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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: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:05PM (5 children)
That doesn't sound like a very serious or scientific analysis of transgenic crops.
Crop plants don't have the rigor to survive the wild very well. And, though I consider this a problem for farmers that mostly serves corporations, most GM crops are 100% sterile. They don't reproduce at all.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:18PM (3 children)
If you're interested in depth, serious talk about the value of species diversity, follow the half Earth [half-earthproject.org] link. I'm not in the mood for more than a sound-bite, but the sound-bite on my mind is: billions of years of evolution produced more "value" in the diversity of life than all of mankind's scientific study and development have managed to even begin to understand. Also: the post 1950 population boom is destroying that value faster than science is cataloging it, much less preserving or extending it.
If you are just in the mood for a funny video, you should watch the flying carp, they're funny (unless you're one of the native species they've wiped out.)
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:21PM (2 children)
Diversity of life is great for things like natural beauty and thriving ecosystems. It's not so great for, let me check my notes... uh... it says here on my todo list "feed 7 billion people with the least possible farmland"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 15 2019, @09:34PM
Keep feeding those 7B people with no respect for thriving ecosystems, when they become 70B, or 700B, at some point the solar energy intercepted by the Earth won't be enough to sustain the human bodies. Now, read me fantasies about how the population boom is going to level out, any day now, go on, I've been hearing that one since before I was born.
The "Half Earth" approach is relatively simple: feed the people with half the planet, keep the other half in a relatively wild state - you know, like it was for tens of millions of years before we had our little oil fueled multi-generational orgy. Keep studying, keep developing, science marches on and will do great things; however, without a wild planet backing us up, we're going to implode in a very unpleasant way within a very few generations.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday January 15 2019, @11:29PM
Dismiss ecology in favour of growth at your peril. Everybody's peril, actually.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(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.