[algoatecorn]

Let's just take a pause and consider some key information:

-This is an association study

-If we CTLR+F "cause", "causing", "causal", etc, the only mention of causation is with extremely high levels of flouride and another mention with extremely high levels of glyphosate and zebrafish

Now let's zoom way out, and consider the use of glyphosate in general. If you plot grain yields over time compared to herbicide use over time and fertilizer use over time, you can see one thing quite clearly. The use of synthetic inputs, along with plant breeding and genetic engineering, has saved humanity from starvation and allowed unhindered growth.

Any experienced agriculturalist knows this. Any experienced commodity trader knows this. All this talk about commercial farming needing to be eradicated is fantasy talk. There are trade-offs to everything.

When you consider cost/acre and calories/acre, it is also abundantly clear that for all its flaws, modern industrial farming is a technological marvel.

When you look back into the history of herbicides, you can consider glyphosate to be way better than many of the past options. So things are definitely getting better.

As for the demonization of glyphosate, I would say that most of this literature is just provocative headlines for the sake of grant funding. It's very trendy to claim that glyphosate is causing X,Y, and Z. We saw the same thing with MSG as a food additive, and are still dealing with the proliferation of bad science, bad messaging, and a sticky belief system within genpop.

[xpe]

> When you consider cost/acre and calories/acre, it is also abundantly clear that for all its flaws, modern industrial farming is a technological marvel.

Modern farming seems optimized for the wrong thing all too often: cheap calories. Calories are important (for basic metabolic needs) but not the whole story. Nutrient density and sustainable practices are worth promoting.

[mvdtnz]

It's easy to be picky about nutrient density and sustainable farming when you have a full belly. Modern farming techniques have saved the lives of millions of people who would otherwise starve to death.

[tuatoru]

Well, yes, nutrient density is worth promoting.

But it seems to me that the populations of those who oppose herbicides like glyphosate, and those who oppose genetically modified crops with say extra niacin or vitamin D, overlap very heavily.

We have a new mental illness, generalized antiscience disorder. Motto: "It is better that a hundred million die of famine or epidemic disease than one person die of cancer."

[Turing_Machine]

Tell me you've never had trouble affording enough calories to survive without telling me you've never had trouble affording enough calories to survive.

"Cheap calories" are what keeps the world from starving to death, and incidentally what allows some of us to be software engineers, novelists, and YouTube "influencers", rather than 95% of us being either agricultural serfs or foot soldiers.

[mbrochh]

Your argument falls apart when you realise that grains are not in any way shape or form part of a proper human diet.

All those bellies that are filled with grains may feel full and therefore won't likely cause much trouble for the elites, but they are really just slowly rotting away and dying (and generating even more income streams for big pharma, owned by the... elites).

[Sammi]

"proper".

Meanwhile humans have been eating grains for millennia.

[codingdave]

When I did a control-F in the study, I didn't find the word "cause" at all. Nor "zebrafish". What document are you looking at?

[hombre_fatal]

Nitpick: all studies only show associations. We draw causal inferences from associations. e.g. Duhem-Quine thesis.

There’s a meme on social media where people think studies break down into association studies vs casual studies or something.

[Natsu]

If you merely observe thermometers and which days feel hot, you'll see a link but won't be able to tell which way causality goes. If you set the thermometer to a high value in a cold room and notice that you don't get any warmer, you'll quickly realize which way causality flows.

So I agree with the GP post, I want to see them modeling & testing causality here.

[algoatecorn]

Is this an AI-generated comment? Nothing about the article mentions herbicide