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Stephanie Seneff

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American anti-vaccination activist
Stephanie Seneff
Seneff in 2014
Born (1948-04-20) April 20, 1948 (age 76)
Columbia, Missouri
NationalityAmerican
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology (BS, MS, PhD)
SpouseVictor Zue
Scientific career
FieldsComputer science
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
ThesisPitch and spectral analysis of speech based on an auditory synchrony model (1985)
Doctoral advisorKenneth N. Stevens
WebsiteSeneff - MIT

Stephanie Seneff (born April 20, 1948) is an American computer scientist and anti-vaccine activist. She is a senior research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Working primarily in the Spoken Language Systems group, her research at CSAIL relates to human–computer interaction, and algorithms for language understanding and speech recognition. In 2011, she began publishing controversial papers in low-impact, open access journals on biology and medical topics; the articles have received "heated objections from experts in almost every field she's delved into," according to the food columnist Ari LeVaux.

Career

Seneff attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), earning her Bachelor of Science (BS) in biophysics in 1968, master's (MS) and engineering (E.E.) degrees in electrical engineering in 1980, and a doctoral degree (PhD) in computer science and electrical engineering in 1985. She is a senior research scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Her research career focused on using computational modeling and analysis of the human auditory system to improve communication between humans and computers. She was elected a Fellow of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) in 2012 as recognition for her "contributions to conversational human-computer systems and computer-assisted language learning". Seneff collaborates with and is married to MIT professor Victor Zue.

Biology and medical topics

In 2011, Seneff began publishing articles on topics related to biology and medicine in low-impact, open access journals, such as Interdisciplinary Toxicology and eight papers in the MDPI journal Entropy between 2011 and 2015. According to the food columnist A. LeVaux, Seneff's work in this area has made her "a controversial figure in the scientific community" and she has received "heated objections from experts in most every field she's delved into".

In 2013, she coauthored a paper that associated the herbicide glyphosate with a wide variety of diseases such as cancer and disorders such as autism. Discover magazine writer Keith Kloor criticized the uncritical republication of the study's results by other media outlets. Jerry Steiner, the executive vice president of sustainability at Monsanto, said in an interview regarding the study that "We are very confident in the long track record that glyphosate has. It has been very, very extensively studied." Seneff's claim that glyphosate is a major cause of autism and that, "At today's rates, by 2025, half the kids born will be diagnosed with autism," has also been criticized. For example, Pacific Standard noted that, contrary to Seneff's claims, many scientific reviews have found that the rise in autism rates over the past 20 years is due to changes in diagnostic practices, and that a number of studies, including a 2012 review in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, have found little evidence that glyphosate is associated with adverse development outcomes.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Seneff published on alleged vaccine adverse effects. In 2022, she co-authored the article "Innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs" in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology with Peter A. McCullough, a cardiologist known for spreading disinformation during the pandemic. Multiple scientists requested a retraction of the paper due to inaccuracies, mis-representations of cited works, and claims not based in evidence. The editors of FCT refused to retract the paper but published a letter to the editor written by concerned scientists.

Seneff and her MIT colleagues have also published on the health impacts of fat and cholesterol consumption in America. Based on this work, Seneff claimed that Americans are suffering from a cholesterol deficiency, not an excess. In 2014–2016 Seneff was proposed as an expert witness for litigators seeking damages from Pfizer associated with their cholesterol drug Lipitor, but the court dismissed the claim largely because Seneff lacked expert status and failed to provide credible evidence linking Lipitor to any specific harm.

International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research

Seneff is an editor of an anti-vaccine journal called International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research (IJVTPR). The journal is known for promoting misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. In May 2021, Seneff published a paper with co-author Greg Nigh (a naturopath) titled "Worse Than the Disease? Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of the mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19" in the then-brand new IJVTPR.

Response from scientists and academics

Clinical neurologist and skeptic Steven Novella criticized Seneff's Entropy publication for making "correlation is causation" assumptions using broad statistical extrapolations from limited data, saying "she has published only speculations and gives many presentations, but has not created any new data". Scientists and scholars such as Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist, and Jeffrey Beall, a library scientist known for his criticism of predatory open access publishers, have separately criticized Seneff's paper for misrepresenting the results and conclusions of other researchers' work. Lowe and Beall also noted that Entropy and its publisher, MDPI, have a known history of publishing studies without merit.

A 2017 Review Article written by Kings College of London researchers and published by Frontiers in Public Health called Seneff's glyphosate health-risk research claims "a deductive reasoning approach based on syllogism" and "at best unsubstantiated theories, speculations or simply incorrect." Consumers Union senior scientist Michael Hansen characterized Seneff and her glyphosate claims as "nutty", "truly unhinged", and "dangerous".

References

  1. Seneff, Stephanie (January 1985). Pitch and Spectral Analysis of Speech Based on an Auditory Synchrony Model (PDF) (Ph.D. thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. S2CID 44470289. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-12-17.
  2. McDonald, Jessica (July 29, 2022). "COVID-19 Vaccination Increases Immunity, Contrary to Immune Suppression Claims". FactCheck.org. Archived from the original on August 11, 2022. Retrieved September 11, 2024.
  3. Acquisito, Alex; Horn, Austin (March 28, 2024). "Legislator pushing anti-vax bill admits cited source was retracted from scientific journal". Lexington Herald-Leader. Archived from the original on September 11, 2024. Retrieved September 11, 2024.
  4. ^ LeVaux, Ari (27 February 2014). "Meet the Controversial MIT Scientist Who Claims She Discovered a Cause of Gluten Intolerance". Alternet. Archived from the original on June 11, 2020. Retrieved 5 February 2016.
  5. "Stephanie Seneff". CSAIL website. Retrieved 19 April 2015.
  6. "Stephanie Seneff". MIT CSAIL. Archived from the original on 11 September 2024. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  7. "Fellows 2012". International Speech Communication Association. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  8. "Weddings and Engagements". Cape Cod Times. 11 October 2006. Archived from the original on 11 September 2024. Retrieved 16 November 2017.
  9. Zue, Victor; Seneff, Stephanie; Glass, James (1990). "Speech database development at MIT: Timit and beyond". Speech Communication. 9 (4): 351–356. doi:10.1016/0167-6393(90)90010-7.
  10. ^ Beall, Jeffrey, "Anti-Roundup (Glyphosate) Researchers Use Easy OA Journals to Spread their Views", Scholarly Open Access, archived from the original on 6 June 2016, retrieved 12 June 2016
  11. Gillam, Carey (29 April 2013). "Roundup is tied to infertility and cancer; herbicide's maker calls it safe". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 11 September 2024. Retrieved 19 April 2015.
  12. Kloor, Keith (April 26, 2013). "When Media Uncritically Cover Pseudoscience". Discover. Archived from the original on January 29, 2014. Retrieved August 1, 2015.
  13. Gillam, Carey (25 April 2013). "Heavy use of herbicide Roundup linked to health dangers: study". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 11 September 2024. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
  14. Staff (9 March 2015). "Research Gone Wild: The Future of Autism". Pacific Standard. Archived from the original on 15 November 2017. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
  15. Seneff, Stephanie; Nigh, Greg; Kyriakopoulos, Anthony M.; McCullough, Peter A. (June 2022). "Innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs". Food and Chemical Toxicology. 164: 113008. doi:10.1016/j.fct.2022.113008. PMC 9012513. PMID 35436552.
  16. Banet, Rémi (6 April 2021). "US cardiologist makes false claims about Covid-19 vaccination". Agence France-Presse.
  17. Barrière, Jérôme; Frank, Fabrice; Besancon, Lonni; Samuel, Alexander; Saada, Véronique; Billy, Eric; Al-Ahmad, Abraham; Florens, Nans; Seitz-Polski, Barbara; Robert, Jacques (August 2023). "Letter to Editor "Innate immune suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccinations: The role of G-quadruplexes, exosomes, and MicroRNAs": Important concerns on the validity of this article". Food and Chemical Toxicology. 178: 113897. doi:10.1016/j.fct.2023.113897. PMC 10265941. PMID 37328089.
  18. Robert, Jacques; Seitz-Polski, Barbara; Saada, Véronique; Besançon, Lonni; Billy, Eric; Samuel, Alexander; Frank, Fabrice; Barriere, Jérôme (26 August 2022). "What Happened When We Tried to Get COVID Vax Paper Retracted". Medscape. Retrieved 26 August 2022.
  19. Barrière, Jérôme; Frank, Fabrice; Besançon, Lonni; Samuel, Alexander; Saada, Véronique; Billy, Eric; Al-Ahmad, Abraham; Seitz-Polski, Barbara; Robert, Jacques (26 October 2022). "Scientific Integrity Requires Publishing Rebuttals and Retracting Problematic Papers". Stem Cell Reviews and Reports. 19 (2): 568–572. doi:10.1007/s12015-022-10465-2. PMC 9607843. PMID 36287337. Archived from the original on 16 December 2023. Retrieved 30 October 2022.
  20. Wartman, Kristin (27 August 2012). "Sunny-Side Up: In Defense of Eggs". The Atlantic. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
  21. Spence, J. David; Jenkins, David J.A.; Davignon, Jean (2012-10-01). "Egg yolk consumption and carotid plaque". Atherosclerosis. 224 (2): 469–473. doi:10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2012.07.032. ISSN 0021-9150. PMID 22882905.
  22. Memorandum of Decision: Sullivan v. Pfizer, No. 3:14-cv-1374 (MPS), U.S. District Court, Connecticut, March 4, 2016.
  23. Sullivan v. Pfizer Memorandum of Decision, archived from the original on 2019-09-09, retrieved 2019-01-05
  24. Mansour, Juliette; Hollingsworth, Anna (October 3, 2022). "Cette étude italienne assurant montrer "d'étranges particules" dans le sang après la vaccination anti-Covid à ARN ne respecte pas le protocole scientifique" [This Italian study assuring to show "strange particles" in the blood after the vaccination against Covid RNA does not respect the scientific protocol]. defacto-observatoire.fr (in French). Agence France-Presse. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  25. Rougerie, Pablo (31 October 2023). "Preventing deaths isn't the sole benefit of COVID-19 vaccination, contrary to Epoch Times article". Science Feedback. Health Feedback. Retrieved 16 September 2024.
  26. Jarry, Jonathan (8 June 2024). "Spikeopathy Speculative Fiction Contaminates the Blood Supply". Office for Science and Society. McGill University. Archived from the original on 2024-09-11. Retrieved 2024-09-11.
  27. Christiansen, Siri (September 10, 2024). "No, there aren't self-assembled nanostructures in COVID-19 vaccines". Logically Facts. Archived from the original on September 11, 2024. Retrieved September 11, 2024.
  28. Gorski, David (25 April 2022). "Scientific review articles as antivaccine disinformation". Science-Based Medicine. Archived from the original on 28 October 2022. Retrieved 26 August 2022.
  29. Seneff, Stephanie; Nigh, Greg (2021). "Worse Than the Disease? Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of the mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19". International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research. 2: 38–79. doi:10.56098/ijvtpr.v2i1.23. S2CID 249052583. Archived from the original on 2024-09-11. Retrieved 2022-06-13.
  30. Marcus, Adam (11 August 2021). "Authors blame a "ghoul" for retraction of paper claiming vaccines lead to health and behavioral issues". Retraction Watch. Archived from the original on 11 September 2024. Retrieved 26 August 2022.
  31. Novella, Steven (December 31, 2014). "Glyphosate – The New Bogeyman". Science-Based Medicine. Retrieved August 1, 2015.
  32. Lowe, Derek (April 30, 2013). "Is Glyphosate Poisoning Everyone?". In The Pipeline. Corante. Archived from the original on April 19, 2015. Retrieved August 1, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  33. Facts and fallacies in the debate on glyphosate toxicity Archived 2017-11-12 at the Wayback Machine, by Robin Mesnage and Michael N. Antoniou, Frontiers in Public Health, November 2017
  34. Not Even Wrong: Seneff And Samsel Debunked By The Seralini Crew Archived 2024-09-11 at the Wayback Machine, by Hank Campbell, American Council on Science and Health, November 9, 2017.

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