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It always strikes me as absurd to see non-biologists writing in a mock-up scientific style utter nonsense about heredity and plant breeding. Inducing radiation damage in thousands of genes is a "relatively small" event, changing precisely one gene has "huge depth of intervention"
Conventional breeding sometimes results in doubling or tripling entire genomes - how can this be a "small event" as compared to changing a single, pre-defined site in a genome?
Christoph Then, the author of this nonsense, is a veterinarian (he obtained his doctoral degree with a thesis on homeopathic remedies applied to cell cultures) and seems to believe that "gene regulation" is a mystic process by which plants willfully eliminate unwanted mutations.
Likewise, he seems to believe that biologists applying modern biology technologies are wizards able to engineer organisms in a way they can bypass mechanisms of "natural" heredity and gene regulation. I bet he never ever ran a single genetic experiment .
This nonsense is published as a "scientific" book, sponsored by tax payers' money. https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030389338
Then heads an NGO named #Testbiotech and is often featured as being the "scientific head" of a "research institute". But Testbiotech does not have a lab at all and does not perform science. It only produces papers, often for green parliamentarians.
Co-author of this book, Armin v. Gleich, in the 80s developed the concept of "soft" or "gentle" chemistry as opposed to "hard" chemistry torturing atoms and molecules with high temperature and pressure. He wrote back then:
"Violent effects that are forced on the selected starting materials in hard chemistry do not remain without effect in the substances themselves ... they carry the violence imposed on them and will sooner or later have a violent effect on the living environment."
All of this bullshit is carefully crafted to impress people with skepticism to modern technology but without any knowledge of real science. How can #scicomm tackle this outraging exploitation of scientific illiteracy? What should society do to combat this illiteracy?
