Hi everyone, Frank N. Foode™ here. I have just received word that the Ashoka Changemakers GMO Risk or Rescue contest has been closed. No more votes will be collected. It has been an exciting week for all of us, our supporters, and also our competitors. During the last few days of the final voting week, we gathered an enormous number of votes, and I want to thank all the bloggers out there who supported us by linking to our entry and asking their readers to vote for us.
Last week, James and the Giant Corn gave us a plug with Putting Prejudice over Science. The Council for Biotechnology Information gave us a plug on Twitter, as well as Mica from Monsanto on her twitter account. Thanks for helping! We enjoyed an early lead of a dozen votes at the beginning, but when Monday morning rolled around, we were behind the Non-GMO Project by about 100 votes. They gathered an impressive number of votes from Friday through the weekend, networking through facebook and other places.
But then at a little after 8 in the morning PZ Myers of the popular blog, Pharyngula, boomed Yum, Genetically Engineered Plants! An hour later, we overtook the competition and took the lead! PZ is an immensely popular blogger, and the pulse of his endorsement was felt across the world, from California to the UK! It was almost inexplicable! Thanks for your help!
Later that day, the indomitable ‘Mean Girl’ Abbie Smith at Endogenous Retrovirus joined in with Vote for Biofortified! and chimed “DOO EEEEEET FOR THE PAPAYAS!!!!” She also liked the discussion going on at the changemakers site on our entry, and anyone that sticks up for the papayas gets an AA in their punnett square as far as I’m concerned. Thank you ERV!
With A Science-based blog about GMO, Tim Kreider at Science Based Medicine gave us a shining endorsement and sent a new army of voters our way. We are happy they like what we are doing over here, we love what you do for medicine over there! Thanks Tim!
Apparently, our quick influx of voters made a few people upset, and they started saying not-so-nice things about who must be supporting us. Cries of “Fixing the Competition” by the ‘biotech industry’ 
were flying around thanks to my newest bestest buddy GM Watch. And PZ Myers jumped back into the fray with a second post on his blog, saying …and those cheapskates at Monsanto haven’t given me a penny! Thanks PZ for the double-plug, and thanks GM Watch for keeping the attention on us! They must have thought we made a Deal with the Devil… they just didn’t know what kind. We were Pharyngulated.
Dr. ‘Orac’ at Respectful Insolence couldn’t stand to have PZ be the only one getting “all that filthy Monsanto lucre” so he posted, I may be late to this party, but I want my big Monsanto check anyway! You won’t be late in our thanks, oh acrylic-encased one. Thank you!
Thank you everyone who passed on our message through email, facebook, over the phone, etc. Your efforts are not forgotten, pat yourselves on the back – you know who you are!
And thank you Anastasia, Pam, Karl, and David for your tireless efforts to get out the vote and welcome people to the site! You’re all heavyweight science bloggers now. We have only one week to wait as the votes are tallied officially and the winner is announced next Wednesday. The votes are not visible on the entries anymore, but the last tally we had that was just minutes before the contest was closed placed the top three entries in this order:
Biofortified: 830 votes
The Campaign for Healthier Eating in America: 379 votes
The Non-GMO Project: 347 votes
These results are by no means final, as the changemakers team still has to verify that each vote came from a registered user, and we have undoubtedly made their job a lot harder. But it looks like we may have won by more than a 2-to-1 margin. Thanks for your support, everyone who managed to make it through their site to register – I know how hard it was so it means a lot to this little ear. We made a really good showing in this contest, and I hope you will stick around and read what else our bloggers have to say in the future, and check back on Wednesday for the results! Thanks again for everyone who supported us!
Enjoy this nifty graph of the voting progress:
Science is so cool!
And a good time was had by all!
Hot damn. It was fun–like watching the last inning of a World Series game.
Congrats on the total. And I really am delighted that supporters of science came out of the woodwork in ways I have rarely seen on this topic before. I think that bodes well for future discussion and increased understanding.
Science over fear! Woot!
*high-five*
Your responses line looks quite a bit like the nitrate uptake response of NRT1.1 to increasing nitrate concentration! Coincidence? I think not!
Uh oh… the jig is up. Truth is, we had an army of plants voting for us… Mutant plants.
Are they ill-tempered?
Yes.
another cool blog, Karl. Pharyngulate. I like it! Congrats.
Even when we were so far ahead, I was afraid to believe that we did it! How exciting. I am so happy that our fellow science bloggers took the time to support us by promoting Biofortified to their members. As I said in Cheaters, all of the promotions and votes show that we are a scientist-backed blog, not an industry-based blog.
Well suppose you think you’re neutral, mature,rational or intelligent on this, gee if science is in your petty hands we have more problems than I thought, growing up in the last twelve years! Listen to the public as well as your wee egos and job prospects. Spoiling a competiton like this is so impressive ? I do though admire more independent scientists that are not apologists symbiots with the market.You are doing to public rights what the church used to do to scientists.Study any history?
Did you also deny climate change Karl und Anasta (anon Frank N Fool) ? Bloggers suc h as this can be such time wasters as this international debate is at least twelve years old.No apolgies for ny passion and distate of your short term poverty of ideas.Hope you print this anyway it might give you more fun chums/geeks.
Thanks for your kind words, scotti. The next time you decide to comment, please consider composing your thoughts in complete sentences.
Oh and by the way, climate change is real and a large part is due to humans. Does that help?
@’karl’ thx for ‘educating’ me how to, jot a note or blog-write/right.Sorry not as excited as you with the small result, lets hope you are not like this,where it counts.I hope that you are as accurate with science experiments? You can read or ‘pounce’ on a typo,does that help your argument?
Glad your student group are not also arrogent climate-change deniers/promoters..it does help(similar psychology):to have science connect better with the risk/damage they often evoke.Less of a problem if your blog/group followed a real ‘independent’ plant science, not as caught up in the hype.Hope you can have a good dialogue with Mr Pollen too as the main prize.You may need to become used to a public discourse with others that don’t agree with your methods or intentions.
I;m not alone in thinking there could be better ethics and containment around plant science and the patents allowable in US law since the 80’s.
Why is US-food science in particular, so untrusted by many of the global world or seen as untrustworthy? Monsanto,DuPont etc not-with-standing.Don’t worry,I wont be taking up too much time on this blog . Anything else u did not get?