The story behind Séralini’s disappearing GMOs-are-toxic study, and the journal that published it

Nicholas Staropoli | January 28, 2016 | Genetic Literacy Project

Where did the latest Séralini anti-GMO paper go?  In a bizarre twist involving the French scientist whose controversial studies are the bedrock of the anti-GMO movement, Gilles-Éric Séralini told Retraction Watch that he has no idea.

Here’s the story.

Gilles-Éric Séralini newest attack on GMOs, this one purporting to show that a type of genetically modified corn once used in livestock feed can be toxic, has disappeared from the web. Séralini and his research group, Criigen — Committee for Independent Research and Information on Genetic Engineering — held a news conference on January 26 announcing:

… new scientific data on Bt toxins and a thorough study of the records show that this GMO Bt maize is most probably toxic over the long term.

Co-authored with Gottfried Glöckner, a German dairy farmer involved in the experimental testing of the corn known at Bt176 (developed by Novartis, now Syngenta) during the 1990s, the article appeared in the Scholarly Journal of Agricultural Sciences (SJAS). Never heard of it? It’s an obscure journal — or was a journal until it disappeared one day after the Séralini paper was published. Based in Nigeria, it was known as an ‘open access’ predatory journal because its business model was to print controversial, often low quality articles–but only after the authors paid high fees, supposedly to cover editorial services and professional review. They often prey on scientists who are desperate to add publications to their resume, or scientists, like Séralini who cannot get their work published any more in serious, scholarly publications....

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