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Do you avoid GMOs in your diet? Do you know what GMO stands for? 

I stumbled across a Jimmy Kimmel video on the topic while I was studying for a genetics exam. My reaction to it was mixed. On the surface, I thought it was clever and I laughed about it with my friends from my genetics class. After I thought about it for a while, though, I became disheartened. Why are these people so certain that GMO is synonymous with bad? Why does it seem like the majority of the population has an opinion that differs from the majority of scientists?

 

I am aware that many videos like this are staged, and they cut out the people who actually know what they're talking about, but I've encountered this issue in my daily life, too. 

 

Miscommunication:

How Ideas in Science Get Lost in Translation

When my best friend graduated from college, I sat in the stands next to her aunt. When she heard my stomach growl, she offered me some non-GMO trail mix. When I asked her why she'd specified non-GMO, she told me that she'd been doing her best to avoid them because she'd heard that some of them could cause cancer, and she only wanted her kids to be eating healthy foods that wouldn't make them sick. 

 

I'm not sure where Aunt Jenny heard that GMOs were linked to cancer, but in all of my research on them, I've never encountered a claim like that that could actually be backed up. I spent the next ten minutes unloading everything I knew about GMOs onto her listening ears, and answered all of her questions as best as I could. We were interrupted by the beginning of the commencement ceremony, but by the end of our conversation, Jenny was thinking critically about her decision to avoid GMOs in her and her kids' diets. 

 

I don't have a Ph.D. in genetics, but I do have a functional knowledge base about how GMOs are made, the biggest risks that they pose and why the benefits likely outweigh any risks. At the end of our discussion, I had Jenny mostly convinced of these, but she did call me a few days later to have me rehash what I'd said. At the end of it all, she only wanted to know one thing: Are GMOs actually a good thing?

 

I told her that I was perfectly comfortable eating them and having people farm them, and that if I had kids, I don't think I would feel bad feeding them GM crops. 

 

I am glad that I could help Aunt Jenny understand GMOs more clearly, but why was this necessary? What shapes the public opinion on scientific issues and why is it often so different than the opinions of scientists? These questions not only have importance in people's daily lives, but they have political significance as well. How can we encourage people to do their research and to be skeptical of what they hear in the news and from presidential candidates? And not just about GMOs, but other scientific issues including climate change, vaccinations, and stem cell research.

 

These are the questions that I set out to answer through the Miscommunication Project. I investigated public opinions on both GMOs and the MMR vaccine, both of which have been highly controversial in recent years. See what I found out by clicking the link below.

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