Translated material
How I went to hell
When I agreed to go to the program “Time will tell” on Channel One (Russia), I did not feel the illusions that a special sense would come of it. I hoped that I would say a few words for common sense and there would be a little public benefit from this. I was ready to sacrifice my mental health for the good goals of enlightenment. But on the program itself, it was impossible to do this.
This is what hell looks like. A crowd of screaming "experts", for the most part, there are no concepts of what they are talking about. Horses, people, horseman in meat, flounder genes in tomatoes, nitrites and nitrates, sugar substitutes and glutamate, fast food, organic sausage and low -fat sour cream were mixed into a heap. Everyone argued about how exactly we were poisoned, accepting for the fact that we are an oily nation (in the studio there were three people with a significant excess weight, which did not really correspond to the given statistics, but not the essence).
Fire was conducted in the squares. If you accept what has been said by the “experts” for a pure coin, it would turn out that there is nothing at all, because it was consistently “proved” the harm of more or less all food products. The only salvation is to “look carefully at the label” and “do not take anything with chemistry”. However, they write anything on the labels, a falsifier around, and the regulatory authorities, which only do, are taking bribes, and hide the truth. Just some kind of industry of fear, not TV. Maybe the calculation that intimidated people think less?
One lady who demanded all the most persistent microphone and screamed louder: "Falsifier!" - I proposed to abolish the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, and the released money is directed to the production of “quality” products. Apparently, because with good food, we will stop hurting, yeah. Another lady advertised an organic economy. Useful food that will help not get fat, apparently. It seems that she was the most complete in the hall. And there was a man who was going to look for GMOs. With the help of a vine.
In the speeches of some participants, including deputies, one could clearly see the famous effect of Danning - Kruger . This is a “metacognitive distortion, which consists in the fact that people with a low level of qualifications draw erroneous conclusions, make unsuccessful decisions and are not able to realize their mistakes due to the low level of their qualifications” [1]. It leads to their excessive ideas about their own abilities, while truly highly qualified people, on the contrary, are inclined to underestimate their abilities and suffer from insufficient confidence in their abilities, considering others more competent.
They gave me just once, after the video about the horrors of GMOs, in which the rats of Seralini were again shown. (Well, how much can these exposed studies be repeated? See [2].) True, this time added that there was also criticism of these studies (in the previous program they did not mention it) - from the company Monsanto (Facepalm). They also showed a tomato with a needle stuck in it - as if GMOs were doing this.
I decided to spend a minute I highlighted as efficiently as possible, that is, to tell a joke. The program is "humorous." Stone Age. Two people sit in a cave and fried a mammoth. One says to the other: “Something is wrong-the air and everything else is environmentally friendly around, and everything that we eat is natural, organic, but for some reason no one lives longer than thirty” (in fact, the average life expectancy in the Paleolithic, according to anthropologists, was 33 years, but the argument, I hope, is clear).
Never in the history of mankind people have lived as long as in modern developed countries. We never had such a safe food. A huge number of groundless horror stories, such as those that were told in the program (not only about GMOs), are needed in order to intimidate people, and then ten times more expensive to sell them “safe” food with senseless labels.
If there was a little more time, I would add the following: you need to be afraid not of “chemistry” (although, generally speaking, everything is chemistry), but “biology”-pathogenic microorganisms, which are precisely cope with the help of preservatives.
The host, in response to my replica that “in the USA and Australia they have been using GMOs for a long time,” objected something like this: “And what's with their heads after that?” No comments.
After my performance, the flame of hell was not going to subside on the program. Baroeing GMOs (which are actually not barren) lead to infertility. They must be prohibited. Logic, apparently, is this: it is clear that a person can boil if a boiled egg is eaten, isn't it? One lady talked for a long time about what terrible GMOs, but to my question: "What is GMO?" - I could not answer or did not want to. Another lady said that no one conducted research on GMOs (well, of course). How can you talk about topics in which you do not understand anything? Moreover, when I asked a girl sitting next to a microphone to give me a word for a comment on the topic of my specialty, she answered me: “While enough.”
The next dialogue between the leading and present doctor was very indicative.
- Can you say as a physician that GMO is one hundred percent safe to use?
- I will reveal you a secret: doctors cannot say anything with one hundred percent probability ...
- All! After such words, I definitely do not want to eat GMO!
This is a very old technique that is used against honest scientists and generally decent people. Indeed, with one hundred percent probability it is impossible to even say that it is safe to read the text in which the word “GMO” is used, such as this (this joke [3] is beaten on the cover of my book, where a warning sign is placed: “The book contains GMOs”). The correct answer is this: I share the position of the World Health Organization: compared with traditional similar products, products made using commercially available genetically modified organisms do not have any additional risks for the health of citizens.
Among the "experts" was the famous Irina Ermakova, the main fighter with GMOs in Russia (also known as a supporter of the idea that men came from German-German Amazons). At some point, I was warned that we "would have to argue." But in the end, they did not give us to argue: I. Ermakov had nothing against my speech, and they did not allow her to answer her subsequent remarks about how GMO kills cattle in Europe.
It never occurred to any of those present to question the proposed plots (several sane voices were, but they were interrupted, and in general they were not heard). No critical thinking. No desire to figure it out. And the worst: it is considered normal. It is normal when, for the entire program about food on the central television channel with coverage of millions of people, not a single scientific argument, not a single useful council, not a single reliable fact, did not sound. And we are engaged in popularization here.
But there was some benefit from the campaign on TV. My article in the “Live Journal” about how I visited Hell [4], scored thousands of likes and reposts on social networks, went to the top and, in my opinion, attracted a lot of attention to the problem of the negative impact of some programs of federal television channels on education in our country.
Alexander Panchin
2. Panchin A. GMO increases the life expectancy of males of rats // TRV-hobby. No. 114 of October 9, 2012.
3. Panchin A. This text contains GMO ! // TRV-hobby. No. 116 of November 6, 2012.