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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."
Scientists don't push fear, scientists publish articles in journals, and then argue over methodology and interpretation. Politicians push fear, and then lord their position and power over the people who they nominally serve.
... whose jobs are dependant on a federal grant getting renewed.
A recent GAO report said that $106 BILLION was spent by the US government through 2010 on global warming research. If you figure that was through the end of 2010, that was still 4 years ago, so the number is now much larger.
That number absolutely dwarfs even the imagined amount of money that fossil fuel companies have been accused of spending in campaigns against "climate change". I mean it's easily more than 2 orders of magnitude larger.
Even scientists are human, and they are smart enough to know which side of their bread the butter is on.
This is why I can't support the GMO labeling laws I keep seeing. So many just want to label something as GMO which is just based on fear and does not lead to any understanding.
So you want to prevent people from getting any information from the packaging about GMOs to prevent misunderstanding?
For ALL kinds of food (organic, gmo, etc) I want to know exactly what is in the food. I want to know the DNA sequence so I can search it or write an app to test it against things i don't want.
Perfect is the enemy of good. I'd like those things, too, but in the mean time I will still accept and even campaign for things which I can reasonably get. You, sir, are part of the problem.
I want all food help to the same high standard. Not this fear based approach that thinks that GMO is different.
GMO is different, it's a fundamentally different approach to breeding plants which goes way beyond breeding, and it permits outcomes which were not feasible or even possible before. That is cause for alarm. It's not reason not to experiment, of course. Science is how we progress as a species. I object to using the wide world for these experiments, not to doing the science.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"