Cry Toxins and Proteinase Inhibitors in Transgenic Plants Do Have Non-Zero Effects on Natural Enemies in the Laboratory: Rebuttal to Shelton et al. 2009: Table 1.

Abstract

A main point of our recent paper (Lovei et al. 2009) is that there are non-neutral effects of Cry toxins and proteinase inhibitors (PIs) on natural enemies in the laboratory and that the pattern of responses is complex and needs additional analysis. Shelton et al. (2009) aggressively attacked this conclusion. They claimed that all negative effects of Cry toxins are caused by effects of sublethally affected hosts and prey. We suggested in Lovei et al. (2009) and reiterate here that the actual situation is not that simple when laboratory studies are considered. We made our point by using statistical meta-analysis to show that there are more nonzero effects of Cry toxins and PIs on natural enemies than expected under a statistical null hypothesis that all observed effects were zero. The interested reader may want to examine the longer history of some of these issues (Lovei and Arpaia 2005; Andow et al. 2006; Romeis et al. 2006a,b). In our rebuttal, we first address the deeper, fundamental questions raised by Shelton et al. (2009) about the value of meta-analysis and then proceed to rebut the core criticisms about our statistical methods. Although Shelton et al. (2009) raised many other issues, we limited our rebuttal to these central issues; our lack of comment does not imply agreement with their other complaints. Shelton et al. (2009) make two criticisms of our work that are, in actuality, more fundamental criticisms of meta-analysis. These criticisms are made, in part, to defend the methods used and conclusions reached in reviews by O'Callaghan et al. (2005) and Romeis et al. (2006b), neither of which are based on meta-analyses. First they argued that nonsignificant P values are devoid of futher meaning and interpretation (Shelton et al. 2009, p. 318), and second, they …