Banging the Drum on Science When It Fits Your Tune
In her last big superlative GMO story, New York Times reporter Amy Harmon wrote:
Scientists, who have come to rely on liberals in political battles over stem-cell research, climate change and the teaching of evolution, have been dismayed to find themselves at odds with their traditional allies on this issue. Some compare the hostility to G.M.O.s to the rejection of climate-change science, except with liberal opponents instead of conservative ones.
Harmon generously linked to a post of mine, which pointed out that liberals “are attentive watchdogs when it comes to flawed coverage of climate change. But with crazy talk on GMOs, they are MIA.” I was referring specifically to progressives in media who monitor real (and sometimes perceived) journalistic shortcomings in coverage of climate change. I am gratified that my own occasional attempts to “police frightful coverage” of GMOs, as CJR put it, have been noted by some of my peers.
Many who inhabit the progressive sphere have yet to come to terms with the tolerance for dodgy science and misinformation on GMOs that is disseminated by thought leaders and public interest champions. For example, what would you say if a much respected, highly credentialed public intellectual wrote a blurb for a book entitled, “The Climate Deception,” a collection of climate skeptic essays? Well, Marion Nestle recently did the equivalent of that with GMOs. This is the sort of thing I highlighted in my Slate piece a few years ago.
Look, there will always be high profile figures who accept a well-established scientific judgement in one field but reject it in another. Such hypocrisy will not go unnoticed and may undermine one’s credibility. In the case of GMOs, Fred Pearce in New Scientist argues that Greenpeace has sullied its name by using the same tactics as those it fights against in the climate change arena:
Climate sceptics are undoubtedly dodgy data dealers. They argue, for instance, that the world has cooled since 1998. They don’t point out that 1998 was an exceptionally hot El Niño year, nor do they admit the extent of atmospheric warming in the 1990s and earlier. They deny that the temperature trend remains upwards. And they ignore continued warming in the oceans.
But Greenpeace cherry-picks data in just the same way in its campaign against GM.
This kind of behavior is environmentalism’s cross to bear.
A similar scientific inconsistency dogs the American heartland, according to Don Carr, a chronicler of rural life:
There is a disturbing double standard in agriculture between farmers and ranchers that embrace the science behind genetically modified crops but reject the science behind human-induced climate change.
I’m no scientist, so I need to rely on their work to inform my opinions. When they form a consensus around the safety of eating GMO crops or the threat of climate change, I listen.
But things aren’t that cut and dried in conventional agriculture. Agriculture lobbyists* and their messengers take to blogs and the airwaves often, banging the drum on the science behind the safety of eating GMO crops while often denying the science behind human-caused climate change.
That selective embrace–and rejection–of science taints the messenger, be it an agricultural lobbyist or environmental group.
Keith — thanks for the mention. Appreciate it. Quick clarification, I’m in DC mostly but the farm is in “South” Dakota.
Okay, I made the fix. Thanks for clarifying.
“Climate sceptics are undoubtedly dodgy data dealers. They argue, for instance, that the world has cooled since 1998. They don’t point out that 1998 was an exceptionally hot El Niño year, nor do they admit the extent of atmospheric warming in the 1990s and earlier. They deny that the temperature trend remains upwards. And they ignore continued warming in the oceans.”
I disagree with several points in this paragraph.
1. Most climate skeptics argue that the trend during the last 12 – 18 years is close to flat, disagreeing with the IPCC model projections.
2. Nobody disputes the warming of the past. However, there are disagreements over the best way to measure the temperature trend, e.g., Satellite, unadjusted weather station data, adjusted weather station data. etc.
3. Most skeptic scientists believe that the trend is upward and that man’s activity contributes to the warming, but they question how fast the planet will warm in response to a given increase in CO2.
4. It’s the warmists who ignore the increase in the oceans. I say this, because the latest IPCC report is based on dozens of climate models, none of which include ocean warming as a factor.
This post should have been titled “Dragging out the Strawman when it fits your Narrative. The whole point of the “Pause” which was “denied” by alarmists until just last year, was that the models are overheated; thus cannot be relied on for projections. No one says the oceans are not warming and that there is still a likely upward trend in the atmosphere. Pearce is a liar.
“…banging the drum on the science behind the safety of eating GMO crops while often denying the science behind human-caused climate change.”
You can get caught in the weeds arguing the merits of individual climate studies, or imaginary conspiracies cooked up by Monsanto or Big Oil. But stand back and look at the big picture of GMO’s and AGW.
If GMO’s were as dangerous as its foes claim we would see a very clear, indisputable pattern of ill health effects among the billions of people who have consumed millions of tons of product over the decades. That evidence is lacking, so I conclude GMO’s are safe to consume.
Likewise, if CO2 is as threatening as many climate change adherents claim we would see clear effects in terms of abnormal weather patterns. However, while CO2 levels have steadily increased for the past 150 years, and global temperatures as best we can measure have increased (somewhat, for probably a variety of reasons, and in unexplained fits and starts), according to the IPCC “…there is no clear evidence that sustained or worldwide changes in extreme events have occurred in the past few decades.” In other words, like the big picture with GMO’s, there is no evidence of a malevolent pattern of climate that falls outside the norm – the actual “change” part of climate change. So, I’m not getting my socks in a wad over it.
I have been dismayed by the abandonment of science by my liberal allies, and equally dismayed by the abandonment of science by some GMO supporters. But I had the same feelings when my fire-fighter/cop/teacher-union loving family members pull the same stuff on birth control, stem cell research, and gays because of their Catholic upbringing.
But the neat thing about standing on science: you can stand in the same place while all these other folks put their left foot in, and put their right foot out… Saves a lot of energy. And I sleep really well.
“there are disagreements over the best way to measure the temperature trend.”
Yes, a most amusing point.
It’s funny that climate activists think it’s perfectly normal for the global average temperature of 1936 to change when new data for 2014 arrives. 🙂
Most skeptics understand that this variation in the “temperature record” is the result of a temperature data infilling method, which reinterprets previously infilled temp data each time new data comes in. But we also recognize that, in using a method like this, the reported temperatures are now model output. They aren’t observations. So the temperature “record” isn’t a record at all. It’s model output.
That being said, we still accept the “temperature record” at face value.
I guess in the long run you have to decide what science is science and what science isn’t science.
I bumped across an interesting paper the other day called how we survived the population bomb:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777609/#R39
And yet many scientists still think we haven’t survived it:
“New multi-scenario modelling of world human population has concluded that even stringent fertility restrictions or a catastrophic mass mortality would not bring about large enough change this century to solve issues of global sustainability.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141027181959.html
But what’s most amazing about the population bomb is that, although it was widely accepted in the scientific community, it wasn’t even good science back in the 1960s. The basic principles of the relationship between resource abundance, prices and technological advancement, which were ultimately Ehrlich’s undoing, were already well established by then.
So what do we do when scientists don’t stand on science? Should we just jump down the hole too?
I do not agree. I think that it is perfectly healthy that “recent” science is examined critically by the wider society, both for its quality and for its fitness for use. Especially in fields like biology, medicine and climate, published science is not synonymous to Truth, and there is a lot of unaccounted for uncertainty, false claims, flawed results and commercially or ideologically driven distortion (this was so in the distant past, but it is no less true right now). Most of recent science is not Science (the stuff you can practically rely on by now). At the same time, “recent” science needs to be taken serious for what it is and what it can offer despite its limitations, which is not the same as something “to believe in”. The people banging the drum on science are often the same ones that use it selectively.
The AGWers are certainly the ones who ignore the science, and I include the IPCC, NASA and NOAA in that category.
They ignore their own 35 year satellite record which shows no statistically significant warming, sea level rise, or global ice cover.
They much prefer the proxy data gleaned from ice core samples, tree ring analysis, ancient tidal gauges, and a faulty instrumental record which purports to go back to 1980.
Can you imagine the reliability of collected world temperature data in 1980?
Even when I was in school a long time ago, we had maps showing large areas of the globe as “unexplored territory”.
As far as your family, what does one’s moral code of values have to do with science, the methodical investigation of the physical world? You could make a very logical case, based on science, in favor of human husbandry with the elimination of undesirables who disproportionately consume resources for little or no benefit to society at large. Oh wait, that’s been done. A moral code must hopefully inform science so that it does not turn into a monstrosity.
I’m all on board for scientists to agree on the best science as soon as the SuperPAC vs SuperPAC war is over.
One of my students just did a survey of a random sample of 500 grad students at our university. Of the 311 describing themselves a democrats, 291 agreed with the statement that US gun murder is up over the past 20 years, 12 agreed with the statement US gun murder is about the same, seven answered they did not know, and one answered correctly that US gun murder was down. (It is down 50% in 20 years)
The 98 describing themselves as conservatives virtually all got the answer correct, and the independents were mixed.
Gun murder is the central core metric related to gun control, a major current issue affecting policy and rights, and there is a clear political/cultural bias and filter creating denial of that core metric.
I merely teach political science 101-204. I am not a brain scientist, nor a researcher in the cognitive field. But as the author shows with GMO, the issue is not one of liberals or conservatives trumping the other in better cognition; but of both groups using filters, likely media selection and peer beliefs, to reinforce their mistake views and exclude actual data to the contrary.
My point had nothing to do with morality. Whose morality do you pick if one person thinks it’s immoral to withhold the tools for a woman to control her own fertility vs. someone who things an old single white guy with a cassock can do so? Luckily this is why we leave these things largely out of secular law, at least in most modern legal systems. And where they aren’t out of the law yet, we continue to fight about them.
My point was that there is always an uneasy alliance among allies on topics. And you can’t really pick what other people will stand on.
So you’re implying that every science (climate, agriculture, etc) has the same controls, funding, review, so we all should just sit back and trust the word consensus. How is this absolutist thinking very scientific? This type of lazy “journalism” keeps the perpeptual extreme thinking machine going. I won’t accept any conscensus until the SuperPAC vs SuperPAC battle is over.
This is what happens when you jump on your high horse and sneer down on everyone else as being anti-science. You may have noticed how little faith America has in its governmental institutions lately, and it is exactly these types of easily refuted allegations of their own competency that make people doubt the entire institution.
Politics isn’t science. They cynically embrace it when it supports their ideology, and ignore it when it doesn’t. KK reports it here like this is surprising somehow, or is a new discovery. I suspect it is because he was buying into the left being a party that simply follows the science.
You can reel off many things the left is confused about, nuclear power for one environmental example. This isn’t an accusation, I totally expect political parties to follow the wishes of their constituents. The parties aren’t there to guide their tribe, the parties are there to implement the wishes of their tribe whether they make sense scientifically or not.
When you view politics in this (more accurate) way, the behavior of the parties is much less surprising.
Thanks for sharing that example, which is yet another example of motivated reasoning. On the facts and myths of gun violence, I thought this was a helpful piece from earlier in the year:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/06/11/gun-violence-and-mass-shootings-myths-facts-and-solutions/
OTOH, several years back one researcher had claimed to show in several papers that personal gun ownership actually reduces crime. The work was later overturned, but conservatives and gun rights advocates clung to it for some time and some I’m sure are still clinging to it.
A recent FBI report indicates that, while gun violence in general is declining, mass shootings are becoming more frequent.
http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fbi-releases-study-on-active-shooter-incidents
Obviously that was supposed to be 1890 🙂
It should be noted the rent-a-mob marchers are usually in lock step in opposing nuclear, GM foods and global warming.
Any thinking person can see that the left of the political spectrum has co-opted climate change as part of their anti-capitalism drive.
No problem with that, per se, but it should be at least kept in mind when the proposed “solutions” involve cutting back on cheap energy production in the West and massive transfers of wealth to the third world.
It should be noted the rent-a-mob marchers are usually in lock step in opposing nuclear, GM foods and global warming.
Any thinking person can see that the left of the political spectrum has co-opted climate change as part of their anti-capitalism drive.
No problem with that, per se, but it should be at least kept in mind when the proposed “solutions” involve cutting back on cheap energy production in the West and massive transfers of wealth to the third world.
I don’t advise jumping down holes. But maybe you can find some fringe scientist that advocates that. And I can’t evaluate the process from the 60s, I didn’t participate at all.
What I do is look at the body of work in the field. This way single personalities or outlier claims are less of an issue. And it is certainly unpopular now, but sometimes you have to wait for more data to come along. That’s not very satisfying in our immediate gratification culture and social media environment, but it’s just the way it is.
For example, a whole bunch of people jumped in the whole when the first report of a small RNA absorbed from food was reported. Most mainstream science folks though–we were skeptical, and waited for more work. More research found that was likely an artifact or just not legit. So making policy on that early report would have been a mistake.
My guess is a large percentage of the anti-GMO types actually object to it on a moral level. This is the “don’t mess with mother nature” crowd in a lot of cases and they have bought in heavy to the nature is always right fallacy.
Because they cannot get what they want through their moral argument, they have attempted to expand their reach by applying a false cloak of science around the argument to allow those who are on the fence to rationalize their disapproval of it on a scientific grounds.
The problem is a classic one of motivated reasoning. People looking for data that re-affirms their political (or cultural) beliefs, rather than looking dispassionately at the data. Once people have emotionally invested in an idea it can be hard to gibe up.
This is where science, because it is objective, helps out. One may not like the result, but as I tell students: the result is the result, regardless of what you hoped to see.
Both sides of politics, because they have invested in an idea of what the world should look like, fall into this trap. On the left it is usually about technology. Adopting variants of naturalism as a creed, means that technology is viewed with suspicion. On the right it is about limits to capitalism.
Even scientists can fall into this trap, particularly when they pontificate outside their expertise. But even when they have a best-loved hypothesis, they can become defensive. I probably do a bit of it myself. However, as I tell the students I love being proven wrong. That is when the interesting stuff happens. I have had plenty of experience accepting my ideas can be wrong: within 3 weeks of my thesis being accepted the concluding model was proven comprehensively wrong by a group that subsequently won the Nobel Prize.
The scientific consensus of experts around a topic is usually a good place for the non-expert to start. For every example where a maverick has proven the consensus wrong, there are hundreds of examples of mavericks promoting crank ideas that have died the death (except on small corners of the internet). The consensus that genetic engineering is not inherently dangerous is most likely to be correct, as is the consensus that vaccines do not cause autism, as is the consensus that human-induced carbon dioxide emissions are warming the Earth.
Still going to the same well- eh Keith?
Despite no actual evidence correlating views on GMOs to political ideology, you still want to bang that drum because, well, because the NY Times took notice.
Here – so why don’t you look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWiJPeGtxQ0
and then come back and do some fear-mongering about fear-mongering by libertarians.
Check out the 2013 US Senate Vote vote on whether states should be allowed to decide on GMO labeling.
Yes – 27 (24 Democrats, 2 Independents, 1 Republican)
No – 71
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=113&session=1&vote=00135
Your point about the RNA is a good one, but note the situation: a problem that’s easily amenable to lab testing.
I feel like scientists who have spent their careers working in labs just don’t get that there are aspects of science that can’t be self-corrected because the systems in question are too large and/or complex to undergo the kind of simple testing that can be applied to, say, claims about GMO or vaccines.
IME, the scientific community needs to find some way of assessing whether it’s state of knowledge on a particular topic can generate accurate projections that can guide policy.
Notice any correlations?
http://s3.amazonaws.com/content.washingtonexaminer.biz/web-producers/GMOmap2.jpg
OK – so that is some actual evidence of something (and as such, different than Keith’s repeated drum-banging), although exactly what it is evidence of isn’t entirely clear to me.
Is it evidence that GMOs are a significantly polarized issue, cleaved by political ideology? Kahan’s data on exactly that issue show it isn’t the case – despite Keith’s repeated drum-banging.
Support for food labeling does not imply supporting “crazy talk on GMOs” or accepting “dodgy science” or “misinformation.”
Interesting that while you showed the breakdown of the number of Dems who voted Yea, you forgot to mention the breakdown number of Dems who voted Nay. I wonder why that is, Tom?
Because we are talking about whether there is a party bias in who actually supports anti-GMO legislation?
For the most part, people simply don’t care much about GMO’s in the US. I think that is what Kahan’s data shows. It’s not very controversial, it doesn’t even register in voter priority polls.
But for those who do care (the activists), I think there is undoubtedly a major leftward tilt here, as there is with greens in general. There will of course be some crossover. Anyone involved in the organic business will support vilifying GMO’s.
It also simply shows that farming states (which are predominantly red except CA) are unsurprisingly not big fans of anti-GMO legislation. These are the people who would actually be affected by this type of legislation and it just makes their jobs harder and less profitable.
I would suggest that these farming states probably understand the issues better than urban areas. There is probably a much more significant bias between farmers and non-farmers.
It’s a sad commentary on our education system (and the media) when people are so polarized on scientific issues.
For example, the very terms, “climate change” and “GM foods” is seldom defined in scientific terms, so people are left to define it for themselves, and naturally inject their own worldview into their understanding.
We all agree that the climate changes.
We all (or should know) that all living animals and plant have, and are being genetically modified every day. It’s called evolution. Do you believe in Darwin?
All the produce in your food mart and garden center has been genetically modified by nature or the hand of man to suit your taste and visual appreciation. Artificial insemination extends even to humans.
Our wonder drugs are another example.
So is the populace getting the full story?
A search of school lesson plans on the subject reveals only one side of the debate, namely GM foods are bad for you, and it’s Monsanto that are the profiteering villains.
I’m not talking about party bias, at all, or hostility/opposition to GMOs being wound up in a Democratic identity, the way climate change skepticism/denial is now wound up with the Republican identity.
I’m talking about something else, entirely.
Joshua once again willfully misreads what I’m saying. Or maybe it’s his own cognitive bias that distorts his reading comprehension.
It’s interesting that there’s this idea that climate change skepticism is Republican.
I voted for Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry and Obama 08. I wound up voting for Romney in ’12, but wow, that was a hard thing to do. I just felt I had to vote against Dems no matter the cost.
I think that many people that have traditionally supported the Dems have taken a hard look at what they’re supporting because of the climate change issue. And what they’re finding is that there are many other Dem positions that they don’t like. IOW, the Dems are turning us into Republicans because of their poor policy positions.
I’m a centrist. People like Paul Ryan and Rand Paul scare me. But so do many of the Dems. They no longer want what’s best for people, they want what’s best for large environmentally minded donors (Steyer, Cameron and others). That’s just as scary to me as Ryan and Paul.
JH –
What makes you think that you, someone who is obviously a GMO, climate change, etc. keyboard warrior, are at representative of the larger public?
http://www.culturalcognition.net/display/ShowImage?imageUrl=/storage/belief_scilit.png?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1411144058700
Do you have any evidence of an increase in party identification among Republicans correlated with a proportional drop in party identification among Dems? And even better – if you have such evidence, do you have any evidence of the related causality? Or, as someone interested in the logic of arguments and taking a hard look at how people draw conclusions from evidence, are you willing in this case to draw conclusions based on nothing other than your subjective evaluation?
“What makes you think that you, someone who is obviously a GMO, climate change, etc. keyboard warrior, ”
OK, don’t agree. I don’t care! 🙂
Nice duck.
Hey, Mr Evidence, are the Dems going to gain or lose seats in the house and senate? 🙂
Niall Ferguson’s book The Ascent of Money has a section on the gold standard and the relationship between resource supply and technological developments. The relationships described apply to all resources. Greenspan’s book covers it very well also. This is the basic science that Ehrlich-ites (and foley-ites?) overlook.
ALL temperature data come from models, even if you read it on your backyard mercury thermometer. So it’s a question of making your data models better and better, not about not using a model at all.
“Without models there are no data.”
— Paul Edwards, “A Vast Machine”
“They ignore their own 35 year satellite record which shows no statistically significant warming, sea level rise, or global ice cover.”
That’s complete horses*it.
What says the population bomb was widely accepttd by the scientific community of the 1960s?
Just wait until we start having GM people.
I sometimes think it could only be an improvement.
+1
Yeah, my state is one of those that’s pushing a labeling bill next year. I’m pondering ways to activate against it. It’s weird, though, here in a green state city. Even mention the word “GMO” and people have a strong visceral reaction, even though they don’t really know what it is. An uphill battle, for sure.