Slate: Anti-GMO activists say the darnedest things

When activist organizations issue over-the-top press releases or make non-scientific claims, I just shake my head, but unless I’m writing at length on a topic I don’t set out to debunk their claims. Activists gonna activate — and often that involves hyperbole, or outright distortion. Also, it’s risky for a journalist to spend time fact-checking activists, because it looks like you are shooting at the ambulance. A journalist is supposed to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as Finley Peter Dunne put it.

As a result, the errors of NGOs go uncorrected, and the misstatements of activists unchecked. Until someone like Will Saletan comes and lays it out for everyone to see. Saletan has a barn-burner of a piece in Slate detailing how anti-GMO groups have flip-flopped their claims as the evidence changes.

For instance: anti-GMO groups first dismissed golden rice (engineered to deliver beta carotene and stop illness caused by vitamin A deficiencies) for having too little beta carotene. Then, when scientists fixed that problem, they warned that there was too much.

No doubt there’s plenty more to say. If Saletan turns this into a book, he should investigate those issues in full. I hope that he might also spend the time to detail the ways in which the pro-GMO lobby has been caught making ridiculous claims — I found one clear example of that.

But I think the most valuable part of Saletan’s jeremiad is to clearly lay out the contradictory claims activists have made over the years. This piece is a chastening reminder that activists aren’t always driven to expose the facts, wherever those facts might lead. For some activists, the cause can trump the evidence.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Slate: Anti-GMO activists say the darnedest things

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