This is a special episode inspired by a listener’s request – welcome to episode 139!
- Recently I’ve been plugging a feedback survey, which included a question on “who or what would you like to hear discussed on the show” – and clearly I have to work on making my previous episodes easier to access and review, because suggestions included people I’ve already interviewed!
If you’d like to check out previous shows, it’s on the page called List Of Episodes and I’ll work on changing the site in the near future. Thanks for your feedback!
- My Curiouser and Curiouser column over on the CSICOP website – if you’d like to check out transcripts from the show and essays I’ve done? They’re featured on this site!
- Want to learn more about some other skeptical Australians? I’d strongly suggest episode 80 with Dr Martin Bridgstock who talks about superstitions in Australia, and I also recommend the most popular episode I’ve ever done, episode 70 – which features Dr Karen Stollznow. She is, of course, one of the co-hosts of the Parsec Award Winning Monster Talk. I also highly recommend “Best Of” episodes 60 and 120.
But down to this episode – and this was a question by an Australian listener, Campbell, asked a question about the recent GM corn tumor rats controversy – which has been commonly known as The Seralini Affair (or Seralini Tumor-Gate). He was interested in a more in-depth discussion and if there was any possibility of conflict of interest, as well as just plain bad science involved.
To find out more about the story, I talked to Dr Ashley Ng – he’s a cancer researcher and post-doctoral fellow at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, researching into leukemia, blood cancers and blood development.
This interview came about from my reading Dr Ng’s informative article on the Conversation website, “Genetically modified corn and cancer – what does the evidence really say?” from the 25th September, 2012.
Research and Links Mentioned In This Episode:
French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini (in a paper in which seven of his colleagues co-authored called “Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modifed maize“) claimed that he’d shown cancer in rats increased when they were fed genetically modified corn and/or water spiked with the herbicide Roundup, which was published in this peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology.
Article in i09 – “Controversial study linking genetically modified corn to cancer under attack by scientists“
Article in Mother Jones – “Does GMO Corn Really Cause Tumors in Rats?“
Article in Forbes – “Monsanto’s GM Corn And Cancer In Rats: Real Scientists Deeply Unimpressed. Politics Not Science Perhaps?”
Follow Dr Ashley Ng on Twitter at http://twitter.com/drng.
The Token Skeptic book, The Scope of Skepticism: Interviews, Essays and Observations From The Token Skeptic Podcast is out now!
Music used in this episode: Kevin McLeod from www.incompetech.com and Marian Call from www.mariancall.com. Theme songs are “P&P” by Derek K. Miller of www.penmachine.comand “Leap Second” by Milton Mermikides, of www.miltonmermikides.com.
Please leave positive comments and reviews on iTunes and consider supporting the show via visiting Tokenskeptic.org – and I’d love to get your feedback via tokenskeptic@gmail.com.
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