Overly long, still not horrendous in terms of science writing.
Well presented and balanced enough to indicate the Chinese teams findings are not correct. (And, even if they were indeed not artifact/contamination such a finding wouldn’t point to any danger).
The Chinese scientists comments are also a huge red flag:
“Most of the people [who speculate about our work] just don’t believe it because the concept right now, I have to say, is broken by my results,” Zhang told Boulder Weekly in a recent interview from Nanjing. “They don’t want to believe until I have new data or the other groups reproduce some of our data. And of course some other people, for whatever reason I don’t want to say … I don’t want to even touch … they are just against our discovery no matter what it is.””
Arguing from this perspective, as a pioneer who is persecuted for revolutionary results, is not how a scientist argues. In fact such argument is the province of cranks, although I don’t think he is a crank, just frustrated and wrong with overly large ambition.
Good points all. Notice also that while Zhang (implicitly) and Vance (explicitly) accuse Monsanto of potential conflict of interest, no one wants to ask what possible conflicts of interest a Chinese researcher might have in keeping US agricultural products out of his country.