The following is an edited excerpt.
Speaking on Radio 4’s PM about Owen Patterson’s GM speech last week, food campaigner Joanna Blythman attacked the SMC for issuing comments to the press from ‘industry-funded pseudoscientists’.
Joanna is not alone in raising the issue of bias and industry funding when scientists enter the fray on GM. Over the years a number of commentators have expressed similar concerns and in another commentary on Patterson’s speech Paul Nightingale from Sussex University said ‘telling the public that industry-funded research finds GMOs are wonderful isn’t going to convince them, because they recognize that they have every incentive to say that’.
Some of those raising questions about industry funding of science do so in good faith and indeed some of the comments we issued to the press show that scientists have their own concerns about the commercial dominance of this field. However, I fear that others deliberately set out to exploit the public’s natural suspicion of industry to discredit the scientists prepared to speak out in this debate.
Read the full post here: Following the money misses the point
