RANT: If you say just follow the money! in response to a contention about someones political views or advocacy (someone agreeing with biotech must have been bought by agribusiness for sure), and you consider this to be any sort of deep revelation.... I HAVE A BATHTUB AND TOASTER COMBO YOU SHOULD TRY. Easiest refutation: most of the the organic vegan anti-GMO crowd (which accuses any opponents of being corporate shills) have arrived at their very strong intellectual positions COMPLETELY WITHOUT BEING PAID OFF. If you try to follow the money with most of these people, youre bound to realize that most of them simply WANT to think this way, and have not been paid off by giant organic foods corporations. So it turns out money is not the only possible motivating factor for a position. Other factors can include: - Pre-existing intellectual bias (desire to believe the reality is a certain way) - Use of evidence to draw conclusions (letting evidence show the way) - Trying to fit in (not having any ideas of your own) - Repeating false mantras innocently (youve only been exposed to biased data sources and have not seen the whole picture) So is following the money a good idea? Sure. It can shed possible light on motivation to advocate a certain idea. But JUST FOLLOW THE MONEY ignores all of the above-mentioned reasons to believe/advocate and borders on being very, very idiotic. So how about we all just follow the evidence... I think thats probably the better option if absolute statements are you kick. SIDE NOTE: If you consistently accuse pretty much all corporations of buying up scientist and journalists to support the ideas that sell them more products, you are reasoning at the level of an 11 year old. DO YOU KNOW HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO BRIBE PEOPLE AND KEEP THEM QUIET!??! Whats to stop a reporter from approaching Monsanto and getting a bribe to write favorable articles, or a scientist to do favorable research, and for them to come out and go public with the attempted bribe?! This would make them HEROS and VERY RICH from speaking tours and documentaries!!!! It would also make future bribing very expensive, and perhaps prohibitively so for such companies... the risk of exposure is MASSIVE and the costs are CRAZY. Bribery confirmed in the US for a large agribusiness? Watch that stock price drop and CEOs hang themselves. Does corporate bribery happen in the US and other modern economies? YES. Is it widespread enough to meaningfully alter the state of science and journalism on a topic? Almost never. So next time you accuse people of taking money in exchange for favorable opinions... you had better have some good evidence of actual conspiracy... not just an assumption that the conspiracy is everywhere, mannnnn. UGH.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 21:00:06 +0000
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