1.More transparency needed
2.SAS defends GM guide
3.Charity guide criticised for not declaring GM interests
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1.More transparency needed (1)
Times Higher Education, 5 March 2009
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=405683&c=2

Tracey Brown, in her letter (26 February) attacking the article on Sense About Science's genetic modification guide and GM Watch's press release about conflicting interests ("Charity guide criticised for not declaring GM interests", 19 February), claims that: "The description of the John Innes Centre (JIC) as receiving funding from biotech companies was mischievous."

Why so? The JIC not only receives such funding but also in the past has entered into major deals with both Syngenta and Dupont - worth about GBP60 million in total and celebrated at the time as exciting precedents. The fact that the Syngenta deal eventually came unstuck, almost certainly in part because of all the opposition to GM, hardly provides a rationale for not wanting to secure a more favourable climate for this technology.

A number of the authors of the GM guide work for the JIC, but apparently the JIC's GM interests do not warrant a mention.

Jonathan Matthews
GM Watch
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More transparency needed (2)
Times Higher Education, 5 March 2009
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=405700&c=2

Sense About Science is annoyed with Times Higher Education for mentioning that Vivian Moses, who contributed to its booklet on GM, heads a biotech industry-funded lobby group. It says this is not a paid position so it is not a vested interest. Yet in your article Moses himself says that, if he had been asked, he would have mentioned it.

Moses is also part of the Scientific Alliance, as are several of Sense About Science's scientific advisers, not to mention one or two of the other contributors to the GM booklet.

The Scientific Alliance is an industry-funded lobby group that openly promotes climate change denial ˆ a topic on which Sense About Science has done almost nothing proactive to challenge the sceptics. Is this something else that shouldn't be mentioned?

And when it comes to vested interests, what about Sense About Science itself? Times Higher Education refers to it simply as a "charity", but a quick glance at the last accounts it lodged with the Charity Commission shows all the substantial sums from its named donors came from life science, pharma, big oil and mobile phone companies ˆ funnily enough, the very industries whose interests it defends against their critics.

Sense About Science complains that some of these links make no difference to its views. Is this a scientific view? It is certainly contrary to a rash of recent research published in the British Medical Journal and Nature, among other places, which found that the corporate funding of scientific research can skew the results.

In view of such potential problems, transparency is vital if we are to establish the line between promoting "good science and evidence for the public" and something more akin to public relations for vested interests.

David Miller
Professor of sociology
University of Strathclyde
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2.SAS defends GM guide
Times Higher Education, 26 February 2009
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=405529&c=2

Your article "Charity guide criticised for not declaring GM interests" (19 February) did not reflect the information provided by Sense About Science and the John Innes Centre in response to GM Watch's list of the "vested interests" of contributors to our guide, Making Sense of GM: What Is the Genetic Modification of Plants and Why Are Scientists Doing It?

Its list comprised tortuously indirect links, inaccurate information and positions many years out of date: it included a contributor who was vice-chancellor of a university that received industry research funds ... until 1995.

After receiving our information, Times Higher Education covered the allegations anyway, using the example that one contributor, Vivian Moses, is chair of CropGen, a group that promotes biotechnology.

Since CropGen advises that none of its members receives remuneration or research funding from biotech companies, there is no vested interest. Moses was described as having a "directorship" - this is inaccurate.

The description of Sense About Science, that it "claims to" promote scientific reasoning in public discussions, was rude, with no reason given for such sneering. The description of the John Innes Centre as receiving funding from biotech companies was mischievous.

Times Higher Education was given a breakdown of the centre's funding, which included a range of research partners beyond research councils, many from the conventional and organic food industries, too.

The article misunderstands the convention and spirit of declarations of interest. Does Times Higher Education declare as "interests" contributors' links to learned societies and institutes because these in turn have links to industry?

If it intended to argue that indirect connections should be published, our contributors have stronger links to conventional and organic agriculture than biotechnology.

If your correspondent had highlighted something tendentious in the guide, we could have looked at the drafting record. As it was, the correspondent sent through a "scientific" response/press release from GM Watch that featured references to unpublished papers, some more than ten years old.

Tracey Brown, Managing director, Sense About Science.
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3.Charity guide criticised for not declaring GM interests
By Zoe Corbyn
Times Higher Education, 19 February 2009
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=405427&c=2

*Sense About Science pamphlet failed to list contributors' links with industry. Zoe Corbyn reports

A charity has come under fire for failing to declare all industry affiliations of the experts it enlisted to compile a booklet explaining genetic modification to the public.

The pamphlet was produced by Sense About Science (SAS), a charity that claims to promote scientific reasoning in public discussions.

According to anti-genetic modification campaigners and academics, it failed to mention links between some of the experts who wrote the booklet and GM firms.

For example, the guide's biography of Vivian Moses, emeritus professor of microbiology at Queen Mary, University of London, and visiting professor of biotechnology at King's College London, does not mention that he is also chairman of CropGen, a GM lobby group that receives funding from the biotechnology industry.

It says only that he has been "a full-time researcher in biochemistry and microbiology" and is now "primarily concerned with communicating science to the public".

Critics also argued that the guide should have noted that the John Innes Centre, where eight of its 28 contributors are based, received funding from biotechnology companies.

Michael Antoniou, a geneticist at King's College London, described the omissions as "outrageous".

He said: "GM is a sensitive issue. People have been extremely suspicious because of its industrial connections. So it is imperative that they declare these in this context, as in a journal publication."

Dr Antoniou, who himself provides technical advice to anti-GM campaign group GM Watch, speculated that SAS had not disclosed Professor Moses' directorship because it was afraid of arousing public suspicion.

Guy Cook, a professor at The Open University who conducted two research council-funded studies into the language and arguments of the GM debate, agreed that the contributors' interests should have been declared.

"If not, they deal a severe blow to their own cause, the authority of science, which rests upon rationality, objectivity, evidence and disinterest," he said. "The problem with GM advocacy is that it has compromised these principles, and in so doing has dangerously undermined public trust in scientists."

David Miller, professor of sociology at the University of Strathclyde, who is involved in running the website Spinwatch.org.uk, likened the pamphlet to "a PR exercise".

In a statement to Times Higher Education, Professor Moses said his CropGen role was not a secret but should have been spelt out.

"Had I been asked by SAS how I should be described (I wasn't asked and presumed it knew as I have been one of its advisers for years), I would have suggested: visiting professor of biotechnology, King's College London, and chairman of CropGen."

A spokesperson for the John Innes Centre stressed that most of its funding was public.

"We do not regard our affiliations to industry as a contentious issue. Our interests are not 'vested' and our scientists are extremely careful to avoid conflicts of interest."

Tracey Brown, managing director of SAS, said the booklet's emphasis was on contributors' scientific background.

"They were not seeking to advance any commercial application of GM technology, but to set research in the context of other plant-breeding research and history," she said.