Tomorrow (Monday) sees the publication of 'The March of Unreason: Science, Democracy and the New Fundamentalism' by Lord Dick Taverne. It's published by OUP at GBP 18.99.
http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/AmericanPolitics/LegislativeStudies/?view=usa&ci=0192804855

While we haven't yet had a chance to enjoy it, Britain's Sunday Telegraph today carried an excerpt under the headline, "A little pesticide does you good but 'organic' farming harms the world." This from the man that Mark Henderson, The Times' science correspondent, describes as "one of Britain's most thoughtful commentators on science"!!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1520030,00.html

Taverne, a close associate of Lord Sainsbury, is probably best known as Chairman of the pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science. http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=127

So to mark the publication of The March of Unreason, we thought we'd reprint our PANTS ON FIRE citation for Lord Dick and his pals. For the original, including a couple of great cartoons (if we may say so), see: http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=60&page=1&op=2
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When pants burn, the truth goes up in smoke!

*Smelliest Newcomer award*

Lord Dick Lets Rip

"When crops burn, the truth goes up in smoke", was the striking headline of an opinion piece in The Thunderer section of The (London) Times by Lord Dick Taverne. In it Taverne denounced the "anti-GM campaign" as "a crusade" led by "eco-fundamentalists". He warned, "when campaigns become crusades, crusaders are more likely to turn to violence". He referred to farmers being "terrorised" and claimed that "the tactics of animal welfare terrorists" were being adopted against GM researchers.

New Pants On The Block

Taverne's article was part of a media campaign orchestrated by the lobby group Sense About Science, of which Taverne is Chairman. Sense About Science was launched in 2002 in the run up to the UK's official GM Public Debate.

While it claims independence, Sense About Science's altruistic supporters include the biotech-industry backed ISAAA, the John Innes Centre (which has benefited from multi-million pound investments from GM corporations), Martin Livermore (a PR consultant on biotech who formerly worked for DuPont), Amersham Biosciences, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Oxford GlycoSciences and the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.

(Non)Sense About Science

Sense About Science's campaign to smear critics of GM as violent extremists kicked off with another article in The Times - "GM vandals force science firms to reduce research". Based on a survey by Sense About Science, the article quoted the lobby group's director, Tracey Brown, as complaining, "The burden of trying to organise the research community to pre-empt and protect from vandalism is potentially disastrous."

Articles in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and elsewhere followed. These suggested that the GM public debate had been "hijacked" by "activists". This claim was repeated in a letter from GM-supporting scientists to Tony Blair, ostensibly organised by Prof Derek Burke but in reality the work of Sense About Science. However, no credible evidence to show the debate had been hijacked was ever provided, although an article in New Scientist put forward the theory that it was the "middle-aged mothers" of the Women's Institute what fixed it. (UK public strongly rejects GM foods )

Sense About Science - Fiction!

The THES articles claimed that scientists who support GM were being subjected to a campaign of physical and mental abuse, leading some to leave the country for jobs abroad. One THES article was headlined, "Scientists quit UK amid GM attacks". Another - "GM debate cut down by threats and abuse" - sounded a still more sinister note. It spoke of "the increasingly violent anti-GM lobby", "growing levels of physical and mental intimidation", "hardcore tactics of protesters", "intimidation by anti-GM lobbyists... mirroring animal-rights activism", "increasingly vicious protests", "a baying mob of anti-GM activists", and "a string of personal threats". It quoted a scientist's call for "the government to intervene to protect researchers."

This article, like all the others, failed to cite a single instance of anyone being assaulted or anything else "violent" or "vicious" having occurred. There were claims of "threats" but the only specific threat of any seriousness cited in any of the articles was an alleged bomb hoax that had taken place some 5 years earlier.

Don't Choke On That Smoke!

The attempt to portray anti-GM activists as terrorists was no spur-of-the-moment inspiration on the part of Taverne and his team at Sense About Science. It is a carefully calculated tactic borrowed from America's pro-corporate Wise Use movement, which has long used the "terrorist" label to marginalize and discredit environmental campaigners.

Though Wise Use tactics have never before gained a foothold in the UK, it's not from want of trying. Wise Users were featured as environmental experts in the Channel 4 TV series Against Nature, which represented environmentalists as doom-mongering imperialists responsible for the death and deprivation of millions in the Third World.

Subsequent investigations revealed that there was more to Against Nature than met the eye. Some of the programme makers and several key contributors were closely aligned, or even directly involved, with a magazine called LM. In March 1998, LM ran an article by Wise Use founder Ron Arnold. According to Arnold, "Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement."

Ever Ready Frank Furedi

LM's star columnist, and the star of Against Nature, was the sociologist Frank Furedi. In recent years, Furry Frank has written for the Centre for Policy Studies (founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher) and contacted the big supermarket chains, offering to educate their customers against food scares - for an appropriate fee! A once-fervent Trotskyist, Furry Frank now appears to be in search of a piece of the action and has even been found defending Monsanto in the pages of The Wall Street Journal.

It's That Man Again!

The phone number for Sense About Science is the same as that of the 'publishing house' Global Futures. But the only publication on the Global Futures website is by Frank Furedi. Sense About Science's assistant director, Ellen Raphael, used to be listed by the Charity Commissiononers as the contact person for Global Futures.

Like Tracey Brown , Raphael studied under, er... Frank Furedi, who eulogises technologies like genetic engineering and human cloning. Brown and Raphael then went on to work for the PR firm Regester Larkin, which has leading biotechnology firms among its clients. Both Brown and Raphael have also contributed to LM and to the Furedi-following post-LM organisations, the lnstitute of ldeas (IoI) and Spiked-online.

Sense About Science has set up a Working Party on peer review, which is expected to be used as a vehicle for attacking GM-critical research like that of Arpad Pusztai. In addition to leading Fellows of the Royal Society, its members include Fiona Fox (sister of lol director Claire Fox) and Tony Gilland (lol science and society director and co-signatory of Furry Frank's pitch to the supermarkets).

Crazy Like A Fox?

Some of LM's most controversial material sought to excuse or deny acts of horrific violence. In fact, the magazine was finally sued out of existence after an article falsely accused journalists working for British news broadcaster ITN of fabricating evidence of war crimes in Bosnia. LM's contributors have even turned up as defence witnesses at tribunals for people subsequently convicted of war crimes and genocide.

One particularly notorious LM piece denying the Rwandan genocide was written under a pseudonym by Sense About Science Working Party member Fiona Fox. It caused an outcry, winning the condemnation of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center amongst others. Other articles by Fox provided a platform for those opposing the peace process in Northern Ireland. In them Fox describes convicted terrorists as "prisoners of war".

Genocide? What Genocide?

There's a splendidly Pants on Fiery irony about Lord Dick - head of Sense About Science - firing off unsupported allegations of anti-GM "extremists" adopting the tactics of "terrorists", while his own staff, and co-members of the Working Party on which he sits, are part of a genuinely extreme ideological network which has played into the hands of genocidal killers in Rwanda and war criminals in Bosnia and Belgrade, by denying the significance, and in some cases even the reality, of their crimes against humanity.

Pants on Fire Fighter in Chief, Jean de Bris commented, "When pants burn, what a smoke-filled world we get! If you object to GM crops, you're part of the baying mob; you're a vicious anti-truth extremist. Going in for genocide, on the other hand, seems to be less of a problem!"

Denier, Denier, De Pants Are On Fire!

The Pants on Fire Brigade leader concluded, "The stench from the undergarments of Lord Dick and his techno-jackbooted pals has to be amongst the most noxious ever to billow out of the lingerie-conflagration department. I have no hesitation in bestowing the Smelliest Newcomer award on the incendiary Sense About Science."


*Afterword: Unlike his staff and others around him, Lord Taverne is not himself part of the LM network. He is a Liberal Democrat peer. This may explain why he appears to find the techo-jackboots of the LM brigade so congenial. His own Party policy calls for a moratorium on the planting of all GM crops.