Peerless review?

All research journals like to make an impact in the news media, but preferably for publishing research that is reliable as well as newsworthy. When the Lancet recently blurred the distinction between the two, the press sensed a good story, even in advance. “The scientist who suggested that genetically modified foods could damage health — and was comprehensively rubbished by government ministers and the scientific establishment — is to have his reputation dramatically vindicated,” wrote the Independent on Sunday’s environment correspondent on 3 October. The headline, “Smeared GM expert vindicated”, was echoed next day by the Express’s front-page screamer: “VINDICATED.” The articles were occasioned by the imminent publication of a paper which apparently confirmed claims that rats given a genetically modified (GM) food showed impairments in growth and immune responsiveness. The allegations were originally aired more than a year ago in a BBC Television World in Action programme featuring Arpad Pusztai, then of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland (see Curr Biol 1998, 8:R630). Since then there has been endless speculation in the press about the data. When the paper did surface, in the Lancet (1999, 354:1353) on 16 October, it reported “variable effects” in the small intestine of rats fed raw potatoes expressing a snowdrop lectin. Authored by Pusztai and Stanley Ewen, it did not describe the effects claimed on World in Action. As the journal’s editor Richard Horton confirmed in an accompanying Commentary, publication of Ewen and Pusztai’s findings was not a “vindication” of Pustzai’s earlier claims. In addition, the data were “preliminary and non-generalisable.” Yet even before their appearance, the data were surrounded by renewed controversy, centred on the journal’s decision to go ahead despite opposition from reviewers. “Research purporting to show that rats suffer ill-health when fed GM potatoes has been judged as seriously flawed and unworthy of being published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal,” wrote Steve Connor, science editor of the Independent. Among other critics, he cited John Pickett, who had refereed the paper and become so outraged that he had decided to voice his concerns publicly. “It is a very sad day when a very distinguished journal... sees fit to go against senior reviewers,” he said. Another, anonymous, reviewer was quoted as stating that the paper’s conclusions were “wild speculation” unsupported by data. On publication day the Independent ran another report under the headline “It is Britain’s pre-eminent medical journal. Now its reputation hangs on a single issue.”