenic and calcium (from hard water)\u00a0 form a complex\u201d which causes Kidney Disease in the Rajarata\u00a0 of Sri Lanka. So they called it a hypothesis\u201d; they\u00a0 paid the 1500 Swiss francs and published it. Here is the reference:
\n<begin reference>
\nJayasumana C, Gunatilake S, Senanayake P\u00a0 Glyphosate, hard water and nephrotoxic metals: Are they the culprits behind the epidemic of chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology in Sri Lanka? Int J Environ Res Public Health vol. 11, pages 2125\u20132147, year 2014.
\n<end reference>
\nSince then, even three years later, no evidence has been presented by these authors to prove their hypothesis\u201d although public policy has been launched based on it, and some individuals have got faculty positions and kudos based on it. If glyphosate, arsenic and calcium ions in water\u00a0 make a poisonous complex that causes kidney disease (named CKDu), they should mix the three components in a test tube and SHOW that such a complex IS\u00a0 actually\u00a0 formed as the first step. The next step is to show that the proposed complex\u201d\u00a0 causes CKDu. But NO, neither they, nor the others who have proceeded to ban glyphosate claiming that they want to save\u201d the farmers from CKDu have shown that the culprit\u201d even\u00a0 exists! But all this fitted in with the pre-conceived views of the Raputin\/Lysenko\u00a0 like figures in SEMA that guide the agricultural policies of the Sri Lankan government!<\/p>\n

The facts and evidence we have regarding glyphosate and CKDU point\u00a0 in the\u00a0 very opposite direction.
\nLet us briefly summarize them.
\n1)There is NO GLYPHOSATE or its break-down products\u00a0 found in the blood, urine, hair,\u00a0 or biopsies of CKDu patients even in significant trace amounts.
\n2) There is NO GLYPHOSATE or its break-down products\u00a0 found in the water, soil or the environment of the areas where the sickness is found, even in significant trace amounts.
\n3) The toxic heavy elements that Jayasumana and others claim to have poisoned the water soil of Sri Lanka\u201d have been looked for by many independent research groups including the WHO, Japanese and US researchers, and all have confirmed that there is not even ten parts per billion of these taoxic substances (i.e., not even significant traces have been found). Every farmer knows this as they see the egrets flocking behind their ploughs picking up the thriving earthworms and bugs in the soil, proving that the soil is heaalthy.
\n4)\u00a0 There is NO CKDu in areas where glyphosate and fertilizers are used extensively, e.g., in the Hill country and in other agricultural areas in Sri Lanka.
\n5) Even globally, NewZealand uses 25-25 times the amount of agrochemicals used by Sri lanka. In fact most western countries\u00a0 which practice intensive industrial agriculture, Malaysia\u00a0 etc have no CKDu, while countries with lower\u00a0 use of agrochemicals (e.g., El salvadore, Sri Lanka) have CKDU, why?
\n6). There is over-whelming evidence that the glyphosate used as a herbicide does its job of killing weeds safely and the residues are rapidly broken down in the hot tropical climate of Sri Lanka, converting glyphosate to soil-nutritious phosphate.
\n7). There is also strong evidence that\u00a0 glyphosate remedies soil, when earthworms and other organisms grow better even in soils containing toxic metals (like Cadmium),\u00a0 by converting the cadmium into insoluble materials, as found by several studies. For instance, an article in a proper peer-reviewed journal known as Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry\u201d states the following:
\n<begin quote>
\nThe acute and subacute toxicities of cadmium (Cd) to earthworm Eisenia fetida in the presence and absence of glyphosate were studied. Although Cd is highly toxic to E. fetida, the presence of glyphosate markedly reduced the acute toxicity of Cd to earthworm; both the mortality rate of the earthworms and the accumulation of Cd decreased with the increase of the glyphosate\/Cd molar ratio. The subcellular distribution of Cd in E. fetida tissues showed that internal Cd was dominant in the intact cells fraction and the heat-stable proteins fraction. The presence of glyphosate reduced the concentration of Cd in all fractions, especially the intact cells. During a longer period of exposure, the weight loss of earthworm and the total Cd absorption was alleviated by glyphosate. Thus, the herbicide glyphosate can reduce the toxicity and bioavailability of Cd in the soil ecosystems at both short- and long-term exposures.
\nEnviron Toxicol Chem 2014;33:2351\u20132357. \u00a9 2014 SETAC
\n<end quote><\/p>\n

So, we earnestly invite Cerberus to use only reliable publications and not sources from the internet that have been repeatedly challenged and unmasked for carrying faked news\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Chandre Dharmawardana, Ottawa, Canada. Commenting on my article entitled The AluthParlimenthuwa\u201d Debate on Glyphosate\u201d that appeared in the Lankaweb ( https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/09\/02\/the-aluthparlimenthuwa-debate-on-glyphosate\/),\u00a0 a writer who uses the fake name Cerberus\u201d has gone shopping for free\u00a0 on the internet and comes back to tell us that glyhosate causes not only kidney disease, but also many other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chandre-dharmawardana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}