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I can't figure out what they're implying about Norman Borlaug's award at the end... that it was a mistake too? Either way, the NYT had a much better critique o

I can't figure out what they're implying about Norman Borlaug's award at the end... that it was a mistake too? Either way, the NYT had a much better critique of why big scientific prizes are bad: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/opinion/the-folly-of-big-science-awards.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/opinion/the-folly-of-big-s...

a_bonobo 11y ago
Seeing that the French are one of the biggest opponents of GM technology and this a French article, I assume that "genetic crossbreeding" (what does "genetic" mean here? It's just "old" cross-breeding) is implied to be a bad thing. It rather reflects badly on the author. If you haven't heard of Borlaug, he's one of my scientific heroes - it's due to his work that Mexico's food production turned completely around, from wheat importing to wheat exporting. He did this by essentially reversing natural selection: each wheat plant in a field competes with the other for light, so while humans plant them close to each other each generation will grow higher and higher. This removes resources normally used for the generation of seeds, so you get less grain. He crossed dwarf-varieties with high-yielding varieties, so you got smaller plants which had more resources left over to make grains, thereby greatly raising the amount of grains you get out of each plant. No modern GM needed for this one. He's estimated to have saved roughly a billion people form starvation and IMO fully deserved his Nobel Prize. (As an addendum, DDT isn't as bad as initially thought - if you use it indiscriminately in the outside like they did initially, then it's a huge health concern as it accumulates in the food chain. But if you use it targeted inside homes it's highly effective, and it's still used for that today) Edit: >Yet in November 1945, just three months after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Nobel chemistry prize honoured the discovery of nuclear fission. This is an error that makes the article's point here moot - Hahn's Nobel Prize is the Nobel Prize of 1944 (so before the a-bombs were dropped), it was just awarded in 1945.

a_bonobo 11y ago

Seeing that the French are one of the biggest opponents of GM technology and this a French article, I assume that "genetic crossbreeding" (what does "genetic" mean here? It's just "old" cross-breeding) is implied to be a bad thing. It rather reflects badly on the author. If you haven't heard of Borlaug, he's one of my scientific heroes - it's due to his work that Mexico's food production turned completely around, from wheat importing to wheat exporting. He did this by essentially reversing natural selection: each wheat plant in a field competes with the other for light, so while humans plant them close to each other each generation will grow higher and higher. This removes resources normally used for the generation of seeds, so you get less grain. He crossed dwarf-varieties with high-yielding varieties, so you got smaller plants which had more resources left over to make grains, thereby greatly raising the amount of grains you get out of each plant. No modern GM needed for this one. He's estimated to have saved roughly a billion people form starvation and IMO fully deserved his Nobel Prize. (As an addendum, DDT isn't as bad as initially thought - if you use it indiscriminately in the outside like they did initially, then it's a huge health concern as it accumulates in the food chain. But if you use it targeted inside homes it's highly effective, and it's still used for that today) Edit: >Yet in November 1945, just three months after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Nobel chemistry prize honoured the discovery of nuclear fission. This is an error that makes the article's point here moot - Hahn's Nobel Prize is the Nobel Prize of 1944 (so before the a-bombs were dropped), it was just awarded in 1945.