5 ms·

The article is a good read but I really hate the repeated assertions that clones are all part of the same single organism. That's just not true--that's not how

The article is a good read but I really hate the repeated assertions that clones are all part of the same single organism. That's just not true--that's not how "organism" is defined. The analogy they use to justify it, the ant colony, is just as inaccurate; each ant is an individual organism. Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but there's someone out there walking away from this article with a terrible misunderstanding of what an "organism" is. Science journalism should be about informing, not misinforming.

NikolaNovak 10y ago
In the example they themselves use, I doubt two identical twins would be considered part of the same organism in human world...
cardiffspaceman 10y ago
Did you miss the weasel words "An argument can be made"? Of course, after using this clause, the writer writes as if the argument that clones are parts of a singular whole was made elsewhere, so he can use that conclusion as an axiom. I agree with you calling this out as sloppy. "Some believe" that all the (science) writers on the WWW need to be subjected to a marathon of "In search of..." episodes so that they have a chance to see how transparent these cliches are.
samirillian 10y ago
And the claim that this is some sort of historical anomaly is a bit misleading. Palatable apples, for example, cannot be reliably grown from seed. (Which was why all Johnny Appleseed's seeds were for hard cider) But yeah, if you've had even one really good banana (I had a few in Rwanda), you know how inferior the flavor of the Cavendish is.
- ska 10y ago
  Much of industrial agriculture has, for presumably straightforward economic reasons, been focused around product that either produce more something (even if that's mostly water) per unit effort, or store and ship much better. Optimizing for these things has been far more successful than flavor or nutritional content.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure that modern cultivars of staple crops like corn, wheat, rice, and potatoes produce more calories per hectare than heirloom variants. Not everything gets optimized for water content and shelf-life.
    - ska 10y ago
      I wasn't claiming only water content, nor limiting to staples. cf modern strawberries. I should have put appearance on the list too. In other words I meant that there is some feature(s) of value in the market (size, uniformity, color, cost/kg to produce, storage, shipability, yield) that trump flavor, nutritional content, sustainability for that market. So we shouldn't be surprised when those don't "win". That said, as I understand it (could easily be wrong) some modern cultivars don't really optimize yield, but labor. I suspect the math works out differently for different crops.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Yet agriculture research has also tried to (and succeed in) carry a lot of diversity from pre-industrial into industrial agriculture. The market will reward more things than yeld, just not in "take over the world" scales.
thaumasiotes 10y ago
> The analogy they use to justify it, the ant colony, is just as inaccurate; each ant is an individual organism. From an evolutionary perspective, the idea that the "organism" is the ant colony rather than the ant has a lot going for it; ant colonies can and do reproduce while individual ants, in general, cannot.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  That's a good point. It looks like I'm at least somewhat wrong on that point. The same dynamic definitely doesn't apply to cloned banana trees though.
Udo 10y ago
The article with all its inaccuracies and misleading language felt like it was written in pursuit of a somewhat manipulative agenda. When I got to the end and read the book it's excerpted from it, it made sense: "Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future". At least the article makes an effort to blame monocultures, but instead of proposing a better model for a more diversified agriculture, it implies that current troubles are an inescapable result of post-industrial consumerism. But I assert what we're seeing is a result of big agricultural companies' unwillingness to change course on a model that was supposed to maximise profits without any thought of long term viability - a phenomenon that is currently slowly changing through consumer demand for more variety. Increasing variety is the answer to the robustness problem. When I was a child, there was precisely one type of tomato in the supermarket, and it wasn't great. Today, I typically see more than five, and they all taste pretty good. If I had five types of banana to choose from, that wouldn't be the end of the world either (neither would be the banana dying out, for that matter). "Having the Food We Want When We Want It" is a highly misleading premise.
- steven777400 10y ago
  I'm not much of a banana guy, so I don't know if it's always been the case, but at my local supermarket there are usually up to four varieties of bananas to choose from, and always more than just one. The usual big yellows take up the most display, of course, but they also have red bananas, a small yellow variety, and the baking banana (for some reason the name is escaping me at the moment, but these are well known).
LordKano 10y ago
That rubbed me the wrong way too. Are identical twins a single organism because they have the same genetics? Of course not and we'd laugh at anyone who based an argument on that premise.

NikolaNovak 10y ago

In the example they themselves use, I doubt two identical twins would be considered part of the same organism in human world...

cardiffspaceman 10y ago

Did you miss the weasel words "An argument can be made"? Of course, after using this clause, the writer writes as if the argument that clones are parts of a singular whole was made elsewhere, so he can use that conclusion as an axiom. I agree with you calling this out as sloppy. "Some believe" that all the (science) writers on the WWW need to be subjected to a marathon of "In search of..." episodes so that they have a chance to see how transparent these cliches are.

samirillian 10y ago

And the claim that this is some sort of historical anomaly is a bit misleading. Palatable apples, for example, cannot be reliably grown from seed. (Which was why all Johnny Appleseed's seeds were for hard cider) But yeah, if you've had even one really good banana (I had a few in Rwanda), you know how inferior the flavor of the Cavendish is.

ska 10y ago
Much of industrial agriculture has, for presumably straightforward economic reasons, been focused around product that either produce more something (even if that's mostly water) per unit effort, or store and ship much better. Optimizing for these things has been far more successful than flavor or nutritional content.
- adrianN 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure that modern cultivars of staple crops like corn, wheat, rice, and potatoes produce more calories per hectare than heirloom variants. Not everything gets optimized for water content and shelf-life.
  - ska 10y ago
    I wasn't claiming only water content, nor limiting to staples. cf modern strawberries. I should have put appearance on the list too. In other words I meant that there is some feature(s) of value in the market (size, uniformity, color, cost/kg to produce, storage, shipability, yield) that trump flavor, nutritional content, sustainability for that market. So we shouldn't be surprised when those don't "win". That said, as I understand it (could easily be wrong) some modern cultivars don't really optimize yield, but labor. I suspect the math works out differently for different crops.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  Yet agriculture research has also tried to (and succeed in) carry a lot of diversity from pre-industrial into industrial agriculture. The market will reward more things than yeld, just not in "take over the world" scales.

thaumasiotes 10y ago

> The analogy they use to justify it, the ant colony, is just as inaccurate; each ant is an individual organism. From an evolutionary perspective, the idea that the "organism" is the ant colony rather than the ant has a lot going for it; ant colonies can and do reproduce while individual ants, in general, cannot.

marcoperaza 10y ago
That's a good point. It looks like I'm at least somewhat wrong on that point. The same dynamic definitely doesn't apply to cloned banana trees though.

Udo 10y ago

The article with all its inaccuracies and misleading language felt like it was written in pursuit of a somewhat manipulative agenda. When I got to the end and read the book it's excerpted from it, it made sense: "Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future". At least the article makes an effort to blame monocultures, but instead of proposing a better model for a more diversified agriculture, it implies that current troubles are an inescapable result of post-industrial consumerism. But I assert what we're seeing is a result of big agricultural companies' unwillingness to change course on a model that was supposed to maximise profits without any thought of long term viability - a phenomenon that is currently slowly changing through consumer demand for more variety. Increasing variety is the answer to the robustness problem. When I was a child, there was precisely one type of tomato in the supermarket, and it wasn't great. Today, I typically see more than five, and they all taste pretty good. If I had five types of banana to choose from, that wouldn't be the end of the world either (neither would be the banana dying out, for that matter). "Having the Food We Want When We Want It" is a highly misleading premise.

steven777400 10y ago
I'm not much of a banana guy, so I don't know if it's always been the case, but at my local supermarket there are usually up to four varieties of bananas to choose from, and always more than just one. The usual big yellows take up the most display, of course, but they also have red bananas, a small yellow variety, and the baking banana (for some reason the name is escaping me at the moment, but these are well known).

LordKano 10y ago

That rubbed me the wrong way too. Are identical twins a single organism because they have the same genetics? Of course not and we'd laugh at anyone who based an argument on that premise.