INSIGHTS
Plant scientists: GM technology is safe THE AMERICAN SOCIETY of Plant
Biologists (ASPB) “supports the continued responsible use of genetic engineering… as an effective tool for advancing food security and reducing the negative environmental impacts of agriculture” (1). A recent petition advocating the ASPB position collected more than 1400 signatories from the plant science community (2). The ASPB, the petition signatories, and other scientists in governmental and scientific organizations throughout the world (3, 4) demonstrate a clear consensus: Current use of genetic modification technology for crops is safe and effective, and future use should be guided by scientific evidence. Despite such broad support for the technology, anti–genetically modified organism (GMO) advocates have had an extensive and troubling impact on policy—at the governmental level and through biasing public opinion—regarding the use of GMObased ingredients in consumer products and food. More worrisome is that these arguments are often founded on science previously demonstrated to be unsound (5), such as the retracted Séralini et al. paper (6), which claimed that rats fed genetically modified corn and the herbicide RoundUp have higher rates of tumor formation.
Noah Fahlgren,1 Rebecca Bart,1 Luis Herrera-Estrella,2 Rubén Rellán-Álvarez,2 Daniel H. Chitwood,1* José R. Dinneny3* 1
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, MO 63132, USA. 2Nacional de Genómica para la Biodiversidad, Irapuato, 36821, Mexico. 3Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] REFERENCES
1. American Society of Plant Biologists, “Revised position statement on plant genetic engineering” (2014);
China has approved the development of genetically modifed corn.
824
2.
3.
4. 5.
6. 7.
8.
9. 10.
https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/aspb.site-ym.com/resource/ group/6d461cb9-5b79-4571-a164-924fa40395a5/ Statements/ASPB_GE_revision.APPROVED_ed.pdf. Cornell Alliance for Science, “Scientists in support of GMO technology for crop improvement” (http://cas.nonprofitsoapbox.com/aspbsupportstatement). Institute of Medicine and National Research Council of the National Academies, Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods (National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2004); www.nap.edu/read/10977/chapter/1. World Health Organization, “Food, genetically modified” (www.who.int/topics/food_genetically_modified/en/). ENSSER, “Democratising Science & Decision Making” (2012); www.ensser.org/ democratising-science-decision-making/. G.E. Séralini et al., Food Chem. Toxicol. 50, 4221 (2012) [RETRACTED]. ENSSER, “No scientific consensus on GMO safety” (2015); www.ensser.org/fileadmin/ user_upload/150120_signatories_no_consensus_lv.pdf. J. Fagan, M. Antoniou, C. Robinson, GMO Myths and Truths (Earth Open Source, London, ed. 2, 2014); www. nongmoproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ GMO-Myths-and-Truths-edition2.pdf. Chipotle, Food with integrity: G-M-OVER IT (https://chipotle.com/gmo). P. A. Sharp, A. Leshner, “We need a new Green Revolution,” New York Times (4 January 2016); www.nytimes. com/2016/01/04/opinion/we-need-a-new-greenrevolution.html.
Protect the Tasmanian wilderness AUSTRALIA’S TASMANIAN Wilderness
World Heritage Area (TWWHA) is one of the three largest remaining temperate wilderness regions in the Southern Hemisphere (1). It covers about 1.6 million hectares, almost a quarter of Australia’s State of Tasmania (1). Pristine wilderness is the most important core value of the region. In January 2014, to encourage local economic growth, the Australian federal government sought to remove 74,039 hectares of land from the TWWHA (2). Although the request was rejected by the World Heritage Committee in June 2014 (3), the Tasmanian state government still supports housing, airport, road, mining, and logging projects within the TWWHA. The World Heritage Committee urged the federal government to stop any such development within the property (4). It is unclear how the federal government will address the Committee’s demand, which leaves the values and integrity of the TWWHA at risk. Australia is only the third country in the world, after Oman and Tanzania, to seek the delisting of its World Heritage areas (5). Australian governments, especially the federal one, should show leadership in implementing the World Heritage Convention. Local and national communities should also raise their voices to politicians and governments to make clear that the values and integrity of the sciencemag.org SCIENCE
19 FEBRUARY 2016 • VOL 351 ISSUE 6275
Published by AAAS
Downloaded from on February 21, 2016
Edited by Jennifer Sills
The European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER) organized a petition signed by 313 individuals in 2013 claiming that “no consensus” exists regarding the safety of GMOs for human health and the environment (7). Commercial entities have seized upon ENSSER’s statements. The Non-GMO Project, for example, cites the ENSSER petition (8) in its efforts to verify the absence of GMOs in over 4500 branded products. The fast-food restaurant chain Chipotle cites the ENSSER petition to justify a campaign against GMO ingredients (9). Questions abound about how to best implement GM technologies, but as we move forward, we must make decisions informed by science. To meet our current and future food supply demands, without destroying our planet, we need every efficacious tool available (10). We hope that the consensus on GM technology among plant scientists is heard by policy-makers, the business community, and the general public. We invite advocates of the responsible use of such tools to make your voices heard to encourage a scientific approach in agricultural research and GMO policy.
PHOTO: XIN KUN/IMAGINECHINA
LET TERS
TECHNICAL COMMENT ABSTRACTS Comment on “Cortical folding scales universally with surface area and thickness, not number of neurons” Marc H. E. de Lussanet
The cerebrum of large mammals is convoluted, whereas that of small mammals is smooth. Mota and Herculano-Houzel (Reports, 3 July 2015, p. 74) inspired a model on an old theory that proposed a fractal geometry. I show that their model reduces to the product of gray-matter proportion times the folding index. This proportional relation describes the available data even better than the fractal model. Mount Pelion East in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
TWWHA cannot be sacrificed by any socioeconomic development. Xiaojiang Yu School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] REFERENCES
1. Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, Tasmania, The 2014 Draft Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Management Plan
Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad0127
(Hobart, 2014). 2. A. Darby, “Abbott government to cut 74,000 ha of forest from World Heritage Zone,” Sydney Morning Herald (31 January 2014). 3. The World Heritage Committee, Decisions Adopted by the World Heritage Committee at Its 38th Session (Doha, 2014). 4. The World Heritage Committee, Decisions Adopted by the World Heritage Committee at Its 39th Session (Bonn, 2015). 5. B. Williams, “Bob Brown says UNESCO decision on Tasmanian World Heritage Forests is a bittersweet victory,” Courier-Mail (24 June 2014).
OUTSIDE THE TOWER
PHOTOS: (TOP TO BOTTOM) ©CHRISTIAN KOBER/ROBERTHARDING/CORBIS; PRASHANT SOOD
Teaching trust with art
A
s a young medical intern, I spent 3 months in the northern Indian village of Qutabgarh, Kanjhawala, working in a single-room dispensary. Early on, I realized that many patients did not trust doctors. Most patients were poor, with elementary or no education, and medical jargon made them suspicious. Pen and paper became my best friends. Simple drawings that conveyed medical information as stories helped reassure anxious patients. For a mother whose child wouldn’t suckle, I drew a picture of what was ailing her child’s gut. Once she understood the problem, I was able to convince her to visit the city doctor I recommended. A skeptical old man with trichiasis kept insisting that he just needed more eye drops, until I convinced him with drawings that he needed to get the offending eyelashes removed too. My illustrations also helped persuade parents to get their children vaccinated in time. Children everywhere fear doctors, but they love stories. The dispensary’s porch and the garden thus became an excellent stage. Short stories and bits of dramatics about the grumpy, growling bacteria and the
Comment on “Cortical folding scales universally with surface area and thickness, not number of neurons” Eric Lewitus, Iva Kelava, Alex T. Kalinka, Pavel Tomancak, Wieland B. Huttner
Mota and Herculano-Houzel (Reports, 3 July 2015, p. 74) assign power functions to neuroanatomical data and present a model to account for evolutionary patterns of
slimy worm feasting in their gut mesmerized them and motivated them to take their medicine and listen to their mothers. As communication and trust grew, we began to handle more sensitive cases, such as taking into confidence the parents and spouse of a young man with hepatitis B to get vaccinations for them and proper treatment for him. Within a couple of months, the number of patients grew from 40 to nearly 200 every day. The village chiefs noticed, giving us an opportunity to educate them about drinking water, sanitation, and quacks. Now I practice both medicine and science, and I have access to computers, cartoons, animations, and movies to help explain medical concepts. But my time at this village taught me that one-to-one communication builds the strongest bridges. I practice it to this day with people from all walks of life, from rickshaw pullers and street children to senior doctors and scientists. When faces I have long forgotten come and tell me how we transformed their lives, it reinforces my faith in good communication and my responsibility to advocate science. I have always held on to the first lesson from my textbook of internal medicine, that the word “doctor” (Latin: docere) literally means “to teach.”
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
Prashant Sood Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen City, AB25 2ZD, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
19 FEBRUARY 2016 • VOL 351 ISSUE 6275
Published by AAAS
825
INSIGHTS | L E T T E R S
cortical folding in the mammalian brain. We detail how the model assumptions are in conflict with experimental and observational work and show that the model itself does not accurately fit the data.
Advance your career with expert advice from Science Careers.
Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad2029
Response to Comment on “Cortical folding scales universally with surface area and thickness, not number of neurons” Bruno Mota and Suzana Herculano-Houzel
De Lussanet claims that our model that accounts for the degree of folding of the cerebral cortex based on the product of cortical surface area and the square root of cortical thickness is better reduced to the product of gray-matter proportion and folding index. Lewitus et al., in turn, claim that the assumptions of our model are in conflict with experimental data; that the model does not accurately fit the data; and that the ancestral mammalian brain was gyrencephalic. Here, we show that both claims are inappropriate. Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad2346
Comment on “Global assessment of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus diversity reveals very low endemism” Thomas D. Bruns and John W. Taylor
Davison et al. (Reports, 28 August 2015, p. 970) claim that virtual taxa of Glomeromycota show little endemism and that endemism that exists is similar to the levels seen in plant families. We show that this is likely due to the conservative species definition rather than to any ecological pattern. Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad4228
Response to Comment on “Global assessment of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus diversity reveals very low endemism”
Download Free Career Advice Booklets! ScienceCareers.org/booklets Featured Topics: § Networking § Industry or Academia § Job Searching § Non-Bench Careers § And More
Maarja Öpik, John Davison, Mari Moora, Meelis Pärtel, Martin Zobel
Bruns and Taylor argue that our finding of widespread distribution among Glomeromycota “virtual taxa” is undermined by the species definition applied. Although identifying appropriate species concepts and accessing taxonomically informative traits are challenges for microorganism biogeography, the virtual taxa represent a pragmatic classification that corresponds approximately to the species rank of classical Glomeromycota taxonomy, yet is applicable to environmental DNA. Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad5495 sciencemag.org SCIENCE
Published by AAAS
Plant scientists: GM technology is safe THE AMERICAN SOCIETY of Plant
Biologists (ASPB) “supports the continued responsible use of genetic engineering… as an effective tool for advancing food security and reducing the negative environmental impacts of agriculture” (1). A recent petition advocating the ASPB position collected more than 1400 signatories from the plant science community (2). The ASPB, the petition signatories, and other scientists in governmental and scientific organizations throughout the world (3, 4) demonstrate a clear consensus: Current use of genetic modification technology for crops is safe and effective, and future use should be guided by scientific evidence. Despite such broad support for the technology, anti–genetically modified organism (GMO) advocates have had an extensive and troubling impact on policy—at the governmental level and through biasing public opinion—regarding the use of GMObased ingredients in consumer products and food. More worrisome is that these arguments are often founded on science previously demonstrated to be unsound (5), such as the retracted Séralini et al. paper (6), which claimed that rats fed genetically modified corn and the herbicide RoundUp have higher rates of tumor formation.
Noah Fahlgren,1 Rebecca Bart,1 Luis Herrera-Estrella,2 Rubén Rellán-Álvarez,2 Daniel H. Chitwood,1* José R. Dinneny3* 1
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, MO 63132, USA. 2Nacional de Genómica para la Biodiversidad, Irapuato, 36821, Mexico. 3Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. *Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] REFERENCES
1. American Society of Plant Biologists, “Revised position statement on plant genetic engineering” (2014);
China has approved the development of genetically modifed corn.
824
2.
3.
4. 5.
6. 7.
8.
9. 10.
https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/aspb.site-ym.com/resource/ group/6d461cb9-5b79-4571-a164-924fa40395a5/ Statements/ASPB_GE_revision.APPROVED_ed.pdf. Cornell Alliance for Science, “Scientists in support of GMO technology for crop improvement” (http://cas.nonprofitsoapbox.com/aspbsupportstatement). Institute of Medicine and National Research Council of the National Academies, Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods (National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2004); www.nap.edu/read/10977/chapter/1. World Health Organization, “Food, genetically modified” (www.who.int/topics/food_genetically_modified/en/). ENSSER, “Democratising Science & Decision Making” (2012); www.ensser.org/ democratising-science-decision-making/. G.E. Séralini et al., Food Chem. Toxicol. 50, 4221 (2012) [RETRACTED]. ENSSER, “No scientific consensus on GMO safety” (2015); www.ensser.org/fileadmin/ user_upload/150120_signatories_no_consensus_lv.pdf. J. Fagan, M. Antoniou, C. Robinson, GMO Myths and Truths (Earth Open Source, London, ed. 2, 2014); www. nongmoproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ GMO-Myths-and-Truths-edition2.pdf. Chipotle, Food with integrity: G-M-OVER IT (https://chipotle.com/gmo). P. A. Sharp, A. Leshner, “We need a new Green Revolution,” New York Times (4 January 2016); www.nytimes. com/2016/01/04/opinion/we-need-a-new-greenrevolution.html.
Protect the Tasmanian wilderness AUSTRALIA’S TASMANIAN Wilderness
World Heritage Area (TWWHA) is one of the three largest remaining temperate wilderness regions in the Southern Hemisphere (1). It covers about 1.6 million hectares, almost a quarter of Australia’s State of Tasmania (1). Pristine wilderness is the most important core value of the region. In January 2014, to encourage local economic growth, the Australian federal government sought to remove 74,039 hectares of land from the TWWHA (2). Although the request was rejected by the World Heritage Committee in June 2014 (3), the Tasmanian state government still supports housing, airport, road, mining, and logging projects within the TWWHA. The World Heritage Committee urged the federal government to stop any such development within the property (4). It is unclear how the federal government will address the Committee’s demand, which leaves the values and integrity of the TWWHA at risk. Australia is only the third country in the world, after Oman and Tanzania, to seek the delisting of its World Heritage areas (5). Australian governments, especially the federal one, should show leadership in implementing the World Heritage Convention. Local and national communities should also raise their voices to politicians and governments to make clear that the values and integrity of the sciencemag.org SCIENCE
19 FEBRUARY 2016 • VOL 351 ISSUE 6275
Published by AAAS
Downloaded from on February 21, 2016
Edited by Jennifer Sills
The European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER) organized a petition signed by 313 individuals in 2013 claiming that “no consensus” exists regarding the safety of GMOs for human health and the environment (7). Commercial entities have seized upon ENSSER’s statements. The Non-GMO Project, for example, cites the ENSSER petition (8) in its efforts to verify the absence of GMOs in over 4500 branded products. The fast-food restaurant chain Chipotle cites the ENSSER petition to justify a campaign against GMO ingredients (9). Questions abound about how to best implement GM technologies, but as we move forward, we must make decisions informed by science. To meet our current and future food supply demands, without destroying our planet, we need every efficacious tool available (10). We hope that the consensus on GM technology among plant scientists is heard by policy-makers, the business community, and the general public. We invite advocates of the responsible use of such tools to make your voices heard to encourage a scientific approach in agricultural research and GMO policy.
PHOTO: XIN KUN/IMAGINECHINA
LET TERS
TECHNICAL COMMENT ABSTRACTS Comment on “Cortical folding scales universally with surface area and thickness, not number of neurons” Marc H. E. de Lussanet
The cerebrum of large mammals is convoluted, whereas that of small mammals is smooth. Mota and Herculano-Houzel (Reports, 3 July 2015, p. 74) inspired a model on an old theory that proposed a fractal geometry. I show that their model reduces to the product of gray-matter proportion times the folding index. This proportional relation describes the available data even better than the fractal model. Mount Pelion East in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.
TWWHA cannot be sacrificed by any socioeconomic development. Xiaojiang Yu School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. E-mail: [email protected] REFERENCES
1. Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, Tasmania, The 2014 Draft Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area Management Plan
Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad0127
(Hobart, 2014). 2. A. Darby, “Abbott government to cut 74,000 ha of forest from World Heritage Zone,” Sydney Morning Herald (31 January 2014). 3. The World Heritage Committee, Decisions Adopted by the World Heritage Committee at Its 38th Session (Doha, 2014). 4. The World Heritage Committee, Decisions Adopted by the World Heritage Committee at Its 39th Session (Bonn, 2015). 5. B. Williams, “Bob Brown says UNESCO decision on Tasmanian World Heritage Forests is a bittersweet victory,” Courier-Mail (24 June 2014).
OUTSIDE THE TOWER
PHOTOS: (TOP TO BOTTOM) ©CHRISTIAN KOBER/ROBERTHARDING/CORBIS; PRASHANT SOOD
Teaching trust with art
A
s a young medical intern, I spent 3 months in the northern Indian village of Qutabgarh, Kanjhawala, working in a single-room dispensary. Early on, I realized that many patients did not trust doctors. Most patients were poor, with elementary or no education, and medical jargon made them suspicious. Pen and paper became my best friends. Simple drawings that conveyed medical information as stories helped reassure anxious patients. For a mother whose child wouldn’t suckle, I drew a picture of what was ailing her child’s gut. Once she understood the problem, I was able to convince her to visit the city doctor I recommended. A skeptical old man with trichiasis kept insisting that he just needed more eye drops, until I convinced him with drawings that he needed to get the offending eyelashes removed too. My illustrations also helped persuade parents to get their children vaccinated in time. Children everywhere fear doctors, but they love stories. The dispensary’s porch and the garden thus became an excellent stage. Short stories and bits of dramatics about the grumpy, growling bacteria and the
Comment on “Cortical folding scales universally with surface area and thickness, not number of neurons” Eric Lewitus, Iva Kelava, Alex T. Kalinka, Pavel Tomancak, Wieland B. Huttner
Mota and Herculano-Houzel (Reports, 3 July 2015, p. 74) assign power functions to neuroanatomical data and present a model to account for evolutionary patterns of
slimy worm feasting in their gut mesmerized them and motivated them to take their medicine and listen to their mothers. As communication and trust grew, we began to handle more sensitive cases, such as taking into confidence the parents and spouse of a young man with hepatitis B to get vaccinations for them and proper treatment for him. Within a couple of months, the number of patients grew from 40 to nearly 200 every day. The village chiefs noticed, giving us an opportunity to educate them about drinking water, sanitation, and quacks. Now I practice both medicine and science, and I have access to computers, cartoons, animations, and movies to help explain medical concepts. But my time at this village taught me that one-to-one communication builds the strongest bridges. I practice it to this day with people from all walks of life, from rickshaw pullers and street children to senior doctors and scientists. When faces I have long forgotten come and tell me how we transformed their lives, it reinforces my faith in good communication and my responsibility to advocate science. I have always held on to the first lesson from my textbook of internal medicine, that the word “doctor” (Latin: docere) literally means “to teach.”
SCIENCE sciencemag.org
Prashant Sood Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen City, AB25 2ZD, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
19 FEBRUARY 2016 • VOL 351 ISSUE 6275
Published by AAAS
825
INSIGHTS | L E T T E R S
cortical folding in the mammalian brain. We detail how the model assumptions are in conflict with experimental and observational work and show that the model itself does not accurately fit the data.
Advance your career with expert advice from Science Careers.
Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad2029
Response to Comment on “Cortical folding scales universally with surface area and thickness, not number of neurons” Bruno Mota and Suzana Herculano-Houzel
De Lussanet claims that our model that accounts for the degree of folding of the cerebral cortex based on the product of cortical surface area and the square root of cortical thickness is better reduced to the product of gray-matter proportion and folding index. Lewitus et al., in turn, claim that the assumptions of our model are in conflict with experimental data; that the model does not accurately fit the data; and that the ancestral mammalian brain was gyrencephalic. Here, we show that both claims are inappropriate. Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad2346
Comment on “Global assessment of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus diversity reveals very low endemism” Thomas D. Bruns and John W. Taylor
Davison et al. (Reports, 28 August 2015, p. 970) claim that virtual taxa of Glomeromycota show little endemism and that endemism that exists is similar to the levels seen in plant families. We show that this is likely due to the conservative species definition rather than to any ecological pattern. Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad4228
Response to Comment on “Global assessment of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus diversity reveals very low endemism”
Download Free Career Advice Booklets! ScienceCareers.org/booklets Featured Topics: § Networking § Industry or Academia § Job Searching § Non-Bench Careers § And More
Maarja Öpik, John Davison, Mari Moora, Meelis Pärtel, Martin Zobel
Bruns and Taylor argue that our finding of widespread distribution among Glomeromycota “virtual taxa” is undermined by the species definition applied. Although identifying appropriate species concepts and accessing taxonomically informative traits are challenges for microorganism biogeography, the virtual taxa represent a pragmatic classification that corresponds approximately to the species rank of classical Glomeromycota taxonomy, yet is applicable to environmental DNA. Full text at http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science. aad5495 sciencemag.org SCIENCE
Published by AAAS
