Such Bad Science

[danydandan]

Recently there was an article posted in a Scientific magazine regarding bees being exposed to glyphosate. One of the active ingredients in Roundup. 

Here is the article: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/18/1803880115

This is what the conclusion of the article says in its conclusion.

"While some species in the bee gut can tolerate high concentrations of glyphosate due to the presence of a class II EPSPS enzyme, others are sensitive due to the presence of a class I EPSPS. A consistent effect of glyphosate on the bee gut microbiota was a negative impact on growth of S. alvi, which possesses a sensitive EPSPS. However, some strains of S. alvi may tolerate glyphosate through an as yet unknown mechanism. Since bee gut symbionts affect bee development, nutrition, and defense against natural enemies, perturbations of these gut communities may be a factor making bees more susceptible to environmental stressors including poor nutrition and pathogens."

Some eco warriors have cited this study, to show a direct correlation between glyphosate and bee decline or hive collapse. Some media have also junped on the bandwagon. 

Here is the crux, and why people who don't read Scientific research should not be commenting on it. The sample size for this study was 45. That's 45 bees total and three treatment groups. That's 15 samples per group per treatment. Others have also suggested that the dosage was too much, unrealistic and overkill. Group one was given 5 my/L, group two 10 mg/L and group three was a control. Natural levels of glyphosate is reportedly between, depends on who you cite, 0 - 3.7 or the one the study cited 1.4 - 7.6. Both mg/L. The groups were fed their doses for 5 days. 

The main issue with this study is the statistical analysis of the results and why they should be reviewed. There was a significant effect seen between group one and the control, however there was no effect between group two and control. If there was a real effect you would expect a dosage response effect. It also doesn't help that each group only had 15 bees.

Basically the statistical weakness of this study cannot be underestimated, however the amount of hyperbolic articles citing this study is incredible. This study is effectively saying there is a small chance that there maybe an adverse effect on bees by glyphosate but we really can't say and we won't. Does it bare further research, yes, but it's at this stage all we can say is we haven't a clue. Yet people are claiming this study emphatically states that glyphosate is killing bees and it isn't. What's sad about this is, it will be the catalyst to more studies. But it won't address the real issue, why colonies are collapsing.

Edited September 25, 2018 by danydandan

[Habitat]

It's all explained in here dandy, and you are going to love it !

 

[danydandan]

2 minutes ago, Habitat said:

It's all explained in here dandy, and you are going to love it !

 

WTF. Lol. Brilliant.

[Piney]

39 minutes ago, danydandan said:

What's sad about this is, it will be the catalyst to more studies. But it won't address the real issue, why colonies are collapsing.

Every time a new growing season comes around. It seems like there is a new invasive species and a new insecticide for them but I've never seen any studies.

There is also all these clowns who need a perfect lawn that looks like a carpet minus all the "weeds".

 Then there was also some form of invasive disease ( I don't remember if it was bacterial, viral or fungal) that was killing off bees. 

It could be many things attributing to colony collapse. 

[Timothy]

@Habitat, that was painfully beautiful. 

[Farmer77]

5 minutes ago, Piney said:

There is also all these clowns who need a perfect lawn that looks like a carpet minus all the "weeds".

We have three homes in town that ive seen trying to grow lawns all summer....I live near death valley....its ****ing impossible ....people are stupid for lawns

[+Not A Rockstar]

Well I had bees, four really great hives, almost ten years old, Russian hybrids with natural resistances and doing great with no treatment or intervention. Then along came the parish road crews, spraying the sides of the rural highway with weedkiller to not have to mow this year.

Within 24 hours 100% bee kill.

They can shove their statistically significant numbers and bee guts and science and refusal to reimburse losses of over a decade of breeding my original hive start up from Florida with Russians and local wild bees to get a tough little black bee line going. Science is for why it kills them if they really can't figure it out. Not how much of this poison I make to sell can they tolerate before they drop dead, so I can pretend my trash is "green" and bee friendly.

Common sense tells anyone that chemicals and bees do not mix. 

[Piney]

4 minutes ago, Not A Rockstar said:

Common sense tells anyone that chemicals and bees do not mix. 

Chemicals and everything in nature don't mix. They've been spraying the orchards for stinkbugs and saying it is only for stinkbugs but I've might of seen 3 monarchs on the milkweed strip and no caterpillars this year.

Roundup literally gives plants cancer and causes their cells to mutate fast. When they spray it "straight" ( which is illegal) the plants drop in a hour. 

[Farmer77]

3 minutes ago, Piney said:

Roundup literally gives plants cancer and causes their cells to mutate fast. When they spray it "straight" ( which is illegal) the plants drop in a hour. 

And our government has been fighting to keep it legal by suppressing the science around it.

Don’t let EPA and Monsanto hide the truth on Roundup

 

[Piney]

6 minutes ago, Farmer77 said:

And our government has been fighting to keep it legal by suppressing the science around it.

Don’t let EPA and Monsanto hide the truth on Roundup

 

I know. It's just Agent Orange with a new label.  

[+Not A Rockstar]

These vermin do not care if we do lose bees, because then we will need to be buying their lab created seeds and meats and supplements and fructose syrup flavored like honey. Seriously, they have no motivation to care, they are about creating the next demand and being on top of it. Same with the destruction of water sources and corporations buying up aquifers and selling us the water we already pay for.

...no, I will not get started.

Night friends. 

 

[danydandan]

2 hours ago, Not A Rockstar said:

Well I had bees, four really great hives, almost ten years old, Russian hybrids with natural resistances and doing great with no treatment or intervention. Then along came the parish road crews, spraying the sides of the rural highway with weedkiller to not have to mow this year.

Within 24 hours 100% bee kill.

They can shove their statistically significant numbers and bee guts and science and refusal to reimburse losses of over a decade of breeding my original hive start up from Florida with Russians and local wild bees to get a tough little black bee line going. Science is for why it kills them if they really can't figure it out. Not how much of this poison I make to sell can they tolerate before they drop dead, so I can pretend my trash is "green" and bee friendly.

Common sense tells anyone that chemicals and bees do not mix. 

I literally know nothing about bees, just highlighting how misinterpreted this study was. And how bad this study was. Needless to say this thread was started to highlight the issue with the biases in media and Science, not really about the topic of the study itsself.

Edited September 25, 2018 by danydandan

[+Not A Rockstar]

35 minutes ago, danydandan said:

I literally know nothing about bees, just highlighting how misinterpreted this study was. And how bad this study was. Needless to say this thread was started to highlight the issue with the biases in media and Science, not really about the topic of the study itsself.

No worries, Dany I have removed myself from it :). Sorry for the derail. 

 

[danydandan]

8 minutes ago, Not A Rockstar said:

No worries, Dany I have removed myself from it :). Sorry for the derail. 

 

I didn't mean to sound like I was giving out. I wasn't. No one can dictate how the conversation flows, and you raised some interesting issues regarding the topic of the study. By all means carry on discussing it as it's quite interesting.

Do you feel that it's only chemicals causing the decline in honey bees? I would have thought over development, changes to environment, disease and chemicals would all play a part. But I have read it's only honey bees the decline is happening in other speices are doing fine if not thriving.

But do you acknowledge the issues with the study itsself and the medias misrepresentation of it?

Edited September 25, 2018 by danydandan

[L.A.T.1961]

I thought, at least in the UK, bee problems were a relatively new problem ? Yet insecticides have been used for many many years. If this is the case how can bee death be caused by a well known and used product ?  

I agree the study is woefully short of meaningful statistical evidence. 

On a brighter note bees in my back yard seem to be around in normal numbers. 

[Piney]

1 hour ago, danydandan said:

I literally know nothing about bees, just highlighting how misinterpreted this study was. And how bad this study was. Needless to say this thread was started to highlight the issue with the biases in media and Science, not really about the topic of the study itsself.

A lot of filthy stuff goes on like that in the States. We have anti-vaxers who claim it causes autism and ADHD when I noticed a correlation between autism and antidepressants. Yet there is no study. The same companies who provide for pain management clinics also produce Narcon and everybody is avoiding a study between said clinics and opioid addictions. 

[Jon the frog]

3 hours ago, Piney said:

Every time a new growing season comes around. It seems like there is a new invasive species and a new insecticide for them but I've never seen any studies.

There is also all these clowns who need a perfect lawn that looks like a carpet minus all the "weeds".

 Then there was also some form of invasive disease ( I don't remember if it was bacterial, viral or fungal) that was killing off bees. 

It could be many things attributing to colony collapse. 

A lots of time,accumulation of multiple causes is a lot more dangerous than only one.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Jon the frog

[Piney]

1 minute ago, Jon the frog said:

A lots of time,accumulation of multiple causes is a lot more dangerous than only one.

That's the "pre-coffee" point I was trying to get across. 

[danydandan]

Just one point I'd make, just because a chemical has certaint effects on plants doesn't mean it has effects on animals.

[+Not A Rockstar]

3 hours ago, danydandan said:

I didn't mean to sound like I was giving out. I wasn't. No one can dictate how the conversation flows, and you raised some interesting issues regarding the topic of the study. By all means carry on discussing it as it's quite interesting.

Do you feel that it's only chemicals causing the decline in honey bees? I would have thought over development, changes to environment, disease and chemicals would all play a part. But I have read it's only honey bees the decline is happening in other speices are doing fine if not thriving.

But do you acknowledge the issues with the study itsself and the medias misrepresentation of it?

In the US corporations and profit control nearly everything in the media. One study which supports that glyphosphate can kill bees, that some are more sensitive to it than others would still be attacked even if they had thousands of results. That the funding allowed for only a few to be studied to this degree is simply what it is. So your specific choice of an example hits major sensitive spots with me. Round up is a bad thing, it is abused - used full strength routinely. No one controls it. This spray had the grass along the roadside browning out within an hour. An HOUR. What if your kid fell off his bike into that damp grass? Nobody cares. Nobody controls it. What if that simple fall into it causes 20% loss of kidney function, not enough to notice now, maybe never if he is lucky and nothing else happens over his lifetime. Would their studies admit that? Science is bought and paid for daily, it is not at all unbiassed in many circles. Consider the back and forth in just the cigarette industry and deny it. No one can. The media took advertising dollars from big tobacco too. It is all for hire. Reader beware.

200,000+ bees died and a decade of really good work was wasted, and nobody cares. It gets deployed along a main food source (flowering weeds and wildflowers) at the height of their daily activity levels and NOBODY CARES. 

To kill bees all you need is soapy water. It doesn't take much.

Now is it just roundup killing them? No. Mine were doing fine, controlling their own mite loads, resisting naturally the diseases affecting them, strong hives fighting off hive beetles well and doing fine. The spray was the straw that broke the camel's back in my sad tale, and this is in miniature what is happening out there. One thing too much. The answer is to control the straws we can, breed better, be smarter, but, on the whole nobody cares and if we do lose all our bees they will come up with something, why worry? Synth meat, synth food, brought to your grocery by some subsidiary of Monsanto or kin.

I can't stand it. I just can't stand it. They spray to save the money of paying a couple guys to mow, by hiring one to spray instead. Then cry about unemployment and dead beats and this goes on nationwide a thousand ways and times a day. Profiteering.

So, it has nothing and everything to do with the media and investors and profit and bottom line, nothing and no one is safe or sacred. 

The day I see media blowing this wide open, I will regain some respect. Until then, at least someone was trying to put out a factual study in defense of bees, however small the budget funding the study was. I am sure Monsanto can easily fund a beast of a study proving some bees don't die (as fast) when exposed to it. 

Now, I really am done derailing your topic, Dany. You have always been courteous to me. Just you slammed your hand on my major hot button and got a response :). I loved my bees. They were a major passion for me and they were champs.

I despise institutionalized greed and sell out media.

Bye yall :), thanks for hearing me out. 

[danydandan]

5 minutes ago, Not A Rockstar said:

In the US corporations and profit control nearly everything in the media. One study which supports that glyphosphate can kill bees, that some are more sensitive to it than others would still be attacked even if they had thousands of results. That the funding allowed for only a few to be studied to this degree is simply what it is. So your specific choice of an example hits major sensitive spots with me. Round up is a bad thing, it is abused - used full strength routinely. No one controls it. This spray had the grass along the roadside browning out within an hour. An HOUR. What if your kid fell off his bike into that damp grass? Nobody cares. Nobody controls it. What if that simple fall into it causes 20% loss of kidney function, not enough to notice now, maybe never if he is lucky and nothing else happens over his lifetime. Would their studies admit that? Science is bought and paid for daily, it is not at all unbiassed in many circles. Consider the back and forth in just the cigarette industry and deny it. No one can. The media took advertising dollars from big tobacco too. It is all for hire. Reader beware.

200,000+ bees died and a decade of really good work was wasted, and nobody cares. It gets deployed along a main food source (flowering weeds and wildflowers) at the height of their daily activity levels and NOBODY CARES. 

To kill bees all you need is soapy water. It doesn't take much.

Now is it just roundup killing them? No. Mine were doing fine, controlling their own mite loads, resisting naturally the diseases affecting them, strong hives fighting off hive beetles well and doing fine. The spray was the straw that broke the camel's back in my sad tale, and this is in miniature what is happening out there. One thing too much. The answer is to control the straws we can, breed better, be smarter, but, on the whole nobody cares and if we do lose all our bees they will come up with something, why worry? Synth meat, synth food, brought to your grocery by some subsidiary of Monsanto or kin.

I can't stand it. I just can't stand it. They spray to save the money of paying a couple guys to mow, by hiring one to spray instead. Then cry about unemployment and dead beats and this goes on nationwide a thousand ways and times a day. Profiteering.

So, it has nothing and everything to do with the media and investors and profit and bottom line, nothing and no one is safe or sacred. 

The day I see media blowing this wide open, I will regain some respect. Until then, at least someone was trying to put out a factual study in defense of bees, however small the budget funding the study was. I am sure Monsanto can easily fund a beast of a study proving some bees don't die (as fast) when exposed to it. 

Now, I really am done derailing your topic, Dany. You have always been courteous to me. Just you slammed your hand on my major hot button and got a response :). I loved my bees. They were a major passion for me and they were champs.

I despise institutionalized greed and sell out media.

Bye yall :), thanks for hearing me out. 

Maybe I should have choosen a different article lol. Like I said my main concern is misrepresentation of Science in general by the Media.

“Falsehood will fly, as it were, on the wings of the wind, and carry its tales to every corner of the earth; whilst truth lags behind; her steps, though sure, are slow and solemn, and she has neither vigour nor activity enough to pursue and overtake her enemy.” Thomas Francklin. 

Maybe I should have used Dr Potti, Wakefield or Korean Steam Cell research. But this article was more to date. 

[rashore]

4 hours ago, danydandan said:

I didn't mean to sound like I was giving out. I wasn't. No one can dictate how the conversation flows, and you raised some interesting issues regarding the topic of the study. By all means carry on discussing it as it's quite interesting.

Do you feel that it's only chemicals causing the decline in honey bees? I would have thought over development, changes to environment, disease and chemicals would all play a part. But I have read it's only honey bees the decline is happening in other speices are doing fine if not thriving.

But do you acknowledge the issues with the study itsself and the medias misrepresentation of it?

There's actually many species of native bees that are in trouble or decline. It's just that since honeybees are popular and commercially used, they tend to get more of the research and media spotlight with their troubles.

https://xerces.org/pollinator-redlist/

https://psmag.com/environment/are-you-not-worried-about-the-bees

https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2017/bees-03-01-2017.php

And something a lot of people miss with the whole Roundup thing. Though glyphosate was under sole control of Monsanto for many years- their patent expired in 2000. Since then several other manufactures have been producing and selling glyphosate mixes. Hi-Yield and Bonide are two of the more popular chemical companies that sell glyphosate mixes, and there are several other sellers in the U.S..

[SHaYap]

One thing about weed killers, even though it will not kill shrubs and plants outright, the chemicals do end up in the plant itself, and it will affect the plant, more so the fruit or root (like potato) ... the plants just won't look healthy or good, and so too , the harvested produce

~