What pseudoscience is and is not.

[truedelphi]

17. Here are some considerations for anyone here examining "woo" vs "non-woo" science

Last edited Sun Apr 20, 2014, 04:43 PM - Edit history (1)

Tony Tweedale, a scientist, researcher and commentator I respect greatly wrote: "About 40 years ago, a toxicity protocol that was called Good Laboratory Practices (or "GLP&quot came about and was mandated by the FDA. This happened after gross laboratory frauds by life science and petrochemical companies occurred. So GLP imposes simple record keeping chain of custody and test data standardization requirements on toxicology laboratories."

Most Americans remain in the dark about all the many games that are played by the American Corporate "safety" experts and investigators, even as they purport to follow the GLP..

One failure is the simple failure of the Huge Big Pocketed Organization, such as Monnato, to properly disclose the ingredients in a product. (In other words, the lies, and the damn lies that come from Industry-sponsored scientists.) America's EPA is the only agency in charge of licensing corporate products that does not now and probably never will in the future run a full gas spectrometric assessment of ingredients. If Monsanto says Product X contains only glyphosate and water, then the EPA says, "Thanks so much, Boys, for telling us that."

Then decades later the public comes to find out that formaldehyde is contained as well. (Although over the last fifteen years, it is possible that another aldehyde is in place of the formaldehyde.) One organic chemist I know had a slap to the forehead "Duh" moment when realizing that formaldehyde had been contained in the original formulation of Roundup: "After all, Carol, without an aldheyde of some kind, the glyphosate in RoundUp would remain in cake form, and the product would not be sprayable."

Also, it is well worth noting that one of the things other nations do in order to protect their citizenry's health is that their EPA-equivalent agency actually does run these gas spectrometric assessments, or other equivalent assessments of a product's actual ingredients. That way when the government is lied to, the government knows it! But we don't even do that.

Then the second thing that is done is this: we let the manufacturer devise the tests and run the tests that prove the safety of their product. Conflict of interest, anyone? yes our EPA lets the company itself do the testing of a product's safety and then provide those results to the EPA. Does anyone else here think maybe that means that the tests that are devised, the protocols etc - all of that can be devised to the Industry's liking so that Industry might devise a test that totally allows the product to escape being tested for the actual dangers.

Example: when glyphosate had to be tested for its safety, regarding RoundUp, the Monsanto scientists decided to have dogs drink water that had been substantially laced with glyphosate. The dogs all lived. But in reality, very few pet owners go out and buy RoundUp and liberally pour it into their dog's drinking water. The real test of the product's safety would have examined the dogs who had been sprayed with the product. Of course, Monsanto's scientists and advisers knew full well that the acids secreted in the stomach linings of the affected dogs would help the dogs survive the drinking water test. But had the dog's been sprayed, and examined after a suitable time, the lungs have no capacity to absorb the product and the results would have been different. (Especially true statement if Monsanto had been required to test all the ingredients in the product and not simply the glyphosate! But the POEA, which breaks down into formaldehyde and an aldehyde as well, as per the actual formulation)

But if the company had doen that, they probably would have jimmied with the time factor. For instance, when BP wanted to have a product used for oil dispersement on the troubled oil-drenched waters of the Gulf, the EPA had fish set up in a tank whe e the oil dissolving product was used. Then the fish were released one week alter, and all were reported to be in good health.

However one very ambitious EPA worker kept a tanks of fish for an additional two weeks, and within that time, all the fish died.

So which is woo? The ambitious EPA researcher who kept the fish longer, or the EPA workers who conformed by the protocols of the testing that was done in accordance with BP's wishes? (The product that dispersed oil was a product that BP was about to make a lot of money on!)

Additionally, the Big Corporate TakeOver of agencies like FDA and EPA mean that indie researcher are continually asked for their raw data before they have even finished their tests. But, of course, double standards apply. Big Corporate "scientists" are allowed as much time as (or as little time as) they want, they offset the risk to benefit factors by purging data that doesn't meet their requirement and numerous other manners and methods of jimmying the data exist. All that is accepted by the Media and by those agencies allied with Big Industry.

Tony Tweedale points out that additionally: "industry's toxicity studies have failed to modernize in over 100 years, still relying on the visible light microscope to see gross changes in slides of organ tissues. Many biological end points are ignored, and the standards on dosing and and test animals have not advance d nearly as far as those of independent researchers. Very high does are used to assure statistical significance, due to insensitivity of the assays, but such near poisoning levels may have little to do with what happens to organisms that are exposed to smaller, real world doses. Also, the dosing is missing the complexity of development, the cause of many diseases. Lastly, test animals are killed before o0ld age, masking most developing diseases. In short, the GLP manner of testing uses protocols that cannot find the toxicity."

BTW, Tweedale has given up working here in the all too often corrupted laboratories of American, corporate owned Laboratories. He now works in Europe.

On edit: here is all of Tweedale's abstract that I utilized in this reply. Sections I did not quote are even better than the ones I did. http://jech.bmj.com/content/65/6/475.extract