Part 9: University of New South Wales computer imaging expert
concludes
Morris paper's claims are "untrue"
This text and images below page were written by Tim Lambert, a lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales, Australia.
The contents are reproduced from the Science Blogs website at:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/09/would_you_eat_wormy_sweet_corn.php
Would you eat wormy sweet corn?
Category: Technology
Posted on: September 7, 2007 12:07 PM, by Tim Lambert
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A 2003 paper in the British Food Journal by Powell et al described an experiment that found that, given a choice between genetically modified sweet corn and the regular kind, consumers preferred to buy the GM corn by a factor of 3 to 2.
However, Stuart Laidlaw reported that the experiment was flawed -- there was a sign above the regular sweet corn saying "Would you eat wormy sweet corn?", while the corresponding sign over the GM corn said "Here's What Went into Producing Quality Sweet Corn".
The experiment shows that consumers prefer GM corn to wormy corn, but they may well prefer regular corn to GM corn if they were both presented as worm free.
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As a result, there was an exchange of letters in the British Food Journal. Joe Cummins wrote:
Powell et al. acknowledge that this was only a preliminary study and there were a number of limitations arising from consumer testing based solely on this one farm store. However, the cornerstone of science is full and honest reporting, and this experiment and its controls do not appear to have been reported either fully or honestly. The research should, therefore, be withdrawn, as should the journal's Award for Excellence.
Powell conceded that the "wormy corn" sign had been present on August 30 (the day the sales experiment started), but [claimed that]
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The handwritten signs were changed the following week.
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But look at the picture that Powell provided of the display. To the right is a closer view of the sign that was above the regular corn. It's a bit blurry, but you can see that it says "Would you eat wormy sweet corn?". I've overlaid it with Laidlaw's picture of the sign. You can switch between them if you roll your mouse over the image (provided you have Javascript on your browser). The match is perfect.
Shane Morris, who is the second author of the paper, posted another picture of the display on his blog and wrote:
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No data from any such "signs" were included in publication data (granted I only came to Canada Sept. 12, 2000 and was not present for the entire sampling period). There are lots of pictures and video footage of the store that show no misleading signs during the data collection period (see pic above). I look forward to posting them all but first lets give Johnny more rope to hang himself. HERE IS GREENPEACE CANADA REVIEWING THE SIGNS........surely they would have contacted the media and the University of Guelph if anything "fraud" like was going on (note camera on Greenpeace rep!!).
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But compare Morris's picture of the display with Powell's: what sign is the Greenpeace rep looking at? Yes, it's the "wormy corn" sign. To the right is a close up view of the sign. The writing is just a blur, but I've aligned it with the previous image of the sign and if you mouse over it, you'll see that there is a good match. It's conceivable, I guess, that other words were written on the sign in exactly the same position, but odds are that the sign was unchanged.
Jonathan Matthews (the "Johnny" that Morris refers to) asked the Greenpeace rep in Morris' picture about the sign:
We contacted Michael Khoo and asked him if he could, as Shane Morris claimed, confirm that the wormy corn sign was not up when he visited the store. He couldn't.
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He told us, "I could have seen it when I was there," but he couldn't say for certain because "it's a little while ago" and he hadn't retained any of the photos he had taken at the store.
But Michael Khoo hadn't gone alone to the store that day. He had a companion - Dr Rod MacRae, an independent food policy consultant based in Toronto who had Greenpeace Canada as one of his clients. Dr MacRae told us that he had seen the wormy corn sign when he went to the store: "I can state categorically that the sign was there the day Michael and I attended." He also confirmed the date: "signage favouring the GE corn by describing the other corn as wormy was still up on Sept. 27, 2000."
Morris has now resorted to threats of legal action to stop criticism of the study. Joe Cummins writes:
SLAPP is acronym for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, a litigation used by large organizations, or sometimes even individuals [1] to intimidate and silence less wealthy critics by so severely burdening them with the cost of a legal defence that they abandon their criticism. The acronym was coined in the 1980s by University of Denver professors Penelope Canan and George W. Pring. One marker of a SLAPP is whether the costs outweigh the damages claimed by a large amount; for example, damages of a few hundred dollars and costs in the tens of thousands. SLAPP can be attractive to lawyers because a marginal case can lead to high legal fees, and because clients actually encourage them to run up large costs [2]. ...
The GM-free Ireland Network is the subject of on-going attack by a biotech lobbyist called Shane Morris, a paid agent of the Canadian Government: a Senior Consumer Analyst at the Consumer Analysis Section of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. He manages a website that attacks opponents of GM crops in his home country and in Great Britain, and even high ranking European Union politicians whom he believes are soft on GM crops. Things came to a head when he threatened legal action against third party internet service providers carrying comments critical of him. ...
The effort from Canada to use the threat of third party litigation to have GM Free Ireland and GM Watch removed from the internet enjoyed a brief success when GM Watch went offline. Now GM Watch is back, and both sites have provided full accounts of the efforts to intimidate them into withdrawing criticism of the shoddy study.
I think that science would have been better served if Powell and Morris had acknowledged the flaws in their study rather than making untrue statements about the "wormy corn" sign being removed.
GM Watch has more on this issue in four parts, 1, 2, 3 and 4.
New Image further demolishes Shane Morris's claims
GM Watch, 10 October 2007.
On his blog Shane Morris has produced two photographic images which he says prove that the controversial 'Would you eat wormy sweet corn?' sign was taken down early on inÝhis and Doug Powell'sÝresearch into whether consumers preferred GM or non-GM sweet corn.
After carefully studying both these images, Tim Lambert a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales concluded, 'I think that science would have been better served if Powell and Morris had acknowledged the flaws in their study rather than making untrue statements about the 'wormy corn' sign being removed.'
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/09/would_you_eat_wormy_sweet_corn.php
Now we are able to publish a special composite image that Tim Lambert has created. ItÝshows more clearly than ever that the 'wormy corn' sign is there in both the photos that Morris has said show it had been removed.
The composite has been formed from the two images on Morris's blog and a third image - a picture of the 'wormy corn' sign taken by a photographer for the Toronto Star at the start of the research when even Shane Morris admits the sign was on display.
Tim used as the basis of the composite one of the images of the store on Morris's blog which Morris says show no 'wormy corn' sign.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1382/2258/1600/Store.jpg
The sign we're interested in on the right (in that image) and is the one in the middle of the three signs shown in the composite image above.
For purposes of comparison, Tim Lambert put the Toronto Star image of the wormy corn sign below it on the right in the composite image.
And above it he's put a sign visible in the other image on Morris's blog. That image shows Greenpeace campaigner Michael Khoo inspecting the farm store on the first day Morris admits to being present at the study (27 September 2000).
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1382/2258/1600/Greenpeace.0.jpg
With the three signs lined up one above the other it is easy to see that they are exactly the same sign, even though two of them come from photographs that Morris has claimed disprove the presence of the 'wormy corn' sign.
Here is what Tim Lambert told us:
'I've put three versions in this one image. ÝThe bottom one is the clear image that shows it says "Would you eat wormy sweet corn?".
'The middle one is Morris's photo of the signs. ÝIt's hard to read, but it's clear that has the same words as the bottom one.
'The top one is from Morris's photo of Khoo looking at the signs and shows the sign he was looking at. ÝI just stretched it horizontally to compensate for the angle of the photo. ÝIt's blurry, but you can see that it's the same sign again and with the same words on it. ÝThis photo is dated 9.27.2000, which seems to contradict Morris's claim that the sign was taken down before he was there.'
The only difference in the sign dated 9.27.2000 is that another much smaller orange sign is covering the bottom right hand part of the wormy corn sign, but other than that, as Tim Lambert notes, it's the same sign again and with the same words on it, including the question: 'Would you eat wormy sweet corn?'
According to Andrew Apel in his article Propaganda, Fraud and Libel, 'the hand-written "wormy" sweet corn signs had gone up and come down before Morris was in Canada, before he was employed at the University of Guelph, and before the data were gathered.'
But from the evidence,Ýnone of this appears to be true.
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continued in Part 10
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