Checking out visits to this blog, I made
the depressing discovery that my latest post “Real Science 1” has had only
about one-fifteenth of the readership of two “hot-button-issue” posts, “Unsafe
at Any Dose?” and “Causation IS Correlation”.
Why
is it depressing? Because winning minor
skirmishes over particular issues, useful though it is, is not going to tackle
the core belief of GMO supporters. Which
is, that they have the Science and we don’t.
And this is their key claim, the claim that that guarantees them
legitimacy, the one that gets trumpeted and re-trumpeted on pro-GMO sites, that
is believed and reinforced by the mass media, and that opponents of the whole
GMO/pesticide nexus have so far done no more than snipe at. We can point to individual papers that
contradict their claims and they trash those papers by subjecting them to
criteria that no pro-GMO piece ever had to undergo. There are fewer scholarly papers finding
problems with GMOs than there are scholarly papers enthusiastically endorsing
them, and there are more scientists, at any rate more people who are called and
who call themselves “scientists”—88% more, if you believe the latest polls--who
believe that GMOs and pesticides are perfectly safe than scientists who are
skeptical of those claims.
Small
wonder then that many anti-GMOers become anti-science, become exactly what
pro-GMOers portray them as being, while others are in denial, refusing to
accept the situation, latching on to anything that seems prejudicial to GMOs
regardless of its provenance or reliability.
But such responses are not just futile—they’re unnecessary. All you have to do is put the conflict in a
broader context. Once you do that, you
will understand what is happening, why it is happening, why it had to happen,
and why the picture is already changing and will change even more. In our favor.
It may not be quick, but we can speed it up by five, ten, fifteen years,
once we realize that GMOers are weakest where they feel themselves
strongest. We can challenge them on
their most basic assumptions, provided we are willing to raise our heads out of
the trenches and survey the battlefield we’re fighting on from a longer and
broader perspective.
In the post series entitled “Real
Science”, I’ll first examine the sociology, psychology and history of science,
with particular reference to its most recent 200 years. Then I’ll talk about what’s been happening in
the biological sciences over the last fifty or so years, culminating in changes
to some basic assumptions that GMO advocates seem not to have noticed. Finally I’ll survey the economic forces that
have sought to control and direct science and why those forces have been
initially so successful, but also why they cannot remain so.
Boring, abstract stuff of no conceivable
interest to people who are trying to get labeling laws passed, or put folk with
placards round City Hall, or host informational seminars, or do any of all the countless
things activists must do? No way! Don’t think for one moment that I want in any
way to depreciate those things. Quite
the contrary. I myself am actively
involved in them, here at ground zero in Hawaii, so I know they have to be done. But, and a very big “but”…
It’s on the high ground of pure science
that the decisive battle will be fought—and won! Never
mind the “pro-science” rhetoric on the GMO side. Once you see the Big Picture, you can see how
much (or how little) that’s worth. Because
that’s what it is, sheer rhetoric, the endless repetition of the same mantras:
GMOs have been proven safe, no-one has ever gotten sick from them, pesticides
are harmless to humans below the government-certified “low dose”, if anyone
says different it’s junk science, farmers have been doing this for millennia, opposition
to any of this is anti-science, and on and on.
Words. I’m going to give you
facts. Facts you can use to put an end
to all this who’s pro and who’s anti-science.
Because the issues we’re talking about
are empirical issues. Things that sooner
or later will be decided on the basis of indisputable fact. I don’t for one moment doubt that there are
many people on the GMO side who sincerely believe that they are on the side of
science and reason—“all paid by Monsanto” is just a pro-GMOers’ myth. Indeed I even know WHY they claim to be pro-science. Because they ARE pro-science. In a sense.
You see, the science they are pro is
basically the science they learned in college or grad-school, twenty, thirty,
forty years ago. Well, unfortunately for
them, science is always moving, at some times faster than at others, and twenty
years can be a long time in science. In
my next “Real Science” post but one, I’ll explain the two most recent major developments
in biology—evo-devo and niche construction theory—and exactly how these impact
the pro-GMO case (in a word, adversely).
First, though, I need to place these developments squarely in the context
of the Still Bigger Picture—how science has evolved over the last five hundred
years, and how much what we still call “science” has itself has been changed by
that process. So that’s what’s coming
next—stay tuned!
Can't wait to hear it. Will be interesting to see what all of the cutting edge scientists are missing...
ReplyDeleteNot to be too snide, but where is all the good science in the anti-GMO realm? You are a proponent of the Sennef gray literature study. But they literally did no science.
If GMO hazards were easily detected, it would have been done in an above-board manner by now. Not in the Seralini way where you can hardly give him the benefit of the doubt because he intentionally did poorly designed studies with non-standard statistical interpretations (the liars lie argument - if he needed poor design and poor statistics to get him there, over and over again...)
Or are you saying that they simply cannot be known?
Talk sense, Mike. I've done it already. Look at the Laura Vandenberg studies on NMDRCs in "Unsafe at Any Dose?" (published in the 20th ranked--out of 5,000+--science journals in the US) which show that GMO "safety" tests are worthless.. Look at the UC Davis report on pesticides and autism. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Now tell me where I have said word one about Seneff or Seralini. All you guys ever do it is repeat all the hoary old slurs with your heads firmly in the sand so you can't absorb any new information. Start talking about the real stuff and I'll be happy to debate you. But please, please don't waste everybody's time with tired old arguments that were no good even when young,
ReplyDelete