GMW: Prof B. unspun! - Genetically Modified Language

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GMW: Prof B. unspun! - Genetically Modified Language

" GM WATCH " <info

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:44:14 +0100

 

 

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

------

Jonathan Matthews looks at a critical book for anyone wanting to

understand what's really going on in the GM debate.

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Genetically Modified Language - Professor Bull***t unspun!

http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=Content & pa=showpage & pid=379

 

Earlier this year The Ecologist asked GM Watch's Jonathan Matthews to

nominate his top 10 books on GM. At the time he hadn't read Guy Cook's

'Genetically Modified Language' or it would have been right up at the

top. That's not just because of the scope and depth of the book's

analysis of the arguments, metaphors, word choices and analogies

deployed to

promote GM, but also because of the extraordinary insights Cook's

research provides into the collective mindset of pro-GM scientists.

....

About six years ago someone sent me a tape of a public debate on GM. As

I listened to it, I realised that one of the speakers, an eminent

scientist, was making seriously misleading claims about various research

findings.

 

This spurred me to investigate other claims made by pro-GM scientists

in public talks and the media, and I soon realised that what had been

captured on my tape was far from a one-off. Sometimes it was a

straightforward case of bogus claims; more often it was a question of

deceptive

language; sometimes it was both.

 

This " anything goes " approach to public communication typically came

from scientists at the forefront of those clamouring for the GM debate to

be based solely upon " sound science " . Yet, the claims they themselves

peddled to the public seemed at times to have no better foundation than

industry spin or common room gossip.

 

Intent on retribution, I installed a character called Professor

Bull***t in a virtual laboratory on the web where - ably assisted by his

colleagues in linguistic crime: Dr Halftruth and Prof Wilspin - he

doled out

awards for public statements that best captured his peers' penchant for

double standards.

http://ngin.tripod.com/pb.htm

 

One such award went to the presidents of three of America's leading

scientific associations for circulating the following:

 

" Many biotechnology detractors gain public support for their cause

through the use of misinformation and emotional appeals... In short,

biotechnology, this incredibly powerful and valuable tool with seemingly

limitless potential to resolve health problems, increase crop yields, and

treat diseases, is at risk of serious setbacks. "

http://ngin.tripod.com/fav.htm

 

How could a complaint about emotional appeals and a lack of

communicative circumspection be placed cheek by jowl with an evangelical

invocation of the incredible power and value of a largely untested

technology

and of its apparently " limitless potential " to solve life's most

challenging (and emotive!) problems - healing the sick and feeding the

hungry?

 

Another award winning example of this tendency to zealous

self-contradiction came from the head of external affairs of the

Institute of Food

Science and Technology (IFST):

 

" IFST is neither root-and-branch pro-GM or anti-GM, indeed as an

independent objective scientific professional body it cannot be

'root-and-branch' about anything... The development of GM technology

holds out such

valuable, indeed indispensable, prospects for the future of humanity

that any other approach would be indefensible. "

http://ngin.tripod.com/fav.htm

 

My all time favourite, though, came near the end of an article about GM

by Prof Jonathan Jones FRS:

 

" The future benefits (for consumers and the environment) will be

enormous and the best is yet to come. In the meantime, let's have more

information and less rhetoric. "

http://ngin.tripod.com/fav.htm

 

Demanding a different standard of discourse from his opponents (no

grandstanding, stick to the facts!) to the one he himself employed was

clearly perfectly reasonable to Prof Jones.

 

And it wasn't only the lack of self-perception that was revealing. On

another tape of a public meeting, Prof Jones was to be found stridently

attacking critics of GM as " self-serving " fundamentalists and " the

green mujihadeen " . He also posted material on the Internet lambasting

them

as " bigoted, myopic, mystical " and " anti-scientific " .

 

It seems hard to tally this kind of name-calling, loose association and

emotive broad-brush condemnation, with the rational, provisional and

evidence-based approach to knowledge Prof Jones is supposedly defending.

Yet Jones is far from alone in his extravagant depiction of those who

criticise GM.

 

Another Fellow of the Royal Society, Prof Anthony Trewavas, posted

advice to US scientists on the net, in which he branded the critics of

GM,

" bloody minded, anarchist and frankly merely destructive. " Greenpeace,

he explained, was " controlled by extremists/nihilists and other

subversives " . And he advised his American colleagues to enlist the

help of

rightwing senators like Jesse Helms by alerting them, " that a subversive

organisation directed from Europe is attempting to destroy US

agriculture and US farming. "

 

This advice was posted on the AgBioView e-mailing list, which claims a

huge following among pro-GM scientists. AgBioView's more extreme

material has accused critics of GM variously of fascism, communism,

imperialism, nihilism, murder, corruption, terrorism, and even

genocide; not to

mention being worse than Hitler and on a par with the mass murderers

who destroyed the World Trade Centre.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=233

 

Despite the apparent absurdity of such claims, these linguistic

onslaughts have almost never met with opposition from AgBioView's

large body

of pro-GM rs. Why not?

 

Enter: Guy Cook, Professor in Language and Education at the Open

University (OU) and author of Genetically Modified Language, a book which

critically analyses the war of words waged by those arguing for GM crops.

Cook investigates the type of language deployed by major players in the

GM debate - politicians, journalists, scientists and corporations. He

also has a chapter on the views of " the spoken to " - the public; plus a

section on the arguments and language commonly deployed in the debate,

including such key words and phrases as " sound science " , " Luddites " ,

" Frankenstein foods " , and " interfering with nature " . But it's Cook's

systematic analysis of the language used by pro-GM scientists that I

found

most compelling because of the extraordinary insights it provides into

their underlying mindset.

 

Prior to his post at the OU, Cook held the Chair of Applied Linguistics

at Reading - a university which has more than its share of GM

researchers. And it was here that Cook first decided to research how such

scientists presented GM crop research to non-specialists. In his book,

Cook

details the findings from that research in conjunction with a detailed

analysis of a speech by one of Britain's leading pro-GM scientists -

Lord May, the President of the Royal Society.

 

Cook shows how Lord May uses his carefully prepared 2002 presidential

address to link opponents of GM within Britain with " outsiders and

enemies of the British nation, such as Hitler, Mao and the Taliban " . May

does this by portraying them all as driven by " closed Fundamentalist

belief systems " .

Cook notes that May's " choice of the word 'fundamentalism' in the

political climate of 2002, was a highly loaded one... It suggests,

like the

mention of the Taliban, anti-Western fanatics prepared to resort to

violence and terror to achieve their ends " . May is unlikely, Cook

suggests, to have been unaware of the unstated associations his choice

of words

would carry.

 

In his speech May contrasts fundamentalism (as epitomised by GM

opponents, the Taliban etc.) with the " rational, humane, questioning "

values

that May says gave birth to the Royal Society and much of what is best

in world civilisation. What May is seeking to do by this, Cook explains,

is to present his listeners " with a binary choice: either be for GM or

join the forces of mindless ignorance and violent intolerance. " But May

achieves this dichotomy, Cook argues, only via linguistic " sleights of

hand… which contradict in practice what is being championed in

principle. "

 

May's speech by itself might be considered unrepresentative, and this

is where the findings from Cook's research on GM scientists as a group

comes into play. The texts of a whole series of recorded interviews with

GM scientists were linguistically analysed. These data sets could also

be computer-analysed to help reveal the GM scientists' most recurrent

themes and word patterns. From studying these shared habits of language,

Cook was able to build a detailed picture of how GM scientists viewed

both the public and opponents of GM. His findings are so revealing that

I'm going to quote from them at some length. (These quotes mostly come

from a summary of his research available online.)

 

The " public " , the data revealed, tend to be seen as homogeneous, as

passive, as frequently emotional, rather than rational, and as uniformly

ignorant. Cook notes that this " characterization of the public is often

achieved through anecdotes of some farcical encounter with a

particularly 'uninformed' member of the public: a commonly voiced one

concerns

people who are worried that they may be 'eating genes'. " He also came

across, " a frequent claim that the public has no understanding of risk,

and naively believes in, and foolishly demands reassurances of, 'zero

risk', " (in fact, studies contradict this characterization).

 

Because public opposition to GM is attributed wholly to ignorance, the

answer is seen as education. This perspective is echoed, Cook notes, in

research such as the widely quoted EuroBarometer reports, " where

knowledge is reduced to knowledge of the technology itself, and

correlated

with negative attitudes to GMOs " . But other research suggests that

technical knowledge of GM does not necessarily lead to increased

acceptance

of GMOs.

 

Cook also found that while many GM scientists, when asked directly,

expressed interest in a public " debate " , what they meant by that was a

one-way " debate " in which members of the public would be " educated " .

" This

apparent readiness to open the GM debate to the public is thus

deceptive, " writes Cook, " as it conceals strongly held beliefs that

members of

the public are interfering when they ask to be heard and to be actors

in (instead of spectators of) the decision-making processes. "

 

The public's supposed lack of knowledge and inability to engage with

the issues, except at an emotional level, contributes to a view of them

as malleable and passive and hence vulnerable to manipulation by critics

of GM. From this perspective, public opposition to GM has been

" entirely created by the media and NGOs, rather than …ever being a

spontaneous,

considered, or autonomous response. This characterization of public

opinion thus frees scientists from having to engage with the public on

equal terms. "

 

The GM scientists in Cook's study seem to have an equally low opinion

of those who criticise GM. Cook found they were judged to be " acting in

their own interests and making decisions without authority on the

public's behalf… NGOs are characterised as launching campaigns in

order to

maintain membership and finance their organization and salaries.

Journalists are seen as fickle, unconcerned with truth, and motivated

only by

the need for a 'good story'. "

 

Cook also found, " There is a limited discussion of types of opposition,

with over half of the references to the press, for example, focusing

upon the phrase 'Frankenstein foods' used in the Daily Mail " (a British

tabloid). Yet, Cook notes elsewhere in his book that this phrase is now

most commonly used not by opponents of GM but by proponents, who use it

both to chracterise the press in general and as an example of language

used to sway people's opinions. Cook found, for instance, that the

scientist and Member of Parliament, Dr Ian Gibson, used it no less than

five times in just half an hour.

 

And the chapter on journalists in Cook's book shows just how misleading

" Frankenstein foods " is as a catch-all for British media coverage of

GM. Not only does it not typify the style or content of many papers'

coverage, but there are a series of newspapers (Cook focuses on The Times

and The Sun) with a generally pro-GM editorial outlook. Cook also notes

how stories reporting speculative GM solutions to intractable problems

(e.g. 'GM allergy-free peanuts', 'GM grass to help hay fever

sufferers') are widely published in all types of newspapers. This

means that

stories designed to promote the GM cause, such as 'Bananas will slip into

extinction without GM', turn up even in newspapers which tend to be

critical of GM.

 

But just as the GM scientists use " Frankenstein foods " as a catch-all

for media coverage, so Cook found that references to anti-GM NGOs, which

in the UK encompass an extremely broad range of organisations, were

limited almost entirely to one organistion - Greenpeace. This pattern,

incidentally, seems to be repeated world-wide. In Argentina, for

instance,

the biotech industry and its supporters are reported to insist on

" debating " with Greenpeace to the exclusion, for instance, of the peasant

farmers who oppose GM.

 

Cook also found that anti-GM protesters and activists outside of the

main NGOs were only infrequently mentioned by GM scientists but when they

were it was in " condemnatory terms " , with one scientist equating them

to terrorists and fascists.

 

Overall, Cook found " some considerable contradiction between the claims

that opinions should be based upon impartial and rational assessment of

evidence, and the scientists' own descriptions and assessments of the

opponents of GM and their arguments. Particularly ironic is the highly

emotive language often used to criticize the irrational nature of the

opposition, and the highly selective use of examples to characterise its

causes and motives - both apparently in defence of science. "

 

In the book, Cook also notes that there is a " marked tendency for the

views of pro-GM scientists and pro-GM politicians to echo and replicate

each other " . A speech by Tony Blair, for instance, presents his

listeners with exactly the same binary choice as Lord May's - either

you're

rational, progressive and well-informed (you're for GM) or you're part of

the forces of ignorance and intolerance (you're concerned about GM).

Even some of Blair and May's analogies, Cook notes, seem to come as more

or less the same job lot.

 

But the public seem not to recognize the image of themselves and their

concerns that is projected by GM proponents, as Cook points out in the

final chapter of his book. And there is one thing in particular which

such portrayals almost invariably leave out. The public, when asked,

often seem not just to be against GM but to be against the people who

advocate it. " They express dismay, " Cook writes, " that decisions are

being

taken undemocratically by unelected commercial companies, by the

governments of other nations or by experts. They regard the supposed

dialogue

as bogus, they do not trust the information they are given and they

claim that irreversible decisions have already been taken without

consultation. "

 

But Cook's research shows the virtual absence of reference to these

common concerns by GM scientists. Cook writes, " a striking aspect of the

interviews with GM scientists, in contrast to those with nonspecialists,

is the general dearth of reference to major arguments in the wider

national and international debate… Most striking of all is the virtual

absence of reference to concerns about the political and economic

implications of GM, how policy decisions are made about it, the nature

and speed

of its implementation, or accusations of improper influence being

exerted by governments, corporations or scientific bodies - even though

these arguments all feature prominently in the anti-GM literature. "

 

Cook's research showed that, instead, there was " an almost exclusive

focus on a cost benefit analysis based on assessable safety issues

relating to health and the environment " . There was no reference to

unforeseen

risks, to the limits of rational analysis, or to the need to make

judgements in situations of imperfect knowledge. Similarly, there was

only

" some vague awareness of ethical objections to GM technology, but these

are generally considered to be religious, and/or caricatured as beyond

the reach of reasoned argument. "

 

While GM proponents may appear to be thus failing to engage with a

whole range of concerns, Cook suggests that they have, in fact, been

highly

successful in tightly defining the grounds for legitimate public

debate. He notes, for instance, how Tony Blair's former Environment

Minister,

Michael Meacher, begins an article by quoting Blair's call for the

" whole debate to be conducted on the basis of scientific evidence, not on

the basis of prejudice " (emphasis added). Meacher expresses his

agreement with this, but Cook argues that in taking this as his

starting point,

Meacher, like other critics of GM, has fallen for a false dichotomy

that often leaves critics arguing over scientific evidence for or against

impacts on health and biodiversity, while ignoring a series of

important concerns that also have validity.

 

Outside the narrow pro-GM terms of engagement lie political,

socio-economic, ethical, and even aesthetic concerns, which opponents,

retreating

under a hail of ridicule, have allowed to be marginalised as belonging

to the realm of prejudice. " The battle is being fought almost entirely

on quantitive and utilitarian grounds " , says Cook. " Yet in addition to

the measurable threat to biodiversity and health, there are many other

reasons to oppose GM. No substantial answer has been advanced to the

views that it represents an unwelcome discontinuity with positive values

of the past; that it shows no humility or wonder at the goodness which

comes from Nature (albeit sometimes aided or redirected through humans

via cultivation) and no trust in the overall power of Nature

(notwithstanding its concurrent destructiveness) to sustain and

regenerate both

itself and ourselves; that it undervalues the personal and cultural

importance of Nature as a force for good in art, religion, literature and

recreation. "

 

Cook also notes how GM proponents continuously fudge the crucial

distinction between science and technology, enabling them to designate as

" anti-science " opposition to one particular technology (genetic

engineering). As Cook points out, one can quite reasonably be against a

technology - nuclear weapons, for instance - without in any sense

rejecting the

scientific understanding that underlies it. Science, in other words,

does not of itself determine our possible technological futures, which

are diverse and should be open to choice.

 

These reflections show both the scope and depth of Cook's analysis of

the arguments, metaphors, word choices and analogies deployed to promote

GM. Of course, reading Cook's book inevitably leaves one wondering what

Cook would glean from scrutiny of one's own language. Pro-GM scientists

are in no doubt that the critics of GM are guilty of all kinds of

rhetorical enormities but, even if that were so, there is a crucial

distinction.

 

Unlike campaigners, scientists are normally able to assume a privileged

communicative position thanks to their status as " experts " who,

supposedly, base their comments on objective evidence and scientific

expertise.This can give their statements an authority that elevates

their claims

and opinions above those of other people - something appreciated by

corporate PR departments who clearly understand the value of third party

endorsements by doctors and scientists.

 

And the authority of scientists can be made to carry well beyond their

specialism, as Cook notes. There is " a common contemporary supposition

that when a scientist speaks, in whatever forum, on whatever topic, and

in whatever style, something of his or her authority carries over into

other domains. In this way, science has come to be seen less as a way

of proceeding or a mode of thought, and more as the property of

particular people. "

 

This, it's worth noting, has been exploited by a number of pro-GM

scientists who have ventured well beyond their specialisms to hold

forth on

issues as diverse as organic farming, poverty reduction, free market

economics, and the role of the media. The inappropriate attribution of

expertise in such cases is not only something the popular media is guilty

of. The science journal Nature, for instance, has published not one but

three separate - and highly controversial - opinion pieces attacking

organic farming by Prof Anthony Trewavas - a molecular biologist.

http://ngin.tripod.com/trewavas.htm

 

But while the authority of a scientist like Prof Trewavas can be made

to extend well beyond his specialist sphere, the authority of scientists

who publish research which raises concerns about GM is stripped away

from them - even in the area of their own specialism! This is not a point

that Cook deals with in his book but his research helps us identify the

pattern of what is taking place.

 

Take, for instance, the so-called Mexican " maize scandal " , triggered by

the publication in Nature of research by the Berkeley scientists,

Ignacio Chapela and David Quist, showing GM contamination of native

Mexican

maize. The journal Science noted the part played in heightening the

controversy by " widely circulating anonymous e-mails " which accused the

researchers of " conflicts of interest and other misdeeds " . In one of the

first of these e-mails Dr Chapela was described as " first and foremost

an activist " rather than a scientist. The subject line of the e-mail

reinforced its message: " Ignatio (sic) Chapela - activist FIRST,

scientist second " .

 

It is not only an Associate Professor like Dr Chapela who can fall

victim to such verbal assaults. Eminence is no protection. When an expert

committee of the Royal Society of Canada produced a report on GM that

was not to the taste of proponents, it was savagely attacked by an

Associate Professor, Dr Douglas Powell, in an article in Canada's

National

Post, contributed as part of the paper's " Junk Science Week " . In the

article Powell dismissed the Royal Society's report as " a document that

more resembled a Greenpeace hatchet job than a reasoned analysis of the

science surrounding GM issues " .

 

The language of attack in both these cases is clearly intended to

exclude the offending scientists from the category of those capable of

impartial and rational assessment of scientific evidence, and to relocate

them in the category of pseudo-science and irrational opposition. This

serves both to scapegoat the scientists concerned and to remove the need

to deal with them and their findings on equal terms.

 

But something else is going on here beyond the choice of language. The

" anonymous " e-mails that initiated and fuelled the attacks on Dr

Chapela and his research were eventually tracked back to Monsanto and its

Internet PR company. And these e-mail fronts, it emerged, had also been

used as part of a much longer-running Internet-based PR campaign aimed at

destroying the reputation of anyone seen as adversely affecting the

interests of the biotechnology industry. The majority of these attacks

were posted prominently on AgBioView - the apparent list of choice for

pro-GM scientists.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=233

 

Cook's research helps to explain what it is about the mindset of pro-GM

scientists that makes them an easy target for this kind of

orchestration. What lies largely beyond the scope of Cook's study is

exactly how

these scientists acquired their particular herd mentality. I'd like to

suggest 3 books that may help to elucidate this.

 

The first is George Monbiot's 'Captive State' which, in considering the

corporate take over of Britain, tracks the drastic and deliberate

alteration in the culture of public science and the academy in recent

years,

particularly as regards the bio-sciences. Having an unelected

biotechnology investor and food industrialist as the UK's science

minister,

based within the Department of Trade and Industry, is more than

emblematic

of the corporate-science culture which has become entrenched not just

in the UK but which has become increasingly dominant in much of the

world.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=116

 

Monbiot shows how in the UK the industrial alignment of the biological

sciences began with a political quest to make the primary focus of

science its contribution to economic competitiveness. The goal of

building

businesses from genetics was consequently made central to the corporate

plan of the UK's public funding body for the bio-sciences - renamed

(with appropriate emphasis) the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences

Research Council (BBSRC). The BBSRC developed a strategy for integrating

scientific opportunity with the needs of industry - a strategy overseen

by a plethora of industry figures appointed to its boards. The BBSRC's

former Chairman was, for example, also a director of the GM giant

Syngenta. Guy Cook, incidentally, is not unaware of the psychological

impact

of this heavy emphasis on the commercialisation of science, suggesting

it may account to a large extent for the diminution in scientists'

minds of the distinction between science and technology.

 

The second book, 'The Arrogance of Humanism', considers a still more

deeply-seated malaise - what its author, the biologist David Ehrenfeld,

identifies as the irrational faith in human power and control to

rearrange the world of Nature and engineer our own future in whatever

way we

see fit. This faith in our own unlimited powers to remake the natural

world is, Ehrenfeld suggests, the dominant religion of our age. Its

arrogant and misplaced assumptions are presupposed in much of our public

discourse, whether it's about business, economic theory, politics,

science

or technology.

 

Although Ehrenfeld's book was first published in the late 1970s and so

doesn't have a lot to say about genetic engineering, this technology

clearly represents the apotheosis of the human command and control model.

To the faithful, this gives it an almost totemic value, and it's surely

here that we find the source of both the fervour and defensive zeal

that surrounds this technology, as well as of its ability to generate

utopian visions based on its apparently " limitless potential " to

engineer a

Nature truly remade.

 

The final book I want to mention also has only a limited amount to say

about genetic engineering. What Andy Rowell's 'The Green Backlash'

does, however, is show how industry dollars spawned a movement

(midwifed by

various PR outfits, think tanks and corporate front groups) aimed at

aggressively demonising those who raise environmental issues that

challenge big business. The coining of abusive terminology was a key

weapon in

this emerging campaign to marginalise the environmental movement. The

king of anti-environmentalist spin, Ron Arnold, told the New York

Times, " We created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to

exist. No

one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along. "

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=251

 

Prof Cook in his book draws attention to the remarkable similarities in

the discourse of pro-GM scientists and pro-GM politicians, particularly

in terms of how they portray opposition to GM. What Rowell's book

enables us to do is to identify the suite of pre-existing arguments,

stereotypes and linguistic formulations that are being drawn upon. It

also

shows how these were created and put into circulation with the deliberate

intention of infecting the rhetorical mainstream.

 

It's also important to recognise that this is a continuing process with

lobbyists playing a critical role in arming, maintaining and exploiting

the ideological perspective of pro-GM scientists. In the UK, for

instance, with the financial backing of GM and pharmaceutical

companies and

the blessing of pro-GM politicians, lobbyists have taken over

strategically important posts at the interface between scientists and

the public.

From here they can both " represent " and groom scientists, and court and

direct journalists to those scientists who can be relied upon to

endorse a pro-GM agenda. (See Rotten to the Core)

http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=2785

 

Not so long ago The Ecologist asked me to nominate my top ten books on

GM. Unfortunately, at the time I hadn't read Guy Cook's book or it

would have been right at the top. Not least because, taken together with

the other books I've mentioned, it provides an extraordinary insight into

the collective consciousness of Prof Bull***t & Associates.

http://ngin.tripod.com/pb.htm

 

 

Genetically Modified Language: The Discourse of Arguments for GM Crops

and Food, Guy Cook, Routledge, UK. Hb: 0-415-31467-4; Pb: 0-415-31468-2

- click here for details at amazon.com (USA)

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