Tag Archives: Neil deGrasse Tyson

GMOs: worse risk of ruin than nuclear power –Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Because Genetically modified crops risk widespread ruin, they should not be permitted without far greater scientific knowledge, for which the burden of proof falls on those proposing GMOs, not those opposing, say experts in risk and ruin.

Risk management or mitigation may work for localized harm, but GMOs risk widespread systemic damage, which is ruin, and to prevent that the precautionary principal is needed:

if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing severe harm to the public domain (such as general health or the environment), and in the absence of scientific near-certainty about the safety of the action, the burden of proof about absence of harm falls on those proposing the action.

A paper by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and co-authors lays out Continue reading

Short-term profit misusing technical know-how beyond understanding of nature –Cosmos

Another Cosmos script Neil deGrasse Tyson read maybe he should have paid more attention to regarding the situation with short-sighted corporate monopolies misusing cherry-picked science to promote their profits at the expense of all of us and the only planet we’ve got.

Talking about the fall of the ancient Mesopotamia civilization, the script Dr. Tyson read for Cosmos Episode 11, The Immortals, says: Continue reading

N.deG. Tyson falls for the misuse of the authority of science that he decried in Cosmos

In his recent misstatements about GMO foods, Neil deGrasse Tyson has fallen for what he called the misuse of the authority of science, in Episode 7 of Cosmos, the Clean Room, which recounted Clair Patterson’s discovery of lead pollution by leaded gasoline. That use of lead had been promoted and defended by Robert E. Kehoe’s “scientific” papers.

The script Tyson read (but did not write) said: Continue reading