If a chef said 'Baked goods are safe' in the face of a movement that claims that baking causes autism, cancer, AIDS (yes, really), and just about near every other disease, would you still trust that chef?

Do you really, honestly think farmers buy Roundup Ready crops so that they can just go and spray more herbicide for the hell of it? Yes, there are herbicide resistant crops, but the systems those are used in result in the replacement of other, harsher herbicides and the promotion of soil conserving no-till methods. When you put it in context, you find that it really isn't that bad of a thing at all. If anyone's got a better viable weed control strategy, I'm the agricultural community is all ears, but until then, herbicide resistant crops are a win.

Thing is, a lot of crops don't really work that way. Yes, it happens in some cases at low levels depending on the location and the species, but ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a population of feral corn just growing out in the wild? How much ecological risk is there in something that doesn't exist naturally in an area by adding an additional gene that really doesn't improve wild fitness? I can't prove that an ecological problem won't happen, but I can say that it does look very unlikely that genetic engineering is intrinsically prone to such things. It's complicated, but I feel that the fear is vastly overstating the actual risk.

Note even remotely how things work. Diversity is genetic sum of what you grow. Genetic engineering is a way of improving crops. They're not at all the same thing. What you are saying is like saying that spinning rims on cars are bad because it reduces the number of car models. It doesn't make any sense at all.

Oh like what? If you have evidence that there is some intrinsic deleterious effect of GE crops, show it. Otherwise, what you are doing is vacuous speculation. I could just as easily speculate on the 'unintended consequences' of vaccines, wifi, water fluoridation, or anything else I fell like opposing today, and it would be just as meaningless.

I call that deceiving people to advance an unscientific agenda.

Not quite. The insecticide in question is the Bt toxin. It has a very specific mode of action, affecting only coleopteran and lepidopteran insects, like European corn borer and cotton boll worm, and of course its only going to significantly affect the things that are actually eating the corn. Contrast that to insecticide sprays, and you get benefits in terms of field level insect biodiversity.

Evolution is just a theory. I demand it be labeled on textbooks.

A study once found a link between vaccines and autism. I demand that parents be informed prior to vaccinating their kids.

Is either of those anti-science? If so, why? I'm just giving people information.

Thing is, a fact taken out of context and presented to those without the basic background information is deceptive. You want to lie to the public to force your anti-science agenda.

Implying that GMO=patent and non-GMO-no patent. This is not the case. If you were well informed about the thing you wish to regulate,you'd already know that, and wouldn't be insinuating a falsehood. This is the problem here. Maybe the regulation of scientific matters should be left to those of us who actually understand the topic, and not put to popular vote of those who don't actually know the issue.

Oh, the corporate conspiracy card, that didn't take long. My university has often been accused of being part of that conspiracy. We're not, and it is an easily verifiable matter of public record, but the lovely thing about a conspiracy is that everything that disproves it is just part of the conspiracy. It's great for when you want to make wild claims with bugger all to back them.

I'd say its more like those who trust science and those who think science is a corporate conspiracy (see anti-vaxxers for reference). Just because a corporation uses something does not make that thing corporate in nature. Companies that sell GPS devices use relativity, but no one would ever bring up those companies in a physics discussion, unlike when the topic of genetic engineering and the related manufactroversy comes up.

Yes, accusing researchers of all being in a plot to make money. I've never heard anyone do that before. By the way, did you know that vaccination and climate change are also plots to make money?

People will say GE crops are bad if they can cross pollinate, bad if they can survive in the wild, bad if they can't cross pollinate, and bad if they can't survive on their own. Yay double standards.

Except you're wrong. That was not protecting Monsanto, it was protecting farmers from having to destroy their crops (conditional on regulatory approval) in the event a lawsuit challenged the deregulation of an already planted crop, as happened in the case of glyphosate resistant sugar beets. Of course, the GMO denialists, for whom everything is about the Monsanto conspiracy, decided to give that a clever and misleading name, Monsanto Protection Act, because they know bugger about the agricultural issues it centered around. But I'm sure Monsanto is so big and bad that lying to make you're wrong point is totally justified.

Which has absolutely nothing to do with genetic engineering. HGT happens, indeed it does, it's how we get things like pea aphids with fungus genes and sea slugs with algae genes, but it happens at an extremely small rate, and there is nothing particularly exceptional about a transgene that makes is any more or less to be transferred in such manner. That is a completely nonsensical line of thought that somehow HGT implies we should not use genetically engineered crops.

In theory, yes, it is possible that an herbicide resistance gene could jump to a weed species. In practice, that's not really a concern. The selection of herbicide resistant weed mutants is a very real and very serious problem, but that is a problem older than genetic engineering, does not occur via horizontal gene transfer, is not a problem intrinstic to GE crops but rather is due to poor resistance management strategies and over reliance (which is not the same as over use) on one mode of action of herbicide, and let me remind you, it is a problem because it threatens the benefits that those herbicide resistant crops already provide. Anti-GMO groups would have you believe that herbicide resistant crops are without benefit while simultaneously saying that herbicide resistant weeds which lessen the benefits of herbicide tolerant GMOs are these world ending 'superweeds'. In other words, they're bad because they have no benefits at all and they're bad because their benefits are diminishing. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

Plant scientist here. It absolutely is.

You're lying, You're not just ignorant, you're actively lying right now. Google the term 'GMO' and you will find tons of such claims very quickly. Hell, Jeffery Smith, one of the most notable anti-GMO activists, claims that GMOs promote AIDS. Acting as if the opposition is not claiming all sorts of bogus health scares is patently deceptive.

What IP problems? The fact that they receive a patent for a certain amount of years? You know, exactly like conventionally bred crops which have no such controversy. Yes, plenty of conventionally bred crops are patented so I guess you oppose conventional breeding too, otherwise you are being pretty selective in your logic. Patents that expire, like Monsanto's first GE soybean patent does in a few months? Or are you referring to the often claimed but completely false myth that Monsanto goes around suing small farmers if they get cross pollinated by GE pollen? Because if so, you don't have a leg to stand on. So tell me, what exactly is wrong with the IP issues surrounding GE crops, and what is your proposed fair alternative?

This right here is my big problem with the anti-GMO thing. You drop people who know bugger all about agriculture into a topic they don't understand and you get these sorts of misconceptions. Yes, some GE crops are resistant to certain herbicides (the other main type which you conveniently neglected to mention is insect resistant ones which require less insecticides). Sounds bad, I agree, but only because you have been dropped in the middle of a story you haven't been following from the beginning. Okay, you use more of one type of herbicide, like glyphosate or glufosinate, but you can use better weed management practices (like no till farming, which conserves soil nutrients and reduces runoff problems) and you use less of harsher herbicides like atrazine. I'd call that a win. Do you have abetter weed management solution?

An appeal to nature followed by an appeal to ignorance. I hope that's all I need to say about that. You could just as easily make the same claim about vaccines, wifi, fluoride, or damn near anything, and be just as wrong and for the same reasons. Also, you neglect to mention the very careful regulations these things already go through. How about you provide a good reason to suspect GE crops of being potentially intrinsically dangerous, rather than just saying that because I can't all-knowingly prove a negative that your point therefore has merit.

I hope I've demonstrated why the anti-GMO nonsense is exactly like the anti-vaccine nonsense.

The corporate conspiracy card doesn't make sense when anti-vaxxers use it, and it doesn't hold water here either. There is plenty of evidence demonstrating the safety and benefits of genetically engineered crops which have been published by independent sources. That the GMO denialists choose to ignore that or act as if big bad Monsanto somehow controls every single thing that goes against their ideology is their own self-made problem.

You shouldn't make assumptions. I work in plant breeding, an area where patents are very controversial, with an active anti-agriculture movement who often claims that there should be no patents on the plants people like me work hard to develop, and that people like me should work for free or not at all. I've got some nifty new things right now I hope get patented in due time. I've dealt with real anti-IP sentiment, I've defended patents and copyright in general at length, and I fully agree that those who say there should be no IP of any kind are just looking to get stuff, and are deluding themselves when they say everyone can simply stop paying for movies, games, programs, ect. and the creaters will still, somehow, get a return on their creative investment.

But that's not that this is about. The copyright system as it stands now is broken, and badly. I fully realize that creators should get control of their works for a time, but this 70 years after you die stuff...how is copyright on the works of someone who has been dead for half a century fostering the arts? I get that if someone dies their next of kin should be supported and all, I'm certainty not saying IP should be automatically terminated at death, but lets face it, that's not what's going on here is it?