APRIL 10, 2025 | OPINION | By Kole Petersen (Opinion Copy Editor)|
About two months ago, I was talking with a few friends in the locker room after swim practice when someone brought an… interesting news story to the table. It was a Daily Mail article with a patently shocking title: “Scientists discover toxic ingredients linked to autism in 100% of Girl Scout Cookies.” It reported that a then-recent study showed that every sample of cookie they analyzed contained glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, which has been linked to a higher risk of autism in children. The study was published by the reliable sounding GMOScience.org, a nonprofit organization trying to educate people about the impacts of genetically modified organisms. While the Daily Mail article admits that this study has not been peer-reviewed, an essential characteristic of serious research, that fact is hidden at the halfway point after an unbearable repetition of the same few facts and an equally excruciating number of ads.
Looking at the exposé itself, it seems to avoid dissecting the supposedly groundbreaking data that they allegedly discovered. Instead, it dedicates substantial time to exposing the supposed contradictory nature of regulatory food agencies, emphasizing the organization’s mission to ‘make the invisible visible’ and spread propaganda about the dangers of GMOs and the importance of organic, regenerative farming without any chemicals. Furthermore, the research was incredibly methodologically flawed, using just 25 samples of Girl Scout cookies and relying on the supposed academic history of their team to prove the study’s legitimacy. News flash: just because someone who conducted this study is a senior research scientist at MIT does not mean the study is scientifically sound.
Speaking of that almighty MIT scientist, her name is Stephanie Seneff, and she has a background primarily in computer science and electrical engineering, conducting research involving the intersection of biology and computation for much of her academic career. However, in recent years, she has become a staunch anti-vaccination activist, and her website is filled with propaganda pieces “supported” by research claiming that Roundup is a major cause of autism, childhood vaccination campaigns are a disaster and glyphosate is also tied to COVID-19. Her recent work has been heavily ridiculed across academia for relying on “correlation is causation” assumptions, a foundational rule in scientific methodology that should never be used in serious research. Furthermore, she has been repeatedly shown to misinterpret the results of other scientific works, and clinical neurologist Steven Novella has criticized that she “has not created any new data.” If this is the highly trusted research scientist GMOScience.org is using to support their claims, then their research may be even more untrustworthy than if they had simply published the results independent of her involvement.
Going back to the original investigation, let’s look at the sparse data that was reported. The average glyphosate contamination among the thin sample size was 33.43 ng/g, or 0.03 mg/kg. This is well below the acceptable daily intake levels recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which range from 0.3-0.7 mg/kg. Although we should not blindly trust governmental recommendations for chemicals, much of the scientific consensus about this chemical focuses on doses far above these acceptable daily intakes. An extensive literature review on the subject concluded that the majority of glyphosate residue levels in food products is below regulatory standards, and calculated Hazard Quotients (H Q) show a very low risk to human health in adults and children. Furthermore, the hardly touched upon claims that glyphosate can lead to cancer and autism are not widely supported, with studies showing a link to developmental disorders, death, and cancers using high concentrations of glyphosate up to 50,000 mg/kg. Thus, putting aside the narrative biases of the “publishers” and the sketchy history of the primary scientist associated with the study, its findings demonstrate very little empirical support to the scientific claims they are trying to make.
But the situation regarding the links to autism gets even worse. Incredibly, although Stephanie Seneff has repeatedly claimed that glyphosate causes autism, the GMOScience report only mentions the word autism once throughout its 3,078-word length, meaning that the sensationalization that Girl Scout cookies cause autism was largely artificially inserted by the Daily Mail. This highlights a concerning trend that has perpetuated autism “research” for decades now, that being the re-interpretation of an — often biased — study into an even more exaggerated story that the general public can more easily comprehend. This pattern was proliferated by the infamous 1998 Andrew Wakefield study. The controversies associated with this now-retracted report can take up multiple articles on their own, but to summarize, Wakefield falsely claimed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The methodological errors of this study largely mirror those of the Girl Scout Cookie report, including the small sample size and similar “correlation equals causation” misinterpretations. Most damning of all, the paper excluded Wakefield’s monetary self-interests; he held a patent for a rival vaccine, stood to earn millions selling diagnostic kits to a claimed non-existent syndrome, and was paid by the lawyer of parents suing vaccine providers. Despite these egregious flaws and the eventual retraction of the paper, this fraudulent study laid the groundwork for the contemporary anti-vaccination arguments that run rampant to this day and established a pattern of subsequent flawed studies assigning a scary biological cause to autism.
Going back to my locker room conversation that feels like it happened oh so many moons ago, we almost instantly approached the Girl Scout cookie study with skepticism and hilarity. We joked about the Daily Mail’s clickbait techniques, the overemphasis on shocking diction and the astonishing state of “science” in the 21st century. We also debunked every claim made with just a few minutes of laugh-inducing Googling. Reflecting on this experience, our jested attitude about this report made me question how such studies are taken seriously in the first place. Although the Wakefield study has a more egregious history, it was published before the proliferation of the modern Internet, so I can somewhat understand why people latched onto its findings at face value. But how can such demonstrably flawed research continue to be unquestioningly adopted by the masses? More than that, why are people so eager to believe that there is some horrifically common cause for autism?
Believing in nonsensical ideas is not isolated to the topic of autism; people have latched onto conspiracy theories over the last few decades more readily than ever before, largely due to increased feelings of anxiety regarding the unprecedented state of our world. Additionally, people are more likely to turn to conspiracy theories when they are anxious and feel powerless, and conspiracy belief is heightened when people feel an inability to control their environment. Applying this concept to the discussion of autism causes, many parents of autistic children experience increased stress, depression and anxiety, and they often experience guilt because they believe that they somehow caused their child’s autism. Thus, when emotionally appealing, “scientifically backed” reports identify a physical cause for autism, parents are compelled to latch onto this belief to relieve themselves of negative emotions. Just as believing the Earth is flat provides some people comfort about the unpleasant reality that our government is capable of lying to us, believing that something concrete causes autism provides a scapegoat for the complicated issue of rising rates of autism spectrum disorder.
The consequences of latching on to this belief extend far beyond simple scientific misunderstanding. The notion that there is a biological cause for autism substantiates the perception that autism is a disease that needs to be cured rather than a disability that needs to be understood and accepted. The anxieties that parents of autistic children feel are completely natural, but to believe that autism is a fate worse than death infantilizes autistic peoples’ abilities and creates increased stigmatization of disabilities as a whole. I am not saying that studies searching for genetic influences on autism spectrum disorder are useless; understanding the basis of behaviors associated with autism can help us better understand autistic people and create more beneficial therapies to improve their quality of life. What I am saying is that the ever-present claims that there is a singular, preventable cause of autism establish autistic people as unfortunate “others” who were robbed of the chance of being “normal.”
So, the next time you see an article that claims that x, y or z has been confirmed as the cause of autism, think about my friends laughing about a deceitful study about Girl Scout cookies. Think about the fraudulent history of the Wakefield study. Think about the reasons why conspiracy theories proliferate in our contemporary society, and think about the autistic people like me who continue to be stigmatized for simply existing.
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