Participate in Science
Here’s your chance to participate in science! I have to make sure my dog doesn’t eat both ears of corn.
Originally shared by David Wood
Curious about GMO’s and want to do some citizen science? Fund this experiment and do something about it. Great idea Karl Haro von Mogel Kevin Folta Anastasia Bodnar
October 13, 2015
Yeah, depends on how hungry they are, even if they’re capable of making a distinction.
October 13, 2015
One of the aspects of GMO is to reduce pest predation. So yes it’s very likely that squirrels and deer prefer non-GMO corn because that’s the point.
October 13, 2015
Jess Nut, it depends on the GMO corn, which I assume will be blinded. We shall see.
October 13, 2015
James Karaganis, the bloody squirrels around here seem to be hungry all the time. Good thing my dog loves to chase them off the yard.
October 13, 2015
Chad Haney True. I did a quick survey and it looks like sweet corn is modified to make it resistant to a particular worm and some fungi that grow in particular areas. Allowing corn to be grown in more areas than are currently biologically sound. Nothing about insect or mammal predators.
October 13, 2015
Any farmer can give you good data on whether wildlife will “touch GM corn” or not. Most of the heavy damage will be done by deer, with areas in the fields trampled in resting areas as well as what’s eaten. Sweet corn fields will see a fair amount of damage along the edges and in areas near trees from raccoon’s, with ears stripped from the stalks. Or you could talk to hunters, who would notice when the deer population dropped and got skinny. But frankly, this is an idiotic assertion, with no basis beyond wishful thinking on the Anti-GMO crowd’s part and proposing to run an uncontrolled “volunteer study” to prove or disprove it isn’t much smarter.
As a point of information, the “pests” which GMO corn is resistant to are insects, specifically corn borers which are the larval form of a moth which lays its eggs on the corn silks and which damage the ears of corn and also provide an entry point for smut and other fungal infections. The change to the corn genome has the same effect on these insects as the powders and sprays of bacillus thuringiensis used on organic corn, but since it is included in the corn itself, the dosage is much smaller. It has no effect on animals, but if it did, the effect should be more noticeable in organic corn, because of the large amounts used. This is also something commonly used on grain in storage. Anyway, check the ground under your bird feeders. There’s always a few sunflowers that sprout under mine but the corn always gets cleaned up.
October 13, 2015
Don’t text me please
October 13, 2015
Well at least not so much thanks
October 13, 2015
John Hatch, I’m not sure if your diatribe was directed at me. If it was, you haven’t read my profile or you haven’t been following me. I think you failed miserably to appreciate the opportunity for science outreach for this project. Do you know the people running this project? I do.
October 13, 2015
Renee Oertli, your comment doesn’t make sense. No one is texting you.
October 13, 2015
There’s no science here because they are testing a non-issue. This would be like me asking for $6000 to see if I leave cat food outside is it also eaten by non-cats
Their study doesn’t propose a thesis even? What do they think it means if animals don’t eat the GMO corn? Could it be taste related or distance traveled? What if they like the GMO corn better? The fact that more people drink Coke than Pepsi doesn’t mean that Pepsi is dangerous.
October 13, 2015
Jess Nut, since I still only have one functioning hand, I ask that you look at Kevin Folta’s comments on the OP. There is science here and therefore science outreach.
October 13, 2015
Actually Coke and Pepsi are both dangerous, but I’ll leave that for another discussion.
October 13, 2015
Jess Nut Chad Haney The internet has many examples of claims that wild animals won’t touch GM corn. Jeffery Smith, Joe Mercola, and Don Huber make the same claim, and people find their assertions highly compelling.
So why not do the actual test? This is how science works. We can argue all day if it is true or not, or we can do the correct, blinded, controlled experiment and get to a conclusion.
The hypothesis is clear. Wild animals will not consume GM corn. The expectation is that when a GM and non-GM cob are set outside, that one will be eaten and the other will remain. When the genetic identify of the products is revealed, the GM corn will be uneaten. That is the expectation based on claims by the internet’s experts. We will do the test, in massive independent replicates. Science.
October 13, 2015
Kevin Folta And what would that prove? What is there scientific result that they are trying to show here? That GMO corn doesn’t emit as much of a smell to attract mammal predators? That animals don’t like the taste? Are they just attempting to prove that animals don’t like to eat GMO corn or are they going to use that to imply a correlation to some other property?
October 13, 2015
Jess Nut It does not prove anything. This is science. We’re testing a hypothesis. Opponents of biotech have indicated with certainty that wild animals will not consume GM corn. I’ve seen evidence that they do. This is a test to see if they do, or if they will not eat it. When done in massive independent replicates is it an excellent way to draw a powerful conclusion, no matter what those data say. Why don’t you do it with us? We still have plenty of kits!
October 13, 2015
Kevin Folta I’m pretty sure that to qualify as “science” you have to prove something. Otherwise you are just surveying.
October 14, 2015
Jess Nut, both Kevin Folta and I are scientists. In science it’s all about testing a hypotheses. Technically speaking you never prove anything. You can test enough hypotheses to eventually have enough evidence to support your theory.
October 14, 2015
Jess Nut Chad Haney Jess, Chad’s right. I’ve been a public scientist for 30 years, and I kinda have this thing under control. In science, we never seek to “prove” anything. That’s the mistake. If we seek to prove something then it usually happens, because it suggests our experimental outcomes are predetermined.
We develop a hypothesis and then test it. We don’t know the outcomes. Certainly, we could take a good guess at what this one will be, but let’s do the formal test and make a conclusion based on objective data gathered from hundreds of independent citizen scientists!
For what its worth, look at my publication record. You see words like “unexpected” or “unusual” all the time. We do a test and usually find our hunches were wrong or underthought. Science grows that way. That’s the stuff discoveries are made of. Thanks.
December 3, 2015
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