EXTRACT: Klaus Ammann's reckless and unsupported claims of fraud are not only unconscionable, but slanderous and should not be tolerated by members of the scientific community. We at GenØk demand a public apology and retraction for his unsubstantiated claims.

NOTE: More on Ammann here:
http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=8&page=A
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GENØK DEFENDS ITS SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY FROM FALSEHOODS OF SWISS SCIENTIST
DEMANDS PUBLIC APOLOGY AND RETRACTION

GENØK, 12 November 2008
http://english.genok.org/news_cms/2008/november/gen_k_defends_its_scientific_integrity_from_falsehoods_of_swiss_scientist._demands_public_apology_and_retraction./66

Klaus Ammann, retired from the University of Berne, Switzerland, and guest professor at Delft University of Technology gave a presentation entitled "Do GM crops pose risks to the environment?" at the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference (ABIC) in Cork, Ireland during August 24-27, 2008. The power point file of the talk is available on-line at: (http://www.botanischergarten.ch/ABIC/Ammann-ABIC-Cork-20080826.ppt ). In this talk, Klaus Ammann made several public accusations of scientific fraud and misconduct against GenØk Centre for Biosafety.

GenØk is a government-mandated research centre that studies the potential risks of genetically modified foods and vaccines for human health, the environment and food safety. No one from GenØk was attending ABIC.

In our humble opinion, it behoves anyone interested in fairness and accuracy to apply at least basic standards of information gathering and evidence verification from first hand sources before making such serious accusations. Klaus Ammann has made no attempt to obtain such direct evidence from anyone at our institute. Regrettably, this unfortunate situation of unfounded allegations could have been avoided, and Klaus Ammann's confusion resolved, if basic scientific standards of evidence gathering, fitting of any responsible scientist, had been exercised (if, in fact, the quest for science and truth is the primary motivation).

Klaus Ammann is a well-known advocate of the biotechnology industry (see e.g. http://www.monsanto.com/biotech-gmo/asp/experts.asp?id=KlausAmmann). Since we became aware of Dr. Amman's accusations against us, we have subsequently learned that he has engaged in similar irresponsible behavior directed at individuals and organizations that do not share his political or scientific views.

While it is unusual for GenØk to address groundless claims made by individuals, on this occasion Klaus Amman has crossed a line by directly slandering and defaming GenØk as an institution at a public international conference. We, therefore feel compelled to respond directly to his accusations, which are in our view irresponsible, and undermines efforts of the whole scientific community to achieve conscientious and constructive scientific discourse on the responsible use of biotechnologies in medical and agricultural applications.

We, therefore, find it necessary to respond publicly to each of his accusations. We believe that Klaus Ammann should be held accountable for his deliberate scientific misconduct.

In his presentation Klaus Ammann displayed slides stating:

*"GENOK: How you can tell lies with a slide.."
*"GENOK Slide Fraud" (repeated twice)
*"False Information replacing original legend"
*"Semi-holistic, grossly misleading approach"
*"An alarmist paper on the 35S promoters activities”¦"

Below, each of these allegations is refuted. Following that, we will discuss Klaus Ammann's apparent incompetence at evaluating evidence and sources.

1. Accusations of "Lies", "Fraud" and "False Information".

These dramatic allegations can be tracked back to a table appearing in an article by Kuiper et al. from 2001(Assessment of the food safety issues related to genetically modified foods. Plant Journal 27: 503-528). In the article the table looked like this:
[see http://english.genok.org/news_cms/2008/november/gen_k_defends_its_scientific_integrity_from_falsehoods_of_swiss_scientist._demands_public_apology_and_retraction./66 ]

In his talk, Klaus Ammann has labelled his versions of the table as "GENOK SLIDE FRAUD" and has given them numbers 17 and 18 in his Powerpoint series.

The "GENOK SLIDE FRAUD" that Klaus Ammann referred to is a low resolution approximation of an image apparently copied from a pdf provided in some years of our Biosafety capacity building courses. Klaus Ammann has never participated in any of these courses and therefore was not a witness to either how the material was presented or what the material looked like in its original form as a Powerpoint slide. The slides he bases his false accusations upon have been handed to him through unknown routes and from unknown sources. He did not even take the care to find out who gave the presentation that he was so upset about, nor did he bother to verify it authencity by asking GenØk. We will here explain the history of this slide so the truth can be aired.

Together with her partners INBI of New Zealand and TWN of Malaysia, GenØk runs an annual course called "Holistic Foundations for Assessment and Regulation of Genetic Engineering and Genetically Modified Organisms" for professionals (scientists, regulators and civil society leaders) from developing countries. The course has so far been running for 6 years, lasts two weeks, and has become tremendously popular. We receive approximately 400 applications each year, and can only accept 40 participants due to economic and lab space restrictions. The course is designed and conducted by a faculty of 20 internationally recognized resource persons. The participants' course evaluations have been highly favourable throughout all the years. The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the Minister for International Development and Cooperation and later on Norad (Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation) have been covering all expenses, and we have never received funding from any other
source for this course. In 2004, Norad appointed an independent, external expert committee to evaluate the course. The conclusions of this external review were very positive, and the committee urged us to continue with the "core" course and to launch both regional versions of the course and also more specialized courses, requests that we have later turned into reality (for further details, see http://english.genok.org/courses ).

It is the normal practice of our leading lecturers to provide course notes to accompany their lectures. These are provided either as powerpoint slides or as pdf versions of the powerpoint presentations, sometimes also annotated with extensive notes beneath the slides. The first slide that Ammann refers to features of a table reproduced with acknowledgements from a paper written by Kuiper et al. 2001. In the extensive notes beneath the image, but NOT shown by Klaus Ammann, were all relevant footnotes of the table.

This is the context and the version for presentation of the Kuiper et al. 2001 table in the GenØk course.
[for deatils see http://english.genok.org/news_cms/2008/november/gen_k_defends_its_scientific_integrity_from_falsehoods_of_swiss_scientist._demands_public_apology_and_retraction./66 ]

This particular lecture's outline was (i) Genetic modification process, (ii) Safety of new proteins, (iii) Occurrence and implications of unintended effects. The table from Kuiper et al., which Klaus Ammann is referring to, was clearly labelled in the original Powerpoint presentation and in the pdf notes as indicating that different proteins that are subject to risk assessments are subjected to a non-uniform array of tests, so that few tests have been done on all commercial products and few or no commercial products have benefited from all possible tests (as listed in the table). When turning to the Notes Page, which was part of the hand-out for the presentation, (all the original footnotes from the Kuiper publication were included) nothing is hidden away from the audience including the original footnotes. Furthermore, it becomes evident that Klaus Ammann's allegations of "Oral interpretation: No [number] of reported cases showing acute oral toxicity" and "Later exaggerated to No
[number] of deaths reported due to Bt toxicity in UNEP classes", are wholly inaccurate. For clarity, the notes provided to the participants accompanying the Kuiper et al. table are reproduced here de toto:

(Quote) "Safety of new proteins"

New proteins in GMOs may come from the products of introduced genes (discussed in this slide), new products of existing genes created by insertion mutations or other effects (next slide), and existing proteins that take on new characteristics because of a change in the cellular environment (slide 3 in this series).

There are no uniform standards for testing new proteins in GMOs. The table indicates the variety and inconsistency in approaches to assessing toxicity and allergenicity, for example.

Table from {Kuiper, 2001 #1175}: "AO, acute oral toxicity; AI, acute intravenous toxicity; BI, binding to mammalian intestinal tissues; HP, haemolytic potential; ID, in vitro digestion; IR, immune response; SC, sequence comparisons with allergens and toxins; SE, sensitization, oral and intraperitoneal,.; SO, subchronic oral toxicity." (Unquote).

Neither in the text nor during the oral presentation has the lecturer ever referred to any "reported cases showing acute oral toxicity" or to "number of deaths reported due to Bt toxicity". This is absolutely absurd, and all that Klaus Ammann builds on is hearsay and unverified second hand information or it is the product of intentional invention by Klaus Ammann himself .

Furthermore, Klaus Ammann claims that information from the table was obscured purposefully to hide that information from the audience. In Klaus Ammann's reproduction, there is a black stripe on the slide. In the original powerpoint, that stripe is transparent highlighting used as an animation. When the slide was converted to a pdf, the conversion obscured that column. This clearly indicates that the slide Klaus Ammann used was from a second hand source. One can only guess what his intent was, in taking one visually obscured slide out of the lecture context to launch an unfounded attack of 'fraud' against GenØk, decorated with additional inventions of a supposedly 'oral presentation' of whatever source.

Given these unfortunate revelations, it is clear to us that Klaus Ammann has demonstrated evidence gathering skills that are clearly below the standard of a research-level academic and has seriously eroded any credibility of his status as a scholar.

2. Statements of “Grossly Misleading Approach” and “An Alarmist paper”

Klaus Ammann refers to a peer-reviewed article based on experimental studies performed in the GenØk laboratories (Myhre et al. The 35S CaMV promoter is active in human enterocyte-like cells. Eur Food Res Technol 222: 185-193, 2006).

It is quite apparent to any reasonable individual that Klaus Amman could not possibly have drawn his conclusions without taking the statements in the article intentionally far out of context. The article is based on quite common experimental approaches and designs, and draws no definite conclusions about any food or feed risks related to the reported findings. Klaus Ammann has drawn his own conclusions that are extreme and unusual.

Our peer-reviewed article demonstrated that the 35S CaMV promoter drives transcription of two different reporter genes in cultures of human enterocyte-like cells. These cells were, of course, selected for the experiments because they are related to key cells at the portal of entrance for food into the human organism. In the discussion, we comment on the findings in the following ways:

(Quote)"But, irrespective of how careful and considerate selection of cell cultures has been performed, the paramount difference between in vivo and in vitro situations cannot be over-emphasized. Hence, well-designed cell culture experiments may give lead for, but never replace, in vivo studies." (Unquote).

(Quote)"But so far, uptake of fragments containing the intact 35S promoter has not been directly demonstrated in any species." (Unquote).

In his ABIC talk, Klaus Ammann's bias is clearly revealed in his discussion of our published research by calling it:

(Quote)"Semi-holistic, grossly misleading approach. An alarmist paper on the 35S promoter activities on animal cell cultures not mentioning that we eat this promoter daily with our normal Food without ANY harm". (Unquote).

Firstly, our research findings made no claim of harm to people. Secondly, Klaus Ammann's statement to support the safety of the 35S promoter is without scientific basis as it relies on assumptions and lack of knowledge rather than scientific facts (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of an effect).

Nobody is purposefully eating 35S promoters. Instead, people and animals eat plant materials that occasionally contain the Cauliflower Mosaic VIRUS (CaMV) (the source of the 35S promoter). The amount of intake will depend on how much Brassicaceae (e.g. Chinese cabbage, kale, cauliflower, cabbage) are in the diet and whether and to which extent the plants are indeed CaMV infected in that particular part of the world. So, while individuals are occasionally exposed to 35S promoters in their natural context, there are various peer-reviewed articles demonstrating that when it comes to uptake of a given DNA fragment in an organism, different contexts give different opportunities for such uptake. Hence, it is disingenuous to extrapolate, as Klaus Ammann does, from one context to another, e.g. from 35S promoters as integral parts of viral genomes, to integral parts of plant genomes.

Concluding remarks

We would like to draw attention to the misconduct definition of the US National Academy of Sciences (1992); "Misconduct in science is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism, in proposing, performing, or reporting research. Misconduct does not include errors of judgement; errors in recording, selection, or analysis of data; differences in opinions involving the interpretation of data; or misconduct unrelated to the research process".

Viewing the ABIC presentation by Klaus Ammann, we noticed that about 1/3 of his 42 displays were attacks on scientists engaged in GMO biosafety research. We also could not help but notice that much of the biased inferences made in his presentation were largely based on a selective use of literature references, and not fitting of a reasoned scientist. All in all, we conclude that the title of the presentation was misleading, the author did not try to answer the questions he was posing ("Do GM crops pose risks to the environment"), but instead he resorted to slandering rather than scholarship to sway his audience.

In addition to the claims we have rejected here, Klaus Amman also used two slides to discuss what he called "Inhaled Bt Pollen Fraud". This referred to the findings by GenØk researchers of antibodies against Bt toxin in blood sera from villagers on the Philippines.His claims in this case are as incorrect as in the others discussed in this document. However, we will return to that case in a specific paper currently being prepared at a later date.

In conclusion, GenØk maintains that:

1. Klaus Ammann's reckless and unsupported claims of fraud are not only unconscionable, but slanderous and should not be tolerated by members of the scientific community. We at GenØk demand a public apology and retraction for his unsubstantiated claims.

2. Klaus Ammann's supporting institutions (University of Berne and Delft University ) should make clear whether his behaviour is in accordance with the scientific as well as ethical standards that professional institutions should uphold.