Public knowledge on GMOs is important to Cara Santa Maria.
The first session of the speaker series, “What’s for Dinner? A Guide to Understanding GMOs,” last Tuesday featured award-winning science communicator Cara Santa Maria.
In addition to this, Santa Maria is a journalist, television personality, producer and podcaster and is the creator of her own weekly science-oriented podcast, “Talk Nerdy with Cara Santa Maria,” as well as a correspondent on “Bill Nye Saves the World” on Netflix.
Santa Maria identifies herself as a skeptic.
“I consider myself to be a skeptic. I think the skeptic community is a very warm one and fits in well with the scientific work,” Santa Maria said.
Santa Maria’s talk focused on communication and public knowledge of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). During the presentation, she referenced many Pew Research Surveys regarding public opinion surrounding GMOs and noted there could be an inherent bias within the polling and to analyze the results with some skepticism.
“We try to slice and dice them (people) up into different groups — but it’s not always that easy,” Santa Maria said. “With a little bit of media literacy, you can dig deeper and find some more interesting and reliable information.”
Santa Maria said a Pew Research poll found that Americans are more trusting of information about genetically modified foods from scientists and small farm owners rather than food producers or elected officials. But Pew also found roughly one-in-five Americans say scientists understand genetically modified foods “very well.” Most Americans instead selected the option “fairly well.” To this point, Santa Maria said she believes a lot of people underestimate the consensus of scientists on GMOs, but that she will still be skeptical to immediately accept a consensus from the broad science community.
“I don’t know about you, but a theoretical physicist’s view on evolution isn’t as relevant as a geneticist’s view on evolution,” Santa Maria said.
She said she was offered a job at Monsanto, a major agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation which is brought to the forefront during GMO debate because of its production of genetically engineered seeds in the U.S. Santa Maria chose not to work with them for the sake of her reputation as a science communicator. She said she wanted people to trust her based on her evidence and recognized a portion of the population wouldn’t if she were ever paid by Monsanto.
“We do have to think about these things less in an idealistic way and more in a pragmatic way,” Santa Maria said.
Fred Gould, co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center North Carolina State University is a prominent member of the National Academy of Sciences and presented at the CALS speaker series. Gould specializes in the ecology and genetics of insects with the goal of improving human and environmental health, as well as food production rates.
Gould’s presentation focused on a research report he led. Gould’s team issued their report in May 2016 titled, “Genetically Engineered Crops: Experiences and Prospects.”
The committee’s task which examined evidence both for and against genetically engineered, as well as examining the future of genetically engineered crops. During his presentation Gould touched on specific results from the report and said the rest of the report can be found online easily.
Gould also spoke on the resistance to new scientific research within the population.
“Science can be very accurate but there is a social to what kind of science gets done and how easy it is for you based on your priors to decide if it’s right,” Gould said.
Elizabeth Marshall can be reached at [email protected]