A controversial paper linking genetically modified maize to the development of tumours in rats, which was published in 2012 and retracted in 2013, has now been published again, by a different journal.
Four other journals offered to publish the paper, lead author Gilles-Eric Séralini told a press conference in Paris today. But, he said, he and his team chose SpringerOpen’s journal Environmental Sciences Europe because it is open-access and would make the study’s findings available to the whole scientific community.
The paper that went online today after peer review, was slightly amended from the original. Four of the authors, including Séralini himself, also wrote an accompanying comment piece in which they allege that they had been the victims of censorship and that that their critics had “serious yet undisclosed conflicts of interests”.
Environmental Sciences Europe published the paper because it “aims to enable rational discussions dealing with the article”, journal editor Winfried Schröder said in a statement provided by Criigen, the non profit Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering that was co-founded by Séralini. “Progress in science needs controversial debates aiming at the best methods.” Nature News requested a direct comment from the journal, but had received nothing by the time of going to press.
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The publication of the new version of the paper gives critics no reason to change their mind, says food allergy researcher Richard Goodman, of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and biotechnology editor at Food and Chemical Toxicology. “To my knowledge, no-one has demonstrated that a two-year feeding study of Sprague Dawley rats has uncovered any hazard that actually poses a risk to human or farm animal health,” he told Nature News.
Read the full, original article: Paper claiming GM link with tumours re-published
