Another fringe green activist here. First, I completely agree with Don, and I will add that the distrust is not unwarranted given that we’ve had (1) a colossal, obvious financial crisis which the institutions didn’t catch, but many individuals saw coming, (2) an EPA which recently contested California’s regulation of carbon emissions (regulatory capture/politics in science), (3) researchers who are frankly petty and dishonest (the recent Climate Research Unit hacking incident). I won’t even discuss the myriad of other issues.

You could start convincing “fringe green activists” by referencing something more convincing than that Springer article (http://www.springerlink.com/content/l12858476u034458/fulltext.pdf), which was written by a Paarhlberg, a political scientist advocate who fails to reference such bold statements as organic yields in Europe are ~70% lower for cereals and potatoes than conventional yields. I’m not a advocate for organic farming, and I wish it discarded with its old natural/synthetic distinction and measured pesticides solely on toxicity and environmental lifecycle. However, I just like to see better research from those who are supposedly informing the unlearned masses. Paarhlberg’s statement is particularly surprising given that the largest dataset on the issue found organic farms yield ~91% of conventional in cereals (Stanhill, G. (1990). The comparative productivity of organic agriculture. Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Environment. 30(1-2):1-26 doi:10.1016/0167-8809(90)90179-H). I have not yet found a focused critique of this paper, but I am open to reading one, as I suspect its results should not be generalized.

I’m not anti-science, but I am opposed to the way that genetically-engineered foods are regulated. That’s not to say I’m an expert on the regulation. I’ve just read a fair bit of the 2004 NRC book (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10977#toc) a while ago and determined that the regulatory process didn’t meet my standards. I’ve also read about troubling allergen effects (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8347) and know for a fact that no long-term safety studies have really been done in humans; in fact I’m pretty sure no real studies have been done in humans at all. Animal research alone doesn’t cut it (see, for example, http://dx.doi.org/10.1006%2Frtph.2000.1399). I haven’t looked into the ecological aspect, but certainly there is an ecological risk. If this research is carried out, it should be fully funded by the industry rather than externalized on the taxpayers. Obviously avoiding regulatory capture then becomes a problem, but the money should not support at all the agencies who collect it – it should be purely doled out (by the agency) as research grants to academic researchers. Does that happen now? I doubt it. My requirements would be quite stringent, since I would like to see long-term evaluation prior to introduction.

I’ll give you props for answering the comments gracefully, even if you lost my respect when you referenced Paarlberg as your scientific support.

AFAIK, the Indian farmers have been much more interested in GM than European farmers, specially cotton farmers.

Mr. von Mogel, I think that even worse is having to deal with completely bogus claims, people talking out of their a**es, like around 2002-2001, some fear mongers were talking about sheep or goats that ate GM cotton and died withc a blackened gut. More than half a decade later, millions are using BT cotton and not a word of this has been confirmed.

There are risks to everything, but there are also risks to doing nothing – this fact seems to escape a lot of people.

The small farmers are either illiterate or very close to it 95% (I am being optimistic – it is probably more like 99%) of the time and have no idea what they are up to.

The educated class is generally disinterested as they understand that for small pocket change the candidates buy the peasant vote making votes cast on their beliefs almost meaningless.

Foreign companies are a very good target for this kind of action. For GMO to succeed there it must appear to have come from within and have the backing of the powers in the capital.

The ‘green revolution’ came from the governments fertilizer program – large coop ventures to convert natural gas to nitrogen.

There are concerned and smart ag scientists in India but they are very much overwhelmed by the political side of things.

it is hard to reason someone out of a position they weren’t reasoned into to begin with

Absolutely. The people who’re engaged in the issue, have access to all the evidence, and still maintain there positions are going to be very hard to sway. As you said we can keep throwing facts at them, but to get where they are and still hold their beliefs means they got good at dodging facts they don’t like a long time ago.

Where the facts can do a lot of good is with people who’ve come into a position (whether creationism, anti-vaccine, anti-GMO, etc) simply because the people they know, and the people they listen to think the same thing. For every active creationist or angry anti-GMO protester there are a bunch of people who accept the ideas because “everybody knows that’s the truth.” Hopefully those people are easier targets for facts.

And congratulations on coming to your own realization, I know how hard it can be to reconsider deeply held beliefs.

The ones who win the “anti-science” label from me are the ones who repeatedly make debunked, false claims– -after being shown the data that contradicts the claim, and those who actively interfere with the progress of science.

It’s funny– -as I’ve been watching several fronts on this (creationism, anti-vax, anti-GMO, anti-stem cell) the parallels have been stunning. Crappy internet sourcing, peer reinforcement in lieu of data, faith-based assertions, active lobbying against funding– -the ones that bother me the most are the ones that are actively interfering with ongoing research.

Creationism, as far as I’m concerned, is an education issue. I want the next generation of scientists trained properly, but creationism doesn’t have an impact on the cutting edge of the science I’m involved with (genomics). It’s a non-issue in our daily work. None of the algorithms are affected, none of the funding is currently affected, none of the experiments are physically destroyed or picketed.

The others lead to public health problems, starvation, and suffering. Those are the ones that earn my full ire.