Spotlight on "Seeds of Science": How a mind was changed on GMOs

Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to change someone's mind even when you give facts that should make the decision easy?  Maybe even looking back you realize how many times you have not changed your own mind easily on certain topics even when someone presents a logical and fact driven argument. 

My wife and I have had some great debates over acupuncture.  I present to her all this information and science on why I think acupuncture is a hoax.   She presents all this information on why it is helpful.  I don't believe anything she shows me and she ignores my  arguments while making her next next appointment.  In the end neither one of us changes our minds.   In this example we have both succumbed to confirmation bias.  We both formed a strong belief and bias all of our arguments to finding information to support our views.   This is called confirmation bias.  Once we form a belief it becomes part of our identity and changing who we are are is much easier said than done. 

Confirmation bias is real and one that will take advantage of all of us at some point.  Taken from Wikipedia the definition of confirmation bias is "the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.^[1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs."

Here are some great quotes across history that show confirmation bias is not a new concept:

“What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

— Warren Buffett

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects.”

— Francis Bacon

“Beliefs can survive potent logical or empirical challenges. They can survive and even be bolstered by evidence that most uncommitted observers would agree logically demands some weakening of such beliefs. They can even survive the destruction of their original evidential bases.”

— Lee Ross and Craig Anderson

“One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview—not because it is actually true or because they have evidence to support it. The striking thing is that it would not take much effort to establish validity in most of these cases… but people prefer reassurance to research.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

— Robertson Davies

Confirmation bias is no joke.  I have fallen prey to it many times and it is a bully that prevents us from changing our mind.   I have had countless debates with people who have already made up their mind that GMOs are bad.  In the end I can convince very few of the merits of GMOs with the facts alone.  As a scientist I love the facts, but over the years I have come to realize facts are only part of the equation to convince someone to change their mind.  There has to be some other connection, usually an emotional connection that can enable us to pull off our blinders and look equally and fairly at both sides of an issue.

That is why today I am not going to spout facts, but instead spotlight a book I just picked up called Seeds of Science by Mark Lynas.  I am not going to pull much from the book, but instead encourage everyone to pick it up and give it a read.   It was just released in June of 2018.   The only part I will focus on is some pages from Chapter 2 which is entitled "Seeds of Science:  How I Changed My Mind."

Mark Lynas was a strong anti-GMO advocate and led efforts to go into GM fields and destroy them.   You could almost call him the father of the Anti-GMO movement.  We are not talking about someone who just thinks GMOs are bad, we are talking about someone who was willing to break the law in destructive tirades to get a point across.

As Mark was protesting GMOS, he was also becoming a strong believer in climate change.  He began to dig into the science as well as use its arguments because the science supported his view on the climate.  (Confirmation bias at its finest!!).  As Mark says, "the environmental and scientific communities were closely aligned on the issue."    He started looking at the facts and digging into the data.  It was this emotional connection to the environment and then a realization that science is just more than just one article that started to make Mark think.  

There is an excerpt I love in the book that in my mind defines when Mark came to the realization of what scince really is and why we can trust in it.  

Mark says, " When sifting through contradictory material, I learned to trust my intuition as much as anything, and to understand that single papers advancing unlikely conclusions should not be taken at face value on their own.  I began to see that scientific knowledge is cumulative: it is built up slowly like a house made of bricks.   Sometimes individual bricks need to be relaid or taken out and replaced altogether, but overall the wall generally continues to rise. Only rarely does it get entirely demolished and rebuilt thanks to a paradigm-changing discovery such as plate tectonics or evolution by natural selection.  Accordingly the vast majority of those who claimed, Galileo-style, to have overturned a century of scientific research were mostly cranks."

As Mark started to see the power of science he also started to question his views on GMOs.  There are many more details in the story that make a great read, but finally in 2013 at the Oxford Farming Conference Mark addressed a crowd of farmers with a big statement.

"My lords, ladies and gentlemen.  I wanted to start with some apologies.   For the record, here and upfront, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up GM crops.  I am also sorry that I helped start the anti-GM movement back in the mid-1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonstrating an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.  As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path.  I now regret it completely." 

You can also see the video and read the blog entry from 2013:  http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/

Even after all these years, I am still amazed when I read or hear this.  I am also encouraged.   It is hard enough for any of us to change our minds, and even harder to apologize when you are on such a stage, yet he had the courage to do it.   

There is so much more in this book, but for Mark the seeds that started to change his mind were not from the facts on the safety of GMOs at the start.  They were born from the strong emotions he had for the environment that spilled over into how he thought about GMOs.  When making those arguments for the environment he could use the science because the science conformed to his beliefs.  If he could use science for one, how could he not use it for another topic?  Mark is an example of overcoming confirmation bias.  It took years to see it for what it was, but the story is that it can be done once we realize and understand confirmation bias.

Any technology is just a tool and all tools need to be used responsibly.  The beauty of the world is that we all look at issues through a different lens.  Those lens ensure a checks and balance system so that we do understand an issue from all angles.   It is when we challenge and then concede or challenge and the other side concedes based on sound evidence that we advance as a civilization and do not waste time in gridlock.