101–110 of 131 posts
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> On the other hand you have a full blown shill campaign on Reddit and other website, being all like, "there is absolutely nothing to worry about, why do you hate science!" [citation needed]
Pfft. You want a citation, go make a vaguely anti-GMO comment on a major sub. Include keywords. See what happens.
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Totally fair point! I'm only familiar with the Internet era of Monsanto complaints. I'm sure Monsanto is not a great company.
The question I have for you, is why do you always pop up to defend Monsanto, no matter what, every single time? Its so obvious you are a supporter of the company, because every single time there is the word "Monsanto" on the HN front page, I can come to the article and search "tptacek" and see you defending the company, diverting the discussion, using a whole suite of tactics to avoid letting anyone make the conclusi…
[1] Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser
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The question I have for you, is why do you always pop up to defend Monsanto, no matter what, every single time? Its so obvious you are a supporter of the company, because every single time there is the word "Monsanto" on the HN front page, I can come to the article and search "tptacek" and see you defending the company, diverting the discussion, using a whole suite of tactics to avoid letting anyone make the conclusi…
Questioning people's motives is a big no-no on HN. We try to keep the place free of that.
Is this something I should just know by experience by now, or am I overlooking this point from the guidelines?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm seriously asking, not because I want to cause trouble, but because I don't see this guideline being enforced at all except in this particular case with tptacek. Are you defending him?
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Modern breeding involves actively mutating known species with DNA-altering chemical mutagen and ionising radiation. Think fuzzing vs. static code analysis, which one would you do first when it comes to debugging? >Breeding is selection of a pathetically tiny set of modifications, but GM is on a whole other level. The truth is probably closer to the opposite of this: most GM species in the pipeline are rather unimagin…
Your argument is that GM is less powerful than breeding because people have been "unimaginative" with it ? OK if you wanted to create, say, a fluorescent horse, which technique would you use: * GM * breeding with radiation and chemical mutagens You have one month.
On the other hand, one can slowly breed for desirable traits such as speed, endurance or disease resistance in horses, good luck doing that with GM.
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Your argument is that GM is less powerful than breeding because people have been "unimaginative" with it ? OK if you wanted to create, say, a fluorescent horse, which technique would you use: * GM * breeding with radiation and chemical mutagens You have one month.
Neither technique will work in the timeframe you specified because gestation time for horses are almost a year long. On the other hand, one can slowly breed for desirable traits such as speed, endurance or disease resistance in horses, good luck doing that with GM.
We can do that precisely for fluorescence and many other traits with GM today, but good luck trying to breed a fluorescent horse, it could take millions of years if at all.
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Neither technique will work in the timeframe you specified because gestation time for horses are almost a year long. On the other hand, one can slowly breed for desirable traits such as speed, endurance or disease resistance in horses, good luck doing that with GM.
The point wasn't how long it would take for the organism to gestate, it was how long it would take for the trait to be introduced into the organism. We can do that precisely for fluorescence and many other traits with GM today, but good luck trying to breed a fluorescent horse, it could take millions of years if at all.
Besides, GFP fluoresence is the proverbial low hanging fruit as it is robustly expressed in many cell types but has very little practical value. Inserting useful traits via GM is often no short cut because they are rarely determined by a single gene.
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There's a video where a Monsanto lobbyist spouts circular talking-points about how glyphosate was safe to drink, offered either Round Up or glyphosate and refused to drink it. https://youtu.be/QWM_PgnoAtA?t=25s It's irrelevant if glyphosate alone is cancerous or not, because 99.9999% of deployment is via sprays like Round Up. The combined product , in both animal and human models, need thorough mutagenic research. It…
I think you'll find if someone who thinks you are evil offers you a glass of liquid of unknown providence you to would decline it as well.
It is a real shame not to be able to trust "science" anymore. We'll have to come up with a new word for what we used to call science because I don't think corporations and media set on manipulating public opinion and laws will give it back.
In order for science to truly work in advancing our understanding of a given problem all studies both with positive and negative results need to be published. However, that is often not what happens. In academia often only the 'interesting' results end up getting submitted to journals and published. In the private sector the problem is even more pronounced because there is a vested interest in only publishing results with a certain outcome.
I work in R&D and we often do scientific studies that don't get published because they don't advance our companies viewpoint or could harm sales. And of course that makes perfect sense when you are not required to do so. So in the end you have to take that into account when evaluating a study, especially when coming from industry. There could be contradictory results that never saw the light of day.
Now there is a very simple fix to this which would greatly alleviate this problem: Have a requirement for publishing that forces the researcher to submit the scientific hypothesis, planed research methods, and variables to be studied before submitting the final results, no matter what they may be. This also prevents a researcher from cherry picking results after the fact and leaving out variables that cast doubt on the original hypothesis.