Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

http://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/can-the-scientific-reputation-of-pamela-ronald-public-face-of-gmos-be-salvaged/

A series of embarrassing retractions have damaged the scientific credibility of the US media's GM-apologist of choice.

Can the Scientific Reputation of Pamela Ronald, Public Face of GMOs, Be Salvaged?
Jonathan Latham
Independent Science News, 12 November 2013

Synopsis: When a quotable university expert is needed to speak on behalf of crop biotechnology, Pamela Ronald is the US media's professor of choice. Her credibility as a scientific pro-GMO expert derives from her long-term research into diseases of rice at the University of California, Davis. But Pamela Ronald's research career is coming to resemble a liability. In the past year the laboratory Ronald heads has publicly retracted two original scientific papers. These publications (including one from Science) formed the core of her plant disease research . At the same time, German researchers have publicly raised substantive questions about a third Ronald publication.

Presumably because her scientific reputation is highly valuable to the biotech industry, a coordinated media campaign is underway to rescue it. Pamela Ronald and the campaign blame now-departed lab members from Thailand and Korea for the lab's errors and Ronald is praised for initiating the retractions. The truth, however, is not so simple, and raises still further questions about the scientific validity of Pamela Ronald's research.

Full text:

Professor Pamela Ronald is probably the scientist most widely known for publicly defending genetically engineered (GE or GMO) crops. Her media persona, familiar to readers of the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, NPR, and many other global media outlets, is to take no prisoners.

After New York Times chief food writer Mark Bittman advocated GMO labelling, she called him “a scourge on science” who “couches his nutty views in reasonable-sounding verbiage”. His opinions were “almost fact and science-free” continued Ronald. In 2011 she claimed in an interview with the US Ambassador to New Zealand: “After 14 years of cultivation and a cumulative total of two billion acres planted, GE crops have not caused a single instance of harm to human health or the environment.”

<>

The first paper was retracted on January 29th 2013, from the journal PLoS One (Han et al 2011). News of the retraction was (belatedly) published on the 11th of September 2013 by the blog Retraction Watch under the headline: "Doing the right thing: Researchers retract quorum sensing paper after public process".[2]

The second retraction, from Science, was officially announced a month later, on October 11th 2013 (Lee et al 2009). This time, retraction was accompanied by a lengthy explanation (Anatomy of a Retraction, by Pamela Ronald) in the official blog of Scientific American. In this article, Ronald blamed the work of unnamed former lab members from Korea and Thailand. Retraction Watch reported the retraction, this time the same day, as: "Pamela Ronald does the right thing again'. Also on the same day, "The Scientist" magazine quoted Pamela Ronald saying it was “just a mix-up” and repeating her claim that “Former lab members who had begun new positions as professors in Korea and Thailand were devastated to learn that [we] could not repeat their work”.

<>