> Someone has already said that scientists can no longer be trusted.  That's
> a broad statement which rings of truth.  In my view, what passes for
> science under the control of well financed vendors, has confused almost
> everyone by dispensing with peer review, the scientific method, and by
> politicizing the research process. Through effective advertising, those
> same vendors sell the resulting pseudo-science at the expense of others
> who do real objective science an much smaller budgets.
>
I think we need to be careful about the issue of trust. While there are a
number of issues in becoming a scientist that reduce the number of
dishonest scientists, they still exist. There are also a number of things
within the workings of science that reduce dishonest results.

The flip side of this is that we are starting to use science as the only
tool available to us. Science is a great tool, but it has limitations. We
also need to learn to understand what is being said by science.

For example if the statement "there are no known problems with GM
products" is made we cannot take that as "there are no problems with GM
products". If more information were to be given, "There are 10,000
possible problems with GM products and we have eliminated the risks in
5,000 of them", we would have a different outlook.

Here is one other thing to consider with GM that I think was left off
another post. If a plant has say 50 different genes and we replace one of
these genes with a new GM version, and the version produces a plant that
pushes out the rest of that plants population due to its survial
advantage, then we will eliminate a good deal of the diversity of that
species and expose it to any pest that overcomes the GM advantage.