The right, and some liberals, also make a mistake in the assertion that because some GMO risks are untrue or grossly exaggerated, all GMO risks are fictional. It deserves some extra regulatory hurdles, especially now that we’re seeing GMO genes in weeds. It’s not the same as traditional plant breeding.

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/1688

At the bottom you can link to a pdf that might be the one. But I’m not certain.

But for precisely that reason, I always probe left examples, to try to make sure I’m taking in the range of variability that’s out there.

I haven’t probed GMOs as much as nuclear and vaccines because, frankly, I think it’s less of a big issue in the U.S. It has seemed to almost fall off the map.

Now, perhaps I was wrong about that perception, based on the new claims you’re making. But that does not prove that I have a blind spot to what’s happening on the left.

Just consider: Which subject involving left wing science abuse is most likely to come up in a presidential debate? Nuclear, vaccines, or GMOs?

Do real liberals in the USA have any problems with vaccination?

The Tomorrow’s Table, Delta Farm Press, USDA, and Oxford Press links are a very useful start. Thank you so much for sharing them.

I would really like to get ahold of that European Union report surveying 700 peer-reviewed articles and decades of research to come to the conclusion that GM Foods are safe, but I still can’t find it anywhere. I’ll keep looking for it.

Debating GM Foods is going to be difficult, because, as with Climate Change, the scientific position is nuanced, not 100% pro, but pro with alot of conditional statements. I think the best strategy is to focus on the benefits of GM Foods (massively reduced pesticide use, increase crop yields, economic benefits for farmers) and stress the positive developments that have come from them over the years.

My point is that you seem more interested in complaining about science politicization by the right than the left, as demonstrated by the relative lack of attention given to issues (like ag biotech) where the real-world consequences of such politicization are quite substantial. As I noted above, you may think liberals are open to GMOs — your OP says as much — but that’s not what we see adopted in the relevant regulatory regimes. That merely reinforces my point that you have a relative blind spot when it comes to science politicization on the left. Of course you’re free to write about what you want. I assume your choice of topics reflects your interests and concerns. But your readers are also free to draw conclusions about your priorities based on what you choose to cover.

JHA

Lot’s of chemicals are estrogen mimics, and roughly half of all chemicals tested, natural or artificial, cause cancer at sufficiently high doses.

So I can make exactly the same argument about peanut butter (aflatoxin, liver cancer), cabbage (indole-3-carbinol, 2-propenyl-glucosinolate, allyl isothiocyanate, chlorogenic acid, allyl cyanide, all mitogenic/carcinogenic), parsley and celery (methoxypsoralin), mushrooms (glutamyl p-hydrazinobenzoate), orange juice (limonene), basil (estragole), nutmeg (safrole), and coffee (loads of toxins – about 800 volatile chemicals of which 21 have been tested for safety and 16 of those found to be carcinogenic – but primarily caffeic acid, which is mutagenic, carcinogenic, clastogenic, and genotoxic to mammalian cells).

( – All the above is perfectly true – but you shouldn’t stop eating vegetables because of this. This is just an illustration of what would happen if you applied the same scare techniques the campaigners use to natural foods. The risks, while far higher than for artificial pesticides and additives, are still negligibly tiny. Probably. – )

Modern life has changed things so much, there’s no telling what might have caused any changes in cancer rates. This sort of campaign science – aimed at claiming compensation based on spurious correlations, speculation, and logical fallacy – is something else Chris ought to be writing about, but rarely does. It causes needless anxiety and inconvenience, and discredits science generally. The endless stream of health scares in the media have become a running joke.

In this case, it is any straw that is being clutched at to stop nuclear. But if you really believed that global warming meant the end of the world, then the problems of nuclear power would be seen as minor in comparison, and a price well worth paying to save the planet. You’d already be building several hundred nuclear power plants by now. That you don’t is a great comfort to me. It suggests that you don’t really believe in it either.

In all of your background reading on nuclear power, have you bothered to read the study of the effects of uranium conducted by Stefanie Raymond-Whish at Northern Arizona University? Her findings were that uranium, in itself, is an estrogen mimic and causes or accelerates the development of breast cancer. Here is one link:
http://sapphire.ucc.nau.edu/gradcol/enews/2008September/Research.html

So, let us consider the entire process of operating nuclear power from the mining of the uranium, through it’s process to the disposal of waste. Given the current safeguards in place, the operation of the reactor is probably the safest part of the chain of work.

Those who proclaim the safety of nuclear, as you do, fail to consider the entire process as a system, and that is about as unscientific as can be… unless, of course, you don’t consider ecology a science.

If there are so many things to write about, then why are you almost always writing about global warming? Not that I’m objecting – I like it – but you do expend a vast amount of effort on a disproportionately narrow front, and I think that was the point.Things have shifted a bit lately towards evolution and economics, with the Democrat election campaign starting up, but for long periods of time, more than half of all the articles have been on global warming and topics closely related.

The argument is not that you ought to write what other people want, but that you ought to be writing about the entire science-politics boundary more evenly.

Of course, you write about what you care about – and you care about global warming far more than you care about GM foods. Or, for that matter, fears about pesticides, mobile phone radiation, vaccines, food additives, nutrition, the number of artificial chemicals in everyday life, road safety, species conservation, spending on “big” science versus small, biotechnology, biomedicine, nanotechnology, police forensics, information technology, open software, the computerisation of the markets, computer privacy/security/censorship, intellectual property and the information pirates, human augmentation, the changes in society brought about by the capabilities of mobile phones and social networks, search engines, surveillance, satellite location, space exploration, deep sea exploration, mineral resources, major engineering projects able to shift entire landscapes around like moving rivers and tunnels and land reclamation, and …, and so on. You get the idea.

It’s not that you never write about any of it, but you don’t write about it nearly as much.

You can, of course, write as you wish. But other people do notice, and comment.