Bad science has been around for a long time and ultimately undoes itself. Bruce Chassy and Henry I. Miller have an article in Forbes.com that recounts how Irving Langmuir gave a speech in 1953 debunking he ESP results of J.B. Rhine at Duke University. Rhine claimed results of ESP that couldn’t be explained by science. Langmuir uncovered the fault: Rhine was omitting the results he believed were guesses given for the purpose of humiliating him.
Chassy and Miller go on to describe experiments by Gilles-Eric Seralini in France on genetrically modified plants, specifically genes from a bacterium (Bacillus thurigiensis or "Bt") which are inserted into plant genes, particularly corn, soybean ad cotton, to inhance disease resistance.
There are four central flaws in Seralini’s experiment:
The authors point out that consumers have two dangers – an "information cascade" of bad ideas repeated and parroted and thus accepted as true when no persuasive evidence contradicts the information, and "rational ignorance,"
"which comes into play when the cost of sufficiently informing oneself about an issue to make an informed decision on it outweighs any potential benefit one could reasonably expect from that decision.
"For example, citizens occupied with the concerns of daily living—families, jobs, health—may not consider it to be cost-effective to study the potential risks and benefits of nuclear power plants or of plasticizers in children’s toys. This is unfortunate because free speech and democratic processes can only serve society when citizens are well enough informed to be able to reject pseudoscientific claims like Séralini’s and those of other propagandists and abusers of science."
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Comments by the Blog Author
I can’t resist pointing out that the 1953 example of bad science, dealing with Rhine and ESP at Duke University, revolved around Rhine throwing out test data from those whom Rhine thought were out to get him. In other words, in his view, the data was only as good as the motivation of those being tested. This flaw seems to me entirely consistent with the fraudulent analytical philosophy of "deconstructionism" which has been thoroughly criticized elsewhere (and summarized on the companion Quiddity blog).
Secondly, what Chassy and Miller say about "rational ignorance" seems to be vitally important. If you don’t know science and pay critical attention to it in the 21st century, you are going to be conned.
Chassy and Miller go on to describe experiments by Gilles-Eric Seralini in France on genetrically modified plants, specifically genes from a bacterium (Bacillus thurigiensis or "Bt") which are inserted into plant genes, particularly corn, soybean ad cotton, to inhance disease resistance.
There are four central flaws in Seralini’s experiment:
- The test was done in a petri dish on animal tissue, and the chemical was applied to naked cells, not a good enough environment to simulate the effects on an intact organism in the real world.
- Almost every chemical, including a concentration of table salt, will be toxic to defenseless cells in petri dishes. Bt proteins cannot penetrate animal skin nor the gastrointestinal tract of animals to get to the type of cells in the petri dish.
- Seralini used doses of Roundup (the herbicide glyphosate) to provide a comparison. But the soybeans and corn actually used for food products contain a tiny amount of Roundup, orders of magnitude smaller than the amount used by Seralini in his experiment.
- Actual animal feeding experiments show that Bt proteins "do not harm animals at doses a million times higher 6than humans would encounter in their diets," note Chassy and Miller.
The authors point out that consumers have two dangers – an "information cascade" of bad ideas repeated and parroted and thus accepted as true when no persuasive evidence contradicts the information, and "rational ignorance,"
"For example, citizens occupied with the concerns of daily living—families, jobs, health—may not consider it to be cost-effective to study the potential risks and benefits of nuclear power plants or of plasticizers in children’s toys. This is unfortunate because free speech and democratic processes can only serve society when citizens are well enough informed to be able to reject pseudoscientific claims like Séralini’s and those of other propagandists and abusers of science."
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Comments by the Blog Author
I can’t resist pointing out that the 1953 example of bad science, dealing with Rhine and ESP at Duke University, revolved around Rhine throwing out test data from those whom Rhine thought were out to get him. In other words, in his view, the data was only as good as the motivation of those being tested. This flaw seems to me entirely consistent with the fraudulent analytical philosophy of "deconstructionism" which has been thoroughly criticized elsewhere (and summarized on the companion Quiddity blog).
Secondly, what Chassy and Miller say about "rational ignorance" seems to be vitally important. If you don’t know science and pay critical attention to it in the 21st century, you are going to be conned.
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