In Looking for the Truth, I did a point by point critical analysis of Organic Agriculture Beats Biotech at its Own Game by Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute. I gave Dr. LaSalle credit for being a smart person who allows his ideology to cloud his judgement.

After reading Why GMO Foods Have Failed at Producing Healthy Food for More People, I don’t think I should have given him that much credit. I already covered most of his points in my previous post, but he makes some new points in this article that are, frankly, reminiscent of the scaremongering lies promoted by the Republican party about imaginary death panels.

I had been of the mind that Rodale was a strong research institution that was overall a good force for agriculture and for science, even if I disagree with some of their recommendations about biotechnology. If Dr. LaSalle’s lack of critical thinking is any indication of what his organization is capable of, then I must admit I was misled as to their purposes.

One sentence from the article says it all:

As the four As (allergies, asthma, autism, and ADD) rapidly increase in U.S. health statistics, we must consider that GMOs could certainly be one of the causes.

Really? We have no other explanations for any of these? Such as increased self-reporting due to media coverage of previous increased self-reporting?

Hopefully I will soon have time to do another point by point analysis, but for now I’ll leave you with a thought from one of the commenters on the article, K:

Ignoring scientific data when it suits you is no way to become a respectable source of information. If treehugger wants me to go against scientific data when it comes to GM foods, why should I believe any articles that want me to go with science when it comes to global warming?

I don’t need an article that is all, “yay, GM foods!”, but I do need an article that presents both the pros and cons, or, at the very least, cons that are real and not made-up.

PS: I was tempted to accompany this post with one of the many insane fearmongering images people have made about biotechnology, but I just couldn’t stomach it.

Someone sent me a link to some YouTube videos of Jeffrey Smith promoting one of his books. I’m not sure what this person expected to accomplish, but it gives me a great opportunity to discuss the important issues of credibility and bias. I just started reading Lies, Damned Lies, and Science, about these and other issues surrounding science communication, and the book has really made me start to examine the source of information more carefully.

I’m frustrated by Smith’s star status among anti-GMO activists for quite a few reasons, but the main one is: who the heck is he? His official bio is incredibly vague. I found snippets of information in comments on various sites that all seem to source back to an article by Alex Avery. The article, Jeffrey Smith – A Highest Flying Activist’s Hidden Scientific Beliefs?, says that Smith is a poor source for science information because of his belief in yogic flying, a type of transcendental meditation. Unfortunately, I’m wary of taking Avery at face value as well because he presumes to speak on topics he doesn’t have training in, but at least Avery has a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology. Smith apparently has an MBA, but I can’t find where his degree was from or what his undergrad degree was in. I also can’t find what Smith did before mysteriously becoming an anti-GMO guru, other than his being an aide for one James E. Davis, who ran for US Senate in 1996 in Illinois for the Natural Law party, earning 0.3% of the vote. According to some sites, like Smith’s bio at the Penrhos Trust, he ran for US Senate in 1998 in Iowa, but he isn’t listed in the relevant Wikipedia article (or in the Des Moines Register). He might have connections to Maharishi University of Management (is this where he got that MBA?) but doesn’t come up in a search on their site either. According to the Penrhos bio and others, Smith was VP of Marketing for a GMO detection lab, but I can’t find any details about that. In interviews with anti-GMO publications, Smith claims to have worked for various non-profits “do gooder type of things” but provides no details.

Am I just really bad at Googling? Let me know if you can find anything, I’m curious. Regardless of what he has done, it sounds like exactly zero of it prepared him to be a communicator of science. On this blog, I discuss things I know I don’t have expertise in, but I don’t claim to be an expert in them. I also have my credentials, at least my job and school history, posted clearly. What are these people hiding that they can’t do the same? I hope that people will start to be more transparent about these things, because the context of the person making a claim is often very important in interpreting the claim. How does this matter? Here’s what I replied to the email:

I have a scenario for you. Let’s say someone sends you a press release of the CEO of Monsanto making all sorts of claims that GMOs are the best, totally safe, going to save the world, blah blah blah. Do you believe him? Probably not, because you know he’s got a lot to gain from making exaggerations and even from telling complete untruths. You might not realize it, but Jeffery Smith makes a lot of money from his website, books, and speaking engagements. Do you really trust a guy that makes his living on what he says to be 100% truthful? I don’t. Let’s extend this idea to subjects other than GMOs… Would you believe a door to door salesman of Product X to be 100% truthful about the product? Would you believe a chiropractor who told you that there were no other options for back pain besides chiropracty? Would you trust a pro-life activist to give good advice on birth control? How about asking an oil executive about global warming? Of course not, because we know all of these people have something to gain by getting you to believe what they say. It’s not that everything that they say is 100% a lie. If that was the case, you’d see through them in a minute. No, they’ll tell 90% truth, as much as they need to so that they can slip in a few exaggerations or falsehoods and have them sound like truth. Not that anyone is necessarily doing this on purpose, it can be subconscious. We all carry biases on a variety of topics – those proverbial rose colored glasses can color what we say as well as what we see. We just have to be careful to take things with a little bit of caution (or a lot of caution as the case may be) and to get information from multiple sources, including sources we know are biased the other way. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle. It also helps if the source actually has at least a little bit of professional training or credentials in the subject they purport to be an expert in.

Aspergillus infected corn. Iowa State University Extension.

The National Corn Growers Association is an important trade group. Their mission is to advocate and lobby on behalf of corn growers, or as they say “to create and increase opportunities for corn growers”. At the Maize Genetics Conference, I got to listen to their Chair of the Research and Business Development Action Team, Pam Johnson (you can find my summary of her remarks in my post Research and the Recession). She was a little overenthusiastic, but generally made sense, advocating for better cooperation between government and industry to produce more useful research. I hate to say it, but, was all that just for show?

Like any special interest group, NCGA puts out information that is biased toward their own agenda. This is nothing new, every special interest group from Greenpeace to AgBioWorld does it. I know it happens, and yet, I was still shocked yesterday when I read the report Research Shines Light on Gulf of Mexico Hypoxic Zone (full paper). The cause of the hypoxic zone has been thoroughly researched by multiple respected organizations including NOAA and USGS, but NCGA throws all that research aside in this report.

Let’s not blame nitrogen fertilization of corn, they say. Instead, it’s increased population causing more sewage and the fertilization of lawns (really, they say that). Some of their points are valid, but taken as a whole, the report may as well be an April Fool’s Joke (unfortunately, it’s not April, and I’m not laughing).

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