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by Variance
5029 days ago
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Deferring to a body that knows far more about these topics than either you or I is hardly an authority fallacy. The FDA will be aware of the animal models and birth defect studies, and I trust in them to adequately regulate pesticide use in response--and they will regulate infinitely more accurately and thoroughly than I would if I were left to literally analyzing scientific studies to find what I should and shouldn't buy at the supermarket. Similarly, most people haven't read Einstein's paper on general relativity, but it's prudent to still take stock in GR because the physics community has read the research and come to a conclusion. I also don't think that there's "no evidence" of pesticide harm--there definitely is evidence that the pesticide levels that we consume are harmful. It just isn't sufficient evidence to be significant enough that we should assume it to be true that we need to eat organic. Every field has fringe studies that provide evidence for unique claims; the claims just don't become meaningful until that evidence becomes piled up enough to be significant. In this case, the evidence against pesticide residue levels being harmful is insignificant as judged by the FDA, and the evidence of pesticide levels being safe is judged significant. |
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Further, the FDA doesn't operate on the precautionary principle.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide
Distorting effects of authority (this applies both within the FDA, and regarding listening to the FDA)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Conformity and group-think: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments