View Single Post
  #76   Report Post  
Posted to alt.home.repair
dpb dpb is offline
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 12,595
Default Roundup For Weeds, Or... ? (what's really safe ?)

JoeSpareBedroom wrote:
....
Back in the early 1980s, Monsanto made the mistake of allowing spokespersons
to say two things to the press, and I believe it was Greenpeace that snagged
both articles and stuck them in one of its newsletters. The company first
said that animal tests indicated some farm chemical was safe. Two months
later, they responded to independent research which indicated that the
chemical was NOT safe. Their response: Tests on animals are not an accurate
prediction of how a substance effects humans.

Funny, huh? Whatever's convenient.


No, neither...it's how science and in particular, testing works...

You do the best you can w/ what you have at the time. If later work
turns up something else, you incorporate that as well.

That people (and companies _are_ people at the bottom) make either
ill-advised statements or that others may take statements out of context
or simply try to find any weakness in one is also a fact of life.

That the second study may subsequently be shown to be either invalid or
superseded by later data and tests/studies is also quite possible and a
very frequent event, too.

In short, any one test/study/claim is only one piece of any evaluation
of any product.

As purely a point of reference, I'm guessing you don't have any
involvement w/ agricultural production nor in the production of a major
portion of your own? (I'm not planning a bash here, just trying to
actually establish some context for discussion.)

--