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The University of Colorado Boulder has an article up about a paper [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41562-018-0520-3] [DX] published Monday in Nature Human Behavior which finds that U.S. adults:
who hold the most extreme views opposing genetically modified (GM) foods think they know most about GM food science, but actually know the least
The paper's key finding is that:
the more strongly people report being opposed to GM foods, the more knowledgeable they think they are on the topic, but the lower they score on an actual knowledge test.
Interestingly the authors found similar results applied to gene therapy, but were unable prove a similar conclusion when they tested against climate change denialism. This leads them to hypothesize that:
the climate change debate has become so politically polarized that people's attitudes depend more on which group they affiliate with than how much they know about the issue.
It might be instructive to run similar studies in a number of areas such as
Vaccinations
Nuclear Power
Homeopathy
...
Where would you like to see this study done next?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 16 2019, @04:04AM
> Crop plants don't have the rigor to survive the wild very well.
Until they chance mutate, the old way, and do?
Or until they're barely able enough, just like lots of plants which have limited ranges/niches?
Or maybe "very well" doesn't matter: they can survive at all. Life struggles, and will survive and spread.
> most GM crops are 100% sterile
That would excuse those, somewhat, except that genes from purportedly sterile GM varieties have been found (and sued over!) in fields adjacent to their plots. Ie. they'd mutated to become fertile, or the strain expressed fertility under some conditions, or with some frequency which hadn't been characterized in the lab and test fields.