Yeah, before we had influencers on the internet, we had celebrity gurus, magazines, etc… In Hungary, interest in home gardening surged after some magazines declared that if some fruits/vegetables rot in a weird way, they must be GMO, thus must cause cancer and have zero vitamins. Some went as far as if some powder of a common food item existed, such as “milk powder”, it meant that said thing was made out of crude oil, and all milk products were fake and vitamin-free.
The moment my stepmother heard meat powder and egg powder existed, I had to move in with them, so once they got their hands on chickens they can let free of “GMO food made out of crude oil”. That part never happened, but at least it helped to sabotage my college education.
casualvagrancy@lemmy.world 6 days ago
The idea that its scientists vs bloggers was created by PR firms. It’s scientists and bloggers vs scientists and bloggers. Both sides have geniuses and idiots.
porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
No, not in the cases of vaccines or climate change. The incredibly overwhelming majority of scientists are on the plainly correct side of both of those, they don’t have to be geniuses for that, just somewhat educated.
casualvagrancy@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Highly educated and credentialed people have complex disagreements on both subjects.
Climate change: that the climate changes and is changing is self-evident, but how it will change and how much of that change is influenced by human activity is a subject of fierce debate.
Vaccines: while nobody thinks that vaccines are never effective, studies consistently show links between high vaccination and chronic health issues, leading to many highly credentialed and educated doctors and researchers arguing that vaccines are a risk factor for SIDs and allergic rhinitis.
Henry Ford Health recently conducted a large study, which they themselves described as near perfect, that showed links to many chronic health conditions, though not autism.
Fluke@feddit.uk 6 days ago
The only reason there is any “fierce debate” about either of those topics, is because vested interests are spending a lot of money to have voices shout very loudly but knowingly in the wrong, in order to prolong the status quo.
The oil industry, for example, is one of the most heavily subsidised, highly profitable industries. That only remains so if the world’s demand for oil and gas remains insatiable.
Time and again, leaks, lawsuits and increasingly rare/dangerous investigative journalism have shown various oil and gas companies up to the fucking elbows in corrupt practices -ranging from skewed science to outright murder- to deny the extraordinary effects of burning their fuels, let alone the absolutely insane list of environmental damage that is accruing from all the non-fuel petroleum products society has been conditioned to be reliant on.
There is no disagreement on human caused climate change besides “Just how utterly fucked are our grandkids?”.
porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
You have clearly been misled by propaganda. There is no broad disagreement about these issues. If there is debate about “how much climate change is caused by human activity” it is regarding the third nine after the decimal point of the percentage figure, which might be debated fiercely but makes no difference at all to the overall message.
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
You know what else leads to much higher levels of chronic health conditions? Viral infections.
You will have 1 in a million adverse events with a glass of water.