Hijacking a Conference's Credibility

Back in November I received an email from Dr. Alison Van
Eenennaam.  We both were planning to
attend the Plant-Animal Genome (PAG) Conference in San Diego in January.  She pointed out one session in particular—a
session called ONE HEALTH Epigenomics from Soil to People.  Here’s the
schedule for the session.  Red flags
anyone?

You can see from the session that the presentations were an
odd mix.  The session was coordinated by Acacia Alciar-Warren, a veterinarian with a molecular biology background in shrimp relatedness. Most of all, none of the topics had anything to do with epigenomics.  Or genomics.  I sense that some
genomics-relevant tag line was required to apply for a session in a genomics
conference, so that was it. Huber and Defarge (from the Seralini program)
represent known special interests against modern biotechnology, and have been
widely criticized for false claims or lousy work. 

Alciar-Warren was also the session moderator.  She dominated the session and asked the vast
majority of the questions. She also steered the conversation.  It was a bizarre and disarticulated session,
featuring an odd mix of legitimate science that was over interpreted, as well
as rehashed data that are known to be false—presented with authority as
scientific fact.

For example, two reasonable talks on shrimp diseases were hijacked
by the moderator and Alciar-Warren steered from their legitimate moorings to tangents on the
dangers of glyphosate, Bt and T-DNA inserts. The speakers even seemed confused.

The Seralini lab’s presentation was the recent PLoS One work, the
paper that says that lab rodent feed is hopelessly contaminated with “GMOs” and
pesticides, and we can’t trust any baseline data for medical tests in animals.

Dr. Don Huber did his typical shtick, presenting a credible-sounding
talk that does not match what we know about herbicide mechanisms of action and
food risks.  I’ll detail his precise claims
on my blog, but they were nothing new. The session was so poorly organized that
it ran overtime and Huber had to quit talking before he got to the Dragon in
his Garage, the deadly pathogen from GM crops that he can culture for a decade but nobody else has seen.  Oh well.

Why Does It Matter?

Most of the audience was students. Concurrent sessions were
compelling to faculty over a clearly crank session on anti-GMO/anti-glyphosate
and tenuously contrived associations to shrimp diseases.  Those students are potentially vulnerable to misunderstanding these messages coming from apparently legitimate speakers. Dr. Alison Van
Eenennaam was one of few that were called on to ask a question to Defarge, but got an insufficient, pandering answer. 

It also is important because we need to discourage hijacking
of our conference sessions by agenda-driven pseudoscience.  When Huber and Defarge’s typical scientific
meetings are clusters of crystal rubbers and guys laying on the ground in bee
suits, we legitimize bad science when we welcome it into our scientific
meetings.

Don’t think they won’t capitalize on that.  These folks are quick to remind you of when
their work punctures the veil of legitimate science. When we loan them our
space, it gives them the patina of quality, and demotes the quality of our
conference.

 Who Should Monitor and Correct Pseudoscience Sessions?

This is not just an issue in genetic engineering and ag chemicals.  The same thing is happening with creationists, climate change deniers, anti-vaxers and other conspiratorial areas.  We need to see the problem and fix it. 

But how should this be policed? At first I thought I’d send a nastygram to the conference, cancel
my registration, and not attend. Then I thought I’d just ignore it, and complain to the
conference organizers.

I thought about a good public shaming in social media, but
were Food Babe tactics needed to enforce reality?  After all, we do want unpopular ideas to be
welcome in scientific conferences, as long as they play by the rules.   

We should not exclude apparently goofy sessions.  A few years ago I put in a proposal for a
workshop at the 2014 Seeds of Justice conference. 
I was going to pay my way and just answer questions about biotech for
those at the generally anti-GMO audience. 
Organizers were excited by the idea, until they weren’t, and my invitation rescinded.  That’s censorship, insulating your tribe from
ideas contrary to the mission of its central tenets. We should never do that.

On the other hand, we always scream that science should be
self-policing.  We talk about how that is
a strength of the peer review process.

With that in mind, we need to identify these instances of
pseudoscientific creep into our scientific conferences.  Don’t cancel them, don’t fight them, but be
sure to show up.  Ask questions.  Don’t let the moderator control the discussion
at the exclusion of legitimate inquiry.

Most of all, show students and postdocs how to be
appropriately critical.   Teach them to
confidently and politely confront those peddling soft claims and bogus science.

The mistake I made was in not advertising the session and
recruiting others to show up.  I should
have brought it to the attention of every scientist at PAG, and had everyone in
that tiny room, asking questions and requesting clarifications.

We are in the age where bad science and activists are
searching for legitimacy.  Predatory
pay-to-publish provide that patina, as so do presentations at scientific
conferences.  We all need to remain
vigilant and read the conference program. 
We need to make any suspicious sessions known to the scientific
community, and make sure we are there to protect our conferences’ integrity.