Government shutdown’s lasting impacts

Recently, the United States endured the longest government shutdown in the nation’s history. For 35 days, without a federal budget passed by Congress and signed by the President, non-essential employees were furloughed and entire agencies were closed. The impacts of the shutdown were far-reaching, impacting the lives of many Americans, and still more people abroad. As the shutdown closed the offices of the USDA, FDA, National Science Foundation, and more, it caused great harm to scientific research, especially agricultural research.

One of the largest and most diverse agriculture-related scientific conferences, the Plant and Animal Genome XXVII Conference, was a microcosm of these impacts. Important sessions were canceled, researchers were blocked from attending, and meetings were missing important collaborators.

I sat down to talk about it with Jason Williams, the Assistant Director of External Collaborations and Lead of CyVerse EOT at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Williams found himself at the center of efforts to help the conference cope with the gaps in the program, and saw how much harm the shutdown caused to US science and its position in the international scientific community. The shutdown may be over now, but its impacts will persist.

Impacts on science and people

While my current research is federally-funded, it was not directly impacted by the shutdown. But colleagues at my institution and nearby agricultural research stations had their work interrupted. And I’ve seen the impacts of previous shutdowns at the USDA offices in Madison, WI, and Asheville, NC.

Funding and access to research facilities is not a faucet that you can turn on and off at will. Research works best when funding is a consistent stream that allows scientists to plan, conduct, present, and maintain their research. That especially goes for the live plants, animals, microbes, and more that must be kept alive! I guarantee that some scientists were sneaking into greenhouses, barns, and more to keep the shutdown from destroying their work, even though they were not getting paid.

The people who dedicate their lives to doing scientific research in service of the public were not only let down, demoralized, and directly harmed by the recent shutdown, so were farmers, travelers, voters, and anyone who benefits from investments in science. (Hint: that’s you.) Internationally, it lowers the reliability of US science, and that’s a barrier to progress that is far more real than the debated barrier that led to this event.

How did the shutdown affect your research? Your farm? Tell us about it in the comments.

More impacts of the government shutdown

NPR: Shutdown Puts Work On Hold For Researchers Collaborating With Government Scientists
Science Magazine: U.S. government shutdown starts to take a bite out of science
The Scientist: Government Shutdown Hits Funding, Resources, and Morale in Science
Politico: Farmers cut off from their federal lifelines as shutdown persists
Ohio Valley Resource: Farmers Still Dealing With Effects Of Government Shutdown

Counting The Cost of the Anti-GMO Movement

Written by Steve Savage

Mark Lynas’s speech has had over a quarter of a million downloads

Last week, environmentalist Mark Lynas presented an articulate and painfully honest apology for his significant role in starting the anti-GMO movement in the 1990s. He said that it was the most successful campaign in which he has ever been involved, but after finally looking into the science, he now deeply regrets what he and others accomplished. While it is gratifying to have a figure like Lynas make such a turn-about, it does nothing to mitigate the damage of which this anti-science movement has perpetrated on humanity and the environment. Ideally, such a dramatic reversal will induce others in the movement to rethink their positions. but this sort of openness to letting the science speak into bias is likely to be rare.
Lynas is right that anti-GMO campaigners have been extremely successful at blocking, delaying, or destroying potential crop improvements via biotechnology. Lynas had a lot of ground to cover in his speech, so he only gave four examples of the ways that his previous movement has achieved its ends: Continue reading →

Mark Lynas’s Oxford Farming Conference Speech

Years ago, environmental activist and author Mark Lynas campaigned against genetically engineered crops, sometimes ripping them up with his own hands. But in a speech given at the 2013 Oxford Farming Conference on January 3rd, he apologized for these actions, and explained how his opinion has changed over time and has been turned completely around. This speech, the transcript of which you can find on his site, has been heard around the world. It has sparked many discussions in the news media, and in social media as well. He explains that part of his journey from being an anti-GE activist to proponent of the technology is that along the way, he “discovered science.” Perhaps more than that, his environmentally-based values may have steered his beliefs to a different path once the science was made clear. If you haven’t seen it yet, it will be an hour well-spent.

07 Mark Lynas from Oxford Farming Conference on Vimeo.
Following this speech, where does the debate go from here?

Verdict on Greenpeace’s CSIRO Vandalism

latona-mccabe — Greenpeace activists Jessica Latona and Heather McCabe leaving the ACT Supreme Court at an earlier hearing. Photo by Rohan Thomson, Canberra Times.

Two convictions and a hefty fine bring a close to a case of Greenpeace destroying a plot of experimental genetically engineered wheat, but whether this will be the last of such incidents is unclear.
Last year, Greenpeace planned and executed a public relations campaign to go after genetically engineered wheat being developed by CSIRO in Australia. The wheat was developed to have an altered starch composition, making it slower to digest and release sugars into the body, and thus lower in its glycemic index. The project was headed toward human efficacy testing, having already been evaluated in mice. Greenpeace hoped to draw attention to the project and shut it down.
They filed a freedom-of-information request, which was turned down. They drafted a letter from scientists objecting to the experiment, but it was plagiarized from another source and had few signatories. Greenpeace also put together a brochure that claimed that the wheat was risky, but it was criticized. Then, they broke into CSIRO to destroy the wheat itself. Proudly publishing a video of the break-in, and an interview with one of the activists involved, the public response would be swift. Continue reading →