Luddites

Boy is it depressing that it's come to this: scientists at the Rothamsted Institute pleading on YouTube that enviro-Luddites not destroy their research.



The Rothamsted scientists' plea is pretty compelling. Here's the Luddites' call for destroying scientific trials.

New Zealand trials of GM radiata pine were destroyed by local Luddites last month.

GE Free NZ disclaimed responsibility for that attack, but didn't exactly go out of their way to condemn the destruction of scientific knowledge:

President of GE Free NZ, Claire Bleakley, told Radio New Zealand she had "absolutely no idea at all" who was responsible and doubted the person was connected to the organisation.

"This is really the responsibility of a person who is obviously so disfranchised by the ERMA process and their anger at having GE trees regardless of the 95 per cent submissions against it to ERMA.

"The people already done it before and are obviously very concerned GE trees. This isn't an act of vandalism, this is an act of ridiculousness that Scion is going forward with taxpayers money."

Putting a human face on the destruction helps build public support for science; Scion, ran the trials in NZ, could look to Rothamsted as example.