Be careful what you write, especially if you uncover evidence of science distortion that upsets activists.
Several weeks after Election Day, as the final ballot count wound down, it was reported that Hillary Clinton’s lead in the popular vote had surpassed 2 million. On November 27, President-elect Donald Trump declared on Twitter: “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Neither Trump nor his advisers offered any evidence to support his claim; reporters traced its origins to a website known for its promotion of feverish conspiracy theories.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said many patently false things that were described as such by journalists. (An arbitrary sampler: “Obama founded ISIS”; “Of course there is large-scale voter fraud happening on and before election day.”) It didn’t erode his standing in the polls, much less the enthusiasm of his base. He often repeated falsehoods after they were proven to be demonstrably false. Normally, there would be consequences for a major presidential candidate who behaved this way.
But as Politico’s Susan Glasser recently noted in an essay for the Brookings Institution: “Even fact-checking perhaps the most untruthful candidate of our lifetime didn’t work; the more news outlets did it, the less facts resonated.”
To my perplexed colleagues in the political journalism community: Welcome to the world of science journalism, where with respect to some topics, the more you report facts, the less they seem to matter. Anyone who’s been on the front lines of the climate wars, feel free to nod along. The same goes for you scientists and science communicators who have gotten entangled in the genetically modified organism (GMO) thicket or who have chased anti-vaccine activists down a rabbit hole.
Donald Trump’s improbable march to the White House shocked many, but the tactics that made it possible undoubtedly looked familiar to those of us who have navigated the topsy-turvy landscape of contested science. For Trump’s success was predicated on techniques that are used by advocates across the ideological spectrum to dispute or at least muddy established truths in science. I’ve reported on such cases for Issues in Science & Technology and other publications, which I’ll discuss momentarily.
First, it’s important to understand that Trump’s winning strategy centered on demonizing his opponent and delegitimizing his critics, such as those pesky, fact-checking journalists. This required an overarching narrative—of a corrupt, entrenched political establishment, which Hillary Clinton embodies. That narrative already had an existing foundation (from the 1990s) for Trump’s team to build on, using new informational architecture from allies such as Steve Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart Media, who produced anti-Clinton books and documentaries. Bannon later became Trump’s campaign manager and has since been named the president-elect’s chief strategist and senior counselor.
Outside events (WikiLeaks disclosures, FBI announcements) had a “truthy” feel that bolstered the corrupt theme of the narrative frame. (Remember those “lock her up” chants at the Trump rallies?) The comedian Stephen Colbert famously coined the term “truthiness” in 2006, as “something that seems like truth—the truth we want to exist.” Since then, the rise of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, has supplied us with a steady diet of news and information from sources that tend to reflect our own biases.
With the ascension of Trump in 2016, have we graduated from truthiness to what some political observers are now calling the post-truth era? Post-truth is defined by Oxford Dictionary as a state in which “objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion.” But this doesn’t do justice to the bending of reality by Trump en route to the White House. You can’t do that simply with appeals to emotion; you need, as his triumph suggests, a made-for-media narrative, with villains, accomplices, and heroes.
You need to do what has already been proven to work in warping public perceptions and discussion of certain fields of science.
Villainous vaccines
Several years ago, I received a call at home from a famous environmentalist. After introducing himself, Robert Kennedy Jr. cut right to the chase: “I’m trying to figure out if you’re a shill for Big Pharma.”
Kennedy has carved out an admirable, decades-long career as an environmental lawyer and ecological advocate. Although we had never previously met or spoken, he knew I worked as an editor at Audubon magazine in the 2000s. That he wondered if I turned into an industry stooge astounded me, but I knew what prompted him to make that leap.
Kennedy had recently given a fiery keynote speech at a conference organized by two well-known anti-vaccine groups. Like the attendees, Kennedy erroneously believed that early childhood vaccines were responsible for the increased number of children diagnosed with autism (which he has often characterized as a “neurological holocaust”) and that evidence for this had been concealed by the US government, in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry. Even prominent members of the scientific community were complicit, he asserted in his talk. He referred to specific individuals—such as a pediatric researcher who was a vocal vaccine advocate—as the equivalent of Nazi concentration camp guards and said: “They should be in jail, and the key should be thrown away.”
In my 2013 post on the Discover magazine site, I criticized these scurrilous comments and noted that Kennedy had been down this road before. In the mid-2000s, he caused a huge stir when he first made the argument for a nefarious cover-up of vaccine harm by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a controversial, widely publicized Rolling Stone magazine article. The sweeping allegation was thoroughly discredited after being scrutinized by leading science journalists. But Kennedy’s belief hardened over the years, and his rhetoric became inflammatory. I wrote at Discover: “Because of his celebrity status and standing in liberal and environmental circles, it is arguable that Kennedy has done as much as anyone to spread unwarranted fear and crazy conspiracy theories about vaccines.”
This prompted his angry phone call to me and his suspicion that I was on Big Pharma’s payroll. After disabusing him of this notion, Kennedy spent the next hour telling me about the “explosive” book he was soon to publish that would show a connection between vaccines and neurodevelopment disorders. He also mentioned that he had upcoming meetings with congressional leaders and top federal agency officials to press his case.
These curious developments, a by-product of his zealotry, convinced me to tell the story of Kennedy’s fixation. My profile of him appeared in the Washington Post magazine in 2014. It illustrated that he was at odds with established science, that his meetings in Washington amounted to nothing, that he had alienated lifelong allies in the public health sphere, and perhaps most astoundingly, that he wouldn’t quit his crusade.
The story elicited sharply divergent responses. Those who reacted strongest fell into two very different camps. One side shook its collective head in disgust: They saw Kennedy as a good guy gone bonkers, someone who had “taken a disreputable plunge into the world of anti-science with his new and inexplicable crusade,” as Time’s Jeffrey Kluger wrote. The other side, particularly those who expressed their distrust of government institutions and the medical establishment, lauded Kennedy as a brave “hero.”
Same story, two opposite take-aways. How could that be?
Ideally, journalists and scholars are fearless when it comes to examining assumptions and embedded narratives that influence public policy and scientific debate.
When I researched the sources that fed Kennedy’s obsession, I discovered an alternate universe of “facts” and “science” that had been constructed over the past 10-15 years: a cottage industry of books, documentaries, obscure journal papers, and websites that reinforced Kennedy’s belief in a vaccine-induced “neurological holocaust” that the CDC is covering up. Kennedy was upset after my piece came out because it didn’t delve into the “science” that he shared with me. (Conversely, there were some in the science community who felt I was too easy on him.)
During the time I reported this story, I met with many intelligent people who appear to sincerely believe that the federal government is hiding the truth about vaccines and autism. (It’s not.) I doubt they would have become so certain without an overarching good guys/bad guys narrative: Big Pharma is the villain; CDC is the accomplice; Kennedy is the brave truth-teller.
In this world, Andrew Wakefield, the British doctor and author of a fraudulent study that set off a wave of panic about the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine in 1998, is a rock star. He is lionized by people who, according to surveys, make up one-third of American parents who (mistakenly) believe there is a link between autism and vaccines. Never mind that Wakefield’s medical license was revoked and that he’s been thoroughly discredited by mainstream science. That’s more proof of the conspiracy!
Just as Trump’s most ardent supporters live in a media bubble with its own set of truths, so too do passionate fans of Kennedy and Wakefield. Both of these bubbles foster disdain for establishment figures and institutions. Objective facts cannot penetrate these enclosed worlds. As Brian Stelter, CNN’s senior media correspondent, recently said: “A big part of the country has opted out of journalism and opted in to an alternate reality.”
It bears mentioning that Wakefield and fellow anti-vaccine activists met privately with Trump for about an hour several months before Election Day. Trump has previously stated his belief in a connection between vaccines and autism. According to Science magazine, which reported the meeting, Wakefield gave Trump a copy of a recent documentary film he directed. It’s called Vaxxed: From Cover-up to Catastrophe.
Monsanto the maleficent
During my career as a journalist, I have been fascinated by the staying power of certain false narratives. In 2014, I explored for this publication the origins and sustained nurturing of one such narrative about the hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers who have been driven to suicide by Monsanto and GMOs.
It’s not true, which was easy enough to ascertain after some research, but what shocked me was how the story became embedded in the media and unquestionably accepted by many smart people as true. I wanted to unravel that.
Just to be clear: The plight of small-scale farmers in India is real; many live on the barest of margins, without access to irrigation, at the mercy of an increasingly unstable climate, and do not have access to institutional credit and crop insurance. Because of a complex mix of sociopolitical reasons, too many of these farmers end up with crushing debts that lead them to suicide. That is a tragic and real occurrence.
And yes, in the early 2000s, India’s government permitted Monsanto to introduce GMO cotton seeds into the country, which many farmers eagerly embraced. But the “agrarian crisis” in India, as it’s been called, predated the introduction of GMO cotton. And the precarious conditions for small farmers did not change much in the 2000s; what changed was the greater attention agrarian-related suicides (which, by the way, occur at a lower rate than nonfarmer Indians) suddenly received.
Although India has deeply rooted, long-standing social and gender inequity issues that derive from its caste society, and although systemic violence and sexual attacks against women are also a long-standing societal problem in India, global activists latched onto Indian farmer suicides as a cause in the mid-2000s. This drew media coverage and interest from university think tanks.
It was around this time that Monsanto and its GMO cotton seeds were pegged as the main culprits for Indian farmer suicides. As I reported in my story for Issues in Science & Technology, no one has done more to cement and perpetuate this narrative than Vandana Shiva, the famous globe-trotting environmentalist. She and her organization published reports calling Monsanto’s product “seeds of suicide.” Shiva amplified the Monsanto-Indian farmer suicide connection in op-eds, media interviews, and public talks. Her exalted standing in the green world and among influential thought leaders helped legitimize the narrative.
But for it to really take hold, there had to be an existing, well-established frame.
That would be the made-for media villain: Monsanto, or as its detractors like to refer to the biotechnology company, Monsatan. That meme, in which Monsanto became tagged on the Internet as “the most evil” company in the world, because it was hell-bent on taking over the world’s food supply and jamming “frankenfoods” down our throats, was already firmly established when Shiva decided to build on it with the Indian farmer suicide story.
I’ve got a shelf of books that vilify Monsanto for its corruption of agriculture. I’ve seen documentaries on this. Everybody hates Monsanto, right?
Never mind that this image is cartoonish. What matters is that it sounds truthy. So yeah, the demonization of the company had been happening well before Shiva made it culpable for 300,000 Indian farmer suicides. Many were already primed to believe it. Of course it was true! Paul Ehrlich mentioned it, and Bill Moyers nodded along gravely when Shiva told him about it.
Then there was that affecting 2012 documentary called Bitter Seeds, which Shiva helped engineer and Michael Pollan praised. It made the rounds at film festivals. You watch that—or the various YouTube clips featuring tearful, wailing Indian families that lost a relative to suicide because of GMOs—and tell me that Monsanto isn’t evil.
It’s all about the narrative and how forcefully you build it: “Corrupt Hillary” is a “criminal”; a pediatric researcher who pushes back on anti-vaccine scare-mongering is the equivalent of a Nazi concentration camp guard; the scientists at Monsanto have created murderous “seeds of suicide.”
These story lines are real for the people who believe them because they have been reinforced repetitively with new information—books, articles, films, talks, radio segments—from trusted, like-minded sources.
Ideally, journalists and scholars are fearless when it comes to examining assumptions and embedded narratives that influence public policy and scientific debate. But in the real world, where group identity matters and reputations have to be guarded against political attacks, some have calculated that certain narratives are best left alone.
Alan Levinovitz, a professor of religious studies at James Madison University, was someone who never questioned the “Monsanto is evil” narrative until he was accused of being a shill for the company after some of his writing had been deemed by anti-GMO critics as too positive about biotechnology. In a 2015 essay, he writes, tongue firmly in cheek:
Like most people, I knew how Monsanto really was, despite not having thought too hard about it…I knew Monsanto sues farmers into oblivion, caused a rash of suicides in India, suppresses negative media coverage, and pays politicians and scientists to lie on its behalf.
But there was one story I didn’t believe, because I knew it wasn’t true: Monsanto hadn’t paid me. So I did what any academic or journalist would do, and started learning more about the company that supposedly had me on its payroll.
Levinovitz talked to scientists at Monsanto and soon a “complicated picture” emerged of a large multinational “that employed a wide variety of people, some of whom cared mainly about making money, and others who cared mainly about doing good science.”
He liked the idea of humanizing a reviled company—and perhaps a field of science—that had been thoroughly demonized. “But then I realized I would never write that story,” Levinovitz recalls in his essay. “It wasn’t worth it. Why risk associating myself, even in passing, with Satan? Other journalists have told me they feel the same way.” He then mentions Nathanael Johnson, who writes about food and agriculture for Grist, who agreed and said to him: “I’m not proud of the chilling effect it has on me.”
No journalist likes the viper pit that inevitably awaits him or her when wading into contested sciences. Based on what I’ve experienced in the past couple of years, I now wonder if I should have had the good sense to avoid certain stories myself.
The anti-GMO gang
In 2012, I wrote a piece for Slate that begins this way: “I used to think that nothing rivaled the misinformation spewed by climate change skeptics and spinmeisters. Then I started paying attention to how anti-GMO campaigners have distorted the science on genetically modified foods. You might be surprised at how successful they’ve been and who has helped them pull it off.”
At the time, agricultural biotechnology was barely on my radar. I spent much of the 2000s cocooned as a senior editor of a leading environmental publication, editing and writing stories about wildlife, conservation biology, climate change, and the sins of the fossil fuel industry. I’m proud of my work at Audubon magazine during this period of my career. I’m not someone who woke up one day and questioned his career choices or identity as an environmental journalist. I didn’t have an ideological or political conversion that led me to conclude, as the headline of my Slate piece put it, “GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left.”
That said, after I became a freelancer in 2009, I sought to carve out a niche for myself, exploring the nuances of environmental and climate issues that were underreported or, in some cases, virtually ignored.
One topic that struck me as inadequately covered by my peers was the GMO debate, which, after flaring up in the 1990s and early 2000s, had simmered for the remainder of the decade. Then, after the food movement emerged in the late 2000s, activists began a campaign to label genetically modified foods. This put the science of agricultural biotechnology back in the public eye. I took notice.
I was fortunate in that I came to the issue with few preconceptions or strong feelings. I hadn’t previously paid much attention to the GMO debate. So I first set out to understand the science of agricultural biotechnology.
It was a complicated, industry-driven science, I quickly learned, which no doubt predisposed many to be suspicious of it. (This is understandable, given the long, well-documented history of disinformation and character assassination perpetrated by the chemical, lead, tobacco, and fossil fuel industries, to cite the most infamous examples.)
But I also discovered that the fears of “frankenfoods” that animated early opposition to GMOs never materialized. Prestigious science institutions had by the late 2000s looked closely at the accumulated body of independent research and found crop biotechnology to be safe. There were still thorny questions on some of the environmental trade-offs with respect to particular crops—whether GMOs reduced or exacerbated pesticide use, for example. But overall, there was a scientific consensus that the science was being put to productive use by farmers without harm to society or wildlife.
To my surprise, the same environmental groups and public interest watchdogs that accepted the scientific consensus on global warming disagreed. They rejected the scientific consensus on GMOs. What shocked me further was how they even used the same “merchants of doubt” tactics that the fossil fuel, tobacco, and chemical industries perfected to muddy public debate. For example, there is a small network of “no consensus” scientists and self-proclaimed experts in the anti-GMO sphere that mirrors the one created by climate denialists.
(In recent years, they have produced dubious scientific papers and hefty books with titles such as The GMO Deception and Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public. The most enduring anti-GMO, anti-vaccine, and climate denialist narratives are powered by a similar conspiracy theme.)
If you want to learn more about how this alternative universe was manufactured, be sure to read Will Saletan’s 2015 deep dive for Slate, which concluded: “The war against genetically modified organisms is full of fearmongering, errors, and fraud.”
This is what my 2012 Slate piece drew attention to when I wrote “that the emotionally charged, politicized discourse on GMOs is mired in the kind of fever swamps that have polluted climate science beyond recognition.”
The responsible parties, I pointed out, were environmental groups, prominent food columnists, and influential progressive writers. At my blog for Discover magazine (discontinued in 2015), I picked up on this theme. I highlighted continuing instances of misrepresentation of the science by green groups and prominent individuals who I thought should have known better. This has not been well received in parts of the progressive sphere (which, I should declare, is my natural habitat).
What do I mean by that? Ask Julia Belluz, a science reporter for Vox who has written hard-hitting pieces on Dr. Oz, alternative medicine, and diet fads; she discusses the blowback she has received in a recent piece entitled, “Why reporting on health and science is a good way to lose friends and alienate people.”
This has certainly been my experience while reporting on GMOs. It’s even worse when the only friends you make after reporting critically on an eco-saint such as Vandana Shiva are the kind of people who work in labs at Monsanto’s headquarters.
My point being: If the journalism you do is perceived to be aiding the most evil company in the world, trust me, you run the risk of losing more than friends. More on that in a minute.
In the meantime, put yourself in the shoes of food activists and greens who oppose GMOs and who truly believe they are on the side of angels. They wake up every day to fight evil. There are no shades of gray in this black-and-white world, which you should view through their lens:
If industry executives and industry-allied scientists—the faces of evil!—are approvingly sharing on social media all my stories and blog posts about how exalted progressive voices are distorting the GMO debate, that probably indicates I’m a friend of Monsanto, right?
If the Columbia Journalism Review publishes a story in 2013 about how I’ve shined a light on slipshod and slanted media coverage of GMOs, I must be carrying water for the biotech industry, right?
In 2015, if I report for a prominent science publication about public-sector scientists receiving Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from an anti-GMO group—before that group wants the requests to be made public—then I must be industry’s handmaiden, right? If I then follow up with another exclusive about the contents of those FOIA requests—before the anti-GMO group that requested them wants the information to be made public—then I definitely must be working for industry, right?
No, my reporting is not influenced or bought by industry. I learned about the Indian farmer-GMO suicide myth on my own. I never even talked to Monsanto when I was reporting about it for this magazine. When I first wrote about the widespread distortions of crop biotech science for Slate in 2012, I had barely begun to talk to scientists in the field. I could glean the upside-down world that anti-GMO activists created just by comparing it to the world of actual science and respected literature reviews.
Since then, I’ve come to know many public-sector biotech scientists. They trust me to report on them in a fair, unbiased manner. After a number of these scientists were served with FOIA requests from an anti-GMO group in 2015, they let me know about it. I wrote a straightforward story about this news for Science early that February. In private, sideline conversations, I also told the scientists that, on journalistic principle, I was not opposed to the FOIA requests, even though I could understand why they felt aggrieved by them.
Later that year, scientists alerted me to the release of thousands of e-mails to the anti-GMO group that stemmed from its FOIA request of one researcher. I then reported on the contents of these e-mails for Nature, which blindsided the anti-GMO group, as it had already been working with other journalists it felt would reflect their interests and philosophy in articles to come.
What happened next blindsided me.
Character assassination
It started one day in September with the anti-GMO group posting e-mails it received from a FOIA request that mentioned my name and other journalists, such as Tamar Haspel, a food writer for the Washington Post, and Amy Harmon, the two-time Pulitzer-winning reporter for the New York Times, who had recently published several highly acclaimed feature stories on GMO controversies (that upset biotech opponents). The excerpts, followed by commentaries from the group, were called, “A Short Report on Journalists Mentioned in our FOIA Requests.”
The e-mail excerpts don’t include anything we said or did. (If a reporter has a specific beat or writes frequently on contentious topics, you can bet that reporter’s name will surface in e-mails of the people with great interest in those topics.) But the few times our names come up in chitchat among university scientists apparently triggered the anti-GMO group’s suspicion. For example, one of the highlighted e-mails where my name is mentioned comes from an academic scientist and outspoken GMO advocate. His message, which relayed concerns about a rumored hacking of websites, was sent to various science communicators and biotech industry representatives. I was on a long list of cc’d people. The anti-GMO group’s conclusion: “The e-mail implies that Kloor works closely with the agrichemical industry’s prominent advocates.”
Several days later, the liberal-leaning website Alternet published the anti-GMO group’s “short report” verbatim, but tacked on a catchier headline: “3 Journalists Who Are Disturbingly Cozy with the Agrichemical Industry.” Remember, there’s not even any e-mails from us! It’s inference piled on inference, a presumed guilt-by-association based on who mentioned our names.
Shortly after that came out, I received an e-mail from Robert Kennedy Jr., who included me on his response to an anti-vaccine activist who had just informed him that I had been outed as a “shill for industry.” Kennedy’s confirmation bias kicked in: “Makes sense. The first question I ever asked Keith was whether he was shilling for [the pharmaceutical] industry. It just didn’t make sense that the guy who sold himself as a science writer was promoting industry junk science so adamantly.” Within weeks I found myself being described on websites as a “Monsanto prostitute” and “industry sleazebag.”
I wasn’t too bothered by this because on-line flamers usually undermine their own credibility. But then in January 2016, the campaign to tarnish my professional reputation became serious. Greenpeace, which has long been opposed to GMOs (and rejects the scientific consensus that that they are safe), created a page for me on its PolluterWatch website. It’s a cunning mix of factually true autobiographical details, half-truths, and outright fabrications, such as this one: “Kloor has repeatedly decried public records requests, some of which include his communications with GMO interests, by organizations exposing conflicts of interest between corporations and scientists.” There is no evidence for this claim, which is also utterly absurd, given that I have used the FOIA myself to uncover industry misdeeds.
Then, days later, a similar post appeared on SourceWatch, an Internet watchdog site that tracks “corporate front groups, people who ‘front’ corporate campaigns, and PR operations.” Today, those who Google my name for whatever reason are likely to come across these sites. If you are unfamiliar with me or my work, you will be unable to distinguish what’s true and false, which is surely by design. That’s disconcerting in the digital age we live in; people are already plenty confused by fake news and slick political propaganda.
Even more disheartening were responses I received from colleagues in the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). After I mentioned the PolluterWatch and SourceWatch pages on the organization’s listserv, one SEJ member said, “seems factual to me.” Another sent me a private e-mail: “Keith, please, tell me who pays your salary? How can you continue to pretend that you have not succumbed to the allure of spin that began with the pork industry paying doctors to extol the merits of eating dead pigs? Do you or do you not tout the technologies that have yet to be proven truly safe? DO TELL. It is time for you to come clean.”
After picking up my jaw from the floor, I thought to myself: With colleagues like this, who needs enemies?
On December 6, as I was wrapping up this essay, I received an e-mail from a scientist at a public university who had just that day received another FOIA request from the same anti-GMO group that has over the past year sent many such requests to dozens of his peers throughout the United States and Canada. This one was different from earlier requests that asked for correspondence between the scientists and anyone connected to the biotech industry.
This time, the request was for correspondence covering the past three years between the scientist and three journalists: myself, Tamar Haspel of the Washington Post, and Grist’s Nathanael Johnson. The three of us have written extensively about GMOs, at times correcting misinformation and debunking myths. In doing so, we have challenged certain false narratives about the science of agricultural biotechnology that have persisted. Perhaps the anti-GMO group that now seeks our e-mail correspondence with one scientist suspects that there are smoking guns to be found that will impugn our names and consequently our reporting on GMOs.
Regardless of what is found in the e-mails, I can already imagine the damning headline: “Science Journalists Found Consorting with Scientists.”
Keith Kloor is a freelance journalist and an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University and the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.
The first thing each side does in a war is to try to dehumanize the other side. That’s what these activists try to do. If they can make scrupulous reporters and science advocates seem to be mindless automatons and companies filled with people of all types to be monolithic looming evils, it’s much easier to get people aligned with their cause.
Thanks for telling your story of the “fun” to be had reporting the truth about GMO’s. As one scientist involved in this area I know their tactics all too well. Fortunately I see the mainstream media waking up to the fact they have been had. Now virtually every story has comments from National Academies of Science , National Health Authorities, National food safety authorities. All endorse the continued safe use of GE crops and derived foods.
The public is also waking up to the distortions and are not happy when they find out the truth about different types of food (with different costs) . I began public outreach about GE crops about 15 years ago when there was considerable interest(as outlined in your story) It then faded until recently. Stay tuned it is going to get real interesting again.
Thank you for the feedback about our website, PolluterWatch.
I’ll point out why your sole example of our “fabrications” is dishonest, and note that you didn’t tell readers where we sourced our claim.
Your quoted this from PolluterWatch.
“Kloor has repeatedly decried public records requests, some of which include his communications with GMO interests, by organizations exposing conflicts of interest between corporations and scientists. Kloor calls the requests for financial infomation on publicly-employed scientists “an attack on science,” comparing the tactic to coal and oil industry attacks on climate scientists. More background at Corporate Crime Reporter.”
Here’s where we got that info: You.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/02/updated-agricultural-researchers-rattled-demands-documents-group-opposed-gm-foods
Here’s how your first three paragraphs open:
1) “The fierce public relations war over genetically modified (GM) food has a new front. A nonprofit group opposed to GM products filed a flurry of freedom of information requests late last month with at least four U.S. universities, […]
2) ““It seems like a fishing expedition to me,” says geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam […]
3) “The group, U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) of Oakland, California, says it has no vendetta.” […]
And here’s the ending, where you frame your conclusion (“vendetta”) without having to own it as your opinion, nor owning your personal stake in the issue.
“USRTK says its requests are designed to promote transparency in a controversial research arena. But some researchers worry they will also have a chilling effect on academic freedom. “Your first inclination … is to stop talking about the subject,” Van Eenennaam says. “But that’s what they want. And I don’t want to be intimidated.” ”
I realize this is fairly common in online advocacy publications. But you claim to be a journalist.
Greenpeace is explicitly an advocacy group. We oppose the industry’s shaky claims that GMOs are a magical solution to hunger and climate change (which you misrepresented above – please consult Google). They are selling a product, and you appear to be helping.
I did edit the page to take out “repeatedly,” as we only provided your one article as the source there, and some n00b typos… And for nuance’s sake, I just added some info on your dispute with Jon Entine:
http://polluterwatch.org/keith-kloor
Thanks, please let me know if there’s anything else.
Connor Gibson
Greenpeace U.S.
There are many things to be noticed, here, each of which could be explored at length, if one were so inclined:
* the mental shortcuts involved in suspecting people’s motives are seldom fully realized by those who take them
* institutions of all kinds can develop groupthink without even being aware of it, yet thinking of one’s self as “independent” can also bias the mind!
* making a position parts of one’s identity hardens one’s point of view; one cannot change the position without endangering one’s sense of identity, affiliations, and relationships with others.
* there is an activist mindset which implicitly or even explicitly looks for data that supports the cause, to a degree which goes far beyond mere confirmation bias.
Thanks Keith for this glimpse into fanatic thinking. Stigmatization, Tribal Solidarity, Opinion Fixing, all this and more are typical for human thinking already in early human history of primitive life. A quick reaction to fear was indeed live-saving, it was a good reason for the survival of generations. Later, in more civilized times, outbreaks in stigmatization against imaginary threat occurred again and again, “normal” people began to solidarise against imaginary ennemies and dangerous things, often combined with world conspiracy theories etc etc. I wonder, how is possible that those repetitious events with their victims have not yet been revealed and only a few are daring to talk about. i have done it and was attacked by friends and foes immediately and with such emotions which prohibit clear thinking. One of the most frequent attacks: you stigmatize GMO opponents as Nazis. This is not the case, but what I dare to say is that there is a massive amount of professional psychological and socio-economic historic data which give proof to such parallel waves. I have studied this professional literature, and also read intensively historical accounts, I will soon try to publish such insights derived from a rich literature from Rosenberg (Chief Nazi ideologist, over the new extensive edition of Mein Kampf, accounts from many other countries of this world – there are such movements, frequently called fascist (despite the differences: both the Nazis and the Fascists (as well as other movements like the Inquisition, the Anti-Hugenotte-Organizations, etc. etc. had in common some kind of common enemy. : People LOVE to have an enemy in common and feel intensive tribal solidarity. Facts are not important, they are overrun by hatred.
About FOIA: i have nearly the whole original literature and legal texts collected: Clearly, the law as established for quite other reasons: the aim was to get more transparency in governmental activities in Washington. It is understandable to be angry about the war on facts against pseudo-facts, but this is not thinking deep enough. We must analyse the reasons behind the ranting on GMOs now lasting for 20 years and indeed showing signs of reaching the end phase. the main activists like Greenpeace and FoE are desperately looking for other fear topics. But as long as lall (also the good ones) are masively funded by the EU and the memberstates, it will be difficult: Bouillon Hardy English translation KA http://www.ask-force.org/web/NGOs/Bouillon-EU-Promotion-not-interested-in-Citizens-en-20140530.pdf
Not to detract from your interesting and important article, but one little misstatement caught my attention: “at the mercy of an increasingly unstable climate.” That’s not a statement that has much basis in reality. Climate on the Indian subcontinent is changing, for sure, but I’m aware of no evidence for “instability” there or anywhere else. This is exactly the sort of language that should not be used when talking about anthropogenic climate change.
There’s a small irony here. I agree with everything Keith says about GMOs and vaccines and applaud his courage in standing up to the pseudoscientists. I have similar scars from the same fights, having championed GMOs in the UK since 1998 when they were even more “evil” than they are considered in the US today. (In the UK, the tide of opinion had turned.) His experiences of being attacked ad-hominem by the extreme environmentalists are very similar to mine. However, having argued for a moderate view of man-made climate change — that it is real, but is being exaggerated and real harm is being done to people and the environment as a result of this exaggeration — I have experienced even more vicious and personal attacks than in the GMO debate. I documented some of them here: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/my-life-as-a-climate-lukewarmer/. I would argue that Keith’s “side” of this debate is infected with pseudoscience at least as much, perhaps more, as the climate-sceptic side, as any reading of the hockey-stick wars confirms. On one occasion, when I wrote an article on new evidence of lower climate sensitivity than assumed by most climate models (since confirmed in more than a dozen other peer reviewed publications) my attackers included Keith Kloor, though admittedly he did not go ad-hominem. He criticised me for (in addition to citing published papers) using as a source an amateur scientist, Nic Lewis. Nic has since published numerous peer-reviewed papers in mainstream journals (e.g. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-014-2342-y), some co-authored with IPCC lead scientists (e.g. http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n6/full/ngeo1836.html) and is widely recognised as one of the leading experts on climate sensitivity. I regard my scoop on low sensitivity as one my best journalistic endeavours, and am proud of having stood up to the bullies.
for “had” read “has” in “(In the UK, the tide of opinion had turned.)”
Thank-you for this post, it is quite illuminating . While I’m not on the same side of the argument as you on one of these issues, I can at least see why that might be so without doubting your motives. With regard to Trump’s flowery prose (usually in 140 characters or less) I’d suggest that his claim that Obama created ISIS should be viewed more as a claim that Obama created the conditions for ISIS to grow. If he didn’t develop the GMO seed that is ISIS, he certainly watered and weeded it.
Pro vaccine scientists fail to do some basic, but difficult, science. The rise of autism vs. the rise of vaccines is a well established correlation. The real question is whether this correlation implies a causation. One part of this is to think of the rise of vaccines as a proxy for something else. During this period, the ingestion of vitamins (esp. folic acid) by pregnant women has also increased dramatically. This doesn’t prove anything about folic acid, but simply says that all reasonable correlated variables should be considered, in order of scientific plausibility.
Another issue is a compassion for people who believe in the vaccine-autism link. Without alternative explanations, the issue just devolves into a shouting match, and I have never been convinced that vaccines are (completely) safe. We chose the dead polio virus for our children, and got DPT, because of the horrors of diptheria, pertussis and tetanus. But our children have a litany of allergies and sensitivities and this is similar to our friends. There is something bad going on in the environment, but we don’t know for sure what.
This article did not convince me that the author is intellectually or morally superior to the people he criticizes, but I do feel some sympathy for the author in light of the alleged “truthiness” and post-factualism he is subjected to.
As usual, K. Kloor can’t imagine how people can be so irrational. But when it’s HIS ox being gored, he gives us this tater tot:
” Outside events (WikiLeaks disclosures, FBI announcements) had a “truthy” feel that bolstered the corrupt theme of the narrative frame.”
Please note the rhetorical sleight of hand – he doesn’t say that the information in the Wikileaks emails were ‘truthy’ – that is, not true. No, he just implies it. The fact that the legitimacy of the emails released was never argued by the .Clinton campaign tells us all we need to know about the ‘truthiness’ of the email dump. So, to the Hillary cadres – including Kloor – it’s not the look behind the curtain we got that matters, it’s ‘the Russians’ or the FBI, or ‘truthiness’ that matters. I recommend that Kloor ask Roger Pielke Jr what he thinks about the content, rather than any imagined context of those emails. Seems like Kloor suffers from anti-vaxer disease when it’s his ideology taking a hit.
Thanks for being committed to good journalism. I know it’s not easy pushing back against the hydra of hyperbole and misinformation, but people like me need people like you. Thanks.
Enjoyed your article, but you are not alone, this new world of post-normal science is dominating the “internet world”. You can “search and replace” GMO with “climate science” and write the same article. Ask Roger Pielke Jr. or Judith Curry.
This is a very distressing article, but I am surprised only by the extent and viciousness that Kloor describes. I’m a former physicist whose “natural home” is, like Kloor, on the left. The disinformation surrounding climate science, GMOs and vaccines are indeed appalling. I might be inclined to add nuclear power to the list, although the case there strikes me as a bit muddier.
On leaving physics and entering financial services I saw a rather similar set of events play out there, following the great recession of 2008. Like Monsanto, a number of large financial institutions became the embodiment of evil. Doubtless like Monsanto, they were neither perfect embodiments of virtue, nor the cartoonish cesspools of villainy portrayed, sadly, in most of the press. As Kloor describes Monsanto, many of those with whom I worked were notably principled and honest, some, regrettably, more focused on their own enrichment. Some of the companies made egregious errors while others fulfilled their societal role quite well in very challenging circumstances. However, the demonic narrative became rapidly entrenched, at least on the (center-) left. And, in much the same Kloor describes, journalists who sought to present the full picture could find themselves subject to campaigns of vilification. Kloor may find it interesting to swap stories with the Times’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.
The liberal left applies the same technique to many topics where they find disagreement with their positions. The practice is rampant in science and politics. But, it exists throughout the business world, as well. They intentionally do a lot of damage to many well-intentioned professionals. And, you needn’t be a journalist to fit into their cross-hairs.
A worrying example of a blogger being threatened with legal costs here:
https://forbetterscience.com/2017/01/03/bavarian-court-sentences-me-to-prison-if-i-dare-repeat-unwelcome-facts-of-walles-trachea-transplants/
How does a layman find the truth? Is it in the scientists at Monsanto? Or in the blogs of NGOs? Likely somewhere in the middle, I’d say. So what to do then? For me, I try to use common sense. Do I want to eat vegetables laden with glyphosate, and then find myself being 1 of the 48 MEPs with uncomfortably high levels of that stuff in my body? Definitely not. And what about our important friends the bees and the butterflies? Pretty sure they don’t like traveling through ubiquitous fields of pesticides.
When it comes to vaccines, I’m inclined to think they do more good than bad. So then why is the rate of autism growing? Something obviously is going on. Maybe it’s the cumulative effect of all those chemicals we’re constantly exposed to on a daily basis? But then again, most of those chemicals are apparently harmless if you believe the science the manufacturers provide.
My philosophy: err on the side of caution because none of you can be trusted. The Earth is warming, there are chemicals all over the place, global biodiversity is shrinking, and disease is managed instead of cured. Those facts comprise my reality and therefore I will act accordingly.
Keith Kloor
You have done well on the GMO controversy, and are paying the price. However, the same tactics Greenpeace used against you were used against a professor (Roger Pielke, Jr.) who dared to challenge the idea that hurricanes and other extreme weather were increasing. When John Podesta’s emails were hacked, Pielke discovered that no fewer than 140 blogs, letters etc. were aimed specifically at him by one climate organization, which took credit for getting him dropped by the fivethirtyeight.com blog after a single posting on that blog. Pielke, like you, took no money from fossil fuel companies. Please consider that organizations using such tactics may well be on the wrong side of science.
Brave of you to stand up to the relentless intimidation and smearing of the various Green groups and others. But perhaps, having seen how it works, you should have another look at climate change, and see whether in fact the science is as solid as you obviously think it is.
At the very least, perhaps you should have another look at the supposed fossil fuel disinformation campaign. You might be surprised at where those claims come from – or, having now seen how easy it is to become a shill for bad pharma, you might not.
I have taken neither “side” in the GMO issue, but from what I can tell, a thorough “systematic review” of all the existing science is necessary. This type of review heavily weights a better, more thorough research design in terms of resulting data and would help to reveal some of the overall results of many of the “studies” that have been performed. There are definitely good studies out there, but they are currently intermixed with less rigorous research. Something like this, if performed by neutral parties, may help both sides recognize reality; which could be somewhere in between where they both reside.
A wonderful example of using character assassination to defend against character assassination.
Science is nothing more than comparative observation. Turning an observation into a fact is a tricky business.
Two inferences in the essay caught my attention:
1. There is no evidence GMO foods are harmful, which is like saying there is no evidence the suspect is not guilty, so, he must be guilty.
2. The inference that non GMO foods cost more, despite the use of patented gene splicing to resist herbicides and such.
The above is just an example; I have no dog in this fight, but science journalists should think long and hard when when reporting important facts to us unwashed and ignorant souls.
Thank you for this, Keith.
Still, I think there’s more to it than that. The similarity in tactics between the “Climategate” episode and the Wikileaks/Trump victory is very striking. These improbable campaigns must have been plotted in advance, probably by the same people.
It would be nice if this astonishing similarity weren’t just muttered sotto voce in the climate science community, and were picked up by some journalists with a wider audience.
On the matter of voters, Judicial Watch, which has a good record for accuracy, says that there is massive fraud in voter registrations nationwide. f.ex. 1.8 million deceased and 2.6 million registered in two states.
http://wwwcinopsbegone.blogspot.com/2016/08/judicial-watch-report-fraud-in-national.html
These and other such errors present opportunity for a variety of interpretations, including Trump’s.
The lesson to be learned here is that the politics and public agitation being practiced by extreme activists of all stripes is a negative activity.
Greenpeace rears its head again as a master of such tactics.
Hi Keith–well done. This is good.
At some point someone with the right CV will have to create the meta construction on issues going back to BSE in the UK. You have pointed out the similarities in how narratives are created and sustained, and it should be a topic for fruitful research.
I also have a page on Sourcewatch, due to my lukewarm views on climate change. As Dr. Tobis fails to note, it’s not those supporting climate change that are treated like pariahs and as Lord Ridley intimates, it is the activist community (in many cases the same people going after GMOs and vaccines) who are using the same tactics to call people like Freeman Dyson or Richard Lindzen industry shills bought and paid for by Exxon or whoever.
You’ve done a lot of excellent work on these issues since 2010, to my knowledge. I await your thoughts in book form.
What I don’t like, is the certainty that people such as this author have that the unexpected never happens.
Going back to the 1970s, there were Vaccines which could cause problems in 1% of people. This fits in with the normal statistical analysis of vaccine trials – 2% may have side-effects. Nobody even tries to ‘prove’ that there’s never an undesirable effect because if they did so, it would take too long for anything to be approved for use.
Keith,
I very much appreciate your taking the time to defend your reputation and expose the ugliness that you and other apparently rational investigative science journalists have encountered. I can’t say I’m surprised, but I am certainly disappointed.
While I suspect we are in disagreement about the degree of anthropogenic contribution to the climate change we are experiencing, what strikes me is that I’m confident we could sit and have a reasonable and intelligent discussion about it. Sadly, it seems such opportunities are increasingly rare.
Please continue to fight the good fight. In a world where alternative facts are not considered even remotely oxymoronic, we need more of you.