[jerf]

It's not an attempt to reason with terrorists. It's way smarter than that. It's an attempt to undercut the entire reason they are doing this. The terrorists are looking to build public awareness, sympathy, and support for their actions against the evil nasty scientists playing with the Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. This is an attempt to humanize the scientists, put their work in context, and reframe the narrative from Heroic Radicals Save Humanity From Cackling Evil Scientists to Idiotic Bookburning Knowledge-Hating Radicals Shoot Selves In Foot and Kill Poor People. It's attacking the foundation of the terrorism instead of getting distracted with the building on top.

[EthanHeilman]

I'm not sure you are representing the views of the "terrorists" correctly.

1. Terrorist is not an accurate title.

2. From what I've read the metaphysical argument that "Things Man Was Not Meant To Know" is not the reasoning behind these actions. The argument used tends to be the same as the anti-nuclear argument. Given the facts, the danger is too great.

3. Plenty of people in the scientific community have serious objections to the way GM crops are used and promoted. It's not an anti-science movement anymore than the anti-nuclear movement was an anti-physics movement.

4. I agree with your assessment that this is a PR maneuver aimed at the general public.

5. The campaign is being managed by the PR firm 'Sense About Science' which is funded by a number of private firms. The claim that this is purely about public scientific research is PR.

Sense about science has done some good work in the past with regard to fighting science libel laws. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_About_Science

[jerf]

"I'm not sure you are representing the views of the "terrorists" correctly."

Since I didn't try, nor do I particularly care, probably not. I was talking about what this document does, not endorsing it or analyzing it beyond that. Personally I'm not a big fan of narrative-based warfare regardless of who is doing it, but that doesn't mean I can't recognize it when I see it.

[koeselitz]

This is a gross distortion of the argument that Take The Flour Back is making. TTFB cites legitimate and real scientific concerns; they don't caricature scientists as evil by nature. Their claim, in fact, is that the people doing these experiments are not acting as scientists, in the sense that they are ignoring serious environmental dangers and running these tests purely for grant money. And I think that's a legitimate concern, for what it's worth. It's very hard to do legitimate science right now because of the money. We see this in medicine, and we certainly see it in agriculture.

So this video might be effective if the only think you know about TTFB is that they're "environmentalists," and if you extrapolate from this that they're crazy spiritist loons who hate science and knowledge. But you would be flat wrong if you did that.

[Toenex]

Very well put. It may not affect those that carry out such actions but may change the view of less radicalised individuals.