This week, we learned that J. Craig Venter has at long last created a synthetic organism—a simple life form constructed, for the first time, by man. Let the controversy begin—and if New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter is correct, the denial of science will be riding hard alongside it.
In his recent book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, Specter charts how our resistance to vaccination and genetically modified foods, and our wild embrace of questionable health remedies, are the latest hallmarks of an all-too-trendy form of fuzzy thinking—one that exists just as much on the political left as on the right.
And it’s not just on current science-based issues that denialism occurs. The phenomenon also threatens our ability to handle emerging science policy problems—over the development of personalized medicine, for instance, or of synthetic biology. How can we make good decisions when again and again, much of the public resists inconvenient facts, statistical thinking, and the sensible balancing of risks?
Michael Specter has been a New Yorker staff writer since 1998. Before that, he was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times and the national science reporter for the Washington Post.
At the New Yorker, Specter has covered the global AIDS epidemic, avian flu, malaria, the world’s diminishing freshwater resources, synthetic biology and the debate over our carbon footprint. He has also published many profiles of subjects including Lance Armstrong, ethicist Peter Singer, and Sean (P. Diddy) Combs. In 2002, Specter received the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Science Journalism Award for his article “Rethinking the Brain,” about the scientific basis of how we learn.
The discussion of organic vs pesticide assisted farming usually only covers the effects of pesticide or lack of effects on the consumer, but a lot of people choose organic because of assumed health risks to farm workers who are exposed to agricultural pesticides.
I’m pretty ignorant about the subject from that end and would like to hear more. A quick gander at the abstract on Pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11783860) and The National Center for Farmworkers Health (http://www.ncfh.org/?pid=4&page=6) might indicate reason for some concern from that angle.
One of the major reasons DDT was so rapidly and widely accepted was its enormously greater safety for applicators compared to previous products such as nicotine sulfate, lead arsenate, and Paris Green.
I have a friend I’ve known only in middle age who is a cancer victim. She is a health food obsessive. I always thought it bizarre she attributes her cancer to a few parts per billion of agricultural chemicals and gives never a thought to the pounds of illegal drugs she consumed in youth.
People cannot know enough about most subjects to independently evaluate the evidence. They only know who they trust. I’ve learned this doing Creation debates and tussling with political liberals. Most people I know, know less about science in general and climatology in particular than I do. They all have more definite opinions about political climate controversies than I do. They either do or don’t trust the left. I know there is strong evidence for anthropogenic warming, but the proposed political responses all carry enormously unfavorable cost-benefit ratios, if in fact they can do any significant good at all. Knowing how much the left has at stake in this should make anyone skeptical.
All strains of the extreme left have been disdainful of truth, masters and fanatics for deception and manipulation. Much of the general public is finally waking up to this. The greatest of con men can over reach. The chickens are coming home to roost.
Logic is not taught in public school or higher education. All students get is political indoctrination, self-esteem, and entertainment. A public armed with logic would destroy politics as we know it, the entire advertising industry and all that depends on it, and ruin everything for everyone who “counts.”
The aggressive - abusive - repetitiveness of advertising and the abundance of idiotic email forwards tells me people believe the familiar without examination. I’ve lost friends by persistent dubunking of email forwards. Reminding people that they have sent the same item a year ago really enrages them. Sharing and possession of beliefs in common is a social or relationship phenomenon. People want to believe, not to know.
No the bane of all evidence is ALTERNATIVE EVIDENCE!!
“Denial” is another of those quasi-pschological terms that describes no activity whatever. Sort of like the ridiculous “schizophrenia” and “bipolar” as diagnostic terms.
There is “relative truth” - dependiing entirely on biases - and the much, much larger body of partial evidence termed “associations”.
So what is being denied??
The term “denial” is meaningless and juvenile, and is most notably used by those who are completely intolerant of opposing evidence to their juvenile explanations.
Great interview and great book. Spector is a very intelligent man, but even so, I think he suffers from some blinders of his own. For example, he discounts the use of organic food merely because of its lower yield than conventional agriculture. However, this is a very simplistic view.
When comparing relative merits of conventional vs organic, it is also necessary to take into account energy input, deleterious effects of monoculture crops, harmful effects of pesticides on the farmers who use them, the morality of CAFOs and other conventional ways to produce meat, and potential negative health effects of bovine growth hormone on humans and animals.
It is also a straw man to compare organic food to conventional food without also discussing locally grown, and in-season produce as well.
@asanta: It is completely groundless to say that the organic industry is “plagued” with e coli any more so than conventional produce.
‘Conventional produce’ has had it’s share of problems, but in my area, the organic market, especially spinach, has been the source of more recalls than any other fresh food produce I can think of.
No the bane of all evidence is ALTERNATIVE EVIDENCE!!
“Denial” is another of those quasi-pschological terms that describes no activity whatever. Sort of like the ridiculous “schizophrenia” and “bipolar” as diagnostic terms.
There is “relative truth” - dependiing entirely on biases - and the much, much larger body of partial evidence termed “associations”.
So what is being denied??
The term “denial” is meaningless and juvenile, and is most notably used by those who are completely intolerant of opposing evidence to their juvenile explanations.
I find your post to be hyperbolic and juvenile, with enough straw men to light a large bonfire. Apparently, in your mind, anyone who does not agree with your specific views is an idiot.
the organic market, especially spinach, has been the source of more recalls than any other fresh food produce I can think of.
Maybe you are only remembering the hits and forgetting the misses. Taking a look at the major e coli outbreaks over the last few years, I see beef, beef, beef, taco bell, cookie dough, and wayyyy at the bottom there is a single link to fresh spinach:
This is not to say that there are not occasional problems with the cleanliness and health of organic food, but it seems that it is far less than that of conventional food. And the problems occur (I believe) not due to the organic nature of the food, but rather because of the industrial aspect of growing the food.
Food is food. The USDA has the duty to make sure that, as much as possible, marketed food is safe.
I have nothing against it, but I sometimes wonder if imported foods receive the same scrutiny.
Regardless, “contamination” by SERIOUSLY hazardous components have been hyped to absurdity.
I must have had a cast iron immune system, and a super-efficient liver since I made it to age 21 in AMISH COUNTRY.
Where organic fertilizer meant animal excreta. Insecticides, fungicides and herbicides were in the future.
The AMISH and other Plain farmers had as many as three different markets in the central city at one time.
The irony was that the 3 became just one as two couldn’t make it. Too many people just didn’t think the food was palatable given the way it was grown.
Food animals and their products - eggs, milk, etc - were likewise considered GROSS! ———————————————————
There were possibly some cases of salmonella, but none that made the paper.
There were likely few cases of heavy metal toxicity - just as there is to this day.
Today, however, we have a gaggle of self-important paranoiacs who find DANGER just looking around. Proof is virtually non-existent.
Maybe third world countries have food-borne diseases - among many other diseases having nothing to do with ingestion. ———————————————————
I saw a posting on a dental office the other day stating that people should avoid using perfumes, aftershaves, deodorants, etc, since their personnel ‘suffered’ “multiple-chemical sensitivity”!
No problem.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be treated by odoriferous pseudo-professionals!
