SPECIAL ISSUES: BIOTECH

June 1, 2001

Understanding How Science Speaks Holds Key to Debate Over Biotechnology
By Napoleon Juanillo, Jr., assistant professor of Agricultural and Environmental Communications in the Department of Human and Community Development at the University of Illinois and participated in the Biotechnology Bootstrap Project in the U of I's Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics.

Agricultural biotechnology is a compelling example of how a technology that might be thought to be a beneficial scientific breakthrough can galvanize widespread public cynicism, resentment, and heated protests in many parts of the world. It has become "a lightning rod for visceral debate, with opposing factions making strong claims of promise and peril."

The new gene technology identifies desirable traits more quickly and accurately than traditional plant and livestock breeding. The incorporation of novel genes has already produced plants that are more tolerant to drought, salt stresses, toxic heavy metals, pests, and diseases. On February 22, 1997, the international community was compelled to come to terms with the spectacular progress of biotechnology when Dolly, the cloned sheep was introduced to the world. Dolly's creation immediately brought focus on a branch of science that is little known and less understood by the public at large. Having developed a mystique of its own, biotechnology fired the public's imagination with doomsday scenarios of scientifically-created cornucopia and monstrous disasters concerning Frankenstein food, designer babies, and Jurassic Park.

Consumer concerns for safety, environmental protection, equity, and ethics have triggered opposition to the increasing development, cultivation, and use of genetically modified crops. In Europe, where resistance is strongest, biotech food has emerged as a very explosive environmental issue. Activists in England have staged sit-ins and "decontaminations" in biotech field tests. Other protesters have destroyed dozens of field trials of genetically modified crops and throughout Europe the public has demanded that biotech food be labeled in the market.

In Japan, the world's largest importer of genetically modified crops, eight Japanese local governments eliminated genetically modified foods from school lunches as consumers grew skeptical about government safety checks. Some Japanese food processors have likewise started eliminating genetically modified ingredients from their products. Companies which have announced plans not to use genetically modified ingredients include makers of "tofu" soybean curd, soybean paste, soy protein food, and corn snacks.

In developing countries, opposition to agricultural biotechnology has been precipitated by fears of proprietary rights by the multinational agribusiness, erosion of biodiversity, and loss of farmers' autonomy and productive capacity. Global concern seems to have reached a crescendo in the militant, vociferous, and violent demonstrations at the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle, where groups of consumer and environmental activists railed that the WTO foists genetically modified food on them.

These examples of worldwide public reactions to biotechnology in the past two years make it imperative to understand the actors involved in this debate, the techniques by which they communicate their positions, and the underlying values behind such positions. For example, when most scientists or technical experts talk to the public about biotechnology, they offer a message that can be characterized as: biotechnology food is safe based on all available science. Such claims seek to convey to the audience that scientists' accounts and actions follow unquestionably from observable characteristics of the natural world.

Scientists also deploy another technique to argue for the benefits and safety of agricultural biotechnology. Often used in informal talks, this rhetorical technique allows scientists to attribute anomalies to extenuating variables, thus inferring that the state of nature could be otherwise if some factors or conditions were varied.

It allows scientists to offer a rebuttal using scientific evidence or appeals to scientific authority while simultaneously citing that variables beyond the realm of science are causing the ruckus. This technique has often been used to downgrade opponents' claims, including those of their peers, by citing factors such as psychological appeals, methodological lapses, or scientific biases, vested political or economic interests, or poor training as interfering with appraisal of evidence.

Not surprisingly science is presented to the public sphere as universal truth or certainty. Scientists downplay the uncertainties produced through experimental and data generation processes in order to appeal to what they perceive as the popular and traditional expectation of science as a definitive and objective source of knowledge. Interestingly, however, scientists are duty-bound among peers to proffer the caveats, limitations, and uncertainties inherent in laboratory-controlled experiments.

Whether biotechnology can reach its full potential as a socially acceptable technological breakthrough that can benefit mankind may depend on how well both consumers and producers of crops and livestock understand the way that risks are constructed, perceived, disentangled, and mitigated by the scientific community. It is only by understanding the way that scientists report "facts" to the public that we can assess the balance of risks and rewards from biotechnology and successfully deal with the arguments from the opponents of this new technology.

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