Gilles-Eric Séralini, who had already been known as an anti-GMO/anti-pesticide zealot (GMOs Are A Pesticide Sponge And Other Weird Tales Of Gilles-Eric Seralini), shot to worldwide fame among the anti-science crowd when he published a paper showing bloated rats with giant tumors.
All due to GMOs, he said.
There were problems with his claims. His study showed no data, he used a strain of rats likely to get tumors, and his methodology was an ethical violation in most countries. Weirdly, given the propensity of that strain of rats to get cancer, some of the results were so inconsistent it looked like GMOs caused cancer risk to go down. Even the EU, no friend to the scientific method, disavowed his work.
Not all good publicity is good publicity and after being ridiculed, Food and Chemical Toxicology took it down. But it has found a new home. Basically, the credit card cleared so one of Springer's new journals, called Environmental Sciences Europe, has pushed it out there.
Peer reviewed journals are less and less peer reviewed, of course. I have ridiculed PNAS for its hermaphroditic frogs, female hurricane names and other papers, just like I have ridiculed PLOS One for producing 30,000 articles a year.
Springer probably thinks 'if we don't take his money, someone else will'. I wonder why it took even a month to go through whatever this new "peer review" was? It couldn't have been more than some editor checking off a few boxes.
Retracted Seralini GMO-rat study republished - Retraction Watch
