Talk:Genetically modified food/Archive 7

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Public Perception

The article currently makes no mention of public perception of GMO foods. This issue was raised above in the RFC discusssion, but since it doesn't directly apply to the rfc, I've started a separate discussion. A few past discussions on this issue have been brief: 1 and 2.

There are a number of references that cover public perception, but they have not been included in the article. Jytdog commented above on this, writing "public perception is well-covered in the top-most section GM food controversies article, here. this article is about GM food per se." But I do not see this as a clear distinction. The Organic food article has mentions of public perception. A number of other articles on controversial subjects integrate discussion of public perception into the main article. Perception is not in itself a controversy, simply a presentation of statistics. I think at a minimum there should be a brief mention in this article. Dialectric (talk) 01:31, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

there are many MANY things related to the controversy over GM foods that we could include in this article. Most of them end up bleeding over into other issues that are not about food per (environment, the relationship with other elements of intensive agriculture), IP rights (that are really about crops not food per se).. all the things we cover in the controversies article, regulation, labelling etc etc. Back in 2012-ish any article about related to GMOs had a disparate mash of all those issues, and there was almost no clear discussion of (starting from the bottom up

a) what is genetic engineering exactly?

b) what is a GMO and what organisms have been modified and why? ;

c) what are the actual GM crops that are used to produce food, how are they modified, where are they grown, etc;

d) what actual foods are there, that come from GM crops or other organisms (what the heck is GM food?)

e) what is the global regulatory scene on GMOs, so regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms

f) finally, what are all the controversies (GM food controversies) which touch on all of the above, often several at the same time?

each of the articles in a) - d) has a SUMMARY stub that leads to the articles in e) and f). This structure has kept the articles well-organized and clear. I am open to re-organizing them but it should be done thoughtfully so we don't end up with all the controversies bleeding all over everything, and thickets of conflicting/contradictory/unevenly updated content across all the articles. Very open to other ideas of how to meta-edit this suite of articles. Jytdog (talk) 01:59, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

As Tsavage wisely notes above,

Spinoff daughter articles should be used to handle subtopics in more detail, and shouldn't be used to remove practically all of the material from where it is directly relevant, to a different location - a comprehensive summary version of the most relevant material from daughter articles should be in the parent article. Currently, in this article, there is no real coverage of public perception, only a three-paragraph "Controversies" section, with one of those paragraphs mostly devoted to stating that there is broad scientific consensus that GM food is safe, and explaining how testing is done (no apparent reason why it's in that section). IMO, that 67% of the adult US population does not believe that scientists understand the risks of GM food[1], and the issue of the huge perception gap between public and science, seems to be directly about this subject, and should be here.

Basic guidelines such as WP:NPOV are being ignored, such as using much of the Controversy section to refute arguments from opposition, or not mentioning the arguments at all (a problem I tried to fix, but was reverted here with a highly dubious edit summary), and as Sarah SV writes in the RfC above, any nuance in the safety consensus argument that is noted by the reputable sources used to support the claim is ignored. Les Vegas gives further evidence for this here.

From past 'discussions' on the matter, I see that people at this talk page are making up rules out of thin air: There is constant temptation to add material to this article but such efforts often bring detail that doesn't rise to the Lead of the split articles and so shouldn't be here either.

My reverted edits 1 2 were meant to address the lack of basic information and updates, as well as the POV issue:

1) added mention of the USDA's announcement last month of their GM-free label program

2) added the reason labeling is considered controversial, explaining to the reader why it was mentioned in the Controversy section, by adding % of Americans favoring the idea of GM labels ("public perception")

3) moved the Safety Consensus statement, unchanged, into its own separate section in order to address the POV issue

There is no support in the guidelines for reverting my edit, except that I should have used this NYT article for #2. Unless I am mistaken, this article is not exempt from PAGs. petrarchan47คุก 23:41, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

the scope of any given article is determined by the consensus of the editors working on it. Like i said above, am open to discussion of other ways to keep the articles relatively organized and in WP:SYNC so they don't go all to thicket. Jytdog (talk) 23:58, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Per WP:YESPOV I am addressing the POV issue; what argument is being used to support including the Safety Consensus in the Controversy section? The two additions I made shouldn't be disallowed due to concerns about scope, as the labeling issue is roughly 1/4th of the section already. The problem is, it doesn't cover even the slightest hint as to why labeling is considered controversial. It is used as platform for the FDA's position and your unsupported consensus statement. petrarchan47คุก 01:35, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Objections?

If there are no policy-based objections to my (reverted) edit described above, I will reinstate the changes. Please add objection, reasoning, and any prior discussion if applicable below. petrarchan47คุก 19:03, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

article scope is something discussed and determined by consensus. you cannot change scope unilaterally. Jytdog (talk) 19:48, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Facepalm I'm thinking you didn't carefully read my reply above:

• Per WP:YESPOV I am addressing the POV issue; what argument is being used to support including the Safety Consensus in the Controversy section?
• Besides moving the Safety Consensus out of the Controversy section, the two additions I made shouldn't be disallowed due to concerns about scope, as the labeling issue is roughly 1/4th of the section already but it doesn't mention why labeling is seen as controversial. petrarchan47คุก 20:37, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Right, the section is currently a WP:SUMMARY of the controversies article, taken from its WP:EAD. Those topics are treated at length in that article. What is important, is keeping the articles in WP:SYNC. You haven't addressed how to re-arrange things, so that the articles hang together. Jytdog (talk) 21:07, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Wildly inaccurate take. Please be aware that WP:NPOV and WP:RS are the prevailing guidelines, and NPOV it is not being met by a long shot. Can you justify (5th time i've asked) adding the Safety Consensus statement to the Controversies section? It reads as a rebuttal, which is expressly forbidden. This can be solved by moving it into its own section, unchanged. Do you have objections to that move? petrarchan47คุก 04:54, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Alrighty, so no policy-based objections have emerged. Do editors agree that the Safety Section should be moved out from "Controversies" into its own section, or is there a more appropriate position that adheres to NPOV? petrarchan47คุก 20:36, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

This proposed approach turns editing into a labyrinthine nightmare. Remember, a fundamental Wikipedia principle is, editors should not need to read any rules in order to edit. This throws common sense editing out the window. You seem to be arguing that, once a daughter article is created, its lead controls the content in the parent article, the tail wags the dog. So rather than keep the higher level, presumably more important, more consulted article, in the best possible shape through direct editing, we have to edit the content of the daughter article, hope there is no objection to summarizing that content in the daughter article lead, and then sync that lead back to the section in the parent article. Frankly, this seems...preposterous for this subject area as it is now. --Tsavage (talk) 00:37, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

IMO, WP:SUMMARY should only be applied loosely for now, and higher level articles like this one, and linked subtopics, should be edited separately, content not deleted simply based on SUMMARY, and then syncing can occur in both directions. That way, higher level articles are not left lacking, on the way to eventually reorganizing things more efficiently. --Tsavage (talk) 02:17, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Even if the consensus ends up with finding that "broad scientific consensus" is not what the sources say (I don't see there being an agreement on the issue on this talk page so far.), that wouldn't warrant completely removing the statements from the respected scientific organisations and studies that were used as reference for the claim, like the edit linked above did. If consensus turns out to be too strong a statement or not completely following what the sources say, the should at least be something like "numerous scientific bodies have stated that food on the market derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food." I think completely omitting this would make the article introduction seem biased against GM crops. Øln (talk) 21:33, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

This edit did not touch the references to the safety statement, it simply moved the paragraph into a more neutral position within the article. You may be referring to a different edit? petrarchan47คุก 22:20, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I am telling you, the articles were a complete mess a few years ago, with thickets of content about the exact same ideas, sourced differently and saying different things, across all the articles, and almost all of it about the controversies instead of the subject matter. please propose a way to keep the articles organized and in SYNC. Neither of you are proposing anything to manage content across the articles. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 02:00, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I reverted the edit. With many fringe ideas being pushed by those opposed to GMOs, we need to be careful about presenting controversy and legitimizing some arguments. In this case, we can't be spreading around different ideas to different sections even if we were going to disregard WP:SUMMARY. In terms of organization, food safety is largely a non-issue outside of controversy topic, so the controversy section and article seems to be the best home for it the topic. Kingofaces43 (talk) 02:28, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Edit in question. petrarchan47คุก 03:31, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

So you admit this safety section is being used not to neutrally convey information, but to refute the "other side" - a side which isn't presented at all. I understand that there are folks engaged here who have strong passions about the topic, however as WP editors those have to be repressed in leiu of the guidelines. From WP:YESPOV

"Achieving what the Wikipedia community understands as neutrality means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of certain points of view, but including all verifiable points of view which have sufficient due weight."

Arguments made thus far supporting a "GMOs are totally safe" statement in the middle of the controversy section are that this article used to be a mess, and that 'fringe ideas are being pushed by anti GMO editors', or that SYNC is the prevailing guideline. This does not make sense to me. It is shocking to hear people overtly defending the use of this carefully crafted safety claim as a prophylactic refutation of big bad meanies out there ready to ruin this article. I am also shocked at the amount of hoops one must jump through to even attempt to apply NPOV or to make an update (such as the USDA's new GMO labeling program) to this article. It feels as if there are owners of the article, but that they aren't playing by the same rules we wikpedians go by. I have been asking on this talk page for well over a week (in the WHO section as well as this one) whether there were policy based objections to my edit, and none came forth. Instead you let me go to the trouble and then revert me. This is disrespectful. Without the guidelines as our guide, I am truly at a loss. petrarchan47คุก 03:04, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I was refering to this edit, I didn't see that there was another one adding in the statement elsewhere, so ignore that. Having statements from respected scientific bodies in the controversies section makes sense as it's what the section is about. As for the other issue, I do think it makes sense to have a statement about perception in this section to guide the reader, as it is more widely covered in the linked Genetically modified food controversies article. It ought to be brief though, and not be too US-centric, maybe there are some meta-studies on perception out there?Øln (talk) 03:35, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

@Kingofaces43: I disagree with your reversion, and your position. Obviously, a GM food article needs a food safety section. Your arguments supporting reversion are hard to follow:

• "we can't be spreading around different ideas to different sections" There is no template for this topic. Organizing information is what we do. The meaning of "spread around" in this context is unclear, is certain information supposed to be concentrated in a certain way or location?
• "food safety is largely a non-issue outside of controversy topic" GM food safety is a huge mainstream current issue. Asking and answering a simple question, "Is GM food safe?" is not "controversial." Content editing may become contentious, but the actual content of a food safety section is not "controversial." The controversy, the dispute, the disagreement, is the debate between opposing sides.

The suggestion here seems to be, don't put safety information under a logical heading for the reader, put it where it can fight FRINGE, which seems to reduce article quality, and is kind of bizarre. --Tsavage (talk) 11:32, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE and WP:NPOV mean that we need to present the mainstream view when discussing fringe viewpoints. That is how we handle the controversy, which is indeed notable. Nothing bizarre about that.

As for the food safety comment, it's not a particularly notable topic once you get outside of the controversy. We don't include a safety section by default for every crop or food out there. It's really only because of the fringe viewpoints (even if it's a large percentage of the public) out there pushing the issue so much that safety is notable within the controversy itself.Now if someone wanted to start writing a section/article about the essentially "default" risks we face in breeding and consuming food and walking through how GM largely isn't any different in terms of risk, that could have some potential, but for now the content fits better in the controversy section.

Overall, the edits currently being discussed do not establish the weight for such a section and still run into the issue of removing important weighting information from the controversy section. If someone has an issue with having a controversy section, it's probably best to work around it first and create homes for the content first rather than the other way around. I generally prefer to see controversy sections integrated, but this is one topic that is large enough when its own article does seem warranted, not to mention that the set up allows the fringe viewpoints to be presented (instead of not at all) while also putting them in the context of NPOV. That's a more important goal in terms of an encyclopedia compared to how the pages are arranged. Kingofaces43 (talk) 22:46, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

It is bad style to have controversies sections. Safety requires its own section and it can address any controversies. The same with all the other issues they arouse controversy. TFD (talk) 21:26, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

here is the article before we started working on the re-arrangements. That version of the article mooshes together GM crops, controversies, regulation, etc.... and there is no discussion of what GM food actually is. The current article explains very clearly what GM foods are. There was no separate article on GM crops at that time nor anything that explained how GM crops are used by farmers nor why. I am open to re-organizing things but it should be thoughtful. There has been a separate article on GM food controversies since 2007 with content that overlapped the other articles and wasn't SYNCed. Jytdog (talk) 23:52, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

In many ways, I find the old article MUCH more comprehensive, readable and informative than the current version, it just needs some editing (not tearing apart). I can itemize some examples if you like. --Tsavage (talk) 00:16, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, please, and in a new (sub) section for clarity would be good. petrarchan47คุก 01:27, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Hahaha. Well, I had already written this after checking out Jytdog's link, but didn't post it because I didn't want to create another "wall of text" if it didn't seem like it would be helpful (there's more like that in a kinda long text file; I type quickly). Since you ask, IMHO... --Tsavage (talk) 14:30, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Comparison of pre-rearrangement article with current version

The problem here is that, in the reorganization - the mooshed version mentioned by Jytdog above, much useful information that should be in THIS article has been lost, moved elsewhere, replaced by content that often conveys much less, or gets overly specific and detailed. Just a couple of examples:

First paragraph of Method (now Process) from mooshed version linked above: Genetic modification involves the insertion or deletion of genes. In the process of cisgenesis, genes are artificially transferred between organisms that could be conventionally bred. In the process of transgenesis, genes from a different species are inserted, which is a form of horizontal gene transfer. In nature this can occur when exogenous DNA penetrates the cell membrane for any reason. To do this artificially may require transferring genes as part of an attenuated virus genome or physically inserting the extra DNA into the nucleus of the intended host using a microsyringe, or as a coating on gold nanoparticles fired from a gene gun. However, other methods exploit natural forms of gene transfer, such as the ability of Agrobacterium to transfer genetic material to plants, and the ability of lentiviruses to transfer genes to animal cells.

That clearly illustrates that there are different GM methods, how they work, and how they relate to naturally occurring modification, and is easily tweaked for to make even less technical. In the current version, the equivalent (Process) is a total of three sentences:

Genetically engineered plants are generated in a laboratory by altering their genetic makeup and are tested in the laboratory for desired qualities. The most common modification is to add one or more genes to a plant's genome. Less commonly, genes are removed or silenced. To me, that verges on no additional information to what we can use editorial common sense to assume most readers more-or-less know already.

The History section has a different problem, inserting several paragraphs of essentially extraneous material that serves to distract more than inform about the central topic, before getting to the point:

First sentences from mooshed version: Scientists first discovered that DNA can transfer between organisms in 1946. It is now known that there are several mechanisms for DNA transfer (horizontal gene transfer) and that these occur in nature on a large scale - for example, it is a major mechanism for antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria. The first genetically modified plant was produced in 1983, using an antibiotic-resistant tobacco plant.

First sentences from current History: Food biotechnology is a branch of food science that seeks to improve foods and food production. Biotechnological processes include industrial fermentation, plant cultures and genetic engineering. and continues for two more paragraphs, talking about food tech used by the Sumerians and Babylonians, and so forth, before getting to GE. Especially in a hot button topic with potentially unfamiliar concepts, we should stick to the main point.

In the mooshed version of the article, there is a "Genetically modified foods" sections with a table of crops and their GM details (which now appears in Genetically modified crops). In its place in the current version is "Relation to food," which is a long, unevenly written and not too readable collection, organized in three levels of subsections, with several molecular charts, and subsections devoted to details like soy protein isolate.

The mooshed version, while quite wide-ranging, has much more readable material, while the current version may fit a flow chart of more orderly reorganization, but IMO dramatically reduces the overall readability and amount of useful, accessible information suited to this article, a high-level overview of GM foods. At about 8,000 words/50k of readable text, the mooshed version was just at the line when page division might be considered (per WP:SIZERULE), so there wasn't any urgent need to chop it up. Judicious in-article editing would have seemed a better choice at that time, and I don't think it's fair or accurate to cite the mooshed version as an example of a seriously deficient version of the current article: the old version clearly sets out what GM food is, in IMO an overall more informative and accessible way than the current version. The old version also includes the main sources for "scientific consensus" on saftey discussed in the RfC above, without using that phrase. --Tsavage (talk) 14:36, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Two quick comments: (besides thank you for this work) I hope that attempts to silence or muffle any editors are ignored completely, and would you mind if I moved this into its own section? I was wrong to suggest it should be a subsection here. petrarchan47คุก 19:09, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

No, I don't have any objection to moving this section into its own section. --Tsavage (talk) 20:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Tsavage's analysis here. Older versions of the GM articles were much better than the ones coming in recent years, which sound increasingly like PR, where important details are left out and bland almost meaningless and vague abstract phrases have replaced them. Your first example is an excellent example. While examples like the above reduce and remove useful information, other sections have been expanded with details which have the effect of distracting from the core material, such as the "3.1.3.2 Protein isolate" which seems more like a free ad for the product rather than anything for the purpose of understanding GMO. David Tornheim (talk) 19:34, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

• if you all would like some different way to structure the content across the articles, please propose something. Jytdog (talk) 19:48, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

• sync does not prevail over creating a readable, informative article. once that is done, the daughter articles can easily be tweaked. pleas stop misrepresenting guidelines and doing anything else that stalls the editing process. petrarchan47คุก 22:55, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Petrarchan, please stop casting WP:ASPERSIONS and making assertions about editors on article talk pages (it stalls the editing process by not focusing on content). If you have a beef about editor behavior, take it to the appropriate forum like the respective user page or ANI. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:29, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

it absolutely has worked well, to keep content in WP:SYNC. Jytdog (talk) 23:45, 10 June 2015 (UTC)