Anna Medaris Miller, writing for U. S. News and World report, gives what I hope was unintended free advertising to a dismal new book on anti-GMO quackery by Steven M. Druker (“Altered Genes, Twisted Truth”-scared yet?) and endorsed by Jane Goodall, a once great scientist currently destroying her legacy with woo.
It is unclear if her article is meant to be journalism or activism. It has subheadings such as “Scientific conflict” and “What’s a consumer to do?”, which flouts the incorrect notion that scientists are in disagreement about GMO safety and dispenses advice on how to avoid GMO products, respectively.
In addition to citing Druker, whose obvious motivation here is promoting his new book, Miller also cites FDA scientists Edwin Mathews and Gerald Guest, whose statements appear to cast serious doubts on the safety of GMOs. From reading Miller’s article, I got the impression she interviewed Mathews and Guest, but that is not true. She links to Druker’s activist webpage which contains references to FDA memos from 1991 and 1992 written by Mathews and Guest. She’s just letting Druker write the article for her and create a false impression of independent consensus.
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The real question is how can Miller cite these sources so uncritically and balance Druker’s propaganda push against a few quotations from a single credible source, Prof. Nina Fedoroff? It is unclear to me if Miller has just been innocently mislead on this issue (and too lazy to actually read what she was citing), or if she is publishing anti-scientific nonsense and dressing it up as balanced journalism intentionally.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: A U.S. News and World Report article glorifies Goodall’s embrace of anti-GMO nonsense
