Pundit’s view: When human health, nutrition and food security is on the line, finding the truth is more important than protecting faulty ideas from criticism.
Press Release from South America:
The Peruvian Association for the Development of Biotechnology – PeruBiotec
Public Pronouncement
We warn the citizens about a serious attempt to stifle and censor scientific criticism and opinions. The Sixth Criminal Court of Lima made a grave mistake when admitting to process a criminal action for aggravated defamation submitted by Dr. Antonietta Ornella Gutiérrez Rosati, Head Professor at La Molina National Agricultural University, against Dr. Ernesto Bustamante Donayre, well-known scientist, member of this Association, who has a track record in academic and private areas both domestic and international.
Dr. Gutiérrez felt her honor offended after Dr. Bustamante questioned, in academic forums and in the media, press and radio, the methodology, conclusion and results of a scientific investigation. Nonetheless, this criticism was not directed to her person but exclusively to the quality of her research work, which is a universal and common scientific practice. This unfortunate and unprecedented judicial act would imply the future silencing of free scientific discussions in Peru as a result of intimidation. Free criticism and discussions of scientific methods and results are a common practice among scientists in the world and constitute an essential requirement for the free development of knowledge through the continuous search for truth. It is our responsibility as scientists to defend such freedom.
This wrongful action completely violates Article 133 of the Criminal Code of Peru, which exempts literary, artistic and scientific criticism from being characterized as defamation. The prestigious international scientific publication Nature Biotechnology published on its February 2010 issue that this occurrence affects the capacity of free scientific debate and is incompatible with the content of the American Convention of Human Rights—which Peru has signed—and with the 1995 pronouncement made by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This attempt against free scientific expression is already generating the frightening effect of preventing the scientific and technical development of the country.
We respectfully request the Judicial Power to put an end to this outrage by dropping the action, providing an absolutory resolution and filing it due to its improperness. This action would be in benefit of the whole Peruvian society, as scientists would be freed from their fears of expressing themselves due to the stifle that would be imposed on them after long and illegal criminal actions for expressing discrepancies on matters of science and technology.
Translated versión of the Public Pronouncement of PeruBiotec published in El Comercio of Lima, Peru, on
Monday 01 March 2010. See: http://elcomercio.pe/impresa/edicion/2010-03-01/ecas010310a24/08
(Sent by Dr. Ing. Javier Verástegui, Member of PeruBiotec Association, Consultant – Biotechnology, Science, Technology and Innovation, Calle Severini 102, depto 302, San Borja, Lima 41, Perú.)
[For more details see next posting at GMO Pundit]
Pundit’s comments
Dr. Bustamante deserve strong support from fellow scientists after becoming a victim of the legal process while making measured, normal scientific criticisms in public. It is is now a worryingly frequent occurrence world-wide for legal threats to be used to stifle inconvenient criticism of bad scientific and pseudo-scientific arguments that frequently emerge in public debate. On more than one occasion, critics of biotechnology have responded with threats of legal action when their erroneous reasoning or factual errors are displayed in public debate. Such resort to legal redress instead of logical rebuttal is scientifically unethical.
On such issues a strong reliance on professional peer-reviewed evidence (which entails considerable private elimination of mistakes) makes public criticism of scientific errors largely redundant. A good example of how this works out to avoid public criticism is the 2005 CSIRO GM pea episode, where there was no public criticism of CSIRO’s dramatic findings by the scientific community at the time of its announcement. Further constructive refinement of their interpretation was carried out via measured and respectful commentary in the peer-reviewed literature.
But when the publically silent scientifically normal process of private peer-review is completely by-passed, as it was in the case of the ill-fated Austrian mouse reproduction tests, with Dr Arpad Pusztai’s GM potatoes (first aired on the BBC), and Dr Irina Ermakova’s soybean experiments with rodents, there is a need for public criticism of any flawed science. This is essential because robust debate minimises public harm from wrong advice and promotes scientifically robust public policy. When human health, nutrition and food security is on the line, finding the truth is more important than protecting faulty ideas from criticism.
