Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini is a French scientist researching pesticides and GM (genetically modified, genetically engineered, GE) crops. A research paper from his team was published in 2012, retracted (withdrawn) in 2013 and republished in 2014. Here it is.
This is the fifth in a series of blog posts in which I comment on Prof Séralini’s study.
The study was a feeding trial in which rats (Rattus norvegicus) ate a GM maize (corn, Zea mays) called NK603 from Monsanto and Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup (active ingredient glyphosate) which NK603 had been engineered to resist.
My fellow bloggers at Retraction Watch tell us how the ‘Séralini affair’ isn’t over. Was the original paper peer-reviewed? If it were so, would that make us believe it? I say no, it wouldn’t make me believe it. It wouldn’t make me disbelieve it either.
I’ve been on both ends of the peer-review system – the reviewed author, and the reviewer. Peer review is done by real people with human faults but it’s the best system anybody has invented. Now that we can see what Prof Séralini wrote, we can think for ourselves about his rat-feeding trial. Just now, I’m learning the chemistry.
Science on the Land 
Very scary stuff, especially with Monsanto doing all it can to discredit scientists who disagree with it’s claims that GMOs in general are safe.