General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Rather than be naive enough to imagine this GMO article would change many minds... [View all]Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)But when I usually think of 'debunking', I assume the person will be trying to show that the claim is wrong, and, given the context of that article, that it is entirely wrong. In several instances, the author actually said things that backstopped the original claim listed, which I certainly don't feel can be considered 'debunking'.
I think the trap people fall into is assuming there are 'two sides' to the 'GMO fight', and that you either agree with side A or side B, and either accept all claims from one side or reject them all. And if you're rejecting them, there's a strong tendency to cast the claims in terms of absolutes, or in wordings that allow you to claim that one problem invalidates the whole, such as in the 'debunking of the claim' that GMOs harm beneficial insects, where the author said 'see, here's a study that said in this one case, the GMO didn't harm the insect!' (and then turned around and showed exactly how specific GMO-linked pesticides were harming others.)
But as you pointed out in this comment, there's plenty of room for nuance in the debate. And GMO does not equal GMO does not equal GMO. So I might not be perturbed at a GMO plant that's been engineered to have a sturdier stalk, or is better able to withstand drought, for instance, while still being appalled at GM crops that encourage farmers to spray so indiscriminately with pesticides that they kill off absolutely everything in the spray zone that isn't their pesticide-resistant crop. And I'll pay close attention to recent studies that show micro-RNA from GMO plants showing up in the critters that ingest those plants to see if we're just starting to get a glimpse that some GMO's have unintended consequences that none of the hundreds of prior 'safe' studies looked at.