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Recently, I've had to deal with more and more people (in person and on the internet) who have been parroting the same ignorant viewpoints about Monsanto. Hell, I've seen people putting up fliers, walking around wearing signs, shouting on street corners---stuff I definitely see people doing for more concerning issues in our area, like fracking or voter disenfranchisement. Following it back to the source via facebook friends who have been posting the same subset of links about evil Monsanto, GMOs, organic food, or similar topics. Inevitably, these always lead back to various advocacy blogs and "news" sites (that seem to exist primarily by peddling "natural cures", "paleo diets", and "herbal clenses"). There is, apparently, an insular network of people and websites dedicated to complaining about how Monsanto is literally the devil because they are selling seeds full of DEATH CHEMICALS or something (very rarely are accurate claims made). Trying to find the source of some "article" always leads one on a chase that takes one from repost to repost around this entire circlejerk ring until you get to the source, which is usually some unsourced post in a green forum or blog comment. The problem I'm running into is how to debate people in this community (or others like it), because of the sheer effort involved. Arguing against whatever claim they are making is difficult, as it is never something reported by the actual media (for instance, recently tried to pull up something to disprove the notion that Monsanto was bribing the Illinois Dept. of Agriculture to suppress/steal Roundup-resistant bees (what???), but found it impossible since every "article" about it was essentially just one guy's account over and over--no reporter had asked the Dept of Agriculture (or Monsanto, if they really wanted) for comment, and no paper had reported on it). When confronted by the fact that the initial claim is dubious at best, I'm met with a torrent of canned grievances (which mostly fall under the heading of "common myths", ie. "terminator seeds!!!" or "Monsanto destroys poor innocent country farmers!!!"). In the end, it seems impossible to change anyone's mind about the subject, since people seem to want to believe that comic book villains exist and are destroying their Pure Organic World. Anyone know how to go about arguing with those existing at the edges of internet echo chambers like this, or is it mostly wasted effort? I'm not looking to debate Monsanto here, because threads on that have historically turned to poo poo, but merely using it as an example since I'm most familiar with it.
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Jun 27, 2013 03:40
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Cream_Filling posted:The sad thing is that Monsanto really is evil. Just not evil in the way these people say it is. Beyond that, maybe try the conspiracy theory thread? Because a lot of these people are basically or literally conspiracy theorists and are stuck in this weird intellectual rut where all evidence supports their view, and evidence opposing their viewpoint is really just evidence of a conspiracy (thus supporting their views). This is exactly right. I'd be more than willing to engage with people citing Monsanto as a failure of capitalism, but no it's always people who don't understand what Roundup Ready crops are, or who paid for the research into "terminator seeds". (ie, the USDA and a company that wasn't even Monsanto). However, I'm not sure if I'd lump them in with traditional conspiracy theorists, if only because they don't seem to run with the same circles, or propogate the same memes. I don't here these people talking about government coverups, false flags, or murder-drones slaughtering those who know The Truth. Instead, they seem to worry more about Big Pharma, "superfoods" that they don't want you to know about, and the secret wisdom of the ancients/the noble savage/the mysterious chinaman. Maybe it does boil down to the same root, but I'm having trouble getting into their mindset and visualizing the common threads between all this nonsense. Hell, I can do that for conspiracy theorists and construct at a partial framework to support the insanity (as long as you are able to overcome a few key bits of cognitive dissonance down near the foundation, you can create increasingly bizarre frameworks of delusion). But I can't do the same with the Natural News crowd, for whatever reason. Maybe a lot of them have given up entirely on logical structure and consistent narratives? Because I can't find any.
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Jun 27, 2013 04:05
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Cream_Filling posted:I think the key is that scientists, like many other academics, have done a pretty poor job of engaging with the greater culture and nobody has any real understanding of what's going on anymore, leaving them to be blindsided by persuasive garbage. Before I start on replying to other posts in more depth, I need to ask--how can the science community do a better job? It seems like enough people don't care about (or can't learn about) the fundamentals of science, making explaining complex issues essentially impossible (unless you're a pop-sci savant who can distill down absurdly technical issues into a mostly-true form that is palatable to the masses), so the actual results of real research is meaningless to them. Fake edit: saw this as I posted, can't resist d3c0y2 posted:I'm opposed to genetic foods because of how it's used to sue poor farmers into oblivion and support unethical business practices. I support the EU forcing GM containing foods to be labelled as such because I try to eat ethically and most GM food is part of a problem that treats farmers and small businesses terribly. You could at least try to read up on the poo poo you decide to publicize your opinions about, in a thread where I am complaining about this exact loving poo poo. Sue farmers to oblivion? No, this never happened to any "poor, innocent farmers". A few people have knowingly and deliberately infringed upon Monsanto's patents, however. And GM Food is unethical? Jesus christ, do you know who sells most of the non-GM seeds to farmers? The same guys who sell the GM seeds. But, really, thanks for your contributions.
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Jun 27, 2013 05:59
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Deteriorata posted:Another reason conspiracy theories are popular is that they offer an easy route to enlightenment. Reality is difficult, messy, and often hard to understand. People don't like feeling stupid and left out of the conversation. Conspiracy theories let people cut through all that, and all the confusion in their minds is excised with this one simple theory. Suddenly they understand, and can talk like an authority on the subject. Their angst is relieved. The importance of a simple, understandable narrative cannot be overstated, in my experience. People can latch on to a simple story and build up on it. Take, for instance, the infantile Loose Change "documentary". It presented a narrative that explained 9/11 as a government conspiracy, and then expanded upon itself to try to cover all of the inconsistencies and holes until the end product is a tangled web of crazy--but if you were drawn in by that original narrative, then all of that can start to seem clear and obvious. Another example is American-style Libertarians, who've latched onto a few memes ("non aggression", the market is right, freedom is always good), and have gone on to construct a reality based not on the real world or real people, but the logical consequences of their essential axioms. I'm not sure enough of them follow the logic far enough to conclude, "well, according to our principles, selling your children into sex slavery is totally fine!", yet some of them do, and view it as totally okay since it is a consequence the narrative they believe to be implicitly good and right. I've only had limited success arguing people out of either of these beliefs---mostly, I've just had to wait for people to outgrow it and look back on it with shame and regret. But the Monsanto crap is different because it seems to have a bigger audience among the middle agers than other bullshit conspiracies. At that point I can't just chalk it down to, "Well, everyone does dumb poo poo in college".
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Jun 27, 2013 06:14
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Strudel Man posted:There's been so much disinformation on this topic that I'm dubious even of this. It's my understanding, for example, that Monsanto's interactions in India are limited, through third-party intermediaries licensed to 'manufacture' (for want of a better word) and sell Monsanto's proprietary strains. The suicide of farmers there is terrible, but blame is difficult to apportion when they're killing themselves over debts owed to party A which were used to buy seeds and farming equipment from parties B and C based on intellectual property owned by party D. It's also really hard to blame them for poor crop yields due to yearly weather conditions or other such "acts of god". EDIT: ^ I wasn't 100% sure that was the drought being referred to, so I kept it vague. Glad to know I wasn't imagining that poo poo.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:26
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Sword of Chomsky posted:I wish it was easier to educate myself on the topics of GMO's without getting mired in the new age poo poo. The topic is distorted enough that it can be hard to find reliable sources, since the good ones can get buried. There are a lot of reasons to be concerned about monoculture crops, but the actual interesting questions and debates are often ignored for the ignorant ones---"monoculture crops taste bad and cause cancer!!!" vs. "is it reasonable to establish monoculture crops in order to produce a reliable and well-understood crop that requires less human-labor and net energy expenditure to grow in spite of the increased risk of vulnerability to an emergent pathogen (an issue with current banana monocultures, as I recall). Unfortunately, I'm not sure enough people have enough technically literacy to understand and share information on the good questions, and are instead drawn to the ones that sound simple and self-evident. As an aside, I might write up a new thread exclusively on these agricultural issues when I have time to actually do enough research to have good sources for people to look at.
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Jun 27, 2013 06:45
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Divine Disclaimer posted:No, my problem with Monsanto is that farmers should be able to re-sow their own seed, for practical reasons I consider more important than Monsanto's corporate profits. Not really, but thanks anyway.
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Jun 27, 2013 14:07
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Play posted:Whoa buddy, calm down there. This attitude makes you seem emotionally invested and you sound like a contrarian Monsanto shill. It's not surprising you don't have luck convincing people if this is how you talk to them. If I seem hostile it's just because I predicated the entire OP on "hey, I have a problem with people throwing out these very specific unsubstantiated claims due to some underlying unease about Monsanto" and have gotten multiple replies along the lines of "that's all well and good, but <very specific unsubstantiated claims due to some underlying unease about Monsanto>". I'm hoping to better understand the mindset that engenders this, but I'm actually having surprising difficulty (whether or not it's due to a conflict between holistic and reductionist viewpoints). I don't really view these people as crazy, or irredeemably irrational, but that I don't understand them, so any classification isn't relevant.
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Jun 27, 2013 17:56
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Judakel posted:Then again... You might just be incredibly bad at making salient points. I wasn't trying to convince someone who couldn't even be bothered to read the whole drat OP (which was miniscule, by D&D standards). Slanderer posted:If I seem hostile it's just because I predicated the entire OP on "hey, I have a problem with people throwing out these very specific unsubstantiated claims due to some underlying unease about Monsanto" and have gotten multiple replies along the lines of "that's all well and good, but <very specific unsubstantiated claims due to some underlying unease about Monsanto>". I'm hoping to better understand the mindset that engenders this, but I'm actually having surprising difficulty (whether or not it's due to a conflict between holistic and reductionist viewpoints).
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Jun 28, 2013 00:12
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Forever_Peace posted:Then you aren't listening. The initial claim being responded to was: Illegibly Eligible posted:Where Monsanto is evil is their business practices. It really DOES harm food supply and fucks farmers over HARD. Say you want to grow Monsanto corn but not Monsanto tomatoes. Not gonna happen. Their licensing is so restrictive that it's virtually impossible to NOT grow their crops once you start. Oh, it turns out there's a drought in your area, so you want to switch from Monsanto's (water intensive) crops back to something else that needs a bit less liquid? Too bad, you're under contract for X years. Oh snap! Your Monsanto corn was cross-pollinated with non-Monsanto corn from the next farm thanks to honeybees. You now owe Monsanto ridiculous amounts of money for violating their copyright. So this doesn't really help with that.
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Jun 28, 2013 15:55
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KomradeX posted:Would that really be the "low damage" option? I can't imagine that would have been good for anything (if anything) lives at that depth. But I'll admit I don't know much about the effects, and try to be less hysterical about nuclear anything, but I recall seeing Micho Kauku on Rachel Maddow talking about how it was a bad idea. I could be mistaken it was a few years ago now. As an aside, Michio Kaku is sort of an outlier in the Physics community with regards to nuclear safety in general, and he is known to present nuclear safety as a much bigger issue that it is. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku#Anti-nuclear_batshittery That said, there are risks to doing massive geoengineering with nuclear weapons, but it was once considered as a possible future tool for a bunch of applications. Without looking it up (there should be lots about it), a lot of underground detonations were performed in Russia for this exact purpose. (EDIT: Ok, I looked it up for the next post) As for undersea use, it is relatively safe (in terms of nuclear weapon tests). The water itself will absorb the initial radiation, and if you do it deep enough, you can probably minimize how much radioactive material enters the atmosphere along with water vapor. At that point, other than a disruption to the surrounding ecosystem, the remaining harmful isotopes will be so diffused by the ocean that they will pose no risk to anything ever. Slanderer fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Jun 28, 2013 |
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Jun 28, 2013 18:04
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Deteriorata posted:The problem is that it's completely unproven technology. There was a decent chance it would fracture the rocks and make the oil leak worse and unstoppable. We also have no bombs of that size and would have to custom-make one for the purpose. That would require a lot of time and testing, which we didn't have. There were some precedents, actually. In the Soviet nuclear geoengineering program, they closed multiple natural gas wells using nuclear devices. This, of course, is still not the same as trying to do it to an oil well at the bottom of the Gulf, but it wasn't a crazy idea at all (just a disproportionately unpopular one due to ATOMS!!!!!!)
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Jun 28, 2013 18:08
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Sogol posted:We can ask it this way. Should I be able to live in a way that does not include ingesting GMO's, which are a proprietary product? Should I have to remove myself from society or grow all my own food to be able to do that? What do we feel is the nature of the social contract with respect to this? Should crops made using "traditional" breeding techniques such as irradiating seeds in attempt to create useful mutations require labeling as well? Should corn grown under high voltage power lines require labeling to? Of course not. To do so is to poison the market against them by acting on fear and ignorance. EDIT: quote:(Papaya is a good example) I had to look this up to double check, but the introduction of GM papaya saved Hawaii's papaya crops from the Papaya ringspot virus. Slanderer fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Jun 30, 2013 |
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Jun 30, 2013 23:21
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FRINGE posted:This is the root reason that even the most under-informed of the crystal clutching hippies are on the right track* - with things being done the way they are being done right now. They are not on the right track at all--they don't even have enough actual evidence to know where the gently caress they are (thus the proliferation of provably false memes about GM crops causing cancer, killing bees, driving helpless Indian farmers to insansity and suicide, etc...). You're looking for independent testing? Hey, cool, no worries. Worry about independent testing for drugs too, then. To single out GM crops is part of the problem in that it exceptionalizes them, and makes it seem as if there is some grand scheme to hide the truth. Does the FDA or USDA test non-GM crops for safety, or pesticide contamination? Nope! And GMOs shouldn't be "owned" because they are in the wild? Why not? Because people could accidentally use them and get sued? Nope. Because they will destroy the 3rd world? Nope. Raisin bran is owned, but it surely affects my gut microbial flora---is this a crime of capitalism too? And, please, use less whitespace. Your posts are far too vapid to use so much screen real estate.
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Jun 30, 2013 23:40
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Sogol posted:There are actually quite a few potential advantages from GE possible including drought resistance, pest control etc. it is not really the current purpose of the system to produce these though. Cross pollination, as in the case of papaya's, should be minimalized and you did not really address that in your post. quote:You are now basically making an elitist argument in which a technocracy should be able to control the market and choices available because the populace is just too stupid and ignorant to do so. The US is pretty much the only place where labeling is an issue and this is in great part due to lobbying efforts. It's not elitist to refuse to acknowledge fearmongering psuedoscience that wants to put a torch to "unnatural" frankenfoods. This is only an issue in Europe because of advocacy and lobbying of environmental groups whose spread misinformation and brands the whole of the scientific community "shills" (unless they are lone-wolf scientist whose fly by night uncontrolled and refuted experiments "prove" that GM corn causes wifi allergies).
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Jul 1, 2013 00:22
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Sogol posted:Personally I feel most of the supportive rhetoric about GMOs is disingenuous unless the system of profit maximization and consolidation is kept in mind as a context that guides the R&D and implementation activities. That is stringing up a whole bunch of fallacies here. You can't throw out GM crops because capitalism exists. That's why "makes more money!" is never in the list of provable GM benefits. Sure, you could make otherwise unprofitable GMOs if we lived in a socialist worldwide utopia. But as it stands, GMOs only exist because huge companies are willing to put up the money to do years of R&D to create them in the first place. I'm sorry if that irreparably taints them in your mind, but that doesn't change the fact that GMOs, as they exist right now, still have enormous benefits for us.
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Jul 1, 2013 00:26
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Sogol posted:Irregardless, you have made an argument that I am too stupid to be able to make choices about what food I choose to eat and that this choice should effectively be taken away from me. Regardless of the reasons for such an argument it is a very extreme argument to make, it seems to me. And I made that requiring labeling GM foods give legitimacy to unfounded fears and misinformation, helping to perpetuate the existence of groups to will refuse to accept this Other food for essentially dogmatic reasons. quote:The distinction that says that the only options we have are ubiquitous GMO or ubiquitous organic is simply an artificial argument. Clearly these are not the only options. The argument that GMOs are 'necessary' to feed the world is even more disingenuous. Currently GMOs are a profit mechanism. They do not produce higher yields. The 'efficiency' gains are artificial since they destroy yield over time, because of the need to monocrop at scale in order for the GMO to be profitable. The destruction of the soil system is not a problem for the system of industrial ag since it requires escalated use of fertilizers. quote:I am really am not saying anything about Frankenfoods. I honestly don't think we know enough to say those things one way or another. The argument that GMOs are somehow necessary however is false. They are only 'necessary' within that particular system of profit. If you believe in that morality of profit, then you might ascribe to that necessity. If you do not, then the question is very different. This is the goddamn cherry on the poo poo sundae. You don't think we know enough, but Actual Scientists who spend their life working on this poo poo disagree. No one claimed GMs are necessary (well, they were necessary to save Hawaii's papayas, but whatever), but you are claiming they are unecessary because they only exist to make money. That is demonstrably false. Something can make profit and be a good thing as well. The same line of reasoning is what leads one to believe that vaccines are a conspiracy because Pharmas only exist to make profit, right?
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Jul 1, 2013 00:56
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acephalousuniverse posted:drat I can't wait to start up an evil multinational corporation. Apparently no matter what you do everything can be hand-waved away with "well that's just how capitalism is baby, every company is evil so I don't see why you're criticizing me in particular! ha!" This thread was very obviously made to mock new age hippies scared of GMOs and not in any good faith desire to understand people's exact reasons for disliking Monsanto, since every point that was acknowledged to be factual and valid was ignored with some variation of that quote. No one is hand-waving it away, but only refusing to accept it as the reason for why Monsanto is singled out in particular. It reeks of rationalization after the fact for a gut dislike of Monsanto. It comes down to people saying, "I hate Monsanto because A, B, and C" and A is trivially disprovable, B is long accepted by the scientific community, and C is something that every company does. Singling out Monsanto for "C" is just another example of presenting it as exceptional, for the sole purpose of justifying existing feelings without rationally reassessing them.
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Jul 1, 2013 15:12
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FRINGE posted:They simultaneously get to suppress findings they dislike, NDA scientists that work for them (and might know some of the failings/frauds), legally hamstring farmers from complaining about anything ever, and slap the US government around like a bitch now that they have planted people in the various agencies. I'm sure you can back up each of these independent claims with multiple, reputable sources, right?
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Jul 5, 2013 04:50
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FRINGE posted:Kind of funny coming from you, right? Your OP was just full of useful things that were obviously not just made-up anecdotes for your troll thread right? My thread wasn't even meant to be about discussing Monsanto, as I explicitly stated in the OP. There was more confusion and contention about the issues than I had anticipated (too many people reading the same blog-spread memes without context popping in), which directed the conversation away from the original goal of determining how people get into certain irrational mindsets and if they can be argued with. From your contributions to this (and previous) threads, I can only conclude that Monsanto literally murdered your parents, and you have been driven by anger and insanity to become a crusader of D&D, fighting to clean up the streets. A symbol of revenge. You are the night. You are the bat.
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Jul 5, 2013 06:47
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FRINGE posted:Well yes, that would be the extent of what you can conclude. This is perfectly in line with your communication skills, as you highlighted in the OP. You seem to be with company, so at least you have internet friends! Well, I can tell you were already well into your one-man-war against
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Jul 5, 2013 07:17
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icantfindaname posted:I'll make this easy. Name one incident caused by pro-GMO ideologues that has caused anywhere near the damage that burning down a GMO research lab has. Well, Monsanto is Pro-GMO, and they destroyed freedom and made farmers start killing themselves before even selling them seeds (temporal seed technology? Must investigate further.), so Pro-GMO has caused harm. QED
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Jul 5, 2013 07:24
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Two friends both posted this on Facebook yesterday saying "wow, looks great!" http://www.independent.ie/business/irish/wave-goodbye-to-global-warming-gm-and-pesticides-29525621.html I now have two fewer friends.
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Aug 29, 2013 03:50
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hseiken posted:I went to March Against Monsanto this summer thinking that people were upset like I was that Monsanto was one of the big corporations that you could see abusing the government for profiteering purposes. Surely the amount of money they spent for protection legislation to be snuck through in budget bills and such would upset everyone else as much as it upsets me to see my government continue to play patty cake with lobbyists. I had a sign that read: YOU TOO CAN BUY POLITICANS FOR JUST 6 MILLION DOLLARS! ASK MONSANTO HOW! And had their PR phone number on the sign (someone actually copied the number down, but no idea if they called about it). Thanks for this, by the way. It's good to know not everyone who went to that thing was completely out of touch with the real issues.
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Aug 30, 2013 15:42
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A better guess for deaths due to radiation exposure is like 1, maybe, unless you are using the same insane and unfounded models that gave projections of 200,000 dead due to Chernobyl.
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Sep 6, 2013 18:10
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Strudel Man posted:Meaningless or not, the 'second-generation' seeds would still have a legal requirement to be labeled, and failing to do so certainly wouldn't accomplish anything desirable. Labeling any of them doesn't accomplish anything desirable in the first place.
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Sep 12, 2013 04:24
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Personally I think we need to label produce that was harvested by illegal central american laborers---what if they poop in the field and I get sick??? Now you might say, "That's ridiculous and racist and unjustified, what the gently caress is wrong with you?" I ask, "What are you trying to hide?" I mean, it's not like that by labeling my product as "100% certified Not poo poo On by Mexicans" I'm somehow implying that the other products are poo poo on, right?
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Sep 13, 2013 20:18
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Baika posted:I recently saw this posted and am not sure how this will change the GMO debate nor do I know how credible the journal Organic Systems is. From: http://www.marklynas.org/2013/06/gmo-pigs-study-more-junk-science/ quote:This picture is even more stark in the data presented in Table 3. 15% of non-GM fed pigs had heart abnormalities, while only 6% of GM-fed pigs did so. Similarly, twice as many non-GM pigs as GM ones had liver problems. Why no headlines here? “Pigs fed non-GMO feed 100% more likely to develop heart and liver problems, study finds” – I can just see it in the Daily Mail. But of course negative results were not what Carman et al were looking for. The paper seems to be cherrypicking data that supports anything along the lines of "GMO BAD!!!!" without actually starting from specific hypothesis. Moreover, the paper authors are anti-GMO advocates specifically sponsored by organic farming organizations. So there are issues.
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Dec 22, 2013 20:59
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LP97S posted:Monsanto is loving up the market with GMO's. They already hosed up the world with hybrid marketing, hosed up with pesticide, what the hell is the deal with giving it a third try seems to be the general notion. I have no issues with GMO, all of my posts in this thread have been about how both left and right sources are scared with pseudo-science crap and how plenty of people shouldn't be trusted because it's all about money. Food insecurity could be eliminated overnight if it wasn't for privatized interests in it and if it was recognized as a human right. Monsanto, along with Cargill and other agro-chemical companies, don't want that so in conclusion they can go gently caress themselves, GMO or not. Um I'm pretty sure that there isn't a "end world hunger" switch in a closet somewhere that Big Monsanto is hiding from the world. Because, you know, the political, logistic, and economic issues associated with this are kinda complicated.
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Dec 25, 2013 22:45
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LP97S posted:Monsanto is the main target because they're monopolizing the distribution of seeds with buy outs and licensing and I'm sorry that apparently this thread is only about GMO being bad from some loving green party platform instead of dealing with the biggest name in loving over food distribution. I guess liberalism wins again, Merry Christmas. [citation needed]
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Dec 26, 2013 00:00
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LP97S posted:Monsanto was the first to do so. Prior to becoming a mostly genetics based company, they manufactured PCB and managed to dump 45 tons of the mess into a single creek in 1969. They also engaged in dangerous practices in disposing of it in many places. Sure, they might not have the raw body count of Union Carbide, now owned Dow, but when people asked why did I not like Monsanto, I explained why specifically with regards of that company. Cargill and Dow are also sketchy companies and I wouldn't trust them with dogsitting, let alone being a major component in food security in the 21st century. This thread was originally about a particular strain of bizarre ideas about Monsanto and GMO that propogated in a strange internet vacuum to create people that were angry at issues that they basically invented themselves. I'm sorry if actually stating what your mad about is a lot of work for you, but...hahaha no i'm not. Actually make a coherent argument if you want to discuss something. If you lack enough information to do so, consider that your beliefs may be ill-founded, since you can no longer back them up.
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Dec 26, 2013 02:54
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Knockknees posted:Soil contaminantation is a major issue in urban farming and in suburban reclamation. Just because it's dirt, doesn't mean it's safe to grow food in. It's also that frankly a lot of places aren't great for growing crops---soil quality is much more complicated than "add fertilizer*, since the actual soil type affects what you can grow. Then the local climate limits crop growing as well. Then there is the availability of water for irrigation. And so on...
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Jan 14, 2014 23:31
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Install Windows posted:GMOs being a profit-driven private industry thing mainly at the moment, means the opposite of monoculture. You can't make the big bucks if you're only selling one variant of each crop! You turn out dozens of provably distinct strains every year so you can upsell farmers and laser-target your marketing to different areas and local conditions. Is there any research out there that actually tries to guess at the genetic diversity of planted crops? It seems like a non-trivial task to try to figure it out. I guess you would need to first get data on what seed products farmers are buying, and then try to get the information on the genetic heritage of each seed (which I guess are trade secrets). That might give you some idea of the susceptibility of modern crops to specific new pathogens, but I'm somewhat out of my league. Looking at Monsanto's site gives a whole bunch of different products for corn alone, along with all everything else. I also didn't realize that farmers in the US were required to leave a portion of their fields planted with non-Bt resistant seeds so that any insects starting to show Bt-resistance might breed with others that live in the non-Bt "refuge" (this is what I get for reading too much wikipedia, instead of actual sources). This totally seems like a viable way of discouraging insects from becoming homozygous for some Bt resistance gene by increasing the odds that they will reproduce with non-bt resistant mates.
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Jan 15, 2014 02:35
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Taaaaaaarb! posted:I think it was no less a scientist as Phil Plait that said that science has a promotion problem. This comes from discipline's rules wherein an argument stands on its merit to establish reality alone in science; the unfortunate reality is that outside of science, this is not true at all. In short, scientists have done a very poor job of promoting their particular discipline over the last decades and now we're reaping the ill-effects sewn: creationists, alternative medicine, climate change denial, technophobia pertaining to nuclear energy and biotechnology and, I would even argue some conspiracy theories fall under this umbrella too (chemtrails, water fluoridation, 2012, 9/11, etc.). It's a product of the process of education access stratification and rationing effectively by the ability to pay, which I think has necessarily resulted in mass scientific illiteracy. It's a huge contrast to the post-WWII sentiment that science is great and will improve your life on a personal level (or at least that's the feeling I've gotten from period educational films, articles, and advertisements. All of them seem to have an undertone of "look what our brilliant scientists have cooked up now! it's wonderful!"). Unfortunately the era of Superscience seems to have passed.
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Mar 19, 2014 19:45
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Malmesbury Monster posted:To be fair, that era of Superscience also involved things like spraying DDT all over literally everything. People lost faith in "look what our brilliant scientists have cooked up now" because a lot of the promises either didn't pan out or were massive public health hazards. In general science as a discipline is much more cautious now, but public skepticism hasn't worn off. You're right about DDT. I mean, it was initially seen as pretty marvelous--it eradicated the threat of Malaria in entire regions overnight. And holy poo poo, this stuff is so amazing that we are going to use it everywhere! Of course, the fact that it killed a bunch of birds and was harmful to people helped create the EPA. The human harm was kinda sensationalized at the time (it's harmful, but the long term harm is totally outweighed by not dying of malaria if it is applied purposefully, instead of being sprayed recklessly). This probably lead to a bunch of needless deaths, as Malaria was never much of an issue in the Western world anyway, so it was harder to make the argument that in tropical regions this would still have a huge net benefit to use. I mean, it all boils down to Science creating a goddamn miracle chemical that saved millions of lives, except without a government regulatory structure in place to determine the extent of it's harmfulness and mandate how it could be used. Solkanar512 posted:Even though it was scientists who figured out that this was a bad idea. Another good point. It probably wasn't the scientists telling everyone to spray DDT everywhere, but companies made it, people bought and used it, and there was no one in authority to say, "Hey, maybe that's a bad idea guys"
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Mar 19, 2014 21:00
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Install Windows posted:Separately from pure yield issues, many strains of GMO crops do not produce more yield per acre of land, but they are better able to handle things like less water, or better able to resist weeds encroaching, or better able to resist insect and small mammal attack. Various things like these may not seem to make too much of a difference on a single farm's level, but across the entire agricultural world it would and does add up to a lot less incidental resource usage for the same output. This is true, but I've tried to think of the "effective" yield of a crop in the environment. IE, a roundup ready crop performs equally to or slightly worse than the unmodified version in an ideal environment. However if there are weeds all over your field and you need to spray herbicide, then either roundup ready variety will have a higher effective yield since you can more effectively control weeds, which improves the yield.
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Mar 20, 2014 19:02
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Ironed Idol posted:Yeah, I'll get right on that. Unironically citing RT takes either a lot of courage, or a severely altered mental state.
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Mar 22, 2014 05:56
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Deteriorata posted:I'm wondering if you've actually read the Cornell link you posted. You seem to be twisting it to make it say what you want it to say, rather than looking at what it actually says. After reading that link, that's the only conclusion I can draw as well.
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Apr 2, 2014 16:01
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Gumbel2Gumbel posted:I think a lot of this fear of GMO's comes from when people switch to 'organic' they also cut out a lot of packaged foods with preservatives and artificial flavors and feel a lot better. I think they erroneously attribute it to the organic fruits and veggies, and not the removal of preservatives and artificial colors and flavors. No offense, but "Preservatives, Additives, Dyes, Artificial flavours/colouring" is almost as bad as GMO-blame. I've seen these things blamed for ADD, Autism, IBS, Fibromyalgia...Never seen any actual evidence, which makes sense as this is lumping together countless unrelated chemicals. I've read some stuff about certain physical symptoms manifesting in part from psychogenic causes (ie, patient manifests symptoms in the presence of something with a certain smell or taste. after inhibiting that sense / masking odor/taste, symptoms go away).
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Apr 2, 2014 16:09
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Gumbel2Gumbel posted:I'm guessing you didn't read the link, at all. No, I did. I specifically quoted the line about "Preservatives, Additives, Dyes, Artificial flavours/colouring". This is such a broad and heterogeneous group of substances that it just seems arbitrarily thrown in, as it is for other patient-reported causes of certain disorders. I wasn't trying to imply that the mast cell thang was psychogenic, just proposing an explanation to the issue i presented ("why the hell do so many people claim these unrelated things all make them sick in unrelated ways?")
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Apr 2, 2014 17:06
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