I skimmed over the article, and saw little of substance there.
Importantly, I did not see that the author’s backgrounds qualify them to write a supposedly scholarly article on a biological subject. I have no idea what an “independent scientist and consultant” is, and I can guarantee that no one trained in computer science and artificial intelligence has any in-depth understanding of life sciences or the complex interactions of an organism with its environment.
They made a lot of assertions, none of which are backed up by experimental evidence. Despite a bucket load of references (nearly 300), they omitted any reference that supported their underlying assumptions. Their most glaring (and false) underlying assumption is that toxicity at high doses can be extrapolated down to toxicity at low doses. That is utterly untrue. No one consumes glyphosate at the quantities tested in toxicology studies. Glyphosate also breaks down fairly rapidly in the environment—it does not accumulate anywhere. The main source of toxic exposures would be among people who apply it to crops—and they should be wearing protective equipment to prevent exposure.
Some of their other assertions also show their glaring lack of life sciences education. Trying to tie glyphosate to every bad thing under the sun, especially in situations where a causative factor is already well-known, is not good science. If you want to tie glyphosate exposure at any level to an adverse outcome, you need to actually conduct a study to establish a causative relationship. Their linking glyphosate usage to C. difficile infection, and then going from there to autism is just plain torturous. It would be a beautiful example of “correlation does not equal causation”, except that they don’t even establish a very good correlation. Yes, autism is linked to gastrointestinal problems—but the most likely explanation for that is that the genetic abnormalities in the metabolic pathways that cause autism also cause intestinal defects. Autism behaves very much like a genetic disease, most likely controlled through the synergy of several genes. It’s going to take real scientists a while to figure it all out—they’re making progress, but science never works as fast as pseudoscience.
Anyway, that article is way too long to go through and criticize point-by-point, and reading all of their references to see what the references actually say is way more work than I care to do for the purpose of making a forum post.
Thank you for pointing that out. That - the author’s credentials and backgrounds and their lack thereof in that particular scientific field, jumped out to me as well, although you stated it, and the reasons for your and my skepticism, much more succinctly than I ever could.
I think that a lot of people, including those in the MSM and many here do not understand is how the scientific process actually works. There are thousands upon thousands of research papers and studies published every year, some on “open” sites like this, ones that seem to accept nearly every research papers, and a lot of hypothesis and conclusions are reached. But what isn’t always looked at or reported in the MSM or understood by anyone without an understanding of how the scientific process works, is the subsequent scientific peer reviews often tear many of these papers apart. Just because a person or a team submits a research paper to a scientific or quasi scientific website, that doesn’t mean that any of the conclusions posited in that research is subsequently proven to be correct.
Unlike you, I am not a scientist, but even I understand that any legitimate scientific paper or study is submitted and then is subject to scientific peer review. Other scientists attempt to replicate the results and either prove the hypothesis to be valid and subject to further study or they find the basis seriously flawed and or invalid and or are not able to replicate any of the same results and the said research paper goes into the scientific dust bin – a dead end in terms of serious research. Some so called research papers submitted are so seriously flawed, that no legitimate scientist would even waste their time with them.
But that is not what get’s reported. When some “researcher” or a team of researchers, even if they publish a paper far afield from their area of expertise, publishes a paper, the MSM and many with no understanding of the scientific process, accepts it as being “factual”, when in reality, it is just an unproven hypothesis and more often than not, one that ultimately is proven flawed or false.
I knew the peer review process was broken, and has been so for some time now, but I can't believe that this would see the light of day had it been subjected to legitimate peer review.
Has the process really sunk this low?