Although denial of anthropogenic global warming and evolution tend to be the domain of the right wing, the left-wing have their own particular brands of science denialism–GMO's. Last year, I deconstructed and debunked a very poorly written article, published in Food and Chemical Toxicology by French researchers Gilles-Eric Séralini and Dr Joël Spiroux de Vendomois, which essentially invented data about a certain strain of GMO corn caused cancer in rats.

If I were the only progressive who thought the data and conclusions in this article were useless, then maybe I should be writing about something else. But I wasn't. Lots of pro-science (and from what I could tell, progressive) writers thought that the article was bogus:



As a sort of counter groundswell started to build against the anti-science nature of the GMO refusers, an article in Slate Magazine stated that the anti-GMO political left are using the same debate methods and tactics that have been adopted by the climate change denialists–they ignore the scientific consensus, cherry-pick data that supports their pre-determined positions, and use popular polls, instead of scientific evidence, to support their beliefs.

The same individuals and groups who are outraged by whatever the climate deniers do politically, seem to ignore those same anti-science principles when it applies to their hatred of GMO products. It's like Mother Jones, the left wing magazine who will jump on any global warming denialist, has switched places with the Wall Street Journal when it comes to GMO foods.

But the concerns about the scientific honesty of their work is further exposed in the article:

Another big red flag: Séralini and his co-authors manipulated some members of the media to prevent outside scrutiny of their study. (The strategy appears to have worked like a charm in Europe.) Some reporters allowed themselves to be stenographers by signing nondisclosure agreements stipulating they not solicit independent expert opinion before the paper was released. That has riled up science journalists such as Carl Zimmer, who wrote on his Discover magazine blog: "This is a rancid, corrupt way to report about science. It speaks badly for the scientists involved, but we journalists have to grant that it speaks badly to our profession, too. ... If someone hands you confidentiality agreements to sign, so that you will have no choice but to produce a one-sided article, WALK AWAY. Otherwise, you are being played."

Could you imagine if a global warming denialist published an article and established the same conditions on a journalist? Every single journalist, except those at Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, would walk away laughing, beating their chests about scientific integrity. Why not in this case? Is it because this "science" supports their values, their point-of-view, and their well-constructed environmental politics?

The scientific criticism of Séralini's article was so widespread and so harsh that the journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology, eventually retracted it in 2013. And as you might surmise, the GMO refusers created all kinds of strawman arguments (and veiled conspiracies) about why the journal retracted it. One GMO refuser group called the decision to withdraw the article “illicit, unscientific, and unethical.” Actually Séralini's work was "illicit, unscientific and unethical," and the journal did the right thing in retracting it.

As I have said dozens of times in dozens of my articles, what makes science so special, and what makes anti-science so repugnant, is that science allows itself to be open to the bright lights of criticism. That's what we all are doing now. We are blasting this study into bits because it is so poorly done. It is what we do to the other denialists, whether they are anti-vaccinationists, global warming denialists, or creationists. We take apart the bad studies that they provide, if they ever do. Just to be clear, we also criticize studies that support our own understanding too. That's how science develops a consensus, through fine-tuning, but also through honesty, not through accepting very bad research.

The American Association for the Advancement of Sciences is an international non-profit organization that has as its stated goals to promote cooperation among scientists, to defend scientific freedom, to encourage scientific responsibility, and to support scientific education and science outreach for the betterment of all humanity. It is the world’s largest and most prestigious general scientific society, and is the publisher of the well-known scientific journal Science. It occasionally makes statements on the scientific consensus about various issues.

With regards to GMO's, the AAAS has stated the clear scientific consensus on genetically modified foods (pdf):

The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe … The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, and every other respected organization that has examined the evidence has come to the same conclusion: consuming foods containing ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming the same foods containing ingredients from crop plants modified by conventional plant improvement techniques.

The important issue is that these "GMO denialists" lack any credible scientific evidence that GMO foods pose any type of short-term or long-term health risk. There is a lack of biological plausibility to correlate consumption of genetically modified foods and any medical condition . And if this study by Seralini is their pivotal study, then they have failed miserably. In addition, there are numerous, and onerous, regulations regarding GMO foods that probably keep us safe just in case there is some unintended consequence of our activities, because science is not absolute, and a mistake could be made. But GMO has incredible benefits to the world, feeding us in a world with limited resources.

But the problem still is that the left wing accepts the anti-GMO point-of-view without the level of critical analysis that they do with the global warming deniers. The amount of data that supports climate change is overwhelming, and those that deny it must truly be blind. There are scientifically based climate change websites that discuss the tiniest parts of the story. Here's one that just details the level of Arctic sea ice (and if it doesn't scare the hell out of you about what's happening to our planet, you are truly a denialist). I can find the same type of detail for evolution.

Sadly, there just isn't the same level of science for the GMO refusers. There's not that depth of science from the GMO refusers that gives us clinical trials, plausible mechanisms, and meta-reviews, all published in peer reviewed journals of high impact.

Slate concludes the article with a discussion about the intellectual failures of the left-wing GMO refusers:

The anti-GM bias also reveals a glaring intellectual inconsistency of the eco-concerned media. When it comes to climate science, for example, Grist and Mother Jones are quick to call out the denialism of pundits and politicians. But when it comes to the science of genetic engineering, writers at these same outlets are quick to seize on pseudoscientific claims, based on the flimsiest of evidence, of cancer-causing, endocrine-disrupting, ecosystem-killing GMOs.

In a recent commentary for Nature, Yale University's Dan Kahan complained about the "polluted science communication environment" that has deeply polarized the climate debate between political camps. He wrote, “people acquire their scientific knowledge by consulting others who share their values and whom they therefore trust and understand.” This means that left-wingers in the media and prominent scholars and food advocates who truly care about the planet are information brokers. So they have a choice to make: On the GMO issue, they can be scrupulous in their analysis of facts and risks, or they can continue to pollute the science communication environment.

Remove "GMO" from Dr. Kahan's commentary, and we could be talking about any pseudoscience, whether it's creationism, vaccine denialism, global warming, or even HIV/AIDS denialism. Orac compares the misuse of science and scare tactics by GMO opponents to the behavior of the anti-vaccine movement, that is, instead of using real science to find a conclusion, they ignore science, ignore evidence, and jump on any pseudoscience, even if it's very poorly done science. to support what they currently believe or what they want to believe about GMO's.

And this goes back to one of my points that aggravates the left-wing members of the political discussion–they have converted the scientific consensus about GMO's into a political debate rather a real scientific one, such as what has happened with climate change. GMO's are safe, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of that statement. The left wing has created a political and social debate about GMO's, an expensive and scientifically ignorant debate, no different that the same same one the Republicans have started with anthropogenic global warming.

Take politics out of science, it will make science so much better.

Full article here.