Let's scrutinize Adventist Today articles

Back in February I addressed the scientific incompetence of an article on Adventist Today.  My article began with this:

 “Adventist Today once again enters the world of pseudo science with their article Hermetically Sealed: Conspiracy Theories and Special Knowledge. Sadly this article is written by David Geelan an Associate Professor of Science Education at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, Australia. I say sadly because in the Big Ag section it is completely wrong. But it does not start out that well either!”

The same author has continued on with some of the same poor reasoning practices in his most recent article.  R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: What Respect Is Owed to Ideas and Beliefs? It is interesting that the title is about others' ideas and beliefs which are the reasons I chose to rebut his fallacies. As you might recall one of his beliefs from his previous article is that:

   “Big Ag and GMOsThe same applies to genetically modified organisms, particularly plants used in food crops. While the genetic modifications themselves are shown to be benign in terms of human health effects, there are real issues. One is that the corporations that make the seeds want to earn higher profits. One way to do this is to engineer the plants so that the seeds they bear are infertile. Instead of saving some seed from last year’s crop to plant next year’s crop, poor farmers must buy seed anew each year. Another is that plants can be genetically modified, for example, to be tolerant to RoundUp (glyphosate) pesticides, but this can mean excessive application of pesticides to fields, with attendant risks to both farm workers and consumers.”

As I pointed out there are no seed companies that are engineering seeds to be infertile. His earlier article about conspiracies included this conspiracy and due to the politics over at Adventist Today no one ever corrected David Geelan’s statement or even questioned as to where he got that idea. Since Adventist Today censors and removes people who disagree with their articles it appears to mainly leave people who will simply agree with those articles. After all, with their rules, anything they disagree with can be labeled as not civil conversation. So it just is not done, to correct an Adventist Today author on their Facebook comments page. If one wants to know more about this purposed technology check out the Wikipedia page. Here is how it begins:

Genetic use restriction technology (GURT), also known as terminator technology or suicide seeds, is the name given to proposed methods for restricting the use of genetically modified plants by activating some genes only in response to certain stimuli, especially to cause second generation seeds to be infertile.^[2][3] The technology was originally developed under a cooperative research and development agreement between the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agriculture and Delta and Pine Land company in the 1990s and is not yet commercially available.^[4]

In David Geelan’s most recent article about respect he states:

“I seek to subject the ideas I hold to the most rigorous scrutiny I can. I want to believe things that are true, and I want to hold ideas and beliefs that make the world a better place. That is the two-fold test: is it true, and does it make the world better? (There are complex questions about ‘better for whom?’ and ‘better judged by what standards?’ but those are for another time.) I very much like Rotary International’s ‘Four-way Test’: Is it the truth?Is it fair to all concerned?Will it build goodwill and better friendships?Will it be beneficial to all concerned?”

I think that list is pretty good with the exception of the last one. I don’t think Geelan follows it at all, however. Obviously, his rigorous scrutiny into seed companies using GURT to force farmers to not hold over seeds they have grown to be used for the next planting would have been quickly revealed to be a myth should he have applied any scrutiny to the question. Likewise, it fails the is it truth test; the is it fair to all concerned test;  the will it build good will and friendship test and is it beneficial to all concerned test.

Nothing will ever be beneficial to all concerned. Some students of David Geelan will likely at some point search his name on the internet and come upon one of my articles pointing out the false information that he is writing and David Geelan will not think that this is a benefit to him. It is not a benefit to Adventist Today because they are propagators of false information. Now it could be beneficial should he or they learn from their mistakes, but you can’t depend on people looking critically at themselves and thus benefiting from correction.

Many times people think that their knowledge is sufficient in itself and they assume that they are simply correct. This is what Geelan does as he continues in his article to tell us how a belief may be harmful. He writes:

“…The idea that hydroxychloroquine is a safe treatment for COVID-19, for example, is not supported by good evidence, and there are cases of people with severe liver damage from participating in clinical trials… and of people who have died taking related chemicals without medical supervision… “

In fact there is practically no safe drug for any treatment. Penicillin, aspirin, ibuprofen, etc. Drugs are cost-benefit analysis. To disregard something by saying it is not safe it very disingenuous. It actually reflects a political viewpoint disguised as being honest.  Opponents of President Trump frequently deride it and ignore the French study that brought world attention to it. The drug is still being tested in trials however some with good results such as this:

A nursing home medical director in Texas said he has used hydroxychloroquine sulfate to treat 39 coronavirus patients, and all of them are doing well after five days, WFAA-TV reported. The Blaze

And a retrospective review, also referenced in the above French study link:

A study of the effectiveness of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine on veterans hospitalized with COVID-19 showed that the drug had no positive impact on those who took it when compared to patients who did not, Politico reported The Blaze

As trials continue it is very unscientific to reach a conclusion before the facts are in. Any new disease takes a while for therapies to be determined as the most effective. Equally concerning is Geelan’s attempt to attach what appears to be a murder attempt of someone to the drug because it has some similar ingredients as fish tank cleaner.

Gary Lenius, a 68-year-old Arizona man, tragically died March 22 after ingesting fish tank cleaner. Lenius's wife, Wanda, told police that she and her husband mixed the toxic cleaner, which contained chloroquine phosphate, with soda to make a cocktail they thought would stave off the coronavirus. The Blaze

  

It is a very interesting case and hard to not suspect murder. That the woman who was a Democrat who disliked president Trump quickly jumped on the chemical to be used prophylactically is equally suspicious. But the motives are often difficult to ascertain. 

But when something comes up and it is not really related to the previous conversation or article you can often tell that there is a political reason for it to be conveyed.  These kinds of subtle propaganda pieces tend to fool a lot of people who may not understand the political manipulation techniques that are being used. But in any case you can’t simply declare a drug therapy unsafe when trials are not complete or because a drug that you can get from veterinarian prescription is used by people who don’t even have the disease in question. That is simply faulty logic or propaganda. In this case, it may, in fact, be both.

Geelan’s conclusion:

We owe respect – of at least one kind and up to three kinds – to other human beings. But the appropriate kind of respect to apply to ideas is not to accept them uncritically, but to scrutinise them rigorously in terms of (a) whether they are the truth and (b) whether they cause benefit or harm in the world if acted upon. And applying this scrutiny to the ideas someone holds and actively promotes is not showing disrespect to that person.

I completely agree. It would be nice if Adventist media could feel that they could afford to allow rigorous scrutiny.

Adventist Today Strikes out again

  Adventist Today once again enters the world of pseudo science with their article Hermetically Sealed: Conspiracy Theories and Special Knowledge. Sadly this article is written by David Geelan an Associate Professor of Science Education at Griffith University on the Gold Coast, Australia. I say sadly because in the Big Ag section it is completely wrong. But it does not start out that well either!

 

After the article’s introduction about conspiracy theories, the article states under the bold header the following:

 

         “Climate and Chemtrails

Loren Seibold’s recent piece in Adventist Today on how Adventists talk about climate change, and my own piece about the evidence and the responses to climate change, along with the ensuing discussions of both, have probably sufficiently explored the ground around that issue, so I’ll leave it for the moment. It’s a crucial issue on which a concerted and well-funded campaign of misinformation has been dismayingly successful, but it shares many commonalities with the issues discussed below. The notion that climate change is a conspiracy by globalists, socialists or the Pope is one example.”

The purpose of saying Climate is simply to equate so called Climate Change Deniers with the conspiracy theory of Chemtrails. The only reference in the section to climate is a couple of Adventist Today articles (I did not read Geelans other article as after reading this one I am not too impressed with his science abilities). The one by Loren Seibold gives no evidence for climate change other than:

         “To be a climate change denier, you have to be as conspiratorial about a minority scientific                   opinion…”

Shades of the often times used statement that 97 percent of scientists agree with man-made global warming/ climate change. As the very good Forbes article begins:

“If you've ever expressed the least bit of skepticism about environmentalist calls for making the vast majority of fossil fuel use illegal, you've probably heard the smug response: “97% of climate scientists agree with climate change” — which always carries the implication: Who are you to challenge them?The answer is: you are a thinking, independent individual--and you don’t go by polls, let alone second-hand accounts of polls; you go by facts, logic and explanation.Here are two questions to ask anyone who pulls the 97% trick.”

What often happens today as with Loren Seibold’s article is the elusive scientists say, the scientific consensus that you conspiracy nuts go against with the other minority of scientists. When it became know that the 97% figure was a fiction it moved to the consensus of science, even though science does not really work with consensus, they try to deal with facts. Interestingly if the Climate Change Alarmists really cared about science they would say go for it disprove our theories! Because that is how science works, gather the data make a hypothesis and then try to test with experiments the hypothesis This is called the scientific method which does not seem at all to require consensus.. So the actual science part becomes the conspiracy theory part to the Climate Change Alarmists.

It is rather peculiar that the so called Climate Change Deniers don’t have to keep changing their story while the Climate Change Alarmists continually change theirs. Remember those sad video’s of Polar Bears who were starving a few years ago. Not true, Polar bears are greatly increasing in numbers. What about Al Gore’s famous use of Mann’s so called hockey stick graph. And the climategate emails as one Forbes article states:

         “The new emails also reveal the scientists’ attempts to politicize the debate and                    advance predetermined outcomes.”

So at least the Adventist Today article with its attempt to tie climage change denial to chemtrails is working within the climategate method of disinformation.

Now to the main reason I decided to bring up this Adventist Today article. I have used bold type to point out the completely wrong section about GMO seeds:

         “Big Ag and GMOs

The same applies to genetically modified organisms, particularly plants used in food crops. While the genetic modifications themselves are shown to be benign in terms of human health effects, there are real issues. One is that the corporations that make the seeds want to earn higher profits. One way to do this is to engineer the plants so that the seeds they bear are infertile. Instead of saving some seed from last year’s crop to plant next year’s crop, poor farmers must buy seed anew each year. Another is that plants can be genetically modified, for example, to be tolerant to RoundUp (glyphosate) pesticides, but this can mean excessive application of pesticides to fields, with attendant risks to both farm workers and consumers.”

First I can agree with him that the corporation is trying to earn higher profits. That is pretty much the way all business works. Sadly and this is really bad for someone that is supposedly involved with science education he says that the seeds are infertile. Here is a good quote from NPR on this myth from their article Top Five Myths Of Genetically Modified Seeds, Busted

:

         “Myth 1: Seeds from GMOs are sterile.

No, they'll germinate and grow just like any other plant. This idea presumably has its roots in a real genetic modification (dubbed the Terminator Gene by anti-biotech activists) that can make a plant produce sterile seeds. Monsanto owns the patent on this technique, but has promised not to use it.Now, biotech companies — and Monsanto in particular — do seem to wish that this idea were true. They do their best to keep farmers from replanting the offspring from GMOs. But they do this because, in fact, those seeds will multiply.”

It seems that this professor of science education accepted this myth because he heard it from anti biotech people. I suppose I could just say it was part of a conspiracy theory but I rather think like most of the Climate Change Alarmists it is more to do with hearing some so called authority say it and just accepting it as truth without bothering to do some investigation into the subject.

While the whole idea is wrong and untrue it is true that if it was hybrid seed, it would not breed true and should not be used in the next years planting. The seed manufacturers do require those buying their patented seeds to sign a contract where they do not plant the seeds from the crops harvested seeds, example Roundup Ready crop seeds. If you are interested in knowing the reasons why this is done there is a good article from a farmer called What’s in a Monsanto Contract?

Since there are hybrid and non hybrid seeds used depending on the crop most commonly corn and soybeans I will let the author of the above article explain as he does well. The Adventist Today article continues with an assumption of the excessive use of herbicides which may also not be true. However there does appear to be some Roundup resistant weeds called superweeds which could need more herbicides. There are simply too many factors to make the statement that Geelan makes however.

I read through the comments section on Facebook for the Adventist Today article. They mostly seem to love it and no one pointed out the problems with it. One person said that the people who really need to read the article won’t because it is on Adventist Today. That is probably true as Adventist Today has become so one sided and fact challenged that I am quite sure a lot of people don’t bother with it or the Spectrum website anymore. Which is rather sad but I don’t see either website changing from their political progressivism and neither seems to like to hear that their articles have problems either.