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[deleted] t1_ixscpa3 wrote

Reply to comment by Decapentaplegia in Glyphosate associated with lower birth weights by Jealous-Pop-8997

Uh huh. Then why did it take decades to show that glyphosate is toxic despite opponents saying it for so long?

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Decapentaplegia t1_ixse7cn wrote

...it's practically nontoxic.

Nature: Although GE crops have been previously implicated in increasing herbicide use, herbicide increases were more rapid in non-GE crops. Even as herbicide use increased, chronic toxicity associated with herbicide use decreased in two out of six crops, while acute toxicity decreased in four out of six crops. In the final year for which data were available (2014 or 2015), glyphosate accounted for 26% of maize, 43% of soybean and 45% of cotton herbicide applications. However, due to relatively low chronic toxicity, glyphosate contributed only 0.1, 0.3 and 3.5% of the chronic toxicity hazard in those crops, respectively.

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eng050599 t1_ixwt46l wrote

You do realize that the overwhelming majority of the scientific community, and regulatory agencies agree that it is not a significant risk at the current regulatory limit, right?

Let me guess, you read about the IARC's classification, and the studies used to spread fear by the various anti-biotech blogs, but haven't actually looked into the full docket?

In fact, I'm going to bet that you can't tell me the difference between how the IARC assesses chemicals, and how literally every regulatory agency does.

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Jealous-Pop-8997 OP t1_ixzkizm wrote

The problem with this is that truth is not voted on democratically. There used to be a consensus that malaria was contracted from the soil and those who believed it to be caused by mosquitoes were very few and considered fringe. Consensus doesn’t determine reality. We cannot just vote on what we want the laws of physics to be. Things are as they are.

Not to mention the consensus manufacturers gets to choose what scientists/what data to include

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Decapentaplegia t1_ixzqsgt wrote

>truth is not voted on democratically.

Nobody is saying this. We are applying the hierarchy of evidence.

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eng050599 t1_iy0o09r wrote

No, that's not how it works.

At the present time, all of the data regarding causal effects from glyphosate exposure indicate that there is no increased risk of any harm at the current exposure limits.

None of the studies claiming to show harm have an equivalent power of analysis, and are weighted lower than the compliant studies.

The data gets worse for the anti-glyphosate types when we also consider that, among the observational studies, the one with the largest power of analysis, the AHS, doesn't even show a significant correlative association to harm.

This is the reason why the scientific and regulatory communities overwhelmingly reject claims of harm.

What you are advocating is for scientists to weight studies based on how they align with your ideology, not in the strength of their design.

The key point is that we have data for causal effects from glyphosate exposure.

We have it for chronic exposure

We have it for acute exposure

We have it for carcinogenicity

We have it for cytotoxicity

Even though they've had decades to perform studies to show that those studies are flawed, either methodologically, or analytically, we see nothing that even comes close to the minimum standards in toxicology.

Back to the original study for this thread, it's design was so weak that even the authors state that their results are not representative of normal pregnancies.

That's a far cry from what we can determine from the compliant studies.

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Jealous-Pop-8997 OP t1_iy0q3r6 wrote

No what you’re doing is presupposing that you can measure and completely control in order to find harm. You’re also disqualifying or not counting studies that reject your hypothesis, and yes that glyphosate in the residual amount is safe is a hypothesis and not a conclusion.

You’re the one advocating that studies are weighted based on their alignment with your ideology rather than their adherence to the scientific method or their rigorousness

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eng050599 t1_iy0udvj wrote

...you do know that power of analysis isn't a subjective metric, right?

It's quite literally something that we calculate during the design stage of an experiment.

It's also why methods like the OECD designs include multiple guidance documents specifically to ensure that researchers will have data of sufficient strength to test for the causal effects for which the methods were designed.

There is a very real hierarchy in terms of statistical power, and the methods like those from the OECD Guidelines, along with their regional equivalents are only superceded by studies like DB+RCT

All but the largest prospective cohort studies rank below this, and in the case of. Glyphosate, it's actually hilarious that the AHS, a prospective cohort study, that doesn't have the statistical power to counter the OECD-compliant ones, it does have the power to counter the other lesser observational studies.

Guess what?

The AHS shows no significant link between glyphosate exposure at the current limits and harm.

Until data from studies of comparable power to the OECD methods materializes, there's no justification to change the toxicity metrics of glyphosate.

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