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New image further demolishes Shane Morris's claims (10/10/2007)

NOTE: To see the new photographic evidence go to
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=97&page=1
More background and analysis of the images here
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/09/would_you_eat_wormy_sweet_corn.php
---

New image further demolishes Shane Morris's claims

On his blog Shane Morris has produced two photographic images which he says prove that the controversial 'Would you eat wormy sweet corn?' sign was taken down early on in his and Doug Powell's research into whether consumers preferred GM or non-GM sweet corn.

After carefully studying both these images, Tim Lambert a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales previously concluded, 'I think that science would have been better served if Powell and Morris had acknowledged the flaws in their study rather than making untrue statements about the 'wormy corn' sign being removed.'
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/09/would_you_eat_wormy_sweet_corn.php

Now we are able to publish a composite image that Tim Lambert has specially created that shows more clearly than ever that the 'wormy corn' sign is present in both the photos that Morris has said show it had been taken down.

The composite has been formed from the two images on Morris's blog and a third image - a picture of the 'wormy corn' sign taken by a photographer for the Toronto Star at the start of the research when even Shane Morris admits the sign was on display.

[PICTURE at
http://www.lobbywatch.org/p1temp.asp?pid=97&page=1 ]

Tim used as the basis of the composite one of the images of the store on Morris's blog which Morris says show no 'wormy corn' sign.
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1382/2258/1600/Store.jpg

The sign we're interested in on the right (in that image) and is the one in the middle of the three signs shown in the composite image above.

For purposes of comparison, Tim Lambert's put the Toronto Star image of the wormy corn sign below it on the right in the composite image.

And above it he's put a sign visible in the other image on Morris's blog. That image shows Greenpeace campaigner Michael Khoo inspecting the farm store on the first day Morris admits to being present at the study (27 September 2000).
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/1382/2258/1600/Greenpeace.0.jpg

With the three signs lined up one above the other it is easy to see that they are exactly the same sign, even though two of them come from photographs that Morris has claimed disprove the presence of the 'wormy corn' sign.

Here is what Tim Lambert told us:

'I've put three versions in this one image. The bottom one is the clear image that shows it says 'Would you eat wormy sweet corn?'.

'The middle one is Morris's photo of the signs. It's hard to read, but it's clear that has the same words as the bottom one.

'The top one is from Morris's photo of Khoo looking at the signs and shows the sign he was looking at. I just stretched it horizontally to compensate for the angle of the photo. It's blurry, but you can see that it's the same sign again and with the same words on it. This photo is dated 9.27.2000, which seems to contradict Morris's claim that the sign was taken down before he was there.'

The only difference in the sign dated 9.27.2000 is that another much smaller orange sign is covering the bottom right hand part of the wormy corn sign, but other than that, as Tim Lambert notes, it's the same sign again and with the same words on it, including the question: 'Would you eat wormy sweet corn?'

According to Andrew Apel in his article Propaganda, Fraud and Libel, 'the hand-written 'wormy' sweet corn signs had gone up and come down before Morris was in Canada, before he was employed at the University of Guelph, and before the data were gathered.'

But from the evidence, none of this seems to be true.

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