A few years back, and with much pomp and ceremony, a group of anti-salmon farming activists announced they had “discovered” a deadly fish virus “new” to the Pacific Northwest. Turned out they didn’t. The tests were false positives, and the lab which reported the findings was found to be so shoddy in its work that the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) had no choice but to delist the lab as a reference station.
Well…THEY’RE BACK!! It turns out that these people just can’t handle being wrong.
It’s the same story as before, only this time the group found a journal to publish their findings. This is probably more a story about how easy it is to publish crap science, or maybe how you can turn crap science into an exciting press release that then turns into a scary, eye-candy newspaper headline.
Today, The Virology Journal published a study about infectious salmon anaemia virus (ISAv).
The actual study simply states “Discovery of variant of infectious salmon anaemia (ISAv) of European genotype in British Columbia, Canada.” However, the study cautions that the tests could not be duplicated and have not been confirmed by accepted international tests, and no disease was present. In fact, the study admits that “All virus isolation attempts on the samples were negative, and thus the samples were considered ‘negative’…”
Despite the pretty boring results, it doesn’t take long for the study to digress into speculation. And then there’s the addition of some creative artistic license when they wrote their accompanying press release.
The group’s press release headline is significantly more dire than the study and starts to finger point: “Feared Atlantic Farm Salmon Virus Identified in British Columbia.” So now this unconfirmed finding that is not linked to any disease should be feared by us all, and we have someone to blame. Emotional statement scattered throughout the press release abound: “severe and tragic consequences” “influenza” “far more serious than anyone knew” and “mutation”.
True to form, media are starting to ramp up the importance of a little story about an unconfirmed piece of a fish virus that doesn’t cause disease.
The first press to report on the story boasts this headline: “Salmon Virus Found in British Columbia, Could Spread to Washington if Not Contained”. Now, what started as a simple discovery without confirmation or presence of disease, is now so scary it should be contained.
The study also includes flat-out lies. The authors state in the conclusion that the CFIA completed two years of ISAv surveillance in BC, but they did not test Atlantic farmed salmon…” Nonsense. The group is either purposely lying, or they can’t perform a simple Google search. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s multi year testing of farmed salmon in British Columbia can be found here. All test results for ISAv have been negative, and confirm the same results from Washington, Alaska, and Oregon.
Editors Note: There is an interesting side note in connection to this fish virus study. We recently published a blog story about a mother who was portrayed by Canada’s national media as innocently questioning the corporate branding of her daughter’s soccer team. By “coincidence”, the company who sponsored the team was a salmon farming business. The soccer mom, Anissa Reed, is named in the acknowledgment section of this fish virus study. Not so “coincidental” after all, apparently.
