LM-er Adam Burgess, partner of Sense About Science director, Tracey Brown, was on BBC Radio 4 last night telling everyone not to worry about risk.

On Radio 4's Moral Maze on the night before GM-supporter Prof Philip Stott was one of the four 'expert witnesses' brought in to discuss the issue of Climate Change. The other expert on his side of the argument was Ceri Dingle who is part of the LM network, but of course that fact was not disclosed.

On the panel assessing the arguments was Claire Fox, also part of the LM network but her connection to Dingle, one of the experts she was cross examining, was not  disclosed. This left her free to defend Dingle's points - "let's forget about Kyoto. We want the poor driving Ferraris!" - in the panel discussion afterwards without any perception of agenda-driven recycling.

Philip Stott is not part of the LM network but happily pumps out anti-Kyoto articles for their web-zine Spiked and sits on the Advisory Panel of the Scientific Alliance with LMer Bill Durodie.

Below is a profile of Stotty + comments on his supposed expertise or lack of it!

1.Philip Stott - a GM WATCH profile
2.Excerpts from Jeff Harvey's comments on Stott
---
1.Philip Stott - a GM WATCH profile
[for all the links
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=126]

Philip Stott is professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He edits the Journal of Biogeography.

He also edits his own campaigning website Anti-Ecohype which contains a number of his articles on topics such as climate, sustainability, biotechnology and forests. More recently, this website has been superseded by a 'blog' EnviroSpin Watch. At one time Prof Stott also ran a separate 'Pro-Biotech' website. He is a regular panelist on a 'critical environmental programme' (his description) - BBC Radio 4's Home Planet.

Although he presents himself as an expert debunker of environmental myths, Stott does not appear to have had a single paper published in a scientific journal in the fields in which he most frequently applies this 'expertise', eg climate change or tropical ecology. His views are also generally at odds with the scientific consensus on such issues. (see Jeff Harvey's comments on Prof Stott's lack of relevant scientific credentials - below)

In a letter to The Guardian on climate change, Stott attacked the scientific consensus as the problem, saying, 'It is surely time in the UK for a more adult scientific openness about the limitations of our current knowledge.' Yet in the case of biotechnology he seems unwilling to acknowledge any limitations or uncertainties. In fact, according to Stott, genetic engineering can already be confidently declared 'an advance vital for human development' and indeed, 'essential for human survival', being the 'finest of all human adaptations'. These quotations come from an article which  he describes as 'one of my more balanced pieces' (personal communication).

Prof Stott also claims to use the tools of post-modernism to expose the 'religious' zeal underlying environmental concerns. Despite this anxiety to 'deconstruct' the language of what he terms 'eco-hype', he shows no comparable interest in unpacking the language of 'techno-utopianism' or of 'sound science' myth making. On the contrary, his own writings on biotechnology are full of religious zeal and what can only be termed 'bio-hype'. Here's Prof Stott on the human genome project, 'Today, we shall truly ''eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'' (Genesis 1.17), for two teams of scientists... have come together to announce the decoding of the alphabet of human life. And ''we shall be as gods".' In another essay Stott talks of 'that Holy Grail of the human genome, our very own alphabet of life' and continues, 'We are truly standing on a great peak and a new country lies at our feet.' (Biotechnology: Mary Shelley or Galileo?)

Prof Stott displays an extreme antipathy towards those with concerns about genetic engineering and presents them as extremists with semi-clandestine political agendas. Asked in an interview to account for the current resistance to GM foods in Europe, he claimed, 'the real reason for the hysteria is indeed the exploitation of the fears... by extreme environmental groups, who often have little interest in the 'science', but who have social agendas of their own. These groups want to 'stop-the-world-and-get-off' and they will abuse and misuse 'science' to achieve their ends. They are avowedly anti-capitalist, anti-development, anti-science, sometimes even anti-farming, and most certainly anti-American, and they want to position America, and its biotech companies, as the 'Great Satan.' Many were at Seattle and Washington DC for the WTO and World Bank protests, and they regularly visit St Louis in small numbers to attack Monsanto, DuPont, etc.'

Ironically, Stott's vision of extremists with underlying agendas exploiting the GM debate fits many of those with whom Philip Stott aligns himself. He serves on  the Advisory Forum of the Scientific Alliance, whose founder describes himself as 'a businessman who is totally fed up with all this environmental stuff' and has suggested Tony Blair introduces martial law. He has also founded  a People's Alliance - aka The New Party (the name of Oswald Mosley's first political party), which  is so far to the right it has been labelled 'fascist'.

Stott contributes articles to Spiked, an online 'magazine' to which he has a link from his EnviroSpin Watch  blog.  Spiked is part of a semi-clandestine network of political extemists with a record of defending terrorism and denying war crimes.

Stott also regularly collaborates with a small coterie of right wing contrarians, including Matt Ridley and Julian Morris, centered principally on the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the related European Science and Environment Forum (ESEF).  The latter was set up with funding from Philip Morris as part of the tobacco giant's covert PR campaign to undermine industry-critical research .

Stott likes to emphasise that he is 'a totally independent academic' and that he does not take corporate money, but he appears perfectly happy to closely collaborate with those who do. He also authors material for Tech Central Station, founded by the conservative journo/corporate lobbyist, James Glassman .

Stott appeared as a key contributor in the Counterblast TV programme attacking organic farming, presented by Roger Bate as director of ESEF. According to Stott, 'The idea that [organic] can replace other forms of agriculture is a dangerous lie.'

Even though his anti-environmental conclusions correspond precisely with those of the pro-corporate right, Stott claims to be a 'Guardian reader' and that he 'comes from the left'. It is hard to marry such claims with someone who refers disparagingly to the Society Section of The Guardian, which covers social welfare issues, as 'tear-stained'; labels subject areas like Development Studies 'dubious'; and uses the term 'socialist' disparagingly, ie damning  environmentalism as socialism with a green face:  'Environmentalism has become the main vehicle for the resurgence of command-and-control ideas after the collapse of the socialist model in the wake of the Cold War. Discuss...' (These comments were all taken from just one page of Stott's blog) All of which, makes Stott's claim of "coming from the left" sound more like a rhetorical ruse, part of a fake persona intended to disarm, than a meaningful statement.

At the end of May 2001 the U.S. Embassy and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where Stott worked at the time, hosted a  Conference entitled: Seeds of Opportunity: The role of Biotechnology in Agriculture . Stott was the conference chairman. According to the conference blurb, 'Participation will be broad-based, including ... representatives from... environmental groups'. In reality, however, not a single representative from any environmental group spoke at the conference which was heavily weighted in favour of GM.

Indeed, the only environmental group known to have been invited to contribute,  the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), withdrew because of doubts about the accuracy of the information it had been given. According to Graham Wynne, Chief Executive of the RSPB: 'When we received the details, the balance of the conference content was different to that which had been understood at the time of the invitation to speak.'

Although he constantly deprecates 'ad personam abuse', Stott dismisses the RSPB as the ' "Our feathered friends are more important than anything else in the world!" brigade', labelling the million-member 0rganisation 'nerds with binoculars'! (The 'Real' Green Dictionary © Philip Stott 2001) He also dismissed Dr Arpad Pusztai as a 'maverick' during a BBC Radio 4 programme, The Moral Maze. This piece of 'ad personam abuse' is particularly ironic given that Stott's views are seriously at odds with the scientific consensus on a number of issues. (see Jeff Harvey's comments)

The environment correspondent of the Guardian, John Vidal, has described Prof Stott - in Stott-like vein - as 'an alarming academic' who pushes George Bush's agenda (The Guardian, June 6, 2001). The director of the Environmental Research Foundation, Peter Montague, blunt: 'It is evident that Professor Stott has abandoned his role as a serious scholar and has become a cheerleader for the biotech industry.'
---
2.Excerpts from Jeff Harvey's comments on Stott
http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/INGLES/Disgrace.html
EMAILS IN RESPONSE TO DR. PHILIP STOTT ARTICLE
Date: 03/20/2002
Name: Jeff Harvey
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Subject: Re: Lomborg

... I also co-authored a piece in the journal Oikos (November, 2001, also with Stuart Pimm) in which we debunked some of the purely-anti scientific rhetoric Stott promotes over his childish web site, "Anti-Ecohype". Like most contrarians including Bjorn Lomborg), Stott is long on words and short on data. He hasn't published anything in the various fields in which he professes expertise (e.g. climate change or tropical ecology), and the only reason I can imagine that he is sought out for his views by generally right wing sources like Tech Central Station or the Wall Street Journal is because they find comfort in corporate boardrooms and those who want to bolster a pre-determined worldview to maintain the status quo. It certainly isn't based on his scientific credentials, which, like Lomborg's, are wafer thin, nor on the 'science' he promotes, which is virtually non-existent. The truth is that Stott's views are completely out of line with the scientific consensus on most issues.

...I find it amusing that Lomborg's most vocal defenders have been who I refer to as "The Usual Suspects" - a small coterie of known anti-environmental writers and scientists. Since there are so few of them, they tend to crop up over and over again in media circles. Scientists such as Philip Stott, Matt Ridley, Pat Michaels, and David Wojick, and journalists such as Stephen Budiansky and Ronald Bailey have been promoting this right wing trash for years, so their views are hardly original. One thing that many of them have in common is links with conservative groups and right-wing think tanks. Some of Stott's and Ridley's material have been published through the far-right Institute of Economic Affairs in London, Wojick and Michaels are with the Greening Earth Society, funded in part by the Western Fuels Association, and Bailey is an adjunct scholar with the corporate-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute. Armed with this knowledge, I would advise Tech Central Station to recruit some new faces to promote the same old story, as Stott and his ilk lost any  credibility years ago. In fact, it is Stott who is a disgrace to British science.

Jeff Harvey,
Senior Scientist,
The Netherlands