| Chemophobia, I love it.
| Don't scare anyone telling them that there are chemicals in their food.
|
| I was just reading recently about how 80% of
| Americans are in favor of labeling food that contains DNA:
|
| http://tinyurl.com/p3catnx
|
| Since that number is at 80%, I must mention that everything that
| is alive contains DNA.
|

Be careful about feeling superior to 80% of the public.

First, the survey was done by Oklahoma State University
Department of Agricultural Economics. That is, a school
in the middle of farm country, where nearly everyone
has a vested interest in not labeling GMO foods. Why
do you think they did this survey in the first place?
It's propaganda masquerading as science -- business
as usual.

Second, the question was a trick question. It asked
whether people agreed with a government policy of
mandatory labeling of foods with DNA. The respondents
were led to believe that there was or might be such a
policy. The DNA question was used to offset the GMO
question and just happened to be the only nonsensical
question in the survey.

So what does the survey tell us? That most people are
not very knowledgeable about these things and don't
want to be seen as stupid, so they try to give what
they think will be an intelligent answer. That's interesting,
but the researchers are also trying to lead the reader
to a false conclusion that therefore opposition to GMO
is rooted in stupidity and ignorance. But shouldn't we
actually conclude that people need to be educated about
GMOs so that they can assess the issue sensibly? Unless,
of course, we have an irrational, ignorant propensity to
defend GMOs without having actually thought about the
issue ourselves. Or unless we don't feel that American
citizens have a right to have a say in regulation of the
food supply.

So 80% of people may be unsure what DNA is. Yet
probably 95%+ of people will assume a "scientific study"
is, indeed, scientific as long as it's given the appearance
of being so, with statistics, technical language, and so on.

How much of science is scientific? Given that science
is the closest thing modern society has to religion,
and that many people treat statements from scientists
with a trust similar to the trust given to priests, shouldn't
we be careful about accepting what passes for science,
from a scientific point of view? I'd go so far as to say that
many scientists are probably not capable of being scientific.
If one is not aware of one's own emotional biases and
cannot set them aside in order to analyze a topic then
one is not capable of scientific neutrality, regardless of
what degrees one may have. Unfortunately, the most
technically minded people are also generally also the
least emotionally sophisticated.

So what does all this have to do with GMOs? Have
you thought about GMOs? Do you have an opinion?
Frank, who started this with accusing the general
public of being stupid and not understanding the word
organic, turned out to misunderstand the word himself.
His final statement on the matter was some sort of
irrational outburst that was essentially incoherent. My
best guess is that he equates organic food with an idea
that US gov't agents are going to impose homosexuality
on him. ...Perhaps we should set up a survey to find out
how many people believe that.