Talk:Genetically modified crops/Archive 1

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was no immediate response, so I decided to be bold

Hi I have been working on the Genetically modified food article and found it unwieldy because so much of it dealt with agricultural issues, which are quite different from food issues. For example, whether the amount of herbicide used has gone up or down since the advent of GM crop farming, is more or less irrelevant to food per se. I found that there was a page called Genetically Modified Crops which was really what was needed for much of the content, but it was blank and redirected to Genetically Modified Food. I took away the redirect, and performed a split to take out the agricultural content from the GM Food article. When I was finished, I stumbled on the already existing, but (in my view) poorly named, Genetically modified plant article. Much of that article also deals with agricultural issues. Let's combine these two so that we have the agricultural stuff in one place and the food stuff in another place. Tidy! Jytdog (talk) 02:43, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I went ahead and did the merger as there was no immediate response and the content needed merging so I decided to be bold and just do it. Happy to discuss renaming the combined page or any other changes!Jytdog (talk) 18:59, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Genetically modified organisms-related articles

The articles this discussion should concern:

The concept of genetically modifying organisms (especially crops/food) is a fairly controversial topic, so I would imagine that the articles get a fair amount of visitors. That said, I want to point out some issues to the articles that could be fixed. I've assigned numbers to each suggestion/issue, so that they can be discussed in separate sections.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yutsi (talk • contribs)

Quick comment. I have been checking page hits
First as a reality check
the Katy Perry article avg is about 17,000 hits per day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/katy%20perry
More seriously the article on China has about 20,000 hits a day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/china
Of the articles you mention....
GM foods is highest ballpark avg 2200 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food
GM organisms avg is about 2000 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20organism
genetic engineering is about 2000 as well http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetic%20engineering
GM food controversies has been big of late but still avg only about 1000 hits (recent increase may be Seralini press release, California referendum.. I'd like to think it is because I have concentrated information there
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food%20controversies
GM crops is pretty small, maybe 500 average. As I note below, I don't think people actually care about agriculture.
They care about food and the contoversies. Right?
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20crops
Regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms is the smallest, maybe 70. I think the title of this article is terrible but have not tackled renaming it.
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Regulation%20of%20the%20release%20of%20genetic%20modified%20organisms
The title name is fine. There are regulations that govern approval to work with GM organisms and regulations that set the protocols and restrictions while they are being developed and tested. This article is about the regulations governing the release of these organism into the environment. I was working on a parent article and will release it (unfinished most likely) to mainspace soon. AIRcorn (talk) 02:15, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
So.. not sure if that meets your idea of "fair number of visitors". :) Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
Frankly my dear... If an article gets 10 hits a day on average IMO it earns its place in WP. This is supposed to be an encyclopaedia, not a tabloid rag. Not every word in a dictionary gets looked up every single day, and some of the most valuable entries are exactly the entries that one has difficulty finding anywhere else, sometimes because nowhere else bothers to publish them. Let's not fall into the trap of "I wish people would stop pestering us for X; we don't stock X; there is no demand for it!" As long as we can produce articles with intrinsic substance and significance and with a decent presentation of information and relevance, our only reaction to a low hit count should be to check whether it could be better presented to strike the eye of potential readers. JonRichfield (talk) 08:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
sarcasm my dear! I think you misunderstood my point. I have spent hours working on these pages - I want them to accurate because I believe wikipedia should always be excellent, regardless of whether the topic is "popular". You got more to my point with your last remark - and that is, how used are these pages? Relative to "popular" topics, and relevant to each other? Why is the regulation article - the one I would hope people read and learn about a lot, so rarely consulted? And my comment about "not sure if that meets you definition of fair number" - I really meant that - I have no idea what Yutsi had in mind when he said that. I like data and hard numbers so I put them out there.Jytdog (talk) 01:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Crossed wires my dear, I suspect. The nearest I came to deliberate acerbity was in rejecting any idea that a low hit rate was a priori a basis for questioning the justification for an article's existence. Sure, if large numbers of people read important topics, that looks good and we should aim for it, but for a lot of really vital technical topics it is fashionable to raise Cain chanting meaningless slogans in the streets, but God forbid that anyone should actually take time learning what it really is all about. (GMO-hatred is not the only such topic, mind you!)



Issue 1

hi read this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Purebuzzin (talk • contribs) 11:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Additional note. I just read the WP:SELFREF and I don't agree that anything here violates it. It is 100% OK to say "this article refers to X" What is not OK, is to write, "This Wikipedia article refers to X". That does not occur. The policy also teaches away from self-references that would not work in other media, for instance, in print. None of the instances do that either. So I disagree that anything violates WP:SELFREF. Jytdog (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks for raising these issues. I have done a lot of work on this suite of articles over the past few months. When I came upon them, they were a real mess. By "mess" I mean things like:
(i) the same matter was discussed across all these pages. At great length, sometimes verbatim but often one stretching out randomly in X direction and another in Y direction. Most of the overlapping material concerned the controversy - namely, people emphasizing studies, especially from the Seralini group, that endeavored to show that GM food is very risky and regulators as not being strict enough.
(ii) the same study would be cited three or more times in a given article, described differently and with the reference formatted differently, making it appear that there were many more studies than there actually were.
(iii) there was not a lot of actual content. For instance there was really nothing about how farmers use GM crops or why they matter to farmers. But farmers are the ones actually buying the GM seed and using them. And the GM food article, remarkably, said almost nothing about what food you find in the store is GM. Again, remarkable.
I think that the articles were messy for three reasons:
a) fact: there is a set of people, anti-GM people, who are emotional about these issues. They are worried and angry and want other people to be motivated to help change the current system. (I still don't know much about the demographics or size of that group. Something on my "to-research" list)
b) fact: There are a few "segments" of material, each of which is fairly complex in and of itself, that read on each other, again in complex ways. The 'segments' can be divided up as the articles are -- the underlying science (genetic engineering article); broad examples of application of genetic enginering (GMO article); agriculture (GM Crops); what you actually might eat (GM Food), regulation of GMOs and food (regulation), and the whole controversy (which touches on all those and more).
c) judgement by me: a lot of the people (not all!) who are the most emotional, and most motivated to edit wikipedia, especially in what I call 'drive by" editing (don't have a logon but edit from an IP address, one or two times maybe) are also (gulp) ignorant about a lot of the complex matter. I don't mean "ignorant" pejoratively, just that they don't know stuff and I don't think they care to know. (see iii above) There is also a lot of half truth "information" about these matters that is passed around in that community. For example, much online discussion of Monsanto vs Schmeiser is wrong - and was wrong in several places in Wikipedia.
Therefore, when I cleaned these articles up by separating matter, getting NPOV sources, editing POV text to make it NPOV, etc, I tried to also signal very very explicitly to readers and editors what they could expect to find in a given article. This is to try to help prevent readers from expecting to find -- or wanting to add -- something about environmental damage from GM Crops in the article on GM Foods. The way things are configured now, nothing about environmental pros or cons of GM crops belongs in the GM food article, because that article is about actual GM food - the stuff you eat. What is GM food, exactly? That is what you should have learned after reading the GM article. And you should know that there are articles on other, complicated matters, that you need to read as well if you want to understand the whole picture.
I realize that this explicit guiding language is not normal wiki style. But because of the above, I think is essential to retain these explicit guideposts. Otherwise the articles will moosh back together again.
Two regular wiki editors, arc de ciel, and aircorn, have also raised concerns about this as well -- see User_talk:Jytdog#CommentJytdog (talk) 17:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • As I stated at Jytdogs talk page, I would prefer hatnotes to refer to different articles on similar topics. AIRcorn (talk) 01:50, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Another user, Semitransgenic has objected to this paragraph - deleting it and noting "remove editorial remarks, use dablinks at the top of the page to tell readers of other relevant content". Happy to see a proposed example!Jytdog (talk) 15:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't support this kind of in-article editorialising, dablinks (hatnotes), or an infobox would be a better method, the tone of the lead in general needs addressing. Semitransgenic talk. 15:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
It is not editorializing in the sense of giving an opinion. If you want to provide sample hatnotes I would be very interested to see them! What do you mean by "tone"?Jytdog (talk) 15:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
starting a paragraph with words like "nonetheless" etc. veers towards MOS:OPED. Lead prose should ideally be pragmatic, just provide an accurate summary of the key/notable content found in the main body of text. Semitransgenic talk. 16:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

If nothing else could we get an answer to this issue. The paragraphs that this concerns are these ones. AIRcorn (talk) 21:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I am OK with how this was handled at Genetically modified food controversies if you want to implement, aircornJytdog (talk) 22:21, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
No problem. It is not looking like this is going to be closed soon. AIRcorn (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Issue 2

  • To the extent that these sections remain, I agree that they could be sorted that way - it would be better. In general I have tried to eliminate these sections, slowly, making sure that the matter is incorporated into the suite of articles. I understand that this is best under the MOS.Jytdog (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • The external links sections should be trimmed to just websites that contain an overview of the whole topic (i.e a website about GM mice should be on the GM mouse page, but is not needed on the GM organism one) but are not suitable for inclusion in the page itself (i.e a large list of GM crops like here. The less the better in my opinion and would be more than happy to see them trimmed. I however do not think that they should be separated based on their alignment. AIRcorn (talk) 01:57, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 3

  • I don't really understand this point. Perhaps you could explain better. My POV: People's concerns about GM food are what drove the mess and what drives a lot of the ongoing editing. I have done my best to carefully sort things out. In my mind, GM food per se (what is it?) should be handled in the GM food article, and controversy around it (and many other surrounding issues), in the controversy article. Regulation of it and GMOs that produce it, in the regulation article. Crops that produce it (and other things) in the GM crops article. GMOs in general, and genetic engineering in general, in those articles. These topics are inter-related, for sure. They need to mention and reference each other. But the topics are separable. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Some overlap is inevitable, but it should be reduced as much as is practicably possible. I don't particularly like controversy sections in articles and would rather see the issues mentioned in the appropriate section. Although I concede that this might be hard to maintain in these articles. What should happen if we have a controversy article is that the GM food should have a controversies section linked with a main template to the controversies article. It should include a couple of paragraphs outlining or summarising the main points associated with food. The GM crops should have the same except its paragraphs should focus more on crops and so on. AIRcorn (talk) 02:05, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
The hard thing about your proposal, aircorn, is that opponents of GM food very rarely have a single focus and it is very hard to sort out the "heart" of many objections. Many seem to care most about industrial agriculture (many angles on this... so-called "corporate control of the food supply", messing with "nature", chemical use, etc. Others really seem to care about riskiness of the food they eat. Others seem more focused on corruption of regulatory agencies. And all those issues very much overlap and feed into each other. And there are problems that touch on everything. The key issue can be broadly captured under the rubric of gene flow/contamination. People worry about gene flow from GM crops to other crops and to weeds (environmental concerns and food-safety concerns, especially with pharming crops, and economic concerns for organic farmers); people worry about harvested crops being mixed (a la starlink); people worry about litigation from gene flow or contamination (mostly based on misunderstandings of Monsanto v Schmeiser). So I ended up with one big honking controversies article. Happy to hear thoughts about how to rationally separate!!13:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Answered below AIRcorn (talk) 00:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 4

  • No objection! Except that no article exists on genetically modified animals. Your link above points to an external links section in the GMO article.. strange. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I would not move that article, if any should be move it is Genetically modified mammals with fish, insects, etc added as sub sections. AIRcorn (talk) 02:07, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
  • All this points, to me, to one article one main article on GMOs with subarticles to the various ... biological kingdoms maybe?? Jytdog (talk) 13:56, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 5

  • I disagree very strongly. People care about what they eat -- what goes into their bodies. GM Foods needs its own article. GM Crops are agriculture -- most of the information you need to know in order to understand them, has nothing to do with food. Much of the material now in the GM crops article was originally in the GM foods article and I pulled it out and put into the GM crops article, and then expanded it. It still needs more expansion in some sections as noted in the article. Farmers don't buy GM seed, thinking about food. They buy them because they make sense to farmers as businessmen. The companies don't make GM seed, thinking about food. They make them so that their customers --farmers -- will buy them. It's agribusiness. It's not about food. (I am not saying that is a good or bad thing -- no moral judgement - it is just the way the world is). It is absolutely true that the companies have to satisfy regulators in order to do business, because some (but not even most) of the product directly becomes food and so it must be safe enough to eat. Most of the product goes to feed livestock and poultry (which then become food). Much of the product is used industrially and never becomes food (cotton, corn for biofuel, potatoes for starch used industrially. etc). It is true that some GM crops used directly as food have failed because farmers' customers didn't want to buy it as food (the New Leaf potato failed because farmers' target customer, McDonald's, didn't want GM potatoes for french fries, even though they satisfied Americans' desire for perfect-looking, unblemished food). But GM crops is its own topic. Look how long that article is already! And the GM foods article also requires expansion itself.. not even close to describing all the food you find in the store that is GM.Jytdog (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Keep them separate. Not all crops are food (cotton is one of the most common GM crops and it is a stretch to label it food, plus you have Amflora and biofuels that are being developed) and with the development of the GM salmon soon not all food are not going to be crops. It still needs some work separating the two, but the crop/food split is a good one at my mind. I would bring back the GM plant article at some stage too, and make it a parent one of the crop one for much the same reasons, there are some important GM plants used in research that are not and never will be grown as crops. AIRcorn (talk) 02:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I have no quarrel with most of your points and the proposed separations of topics seem reasonable to me, but I am mildly puzzled as to why you exclude cotton from food plants as a topic. I don't eat much fabric or cotton wool myself, any more than I can help anyway, but I have eaten a lot of foods prepared or canned in cottonseed oil and have probably eaten more products of cottonseed cake than I know about directly, and a good deal more meat from animals that have eaten large quantities of cottonseed cake. Once you remove the gossypol, either artificially, or genetically, cotton is quite an important food plant. And beware what you say about hemp and poppies too! Just an obiter dictum... JonRichfield (talk) 08:41, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Not too familiar with cottonseed oil, although I knew it existed. I mostly think of cotton as the fibre. Cotton would probably have to be mentioned in both articles, along with maize and the other food crops. Am working on organising a kind of heirachy now, so hopefully we can get the split better organised. There needs to be a Genetically modified cotton article created, plus one for tobacco, Arabidopsis and other important plants. AIRcorn (talk) 12:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Right. That is the sort of thing I had in mind in my comment below when I spoke of "adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging..." JonRichfield (talk) 16:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks John! I am very aware that cotton is used to make cottonseed oil -- in fact I have been trying to get the Andrew Weil website to change its stupid page on cottonseed oil which is not accurate. http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400361/Is-Cottonseed-Oil-Okay.html See the Cottonseed_oil#Concerns_about_fats_and_toxicity that I edited to make accurate. And I do list cottonseed oil in the Genetically modified food article. In my comments above, I was not trying to exclude the use of cottonseed oil as food; I was just making the point that the cotton from GM cotton plants -- along with many other products of GM crops -- are not used for food. Sorry to have created a misunderstanding. Jytdog (talk) 13:13, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
No problemo. All such misunderstandings should only be so easily fixable ;-) JonRichfield (talk) 17:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: To forestall almost inevitable accusations of POV, if not actual corruption by evil multinationals, I have no material, contractual, or commercial interest in any form of GM that I know about. Idealistically and intellectually I am deeply interested in the matter and deeply alarmed and disgusted at such examples as I have seen so far of, for example, large scale plantings of crops with genes for defensive production of single substances for pest control; such abuses rank with the early days of misapplication of antibiotics, both in human medicine and in agricultural and veterinary practice.
Interesting comment! I like the comparison with antibiotics. GM seed with stacked traits are now 25% of the market and growing steadily (http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/43/executivesummary/default.asp), so things are snapping into a line of intelligent use quickly....Jytdog (talk) 13:19, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I was not aware of that trend. It is encouraging, though of course it is just a hint at the depth of responsibility that we bear when tinkering with such powerful tools. If we are not careful we shall simply turn a vital biotechnological opportunity into an exercise in the fostering of super-pests. JonRichfield (talk) 19:46, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
That said however, I regard GM as a field on a par with computing, the control of fire, printing, and the development of modern science in terms of historical importance for the future. There is no way that we could rationally justify ignoring or sidelining it. The question of how to present it, including how to split the topics into manageable articles is what matters, as already indicated in several of the contributions to this RFC. I have no particular quarrel with the proposed titles as presented, as long as each is coherently written and adequately cross-linked to the others. Questions such as what readers care about putting into their bodies are far less important than questions concerning the clarity and perspective of each article. Since the articles are in inevitably not independent, there must necessarily be some overlap, but this is hardly a new problem and requires no new techniques in dealing with it. Concise cross-reference plus clear reference to the main article for each topic is naturally important, but hardly challenging.
As I said, I have no quarrel with the proposed split, but I also would have no problems with adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging during their authorship and editing. JonRichfield (talk) 09:05, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Principles in using subarticles

Hi

IMO, any time we have subarticles, there should be a standard, brief paragraph in the "head" article (ideally taken from the lede of the subarticle and edited for concision if necessary) and a link to "main", and then keep an eye on those standard paragraphs for changes so that they stay short and plain. Ideally, no statistics would be in those standard paragraphs, otherwise when new data emerges we have to go back and update the data in many places which will inevitably lead to missing things and the overall suite falling out of sync within itself and with reality. I feel that we should try hard to avoid having long sections in different articles that cover the same matter. This was the state in which I found articles within this suite several months ago and most of my work has been consolidating overlapping material into clear, NPOV, well sourced discussions. Having a suite of articles covering various aspects of complex matter is indeed common in WIkipedia, but it is also commonly handed badly IMO. For instance in the suite of evolution articles, the main evolution article has a history section that is very long (7 paragraphs that fill my screen)... and there is an entire much longer subarticle on the history (about 10x longer). I glanced over the two texts and they don't tell the same story or even use the same refs.... this is not a happy thing for an encyclopedia and we should avoid doing this. This is for me a very important principle and I hope we can discuss it. Jytdog (talk) 13:58, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Organisation and consistency is the bane of Wikipedia. This seems reasonable though. AIRcorn (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
sorry you have thrown me off.. do you mean lack of organization and consistency are the bane (i.e. a source of harm) or do you mean that pursuing them is a bad thing? sorry, i don't know you that well and this was confusing...Jytdog (talk) 01:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
It was meant slightly tongue-in-cheek. Due to its nature Wikipedia tends toward inconsistent disorganisation (anyone can edit after all). It is amazing that it works as well as it does. Providing order is an admirable thing, and I will help out as much as possible, but at the end of the day you are going against the natural inertia of the project and no matter what you do, if you want to keep it organised it is going to take constant watching. AIRcorn (talk) 02:37, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I totally hear you on that. :) I intend to watch for a long time. But I also want to structure things as much as possible, with explicit markers "This goes here, that goes there" - to help keep things in line.Jytdog (talk) 03:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't see you getting consensus for the self references (issue 1 here). I would suggest using the hidden text function. Simply type<!-- Add appropriate comment here -->. It will only be seen by editors when the click the edit button. See this for how it might work. AIRcorn (talk) 03:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

(starting tabs over) Hi Aircorn... so far nobody has gone to the mat on the the self references. With respect to the objection raised in Issue 1, I wrote above, that if you read Wiki's self-reference policy, it is clear that these texts do not violate that policy. Nobody has responded to that so I assume nobody disagrees. My sense is that you and arc de ciel have objected on more stylistic grounds... but neither of you has gone to the mat on this. Is this indeed important to you?

But let's go back to the subject matter of this section. I have been trying to lay down a principle that sections for which we have big subarticles should just be very brief stubs - 1 paragraph taken from the lede of the subarticle, so that we don't end up with long, weedy descriptions of a given issue in different articles that extensively overlap with each other and with the main subarticle... which leads to inconsistencies and disorganization that you have described as a bane of wikipedia (and I heartily agree!). I thought we had kind of agreed on this... but you just recently expanded one of these stub sections with a bunch of material copied from a subarticle. So what gives? How shall we do this? I have been tempted to go into some of the articles you have created and apply this "stub principle" (for instance you have a section on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms" in your "regulation of genetic engineering" article that is my mind is waaaay too long and should be just a stub, as we have a whole article on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms") but i have held back from stubifying that section until (and only if) we reach consensus here.Jytdog (talk) 18:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

No one needs to got to the mat. We have consensus so far (me, Arc and Yutsi against you so far) not to use them. Is it important to me? No other things are more important at the moment, but one day I would like to get the articles up to Good standard and that is not going to happen with those instruction paragraphs in the lead.
I think we slightly misunderstood each other above. I agree that there should only be short summaries in the head articles, but we have a disagreement over what is short. I think that there needs to be enough information in the parent article that the reader will get a good overview of each topic, they should not be obliged to go to another article to find this. They should only have to go there if they want to find more details. Basically each article should stand on its own and stubby sections are not going to allow that. Three to four paragraphs covering the regulation and controversies should be enough, but anything less and the article is going to be incomplete. AIRcorn (talk) 21:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for talking! OK, on the guide paragraphs.. both Yutsi and Arc based their objection on their understanding of wiki policy, and as mentioned, I don't see how these run afoul of the self-reference policy. You seem to be basing your objection on that too, when you say that an article with these paragraphs, will never be Good. But what is the basis for that? Please explain...
Thank for zeroing in on the "stub" issue. I really appreciate it. So to you the key principle is that the article should stand on its own with respect to providing a good overview and that a compact stub is not enough. I had thought that the stub does provide an overview, but what I am hearing is that this is too high level for you -- it is not a "good" overview. So you want more of the story in all the articles. Whew that is all a tall order for complex matter like this. It helps me understand why you want longer "stubs." OK I need to think about this a bit! I will write again in a couple of days, this requires thinking and if I come into alignmnent with you, some major resetting for me. Thanks again.Jytdog (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
The Good articles have a set of simple criteria that they have to meet in order to gain that status. IMO they are a great base that every article should aspire to. One of those criteria is compliance with WP:Lead, which I don't think the navigational paragraphs meet. Another one is broadness, which is why I think we need more than one paragraph stubs in important sections. AIRcorn (talk) 16:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really watching the articles right now, but I just wanted to confirm that the objections I raised were indeed answered. It doesn't "feel good" from my own style perspective, but I don't know of any style guideline that rules it out. Also, I think that the general organization Jytdog has put in place is a good one; as he said, my concerns were only about the way they were disambiguated. It seems that people adding the same citations repeatedly is common in this group of articles, and this organization would probably help a lot. Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:00, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Overall structure

Let's have a focused discussion on overall structure. This is part of the topic mentioned above but only part. Let's map it out. It would be really great to do this with some kind of software that allowed us to draw things, but I am ignorant of how to do that. So I will take a shot at this using words alone.

Here is my perspective

  • genetic engineering (head article; should describe history and techniques and a high level overview of uses)´
  • GMOs - this should work be organized by the biological taxonomy of the kinds of organisms that have been modified and briefly state the purpose of the modification --> subarticles on various GMOs
  • GM crops - describes the agriculture and agribusiness of GM crops. Not about food, about crops. --> subarticles on various crops (many will be same subarticles of GMOs above)
  • GM foods - describes what foods we eat are GM. Not about agriculture, about food. This is by far the most trafficked article in the suite (fact), because people care about what they eat (opinion).
  • regulation - should be a brief, standard, subsection of each of the articles above, and describe the general principles of regulation, and provide an overview of each countries' current regs (right now lacks international agreements like Cartagena Protocol - needs to be added) --> subarticles on each country's history of regulations and international agreements
  • controversy - should be a brief, standard subsection of each of the articles above, and describe all the aspects of controversies around GM crops and GM food --> subarticles? I struggle with this. Part of my goal here is to give the full controversy full voice in one place, so that it is not inserted into every article on every genetic engineering topic, and gets clear, NPOV discussion someplace where everybody can find it.

All this done with the principle of subarticles mentioned above...Jytdog (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything here. Although I would think you would have to cross reference food in the crops article and crops in the food one. As far as the controversies go I would have a section solely on the health concerns in GM food and one solely on the environmental concerns in the crops one. Then I would have a section over-viewing the other concerns. I think the length of the controversy section should depend on the article. GE, food, crops, plants, animal, organisms should probably get their own section with a good overview of the issues relevant to each topic and a {{main}} to the controversies article. The sub-sub articles can probably just get away with a link provided in an appropriate section (e.g. in Bt brinjal it says in the first sentence of controversies "There are many controversies surrounding the development and release of genetically modified foods, ranging from human safety and environmental impacts to ethical concerns such as corporate control of the food supply and intellectual property rights" in the lead of the controversies section). The rest of the section just details the issues with the titles topic and does not dwell on the overall controversies. For the controversies article itself I would keep the public perception as the first header, then have health concerns, environmental concerns, regulatory concerns (including labeling), religious concerns and Intellectual Property concerns (including corporate control). Most should fit into one of these broad categories. It may become necessary to split health and environment to separate articles to reduce the size. AIRcorn (talk) 00:13, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Let me get this straight. You would have a pretty long section on controversies in (for example) the food article - in that one, focused on health. Then, again in the main controversies article, you would have another fairly long section on health (which is all about food)?Jytdog (talk) 01:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Depends what you mean by pretty/fairly long. I was thinking two to three, possibly four paragraphs (maybe a bit more in the controversies article). The health section in the GM controversies is well beyond fairly long already, especially if you add in Pusztai and Serilini. For example the GM food could be presented like:
  • History
    • [main to GM History]
  • Process
    • [main to GM Techniques]
  • Plant based
    • [main to GM Crops][see also to GM crops]
  • Animal based
    • [see also to GM animals]
  • Regulation
    • [main to GM Regulation]
  • Detection
  • Health concerns
    • [main to GM health concerns (if split from controversies)]
  • Other concerns
    • [main to GM controversies]

I like the smallification of text!! didn't know one could do that. Funny that you have "animal based" - there is no GM food from animals (yet). but in theory i see what you mean. But i disagree really really strongly that "GM crops" is main for plant-based GM food. GM crops is about agriculture. its not about food. why do you think gm crops is about food? more to say but that stopped me - one thing at a time!Jytdog (talk) 03:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Should have been see also like the animal one. AIRcorn (talk) 03:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Seems to me acceptable.Fox1942 (talk) 14:09, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Methods/Uses, actual and propsed

I am planning on redoing the methods subheading. I am planning on taking the Glyphosate resistance section out of the "Methods" subheading and adding it to the "Uses, actual and proposed" section. I also plan on taking out the subheading of "Types of Genetic Engineering" and simply adding it to the section of Methods, because they are essentially the same thing. If there is any information I get wrong, please correct my edit once it is up. 216.185.230.22 (talk) 02:12, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Long term Roundup herbicide or Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize extremely toxic & carcinogenic PMID 22999595

Séralini GE, Clair E, Mesnage R, Gress S, Defarge N, Malatesta M, Hennequin D, de Vendômois JS.

PMID 22999595

Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize.


Food Chem Toxicol. 2012 Nov;50(11):4221-31.

doi: 10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005.

Epub 2012 Sep 19.

Abstract

The health effects of a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize (from 11% in the diet), cultivated with or without Roundup, and Roundup alone (from 0.1ppb in water), were studied 2years in rats. In females, all treated groups died 2-3 times more than controls, and more rapidly. This difference was visible in 3 male groups fed GMOs. All results were hormone and sex dependent, and the pathological profiles were comparable. Females developed large mammary tumors almost always more often than and before controls, the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup treatments. In treated males, liver congestions and necrosis were 2.5-5.5 times higher. This pathology was confirmed by optic and transmission electron microscopy. Marked and severe kidney nephropathies were also generally 1.3-2.3 greater. Males presented 4 times more large palpable tumors than controls which occurred up to 600days earlier. Biochemistry data confirmed very significant kidney chronic deficiencies; for all treatments and both sexes, 76% of the altered parameters were kidney related. These results can be explained by the non linear endocrine-disrupting effects of Roundup, but also by the overexpression of the transgene in the GMO and its metabolic consequences.


PMID 22999595 [PubMed - in process]

Full Free Text:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637

http://research.sustainablefoodtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Final-Paper.pdf

--Ocdnctx (talk) 19:15, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Main discussion at [[Talk:Genetically modified food controversies#Long term Roundup herbicide or Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize extremely toxic & carcinogenic PMID 22999595]] AIRcorn (talk) 20:39, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

"what feeds what we eat" section

So this section was introduced a while back, with content based on a review published in 2012. I have been uncomfortable with the section, content, and source since it was introduced. The section header itself doesn't fit with the others... the content in the section was taken almost verbatim (very close to copyvio) from probably the most speculative and cheerleader-y part of the source. And the source itself, comes pretty close to being POV cheerleading for more use of GM crops and contains unsubstantiated claims about animal feed from GM crops being healthier for animals, and about the GM crops themselves being more productive. This makes me uncomfortable using this as a source -- I think opponents of GM (which I am not) would not find this source very acceptable and I don't like to use sources that anybody can so easily attack. On the other hand it is a review, and people opposed to GM have not attacked it yet. In response to the section being tagged for expansion today (unclear to me what that editor actually wanted) I looked at the section/content/source again and reckoned that i could create a brief paragraph in the "business" section based on the source, hopefully not so cheerleader-y. So I did, and deleted the "what feeds what we eat" section. Jytdog (talk) 20:52, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

addition of content from Scientific American to lead

Today the following was added to the lead in this dif by User:AcademicReviewer. I reverted it in this dif with edit note "please don't load things into the Lead. Also please see Talk for quick discussion"

Scientific American reports on the controversy noting, "The vast majority of the research on genetically modified (GM) crops suggests that they are safe to eat and that they have the potential to feed millions of people worldwide who currently go hungry" while noting GM-supportive scientists are often overly dismissive in their rejections of counterclaims and concerns.(ref)The Truth about Genetically Modified Food, by David H. Freedman, Scientific American, August 26, 2013.(/ref)

So, first, nothing should be in the lead that is not in the body -- I know it is tempting to just quickly add stuff into the lead but this is an article with plenty of traffic, and is part of a suite of related articles that I have been trying to keep clean and organized as a set. If the content would be added it should go into the article section on controversy, here. However, as part of an overhaul of this suite of articles about a year, a group of editors working on these articles swept up information on controversies that had come to be repeated across all the articles, in a scattered, disorganized, and often contradictory way, and we put it in one article, and left a stub in each of the remaining articles, which you can see in the section linked to above. This approach has been stable for a good long while now. The cited Sci Am article is a great source, and I will add it to the Controversies article, along with your content, and note that I merged it from here. I hope this makes sense. Happy to discuss! Jytdog (talk) 15:31, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Flavr Savr tomato

I believe this section of the article is in the incorrect spot. The main header of these smaller subheadings are the methods that are used to create genetically modified foods, and not the actual plants that were created. Therefore the heading should be in what way was the plant modified from its original state and not the name of the plant. I also believe the Flavr Savr Tomato should be added to the section regarding the different plant types that have been modified. I will be replacing the section of the tomato with more relevant information.TheJGGiant (talk) 01:07, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for opening this section! I think the reason that was there, was to give a specific example of one method, namely using RNAi. The next section describes how roundup resistance was done - inserting a gene that expresses a variant of the endogenous protein. I had wanted to include more examples too. Do you see the logic? Jytdog (talk) 01:20, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
I do see the logic in that. I was not against having the Flavr Savr tomato mentioned under the Methods section, I just believe that it shouldn't be the subheading title. I do think giving examples of what plants are targeted by certain genetic modification is a good idea though to make the article more "full circle" to how it is applied in real life.TheJGGiant (talk) 01:32, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
Thanks again for talking and for walkingworking! I see what you were doing - just add it to the big table. And you are right, I think the modifications described there serve plenty well as examples. I had been thinking it would be nice to have narrative as well as the table. But the table alone is fine with me! Jytdog (talk) 02:30, 4 October 2013 (UTC) (copyedit, sloppy mistake Jytdog (talk) 12:40, 27 October 2013 (UTC))

Method's Section

Just a brief question about the main article that is hyperlinked at the top of the article. The "main article" that is used is simply another subheading of an article. I was wondering if anyone had an objection to changing the hyperlink to the article of Techniques of genetic engineering?TheJGGiant (talk) 23:32, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Uses, actual and proposed

I believe this section should be split up into two different sections, or at the very least be divided up so the proposed uses and the actual uses are easier to distinguish. Side note: I did change the capitalization in the title. TheJGGiant (talk) 01:02, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Your change to the section headers goes against the Manual of Style, which says that section headers and articles should be sentence case, not title case. See here. Please change it and the other one you changed, back. Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 01:26, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
Fixed this tonight Jytdog (talk) 01:33, 15 October 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I was not aware of this. Thanks for the info. TheJGGiant (talk) 23:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)
You are welcome! Jytdog (talk) 00:33, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Scientific Consensus

I think this article should receive the same treatment as the GM Food article. Scientific consensus should be referenced in the lead and the Controversy section.CFredkin (talk) 17:26, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Quick note on this - the scientific consensus on GM food has been discussed to death. The heart of the conversation is at the Talk page for the Genetically modified food controversies article; there was an RfC on the consensus statement that was closed in mid August of this year, which you can find here.Jytdog (talk) 18:00, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Use of Montagu opinion piece as source

Today User:CFredkin introduced the following source, in this dif:

cite news | author=Marc Van Montagu | title=The Irrational Fear of GM Food | url=http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303680404579141741399966328 | newspaper=The Wall Street Journal | date=October 22, 2013 | accessdate=October 28, 2013

The article is by a university scientist and ag biotech pioneer, Marc Van Montagu, who founded Plant Genetic Systems. It is listed as an "opinion" piece by the WSJ, and in the piece, he advocates strongly for GM crops and describes their benefits. This is a great apologia but it is not a great source to use in Wikipedia, as Montagu makes no effort to provide both sides of the issue or to be neutral; according to this piece no reasonable risks exist. Wikipedia is not a place for advocacy on either side of any issue, and any source that we use should be acceptable to all sides of an issue. That is why I replaced this with the NYT article that is there now. Jytdog (talk) 19:18, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

addition of a bunch of "balancing" stuff re health

Today User:71.184.226.11 added "balancing" negative content, supported by bunch of primary studies, in this dif, with edit note "It's not really fair to call it a "scientific consensus" when a trivial search pulls up numerous scientific studies showing the opposite opinion. Both sides need to be shown." I reverted. First of all, Wikipedia doesn't do "balance" and we don't do fair, we do WP:NPOV which is a very different thing, and calls on us to give appropriate WP:WEIGHT to various perspectives. There is a scientific consensus on this issue - currently marketed food from GMOs is as safe as food from conventional counterparts. There are WP:FRINGE perspectives that say otherwise, and that grab on to primary studies (see WP:MEDRS#Definitions) and make far stronger conclusions based on them than the studies can bear. Saying that a "trivial search" pulls up lots of results and therefore the results must be true, is not how we do things on Wikipedia (and is a pretty terrible way to determine what is true or false in any case). Further, under WP:MEDRS primary studies a) should not be used at all and b) cannot be used to challenge consensus statements.

So.. I reverted in this dif with edit note " there has been a great deal - and i mean a LOT - of Talk about this, including an RfC, please see Talk". And I opened this discussion, here.Jytdog (talk) 18:37, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

OK, so User:71.184.226.11 just re-reverted in this dif with edit note "So removing references to scientific studies helps the situation how exactly?". Not following WP:BRD, not talking.

I did two things: I re-re-reverted in this dif with edit note " you are not coming to talk! please do not edit war. please come talk as per WP:BRD" and I left a message on this IP user's Talk page (first a welcome, with this dif and then tried to open a conversation about this and a warning against edit warring, in this dif.) Hopefully the IP user will come and Talk. Jytdog (talk) 20:31, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

extent section

Today, in these difs, User:79.7.27.115 changed the table in the Extent section, from using "agricultural land" as a baseline, to "arable land", and changed the numbers in that column, and the percentages in the next column, accordingly. I think this is a good idea. I wanted to check the accuracy, and looked at the ref, and to my surprise it is weird - the actual ref looks like this: (ref}FAOSTAT(/ref). I looked to see where this came from. I introduced this content into this article on Sept 3 2012 in this dif when I pulled in the chart from the Genetically modified organism article. I searched the history of that article and found that this content and ref was introduced in this dif in that format, and nobody ever challenged or fixed it. I am guessing that FAOSTAT is this page of the "faostat" website, the home page of which is here: http://faostat3.fao.org/faostat-gateway/go/to/home/E

As I thought about this more and looked for sources, I could not find any single source that had the total arable land and the total GM crop land, and came up with percentages. This led me to realize that this table, as it was originally created, was a work of original research and that we cannot have it in Wikipedia. So I deleted the total arable land and percentages columns. If anybody finds a source that brings the total GM crop and total arable land together, and calculates percentages, then we can bring those two columns back in. I hope that makes sense to everybody. I did update the acreage planted with GM crops from the most recent ISAAA report. Jytdog (talk) 14:12, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Haven't looked into this case in detail, but simply mathmatics is not considered original research. AIRcorn (talk) 21:10, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh! thanks aircorn! do you think the "percent of arable land" column is useful and we should store it? Jytdog (talk) 22:39, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Inappropriate external links

I have moved the following ELs here because they may be suitable for citations to support article content but are inappropriate as ELs:

Jojalozzo 23:37, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

would you please state why, under WP:EL you see this as inappropriate? thx. Jytdog (talk) 00:24, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
External links should generally link to information that is useful, but may not be appropriate or easily presented in the article or to organisations/groups home pages directly affiliated with the article. If a news or journal article contains important information it should be presented and cited in the article. If it doesn't then it shouldn't be in the external links section. AIRcorn (talk) 00:55, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

new section on "subgenic" type of genetic engineering

i think it is great to have a section on knockdowns. this should not describe specific work, but instead should describe it generally, as the already existing 2 sections did. (this is not new btw - if i remember rightly flav savr was a knockdown too) will work on that later when i can. good addition tho! Jytdog (talk) 19:25, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

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