A profile of the anti-GMO activist Vandana Shiva in The New Yorker in August by Michael Specter has drawn a blistering, 5,000-word rebuttal from Shiva, who accuses Specter of “character assassination,” a “tool used by those who cannot successfully defend their message.”
The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, shot back in turn with a rebuttal in which he concedes a few minor errors but otherwise completely dismisses Shiva’s criticism. It begins:
This is in reply to the letter you sent and subsequently posted on the Internet earlier this week. It is not for publication in any way or on your website, but I thought you were asking for a serious reply. So here it is: I should say that since you have said that the entire scientific establishment has been bought and paid for by Monsanto, I fear it will be difficult to converse meaningfully about your accusation that the story contained “fraudulent assertions and deliberate attempts to skew reality.” But maybe I am wrong; I’ll try.
Remnick then went on to give a point-by-point reply to Shiva’s objections.
Shiva charges that Specter’s profile “contains many lies and inaccuracies that range from the mundane (we never met in a café but in the lobby of my hotel where I had just arrived from India to attend a High Level Round Table for the post 2015 SDGs of the UN) to grave fallacies that affect people’s lives.” Perhaps, she continues, “the article was intended as a means to strengthen the biotechnology industry’s push to ‘engage consumers.’”
Faye Flam thought quite the opposite. In a late-August post on Specter’s piece, she wrote that it is “a textbook lesson in how to write about someone who is misguided in some science-related arena without succumbing to the perils of false-balance.” She noted that when Shiva claimed an association between autism, GMOs, and the herbicide glyphosate, Specter did not simply ask a scientist for balancing comment. He reported that the association was meaningless:
Hundreds of millions of people, in twenty-eight countries, eat transgenic products every day, and if any of Shiva’s assertions were true the implications would be catastrophic. But no relationship between glyphosate and the diseases that Shiva mentioned has been discovered. Her claims were based on a single research paper, released last year, in a journal called Entropy, which charges scientists to publish their findings. The paper contains no new research.
Specter reports, as he should, that Shiva is hugely influential, “a hero for anti-GMO activists everywhere.” He writes that she believes Monsanto has conspired with the World Bank, the U.S. government and others to impose “food totalitarianism” on the world. He tells us that she transfixed listeners at a meeting in Florence. But everywhere that he reports her views, he follows with conflicting statistics. He also acknowledges, at one point, that “those statistics have not deterred Shiva.”
Remnick’s concessions were trivial. “I regret that we suggested you were in Greece when you were not,” and “nobody disputes that you received a master’s degree in physics and I’m sorry we didn’t note that in the piece. Nonetheless, Mr. Specter ‘twisted’ neither your words nor your intentions when writing about your work history.”
It was gratifying to read this defense of a reporter by his editor. The days of arrogant editors or writers saying only that they “stand by the story” are long gone, and they should be. I don’t know how many people will read Remnick’s rebuttal, but it’s good to have it on the record. The non-profit Genetic Literacy Project, which published the rebuttal, noted that Remnick described it as a private communication, but it says that The New Yorker “decided to release it after Dr. Shiva published her criticism.”
The New Yorker is far from alone in criticizing Shiva’s claims and distortions. Mischa Popoff, a political columnist at The Heartland Institute, noted in a recent column that Shiva has embraced the baseless claim that “GMOs are causing a mass genocide” in India, a claim that Specter also addresses in his piece.
And Keith Kloor, author of the Collide-a-Scape blog at Discover, has repeatedly challenged the claims of the anti-GMO activists, including in this post published in August.
Specter’s piece is a fair and accurate report on an activist whom we should be watching. However improbable her claims might seem, many thousands of people believe her. Somebody needs to tell them that much of what she says is wrong. That’s what Specter did. And that’s what Remnick endorsed.
-Paul Raeburn
From Dr. Marineau’s blog:
Feynman said that scientists should not “only tell what’s true
but…make clear all the information that is required for somebody else
who is intelligent to make up their mind” about how to use a technology.
He also said that technology “carries with it no instructions on how
to use it, whether to use it for good or for evil” and that how to
control technology “is something not so scientific and is not something
that the scientist knows so much about.”
Belinda thinks that scientists could be doing a better job of making
“clear the entire situation” about the science supporting agricultural
biotechnology and she hopes to help rectify that situation with this
blog. She also plans to take off her scientist’s hat and participate in
discussions about how best to use and control the powerful technology of genetic engineering.
http://biotechsalon.com/about/
I think, at this point, with the anti-gmo resistance against lifesavers, such as goldenrice, the anti-gmo’ers are killing more people than the anti – vaccine movement.
The antiGMO nuts are almost as irritating as those who continue to claim, faced with overwhelming facts to the contrary, that autism is linked to vaccines.
What points in the “industry line” did Specter toe? Did he toe emotional or judgmental points that are unsupported by evidence? I didn’t see that.
I’m really glad to have seen at least an attempt to hold activists to accountability. It’s very hard to do, and many writers in this arena seem to give them a lot more credibility and ink than they would on another topic with similarly wild claims (say, vaccines).
GIve the world a break, Paul. You quote a political columnist for the climate change denying, Monsanto-lobbying The Heartland Institute as an authority on GMOs? The MSM’s knee-jerk defense of Monsanto’s use of science to harm world agriculture is repulsive. There were many ways that the New Yorker article could have been written. It did not need to be a hit piece. Clearly, however, it was not even fact-checked!
“However improbable her claims might seem, many thousands of people believe her. Somebody needs to tell them that much of what she says is wrong.”
I wonder what the value in the original piece, and subsequent reply, are. An article saying someone is promoting wrong information seems purely malicious when it does not also address the issue at hand? GMOs may not be causing genocides, but Monsanto and their tremendous global destructive impact is nothing to sneeze at. The articles do come across as supporting this kind of corporate control simply because they do not address it, or acknowledge the heart of the work that Shiva does and its legitimacy.
Of course it was fact-checked. And it was in no way a hit piece — unless you’re a person who just can’t stand to have his pre-conceived point of view challenged. Thank goodness Michael Specter exposed Vandana Shiva. The rest of the MSM has been afraid to take her on and the “progressive” media is totally in bed with the anti-GMO folks, so they are not challenging anything.
No, you did not “simply ask a question.” You didn’t even provide me the courtesy of reading what I’d written.
And yes, my conclusion is as I said before: scientists find what they look for.
For example, my understanding is that industry has been very circumspect on releasing specific information related to the proteins and polypeptides released due to these gene insertions. This could have long-range effects, especially regarding immunogenecity.
These trans species proteins/polypeptides produced within the food are atypical to the food typically made from that species.
Again, maybe even with good, high-powered studies looking into potential adverse health effects, it might be decided that the overall gain from certain GMOs is worth it. But it still is important to know what we are reckoning with.
What facts did I not get straight? I simply asked you a question.
Many studies of health effects are carried out over many years, and no evidence of harm emerges. And your conclusion is what? That they didn’t look hard enough?
“Journalists are supposed to be watchdogs.” True, but you cannot assume a priori which side should be watched. In this case the dog was barking at a global celebrity.
Snippet, and this is just Monsanto v. organic farmers: http://blog.whyhunger.org/2012/02/organic-farmers-take-monsanto-to-court/
And here is some about their presence in Haiti: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-bell/haitian-farmers-commit-to_b_578807.html
Big ag is no joke. Farmers are really struggling — It’s a sad irony that those who grow our food are some of the most likely to be low-wage workers.
cites please
Organic Farmers v. Monsanto. You should check the court records and not a blog. They were unable to prove Monsanto was suing farmers without just cause. The irony of the Haiti situation was that they burned non-GMO seed. It was conventionally produced hybrid seeds that they were giving away to the Haitian people. You need better cites.