General
Introduction:
It
always surprises me when otherwise intelligent people undercut their own arguments by resorting to easy,
sleazy informal fallacies, such as slapping a label on an opponent (e.g.,
liberal, conservative, libertarian) and thinking that constitutes an argument.
Or outright name-calling (e.g., Luddite, elitist, extremist)– even worse.
An
initial response of anger or disgust on hearing or reading something personally
upsetting, I understand. I have those emotional responses, too. I feel I’ve
been attacked – or, worse, ignored, unseen. But I’m not looking to get into a
brawl with anyone. My hope is to present my own view so reasonably that my
opposition will have no choice but to consider it.
I
did not always hold the political views today. My positions on a few issues
were different when I was younger. Not on everything but on some important
matters, I have changed my mind over the years. People who disagree with me are
not villains or morons. I do – I must – believe in reason, but I don’t believe
in using reason as a bludgeon, its blows delivered with sarcasm and disdain.
Why
I Bring It Up Again Today:
A
recent article in an online magazine decried alarm from a segment of the public
over genetically modified food products, suggesting (none too subtly) that
genetic modification is too complicated for Americans not trained in science to
begin to understand. So as not to seem completely patronizing or dismissive of
concerns, however, the author went on to present cases where adoption of a GM
alternative had (1) solved a problem posed by the previous unmodified version
of the plant and (2) presented no health danger to the public.
If you’re like me, you don’t really want to wade into this issue.
It’s too big, technical, and confusing. But come with me, just this once. I
want to take you backstage, behind those blanket assurances about the safety of
genetic engineering. I want to take you down into the details of four GMO
fights, because that’s where you’ll find truth. You’ll come to the last
curtain, the one that hides the reality of the anti-GMO movement. And you’ll
see what’s behind it.
The
reasonable-sounding, measured language above gives way later in the article,
where the author calls opponents of genetic modification “Luddites,” “ quacks,”
and “pseudo-environmentalists waging a leftist war on science.” It’s surprising
that someone claiming the scientific high ground in defense of GMOs would stoop
to name-calling, one of the most common uneducated informal fallacies. A strong
argument need not insult opponents, and insulting anyone is the surest way to
fail to persuade. Perhaps the writer hopes to intimidate and shame? Or simply
raise cheers from those who already agree with him? Is his case weak, or simply
his rhetoric? You can read and decide for yourself. He failed to persuade me.
Full
disclosure: As will not surprise anyone who knows me, I am not a laboratory
scientist. Not any kind of scientist at all. The last university math and science
classes I had, very low-level, were as an undergraduate. My chief focus as an
undergrad and nearly exclusive focus as a graduate student was in philosophy.
If you never studied philosophy or only took one philosophy class, you may be
tempted to joke about angels dancing on the head of a pin (how many can?) or
trees falling in a forest when no one is there to hear them fall (is there a
sound made?).
But
the main business of philosophy, from cut-and-dried logic to way-out-there
criticism is (a) to investigate the world and human thought and action, (b) to
formulate arguments to make cases for stating claims about world and/or thought
and/or actions and consequences, and (c) to analyze and critique claims and
arguments made by others. This is not some idle, esoteric game. It is, in fact,
a generalized, thought-experiment form of the scientific method itself.
Researchers
in laboratories, medical researchers in the field, botanists, agronomists,
farmers, courtroom lawyers, corporate attorneys, and men and women in every
field of life, every day, are engaged in some version of this process.
Differences in conclusions depend on starting points, knowledge, rigor of
reasoning --
also, crucially, on background assumptions (almost always unstated and very
often unrecognized); limits of the investigation; and wide
implications attached to narrower legitimate conclusions.
An
argument is presented to persuade. There is nothing “scientific” about falling
down in awe of an argument presented in the majestic robes of “science,” and
there is nothing rational about being persuaded without examining an argument.
Good
science has no need to hide behind a curtain.
The
author says the issue of genetic modification is “big, technical and
confusing.” Unfortunately, despite promising to shed light, he cherry-picks
facts and oversimplifies the issues. The truth is much, much more complicated
than he would have us believe -- not because of shadowy conspiracies of
science-phobic Luddites the author imagines "behind" opposition to GMOs but because of the limitations
of scientific research and the holistic nature of both agriculture and health.
A
farmer friend who is always open to new organic methods -- both because
reducing chemical inputs means more money in his pocket if an organic
experiment is successful (i.e., produces a crop as good or better than would
conventional methods) and because he takes seriously his role as steward of the
land, and he cares about growing nutritious, good-tasting, safe food in a
sustainable manner – is often frustrated by his inability to control
experiments and quantify results. Scientists commonly study plants grown in
greenhouses, in sterilized “soil,” under controlled conditions. Or animals
raised in laboratories and fed measured amounts of food and drugs that has been
subjected to careful chemical analysis.
That
isn’t farming.
Weather
affects crops. Variations in soil play a role. What has grown or been raised on
the land in previous years? What about the health of pollinators in the
vicinity? And that doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the complex,
interconnected, very real physical world of nature and what we do with it and
to it.
The
online author writes that GMO opponents do not worry about toxic chemicals used
to grow food, that they should worry about poisons instead of GMOs. Where
did he get such an idea? Who are these people who worry about one and not the
other?
Clearly,
the writer wants to frame a debate in which one must choose either genetically
modified crops or heavy doses of agricultural chemicals., but this is an
egregious false dilemma. (Note: another fallacy in reasoning.)
Roundup-ready seeds genetically modified to be immune to herbicides have
triggered speeded-up evolution of weeds, necessitating increased applications of
chemicals to the fields, so it is not a case of choosing either genetic
modification or chemicals: if you choose the GM seeds, you have also chosen
the chemicals, in ever-increasing doses. Roundup has been used for forty years, he
reminds us. Not,
I would point out, at levels of application we are seeing today. A short history of
weed control, including Roundup and its consequences, can be found here. The
increase in tons applied over the last decade is astronomical.
Only
in recent years has the place of mycorrhizal fungi in the production of humus
even begun to get scientific attention. Australian soil ecologist Dr. Christine
Jones, in an interview in the March 2015 issue of AcresUSA, discusses the
carbon cycle and the nitrogen cycle as these are played out in the soil, the
breaking-down process in compost, the building-up in formation of humus. Soil
testing, long the gold standard to determine soil health, Jones says,
will only tell you what is available to plants by passive uptake.
The other 97 percent of minerals – made available by microbes – will not show
up on a standard test.
The
kicker is that if the necessary microbes are present, minerals and trace
elements not even present in fertilizers will be available to crops, but cultivation
and chemical fertilizers and pesticides destroy the mycorrhizal networks. With graduate
degrees (albeit in philosophy) from the University of Illinois, I was happy to
see Jones referencing that university’s Morrow Plots, “the oldest continuously
cropped experimental fields in the United States.” Beginning in 1955, U of I
scientists began applying nitrogen and testing the soil:
They discovered that the fields that had received the highest
applications of nitrogen fertilizer had ended up with less soil carbon – and
ironically less nitrogen – than the other fields.
Hardly the result a fertilizer producer would be anxious to publicize. Then comes
increasing soil compaction, loss of water-holding capability, more demand for
irrigation, and increased soil erosion....
Also, nutrients present in food are not automatically available to those consuming
it, either. Certain chemicals added to crops can bond two minerals together and
make them inaccessible to the end consumer’s internal system.
Looking
at rats in a laboratory eating two different diets for four weeks, all other
things being equal, is such a distortion of the world in which plants and human
and nonhuman animals live that it tells nothing about our ability to grow food
and feed ourselves and remain healthy in the future. It’s complicated
because it’s all connected – agriculture and food and health, chemicals in soil
and in food, soil management and soil loss, microbes, pollinators, erosion,
water supply -- and more. Initial increases in yields from GM crops looked
good; over the longer term, the increases were lost. Now more herbicides are needed
to control weeds, as GM seeds, lacking natural resilience, need chemical
support. The chemical glysophate, Roundup’s main ingredient, is estrogen-sensitive, an endocrine
disrupter, crosses the placental barrier, disrupts the gut microbiome, and
causes necrosis in cells, among other things [Interview with André Leu in AcresUSA, , October 2014].
Sound safe to you?
And arguing
against agricultural chemicals is not changing the subject from GMOs, as long
as the latter are dependent, over the long term and increasingly, on the
former.
It
baffles me that otherwise intelligent people can be so lost in admiration for
what they see as “science” that they label skeptics “unscientific,” “Luddites,”
quacks,” “pseudo-environmentalists waging a leftist war on science,” etc.
Skepticism is scientific. Caution is scientific. Continued
investigation before making illegitimately broad claims is scientific.
When
the GMO issue comes up on Facebook, as it does repeatedly, I issue an open invitation to anyone in the area, either as a resident or a visitor, to
drop by my bookstore and take the opportunity to read back issues of AcresUSA. In-depth
interviews with scientists in the field, with organic practitioners of many
years, with government and former government ag workers, etc. are eye-opening.
And yet, so far, despite repeated invitations, the only person, ever, to
take up my offer -- and he’s not even on Facebook -- has been my farmer friend.
He is my age, no spring chicken, but he has an open mind. He follows up
avenues of information. He continually questions – and he questions himself,
too. He has what I call a truly scientific mind.
And
he’s out on the front lines, too. In the field. Practicing rather than
preaching. He doesn’t have time for blather.
The
truth is that a massive experiment is already underway in our world, and every
living thing, animal and plant, is a guinea pig in that experiment, and by the time
the results are in, it will be too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
As usual, to make use of another figure of speech all too often appropriate, we human beings, with our scientific hubris, are overdriving our headlights.
What do you expect from science? Its practitioners, as in
any other field of human endeavor, are human beings, with agendas, biases, and
blind spots. Scientific? How do you define it?
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I'll apologize for this post in that it is not a polished essay. It's summer, and between home and bookstore, mowing grass and selling books, making and cleaning up after meals and setting up and promoting author events, I am not at leisure during waking hours and have put this together in pieces, at odd moments. If I could write and edit myself and rewrite in my sleep, it be better, but it is what it is.
