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closeFruit flies are insects
Posted by stevekass on 28 Mar 2013 at 15:29 GMT
Organically farmed foods are known to have lower levels of synthetic pesticide residues, as the authors note. Pesticides are designed to kill insects, so the different levels in organically raised vs. non-organically raised foods should have been considered as an explanation for the results. Furthermore, pesticides are not designed to kill humans, so in this case, insects are not a reasonable model from which to conclude that "organically raised food may provide animals with tangible benefits to overall health."
A more reasonable conclusion: Foods that typically have less pesticide residue may provide pests with tangible benefits to their overall health.
This paper raises serious questions about the editorial and peer review process at PLoS One.
RE: Fruit flies are insects
enzos replied to stevekass on 26 Apr 2013 at 03:15 GMT
Spot on, Steve! Though I was a bit slow, it took all of five minutes reflection to spot the problem (doh!):
that fruit flies are fruit pests, that normal non-organic practice is to apply an insecticide.
And, of course, that we are not fruit flies, that insecticides are developed to kill fruit flies but carefully designed and tested not to affect the health of rats / mammals / people. So unless they assay for, and test the effect of, the traces of insecticide residues on/in the fruit fed to the flies, the findings are worthless except to show that ordinary food is better because it is less likely to get infested by Drosophila.
In science, you expect nonsense from newspapers but not from a so-called journal boasting peer-review.
RE: Fruit flies are insects
shrs replied to stevekass on 27 Apr 2013 at 03:32 GMT
This paper was peer-reviewed by six reviewers and with two rounds of revision. Reviewers were experts in Drosophila as well as food and nutrition experts working on animal models including human.