The Gap Between What The Public Thinks And What Scientists Know

First time accepted submitter burtosis writes Despite similar views about the overall place of science in America, the general public and scientists often see science-related issues through a different lens, according to a new pair of surveys by the Pew Research Center in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). From FiveThirtyEight: "The surveys found broad support for government to spend money on science, but that doesn't mean the public supports the conclusions that scientists draw. The biggest gap between scientists and the public came on issues that may elicit fear: the safety of genetically modified (or GMO) foods (37 percent of the public said GMOs were safe, compared to 88 percent of scientists) and the use of pesticides in agriculture (28 percent of the public said foods grown with pesticides were safe to eat, versus 68 percent of scientists). There was also disagreement over the cause of climate change (50 percent of the public said it is mostly due to human activity, compared to 87 percent of scientists). Here’s a full list, via Pew Research Center, of the scientific issues the survey asked about."

Comments

Re: whose payroll is the scientist on? It matters

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read a lot of journal articles, and granted, they arne't Science or Nature since I don't have expertese in those fields, but more like IEEE transactions. In those journals, I'm always shocked as to the piss poor quality of the a lot of the articles. And honestly, some of the most interesting articles I've read weren't in top tier journals. They went against the mainstream and IEEE wouldn't touch them. If you think groupthink isn't a thing in science, you're massively naive.

Re:More ambiguous cruft

[Karmashock]

The only issue there is that if pollen blows into my field, I don't think it is reasonable that I have to pay you a licensing fee.

Take for example a bull that breaks through a fence and breeds with some of my cattle. Do I have to pay a breeding fee for you bull's "service" to my herd? No.

And the thing is that Monsanto has done that in the past. What is more, they'll have funny genes that will not only not fertilize my crops but will literally make them sterile. There are terminator genes that won't breed true. And so that bull that hopped the fence not only bred with my cattle but effectively implanted defective genetic material that will miscarry.

In regards to corn specifically, the GMO corn should probably not produce pollen. Or if it does, that pollen has to not screw up non-GMO corn and has to not incur any fee to Monsanto etc.

If a farmer is just trying to grow his crops and wants nothing to do with the whole thing, these GMO crops often make that very difficult. If the GMO crops don't spread their DNA to non-GMO crops then they're fine. I really don't have a problem with GMO in theory. The issue is that in practice it tends to have a lot of problems that are not okay.