Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini will tomorrow be honoured with the 2015 Whistleblower Award by the Federation of German Scientists (VDW) and the German Section of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (“IALANA”).
Prof Séralini will receive the award in recognition of his research demonstrating the toxic effects of Roundup herbicide on rats when administered at a low environmentally relevant dose over a long-term period. After the research was published, Prof Séralini was attacked in what the VDW and IALANA call “a vehement campaign by ‘interested circles’ from the chemical industry” as well as from the UK Science Media Centre. This smear campaign led to the retraction of his team’s paper by the first journal that published it. But Prof Séralini and his team fought back, countering the scientific arguments raised against their research and republishing their paper in another journal.