7 ms·

Here is the paper that made me start to take organic food seriously a few years ago: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.

Here is the paper that made me start to take organic food seriously a few years ago: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3945755/ I don't have the skills to evaluate it in depth but it seems to indicate a plausible connection between glyphosate and leaky gut, which could explain why a lot of people who don't actually have celiac's have troubles with wheat. This is conjecture on my part, but it's possible that many people with trouble with wheat would be fine if they were able to avoid pesticides and repair their gut bacteria and general gut health. The other thing I learned alongside reading that paper (or maybe it was mentioned in it, I forget), was that they use glyphosate not just to kill weeds, but as a dessicant applied directly to wheat to aid in the harvest, and a "ripening agent" applied directly to sugar cane. Finally, although the risks are not well understood, it has been demonstrated that glyphosate does appear in detectable amounts in human excretions (urine and milk), which goes against some of the claims that were made in approving its safety (they claimed it does not bioaccumulate). Sorry I don't have sources handy for the rest of this stuff, but it's enough to perhaps encourage others to run some searches too. Edit: a final concern is not to humans but to soil biology. This new and growing field has been finding that there are symbiotic relationships between plants and fungi in the soil and that pesticides may disrupt this, dramatically reducing effective soil quality and the nutritional content of the plants grown there.

faitswulff 7y ago
Note that the USDA organic label isn't exactly foolproof either - "organic" compounds are chosen by committee: > This week, in a process that is largely invisible to consumers but that has become a semi-annual ritual of controversy within the world of organic politics, a committee called the National Organic Standards Board is selecting those synthetic substances that organic farmers and processors may use. > ...For while many would prefer to exclude the use of any synthetic chemicals, there are some substances - including herbicides, fungicides, emulsifiers and other additives - that some organic farmers say they cannot do without. - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/28/sure-that-food-has-the-governments-organic-label-but-that-doesnt-mean-it-was-made-without-chemicals/?utm_term=.31330c089081 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/28/sure-...
throwaway5752 7y ago
This was a very disturbing article. In particular, he alluded to congenital defects in pigs that appeared to match observations of human populations near intensely treated agricultural areas in https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0117-0 https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-.... "Human epidemiological [23, 29, 30, 31] and domesticated animal studies [32, 33] suggest associations between exposures to GBHs and adverse health outcomes. For example, congenital malformations have been reported in young pigs fed GBH residues-contaminated soybeans [32]. This suggests that GBHs may be at least a contributing factor to similar birth defects observed in human populations living in and near farming regions with substantial land area planted to GBH-tolerant GE crop cultivars [23, 34]." Footnote 23, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/tx1001749 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/tx1001749, that detail the teratogenic effect is something I will be reading later, but was the most disturbing. Footnote 24, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/tx1001749 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/tx1001749, should be eye opening to many people here based on (unfounded) isoflavone estrogen mimic fears of soy/tofu: "We also checked androgen to estrogen conversion by aromatase activity and mRNA. All parameters were disrupted at sub-agricultural doses with all formulations within 24 h." And with respect to your edit, it looks like the author touched on fungicides in his prior editorial: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-03/big-agriculture-is-breeding-a-worldwide-health-crisis https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-03/big-ag...
chicob 7y ago
I wouldn't decide for organic because of that. Like I said in another comment in this thread, organic farming still uses pesticides, just not the synthetic ones. In my opinion as a farmer, the foundational principle of Organic Farming is not a path towards better farming practices, but one that divides what is supposedly natural and organic, and what is artificial and synthetic. This has more to do with a romantic ideal of purity regarding agriculture and food production than guiding farming with principles of science-based agronomy or efficacy/efficiency decision making.
- manifestsilence 7y ago
  Sure, I agree the organic standard is far from perfect and has many loopholes, but it's a starting point. If there were a standard out there that instead embraced a systems-thinking view on safe practices - both chemical use and general land management, emphasizing safety for the long term health of the ecosystem, the farm economy, and the humans consuming the product - I would embrace that standard instead. Even if it were (as it might be) initially quite expensive.
  - chicob 7y ago
    Your second paragraph pretty much resumes what Integrated Farming is. That is exactly what I do. And everything you do in Organic Farming can be done in Integrated Farming - you only resort to chemical solutions if there are no other options left. And even then, only if you've gone beyond a certain point beyond which the damage will out-cost the benefits of the spraying.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      Not that the other is not the case. Organic farming is not allowed to use chemical solutions even they are better for the environment. edit: as others have pointed out, some chemicals are allowed. However the points remains, environmentally friendly means to control weeds is often not allowed in organic.
      - 7y ago
noname120 7y ago
This paper is actually part of a longer series of papers made by the same authors about the relation between glyphosate and several conditions. [1] I haven't read it entirely so I cannot vouch for its quality, but you might be interested in the following paper which does a critique of their work: [2] [1] https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Glyphosate%2C%20pathways%20to%20modern%20diseases&sort=relevance https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Glyphosate%2C%20pat... [2] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Glyphosate%2C-neurological-diseases-%E2%80%93-and-the-method-Seneff-Samsel/0d3e0146f3ecffa392f9fde6f64e82419cf69605 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Glyphosate%2C-neurolog...
will_brown 7y ago
Glad to see this comment as #1 because you cite a study referencing Leaky Gut. Diet, health and nutrition are controversial topics...but last time I brought up the potential for Leaky Gut to be a legitimate health issue I was more or less attacked for referring to a pseudoscience. It’s true it’s not a recognized medical condition, but there are many studies and medical professionals who are beginning to recognize leaky gut as a real condition. Extra points for also bringing up gut bacteria which also typically generates controversy, last HN article on the microbiome commenters were calling it peak gut bacteria. Whereas it’s also a science in its infancy.
grandmczeb 7y ago
“The linking of this effective herbicide to the alphabet soup list of conditions enumerated by the authors seems to be “shotgun science” — namely, multiple associations based on population‐based statistics, disconnected correlations, and manipulation of numbers and conditions that create an epidemiological recipe for errors and nonvalid associations. The authors link every kind of disorder imaginable to a widely used chemical that has not been specifically linked clinically to any of those disorders.” Quoting from criticism of that paper in [1]. Seems to a rather apt description. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4538578/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4538578/
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  It's a fair point to bring up, but that statement is extremely biased in phrasing. Why is "effective herbicide" relevant here? Agent orange is also an effective herbicide. Further, "a widely used chemical that has not been specifically linked clinically to any of those disorders" ... you might not pick up on it, but "specifically linked clinically" has some pretty specific meaning and is an extraordinary level of proof to call for at this stage. What they have at this point are theoretical pathways for the observed effects and epidemiological correlations. Taken together, those are pretty damning and worthy of urgent funding of further study.
  - grandmczeb 7y ago
    This is the paper version of [1]. Worthy of further research? Sure. "Damning" and "urgent"? Probably not. [1]https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
    - throwaway5752 7y ago
      It is absolutely not. They observed sub agricultural limit exposure in vivo and in vitro (see linked papers and their footnotes from the article). The identified pathways for observed effects. They then saw similar effects in human populations with higher than average glyphosate exposure. You argument is precisely the kind of one that would be deployed to argue against the health risks of tetraethyl lead, asbestos, or CFCs. It's possible it's not related, but it probably is. You are right, though "damning" and "urgent" are subjective, and depend on how much you care about preventable cancers and birth defects.
sjg007 7y ago
Those authors are not credible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Seneff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Seneff
- reizorc 7y ago
  And Wikipedia is?
  - lordlimecat 7y ago
    Wikipedia cites its sources, and some of them are juicy indeed.... >In 2011, Seneff began publishing articles on topics related to biology and medicine, an area in which she has no relevant qualifications or expertise, in low-impact, open access journals, >Seneff's claim that glyphosate is a major cause of autism and that, "At today's rates, by 2025, half the kids born will be diagnosed with autism," has also been criticized...contrary to Seneff's claims, many scientific reviews have found that the rise in autism rates over the past 20 years is due to changes in diagnostic practices >Clinical neurologist and skeptic Steven Novella criticized Seneff's Entropy publication for making "correlation is causation" assumptions using broad statistical extrapolations from limited data, >In 2014–2016 Seneff was proposed as an expert witness for litigators seeking damages from Pfizer associated with their cholesterol drug Lipitor,[15] but the court dismissed the claim largely because Seneff lacked expert status I love the last one; she's actually a court-certified quack.
- asdff 7y ago
  It's also a predatory journal. https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/ https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago
This is far from a compelling paper. Calling it deceptive or counterproductive wouldn't be outside of reason. I understand that science is hard, and I think it's great that people read primary research, but your attempts to do so should be balanced (i.e. don't just read things that support your argument!) and you should seek expert interpretations when possible to consider counterarguments. It's good to take a step back and understand the kind of evidence that a given manuscript may employ. Ideally you have high-quality data from experimental intervention, appropriately quantified with statistics. This generally comes from tried-and-true experimental methods, and will produce results that speak for themselves without 'squinting' at it with stats. For smaller effect sizes, or else when sampling is limited, you may need to rely on more questionable statistics, but as part of a suite of complementary methods, this data can be very useful as well. Next would be observational data. Observational data must deal with confounding factors as no controlled experimental intervention is made, and can only demonstrate correlation, not causation. Sometimes this data is all that is reasonably available (for practical or ethical concerns), but extreme care must be used with observational data. It becomes very easy to support a desired conclusion by careful selection of data. Serious work with observational data will go to extreme lengths to consider potentially confounding factors and explore them in great detail. This is not a serious paper. It's not good science, and there are litany of reasons. This paper amounts of a sort of 'gish gallop' of specious correlations that pin glyphosate as the ultimate evil and cause of an absurd variety of maladies. Celiac disease, intestinal infection, sulfate metabolism, retinoic acid, reproductive issues, Cobalamin deficiency, anemia, Molybdenum deficiency, thyroid cancer and selenium, kidney disease, general cancer, and various nutritional deficiencies. It's an astounding list. More astounding, in other work, the first author has included asthma, autism, diabetes, COPD, and more! A priori, you should consider whether this is plausible when it's such a well-studied molecule. How could so many studies, carefully conducted with standard methods in epidemiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, etc. have missed this litany of issues? What kind of data is backing this up? The paper presents a few graphs where incidents of certain diseases are compared to the mass of glyhposate applied. One immediately wonders how this relationship plays out: are more acres being treated with glyphoste, is the application per acre increasing, what is the number of people exposed, what are the doses of exposure, are there geographic relationships between exposure and incidence, are there new diagnostic tools or detection of the disease, etc. etc.? These are the standard sorts of questions you expect to be addressed from observational studies, yet they have no discussion here. This is telling. Furthermore, the proposed mechanisms are little more than idle speculation. This is basic biochemistry and molecular biology, tractable issues that can be investigated experimentally. So why is this discussed? This is the sort of thing that might get a paragraph or two in a review article talking about future work. Generally this is only done when the review author knows that a colleague is performing this work or seeking funding for it. It's difficult to communicate how 'off' this kind of speculation is. Biology is full of specious hypotheses. It's so easy to be wrong, but to sound very right and reasonable while you're doing it. You quickly develop a deep distaste for speculation outside of some animated conversations you might have with colleagues in the lab or at conferences. It has no place in the literature. It is a violation of norms that is deeply revealing. So what about these authors? Are these molecular biologists? Biochemists? Epidemiologists? Physicians? No. Anthony Samsel is an 'independent researcher' that publishes on occular medicine. He does stuff like go on "Moms across America" and says that glyphosate and GMOs are responsible for the Autism 'epidemic'. https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/tags/anthony_samsel https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/tags/anthony_samsel Seriously, this asshole is an autism scaremonger, and somehow he's getting upvoted of fucking hacker news. Stephanie Seneff is a (staff, i.e. not a PI. her husband is a PI, tho) computer scientist at MIT that works with speech, natural language, human-computer interface, that sort of thing. She's earned herself a Wikipedia entry that discusses her habits of publishing controversial (i.e. shitty) work in low-impact journals and generally gets involved in all kinds of shit she has no professional experience in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Seneff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Seneff You almost couldn't pick a more ridiculous pair to embody 'bad science'. The paper you linked is pure bullshit my friend. It's clear as day for all to see with a moment's reflection. I think you may consider your own epistemology and critical faculties to see whether they are serving you. You got got. "Plausible" is everywhere. There's good reason why it has not currency in science. Evidence is what has currency, and that's tricky enough to begin with.
JamesBarney 7y ago
This article is a fishing expedition published by someone who is not involved in the field at all and wasn't peer reviewed by anyone who studies this seriously. Speaking of fishy, the fish study was a small study where fish were literally swimming in roundup(not just glyphosate) at much higher concentrations than anything humans have contact with. Which tells us it's probably a bad idea to drink a glass of round up. Here is a critique by an actual researcher in the field. http://www.ultimateglutenfree.com/2014/02/does-glyphosate-cause-celiac-disease-actually-no/ http://www.ultimateglutenfree.com/2014/02/does-glyphosate-ca...

faitswulff 7y ago

Note that the USDA organic label isn't exactly foolproof either - "organic" compounds are chosen by committee: > This week, in a process that is largely invisible to consumers but that has become a semi-annual ritual of controversy within the world of organic politics, a committee called the National Organic Standards Board is selecting those synthetic substances that organic farmers and processors may use. > ...For while many would prefer to exclude the use of any synthetic chemicals, there are some substances - including herbicides, fungicides, emulsifiers and other additives - that some organic farmers say they cannot do without. - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/28/sure-that-food-has-the-governments-organic-label-but-that-doesnt-mean-it-was-made-without-chemicals/?utm_term=.31330c089081 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/28/sure-...

throwaway5752 7y ago

This was a very disturbing article. In particular, he alluded to congenital defects in pigs that appeared to match observations of human populations near intensely treated agricultural areas in https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0117-0 https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-.... "Human epidemiological [23, 29, 30, 31] and domesticated animal studies [32, 33] suggest associations between exposures to GBHs and adverse health outcomes. For example, congenital malformations have been reported in young pigs fed GBH residues-contaminated soybeans [32]. This suggests that GBHs may be at least a contributing factor to similar birth defects observed in human populations living in and near farming regions with substantial land area planted to GBH-tolerant GE crop cultivars [23, 34]." Footnote 23, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/tx1001749 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/tx1001749, that detail the teratogenic effect is something I will be reading later, but was the most disturbing. Footnote 24, https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/tx1001749 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/tx1001749, should be eye opening to many people here based on (unfounded) isoflavone estrogen mimic fears of soy/tofu: "We also checked androgen to estrogen conversion by aromatase activity and mRNA. All parameters were disrupted at sub-agricultural doses with all formulations within 24 h." And with respect to your edit, it looks like the author touched on fungicides in his prior editorial: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-03/big-agriculture-is-breeding-a-worldwide-health-crisis https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-03/big-ag...

chicob 7y ago

I wouldn't decide for organic because of that. Like I said in another comment in this thread, organic farming still uses pesticides, just not the synthetic ones. In my opinion as a farmer, the foundational principle of Organic Farming is not a path towards better farming practices, but one that divides what is supposedly natural and organic, and what is artificial and synthetic. This has more to do with a romantic ideal of purity regarding agriculture and food production than guiding farming with principles of science-based agronomy or efficacy/efficiency decision making.

manifestsilence 7y ago
Sure, I agree the organic standard is far from perfect and has many loopholes, but it's a starting point. If there were a standard out there that instead embraced a systems-thinking view on safe practices - both chemical use and general land management, emphasizing safety for the long term health of the ecosystem, the farm economy, and the humans consuming the product - I would embrace that standard instead. Even if it were (as it might be) initially quite expensive.
- chicob 7y ago
  Your second paragraph pretty much resumes what Integrated Farming is. That is exactly what I do. And everything you do in Organic Farming can be done in Integrated Farming - you only resort to chemical solutions if there are no other options left. And even then, only if you've gone beyond a certain point beyond which the damage will out-cost the benefits of the spraying.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Not that the other is not the case. Organic farming is not allowed to use chemical solutions even they are better for the environment. edit: as others have pointed out, some chemicals are allowed. However the points remains, environmentally friendly means to control weeds is often not allowed in organic.
    - 7y ago

noname120 7y ago

This paper is actually part of a longer series of papers made by the same authors about the relation between glyphosate and several conditions. [1] I haven't read it entirely so I cannot vouch for its quality, but you might be interested in the following paper which does a critique of their work: [2] [1] https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Glyphosate%2C%20pathways%20to%20modern%20diseases&sort=relevance https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=Glyphosate%2C%20pat... [2] https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Glyphosate%2C-neurological-diseases-%E2%80%93-and-the-method-Seneff-Samsel/0d3e0146f3ecffa392f9fde6f64e82419cf69605 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Glyphosate%2C-neurolog...

will_brown 7y ago

Glad to see this comment as #1 because you cite a study referencing Leaky Gut. Diet, health and nutrition are controversial topics...but last time I brought up the potential for Leaky Gut to be a legitimate health issue I was more or less attacked for referring to a pseudoscience. It’s true it’s not a recognized medical condition, but there are many studies and medical professionals who are beginning to recognize leaky gut as a real condition. Extra points for also bringing up gut bacteria which also typically generates controversy, last HN article on the microbiome commenters were calling it peak gut bacteria. Whereas it’s also a science in its infancy.

grandmczeb 7y ago

“The linking of this effective herbicide to the alphabet soup list of conditions enumerated by the authors seems to be “shotgun science” — namely, multiple associations based on population‐based statistics, disconnected correlations, and manipulation of numbers and conditions that create an epidemiological recipe for errors and nonvalid associations. The authors link every kind of disorder imaginable to a widely used chemical that has not been specifically linked clinically to any of those disorders.” Quoting from criticism of that paper in [1]. Seems to a rather apt description. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4538578/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4538578/

throwaway5752 7y ago
It's a fair point to bring up, but that statement is extremely biased in phrasing. Why is "effective herbicide" relevant here? Agent orange is also an effective herbicide. Further, "a widely used chemical that has not been specifically linked clinically to any of those disorders" ... you might not pick up on it, but "specifically linked clinically" has some pretty specific meaning and is an extraordinary level of proof to call for at this stage. What they have at this point are theoretical pathways for the observed effects and epidemiological correlations. Taken together, those are pretty damning and worthy of urgent funding of further study.
- grandmczeb 7y ago
  This is the paper version of [1]. Worthy of further research? Sure. "Damning" and "urgent"? Probably not. [1]https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
  - throwaway5752 7y ago
    It is absolutely not. They observed sub agricultural limit exposure in vivo and in vitro (see linked papers and their footnotes from the article). The identified pathways for observed effects. They then saw similar effects in human populations with higher than average glyphosate exposure. You argument is precisely the kind of one that would be deployed to argue against the health risks of tetraethyl lead, asbestos, or CFCs. It's possible it's not related, but it probably is. You are right, though "damning" and "urgent" are subjective, and depend on how much you care about preventable cancers and birth defects.

sjg007 7y ago

Those authors are not credible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Seneff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Seneff

reizorc 7y ago
And Wikipedia is?
- lordlimecat 7y ago
  Wikipedia cites its sources, and some of them are juicy indeed.... >In 2011, Seneff began publishing articles on topics related to biology and medicine, an area in which she has no relevant qualifications or expertise, in low-impact, open access journals, >Seneff's claim that glyphosate is a major cause of autism and that, "At today's rates, by 2025, half the kids born will be diagnosed with autism," has also been criticized...contrary to Seneff's claims, many scientific reviews have found that the rise in autism rates over the past 20 years is due to changes in diagnostic practices >Clinical neurologist and skeptic Steven Novella criticized Seneff's Entropy publication for making "correlation is causation" assumptions using broad statistical extrapolations from limited data, >In 2014–2016 Seneff was proposed as an expert witness for litigators seeking damages from Pfizer associated with their cholesterol drug Lipitor,[15] but the court dismissed the claim largely because Seneff lacked expert status I love the last one; she's actually a court-certified quack.
asdff 7y ago
It's also a predatory journal. https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/ https://predatoryjournals.com/journals/

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y ago

This is far from a compelling paper. Calling it deceptive or counterproductive wouldn't be outside of reason. I understand that science is hard, and I think it's great that people read primary research, but your attempts to do so should be balanced (i.e. don't just read things that support your argument!) and you should seek expert interpretations when possible to consider counterarguments. It's good to take a step back and understand the kind of evidence that a given manuscript may employ. Ideally you have high-quality data from experimental intervention, appropriately quantified with statistics. This generally comes from tried-and-true experimental methods, and will produce results that speak for themselves without 'squinting' at it with stats. For smaller effect sizes, or else when sampling is limited, you may need to rely on more questionable statistics, but as part of a suite of complementary methods, this data can be very useful as well. Next would be observational data. Observational data must deal with confounding factors as no controlled experimental intervention is made, and can only demonstrate correlation, not causation. Sometimes this data is all that is reasonably available (for practical or ethical concerns), but extreme care must be used with observational data. It becomes very easy to support a desired conclusion by careful selection of data. Serious work with observational data will go to extreme lengths to consider potentially confounding factors and explore them in great detail. This is not a serious paper. It's not good science, and there are litany of reasons. This paper amounts of a sort of 'gish gallop' of specious correlations that pin glyphosate as the ultimate evil and cause of an absurd variety of maladies. Celiac disease, intestinal infection, sulfate metabolism, retinoic acid, reproductive issues, Cobalamin deficiency, anemia, Molybdenum deficiency, thyroid cancer and selenium, kidney disease, general cancer, and various nutritional deficiencies. It's an astounding list. More astounding, in other work, the first author has included asthma, autism, diabetes, COPD, and more! A priori, you should consider whether this is plausible when it's such a well-studied molecule. How could so many studies, carefully conducted with standard methods in epidemiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, etc. have missed this litany of issues? What kind of data is backing this up? The paper presents a few graphs where incidents of certain diseases are compared to the mass of glyhposate applied. One immediately wonders how this relationship plays out: are more acres being treated with glyphoste, is the application per acre increasing, what is the number of people exposed, what are the doses of exposure, are there geographic relationships between exposure and incidence, are there new diagnostic tools or detection of the disease, etc. etc.? These are the standard sorts of questions you expect to be addressed from observational studies, yet they have no discussion here. This is telling. Furthermore, the proposed mechanisms are little more than idle speculation. This is basic biochemistry and molecular biology, tractable issues that can be investigated experimentally. So why is this discussed? This is the sort of thing that might get a paragraph or two in a review article talking about future work. Generally this is only done when the review author knows that a colleague is performing this work or seeking funding for it. It's difficult to communicate how 'off' this kind of speculation is. Biology is full of specious hypotheses. It's so easy to be wrong, but to sound very right and reasonable while you're doing it. You quickly develop a deep distaste for speculation outside of some animated conversations you might have with colleagues in the lab or at conferences. It has no place in the literature. It is a violation of norms that is deeply revealing. So what about these authors? Are these molecular biologists? Biochemists? Epidemiologists? Physicians? No. Anthony Samsel is an 'independent researcher' that publishes on occular medicine. He does stuff like go on "Moms across America" and says that glyphosate and GMOs are responsible for the Autism 'epidemic'. https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/tags/anthony_samsel https://www.momsacrossamerica.com/tags/anthony_samsel Seriously, this asshole is an autism scaremonger, and somehow he's getting upvoted of fucking hacker news. Stephanie Seneff is a (staff, i.e. not a PI. her husband is a PI, tho) computer scientist at MIT that works with speech, natural language, human-computer interface, that sort of thing. She's earned herself a Wikipedia entry that discusses her habits of publishing controversial (i.e. shitty) work in low-impact journals and generally gets involved in all kinds of shit she has no professional experience in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Seneff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Seneff You almost couldn't pick a more ridiculous pair to embody 'bad science'. The paper you linked is pure bullshit my friend. It's clear as day for all to see with a moment's reflection. I think you may consider your own epistemology and critical faculties to see whether they are serving you. You got got. "Plausible" is everywhere. There's good reason why it has not currency in science. Evidence is what has currency, and that's tricky enough to begin with.

JamesBarney 7y ago

This article is a fishing expedition published by someone who is not involved in the field at all and wasn't peer reviewed by anyone who studies this seriously. Speaking of fishy, the fish study was a small study where fish were literally swimming in roundup(not just glyphosate) at much higher concentrations than anything humans have contact with. Which tells us it's probably a bad idea to drink a glass of round up. Here is a critique by an actual researcher in the field. http://www.ultimateglutenfree.com/2014/02/does-glyphosate-cause-celiac-disease-actually-no/ http://www.ultimateglutenfree.com/2014/02/does-glyphosate-ca...