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Comment by frostmatthew | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot more than what acheron linked to support his/her statement that "GMO" opposition is anti-scientific nonsense, the scientific consensus on the matter is equal to that of climate change.

There was a Forbes article[1] last year that linked to a number of studies. If you're looking for a less journalistic take and want to poke around with the data/studies yourself check out GENERA[2] (a database of peer reviewed GMO studies).

FiveThirtyEight did a good piece on the gap between "what the public thinks and what scientists know" and saw the widest margin in the subject of GMO safety[3]. A recent NYT op-ed explains some of the benefits of GMOs and what caused the author to change their stance[4].

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-...

[2] http://genera.biofortified.org/

[3] http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/theres-a-gap-between-what...

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/opinion/sunday/how-i-got-c...

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I will have a look at what you've provided above shortly. However, my opposition to GMOs lie in the fact that GMO crops have led to a widespread INCREASE in herbicide use, particularly glyphosate, which is a wide spectrum herbicide to boot. Monsanto owns glyphosate AND RoundUp Ready seeds, so they profit surreptitiously on both ends.

Source? In my personal experience, usage of roundup-ready seeds decrease herbicide use. It allows the replacement of a cocktail of several selective herbicides with a single broad sprectrum one.

Roundup resistance has led to greater use of herbicides, with troubling implications for biodiversity, sustainability, and human health http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-...

Herbicide-resistant crop technology has led to a 239 million kilogram (527 million pound) increase in herbicide use in the United States between 1996 and 2011 http://www.enveurope.com/content/24/1/24

But a new study released by Food & Water Watch yesterday finds the goal of reduced chemical use has not panned out as planned. http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2013/07/02/gmo-crops...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/genetically-engineered-crops-mo...

Your links clearly state that the increase in herbicide use is due to the fact that weeds are becoming resistant to the herbicides in common use. That herbicide is glyphosate because of the wide use of glyphosate on Roundup-ready crops.

The same thing is happening to other herbicides, just slower, because they weren't used as much. They weren't used as much because they were replaced with glyphosate.

I think "consensus" is a term we should all be wary of no matter what the argument. In order to discover merits of an argument one needs to really dig into the evidence on both sides regardless of so called consensus.

I recall about over 15 years ago how all my peers and many experts in the industry said the "consensus" on building web services was to use SOAP BPEL and develop using waterfall methodologies. At that time Agile development and REST services might have been considered quackery.

> In order to discover merits of an argument one needs to really dig into the evidence on both sides regardless of so called consensus.

One of the links in my comment was to GENERA[1], a large database of peer reviewed GMO studies, feel free to "dig" away.

> 15 years ago how all my peers and many experts in the industry said the "consensus" on building web services was to use SOAP BPEL

First of all that's just generic use of the word consensus[2], not quite the same as the concept of scientific consensus[3]. Scientific consensus can certainly change over time (you wouldn't want science to just assume whatever if previously thought was right, would you?) but that doesn't mean we should dismiss the current collective judgment of scientists because they might change their position X years from now.

[1] http://genera.biofortified.org/

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/consensus

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus

It doesn't mean dismiss, but likewise it also shouldn't be the means to dismiss opposing arguments for which it most often used.

What we think of scientific consensus may not be what it actually is in reality. https://plus.google.com/+ChrisReeveOnlineScientificDiscourse...

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