How Will Time Judge You?
This week I was stunned by an article in Mother Jones. Author and Senior Editor Kiera Butler wrote an article about the IARC decision against glyphosate, and how the panel knowingly omitted data from a massive study that did not support the panel's predetermined conclusion that links the herbicide to cancer.
Scientists and regulatory agencies have long recognized that glyphosate is benign relative to other week killers, and extremely safe at levels used. Activists claim that it is a deadly poison and its immense toxicity is covered up by a deep cabal between companies, regulators and every scientist and farmer in the world.
Mother Jones has a history of supporting less-than-scientific positions, including work that they have written about me personally.
The problem is that when you espouse positions based on feelings over fact, time has a way of calling you out on it. Mother Jones, like most left-leaning publications, made the mistake of posting many articles inappropriately critical of good seed technology. These articles don't hold up well through the lens of time, and they remain permanently archived on the internet.
In other words, your assault on science and reason can come back to haunt you, you lose credibility, and people tune out.
I started to think about this a lot when I met Gary Ruskin in person recently. I was kind and soft to the man that posts harmful, defamatory bullshit about me on his website and costs my university millions of dollars.
He said that he had to hustle home to California to spend time with his relatively new child. That's good.
But as that child grows, how will they see their father? Will he be a crusader for truth as he claims to be, or will time unveil his scheme as an agent of corporations sworn to harm public scientists and advance a science-free agenda?
History will show-- these people are reprehensible opponents of reason and evidence, that slowed acceptance of good technology, hurting innocent people maliciously along the way.
What will you look like through the lens of time?
Mother Jones wants to keep it real, for their own survival.
Scientists and regulatory agencies have long recognized that glyphosate is benign relative to other week killers, and extremely safe at levels used. Activists claim that it is a deadly poison and its immense toxicity is covered up by a deep cabal between companies, regulators and every scientist and farmer in the world.
Keeping readership trust in the long term requires discussion of of evidence when it is blatant or insurmountable. The comments section is priceless, including claims that Monsanto paid for this article.
Mother Jones has a history of supporting less-than-scientific positions, including work that they have written about me personally.
The problem is that when you espouse positions based on feelings over fact, time has a way of calling you out on it. Mother Jones, like most left-leaning publications, made the mistake of posting many articles inappropriately critical of good seed technology. These articles don't hold up well through the lens of time, and they remain permanently archived on the internet.
In other words, your assault on science and reason can come back to haunt you, you lose credibility, and people tune out.
I started to think about this a lot when I met Gary Ruskin in person recently. I was kind and soft to the man that posts harmful, defamatory bullshit about me on his website and costs my university millions of dollars.
He said that he had to hustle home to California to spend time with his relatively new child. That's good.
But as that child grows, how will they see their father? Will he be a crusader for truth as he claims to be, or will time unveil his scheme as an agent of corporations sworn to harm public scientists and advance a science-free agenda?
History will show-- these people are reprehensible opponents of reason and evidence, that slowed acceptance of good technology, hurting innocent people maliciously along the way.
What will you look like through the lens of time?
Mother Jones wants to keep it real, for their own survival.
