If you follow the public debate on genetically modified foods, you know it’s become unhinged from reality. This is because green groups and influential voices in the food movement have allowed the fringe to hijack the conversation. Now that those furies have been let loose, it’s going to be that much harder to have a civil dialogue about GMOs.
Kevin Folta, one scientist who often engages with biotech opponents, is finding this out. Now, owing to the ideological and emotional nature of the debate, I’m not surprised at its increasingly shrill tenor or the deepening fault lines that separate the pro and anti-GMO sides. The charged dynamics have come to resemble those of the climate debate.
But I am disappointed that some intelligent people seem unwilling to recognize this and even obfuscate matters more with inaccurate characterizations of the GMO debate. For example, in a recent piece for the Guardian, Alice Bell wrote (my emphasis):
It’s also a lot easier for the GM lobby to play a game of “you are wrong on science” rather than acknowledging that the bulk of the critique against them is economic and political.
This really irks me because it’s patently false.
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