109 Nobel Laureates sign a letter slamming Greenpeace.

[Lithos]

112. The anti-science pattern is common in other areas

In the tech industry, it's the fight over Privacy. Another is the Closed-Source vs Open-Source debate.

It's always a "trust us" kind of thing. However, the tendency to hide behind legalities to create an opaqueness designed to make them money is never a good thing. And in this case, the claim is not "anti-science", but "anti-innovation"...

Same pattern exists in Education, Pharma, Medicine and Energy. And I think a lot of people take their experiences in one and relate them to the other fields.

It's only in the past 200 years have most of these fields turned into a very big business. The relationships between the companies servicing the supply chain and their financial investors have gotten very complicated. There have also been many laws which these businesses have lobbied which protect these businesses, their relationships to the detriment of the consumer, and in some cases the producer (think about why the effort for Fair Trade coffee). It's very big money. There is a lot of quid-pro-quo.

However, one must be careful though to keep this from being a false dilemma fallacy. In the case of Agriculture - humans have been modifying their food base, and environment, for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of years. I think it rather foolish to try and make the claim that any changes are bad; that ship has sailed. I do not think it foolish to ask for a bit more skin and transparency from these businesses into the risks they make us take. 200 years ago, a mistake would cause a village in France to have Ergot poisoning. Today a mistake can affect millions of people sometimes for tens of years afterwards; privatized profit but socialized loss.

But to repeat, these businesses can do great good with science and innovation, but they can't hide behind them with a 'trust us'. They have to be called out when they choose quid-pro-quo and business as usual over the concerns of the consumer. The ability of Pharma to deliver good vaccines to the world population is an astounding feat of science and logistics. However, the games they play with Patent Extension which keeps needed drugs out of the hands of people, long after the Pharma industry made their profits is obscene.

The same is also true with the other fields noted above.