I’m glad to hear you’re learning. I’m doing the same - as best I can.
The trouble is that much of science has sold out to ideology. You write as though finding the truth these days involved little more that doing an internet search.
Even among those scientists whose integrity has not been compromised, there remains so much ignorance - simply because there’s so much left to discover. So, as someone pointed out above, yesterday coffee was bad for us, but today it’s good for us.
Perhaps its premature, then, to claim that GMO (modified artificially, as opposed to, say, crossbreeding - a distinction some would obscure) is harmful. To claim it’s harmless, on the other hand, is clearly reckless.
Your eagerness to dig for the truth is a rarity, and so it seems unlikely the GMO experiment will be halted. We’ll probably know within a few decades whether or not it was a mistake.
Point taken about the Internet. However, given a decent education and the ability to cross-check statements, it is really possible to find truth via the Internet. You can even research the researchers, now. I’m not advocating taking the first hit on a simple search and considering it factual or reputable. If that was the implication, I apologize. It can and does take time, especially w/o a specialty education in a given field.
I worked at a major business library and a university library back when they were switching from the Dewey Decimal System to Library of Congress Classification system. It was a great foundation lesson in keyword search before there was an Internet. In the beginning of the public access Internet, it helped a lot before the advanced search algorithms were available to everyone. It still helps to drill down into a subject or a person.
I do not have the exact dates at hand, but IIRC, GMO has been around and in the food supply for meat animals and for humans for at least a couple of decades already (someone will provide the exact amount of time, I am certain). I’m not sure it is still an *experiment*, more like a fait d’accompli. As for coffee, humans have been drinking it for so long that I think it can be included in “generally regarded as safe”. Same for tea and lots of other plants that contain caffeine. OTOH, some metabolisms and conditions may react differently to various alkaloids.
Most of us have been ingesting processed foods all our lives. I recall a study a few years ago that found that the preservatives in food might be responsible for people today seeming younger at the same age their grandparents were considered old, as well as perhaps adding years to our lives. Might be true, might not, but bears some further investigation, IMO.
I think people are leery of change and that may be a hard-wired survival attribute. One of the downsides of all this instant communication is that we can scare ourselves and each other much more quickly than could happen previously.
But, for me, the Internet provides access to medical and scientific studies that at least allow me to know more than I ever could before. It has only been the past 5-6 years or so that I began to discern an ideological edge to the various scientific papers available from credentialed researchers. I do understand the potential for swallowing propaganda. That is why I really try to _learn_ what I am studying and to integrate it with what I already know, can observe or cross-check.
Prior to the Internet, one had to go to a major university library and work through the ready reference librarian. I actually did that, more than once in the past. The hardest part was getting into the library unless you were a student/staff. There was a time, 40 years ago, when you could phone a reference librarian at a major urban public library and get a timely response. I have many reference books and encyclopedia that are by now out of date and the Internet allows me to access more recent findings.It is a lot cheaper, too, of course.
My first reaction to the Internet was that I now had some access to previously out of reach stores of knowledge. It was exhilarating.
I guess I was a nerd before there was a term for it.