GMOs: Fear mongering

Human nature is an amazing thing, but sometimes I think you could replace amazing with frustrating.  When humans come across new ideas, new products, new technologies, or new scenarios many of us tend to perceive it as a threat,or at least become skeptical.  I think this how we are programmed and what has kept our civilization alive.  Fear and the fight or flight response still comes naturally to all of us without even having to think about it and that emotion is picked up by any in the area eliciting a response in them as well.  We are no longer running and fighting saber tooth tigers, but we still come across situations where the fear response is strong.  This instinctual reaction comes to all of us at some point in time whether it is on a roller coaster, a situation where we perceive someone threatening, or military deployments.   We still experience fear and need to react.  However our ancestors experienced fear individually or in small communities and it was contained.  In today's world fear can spread more broadly   Fear is now spread through media in the form of TV, social media, radio, etc where thousands of people are exposed to a story.    Humans react off of each other's emotions.  Has someone in your house been grumpy for a day.  Usually everyone is grumpy and in a foul mood because emotion is contagious.   So when media spreads something that causes fear for a few it spreads like wildfire.  We sense fear in others and that innate fight or flight  response kicks in and makes us fearful too.

Let's look at a quick example.  In NC we have had around 8 shark attacks in the summer of 2015.  And it was in the news everywhere. You heard talk about it everywhere and people were scared.   Social media was full of of its usual fun.

The fear spread efficiently and the first response for many was "The is no way I,m going in the water this year."  This was a new scenario and we react with an instinctual fear response.  Once things settle down we start to think more rationally.  Let's think rationally about this one.  We get in our cars everyday.  We are not really fearful of using those multiple times a day, but the probability of dying in car is WAY higher than a shark biting you.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/sharks/attacks/relarisklifetime.html

Ebola is another example.  Remember the fear in the United States when the Ebola epidemic hit Africa.  If you vomited, then people were getting away from you.

The point is that when fear is spread it quickly outpaces rational thought.  There is nothing wrong with that; it is what could keep us alive.  However there will be time to stop and apply rational thought.  Once we can sit down and are willing to process that fear we can quickly find that things are not as bad as they might seem. The sad thing is that some people know how to use that natural human fear response to pursue their own agenda.  A new article by Shiva Ayyaadurai says Formaldehyde may be in GMO crops.

The paper

And it does not mater how bad the science is, the anti-GMO groups can use this type of material to spread fear.  We don't think rationally to fear and so when you see this picture you don't go and say "let me read that paper and make a conclusion for myself."  Instead you say "Oh wow, I'm not feeding that to my kids and I need to tell my neighbor the same thing."

Infographic release by GMO free after the article

It is hard to get ahead of the curve of fear mongering.  People's emotions are a strong tool for Anti-GMO activists.  The paper is full of holes and lots of them.  For one actual plant samples were never even tested.  The paper is based on on computer models, which by the way can output anything you want them to depending on what you put in the beginning of the model.    An awesome scientist, Kevin Folta has publicly tried to reach out to Ayyaadurai and actually do the test with REAL samples with a very well thought out scientific design.  Guess what that answer has been?  SILENCE.

http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2015/07/gmo-formaldehyde-challenge.html

I don't want to get into more details of why this paper is not very good on a scientific level.  For that take the time to read  the Genetic Literacy Projects response to the paper.   The point is that fear from papers like this are hard to counter.  Once the damage is done you can't retract it even when the data is completely irrational and plain out wrong.  Once one shark is seen then everyone is scared to go in the water.   Our human fear instincts are going to kick in on matters like this.  It is who we are as humans and that is not going to change anytime soon.  It is part of what has made our civilization successful.  That does not mean we should not recognize the power of fear and do own our research. My plea is that once you have a moment in a safe place  then stop and use your rational thought to really investigate if the fear response you had was really warranted.