NEW!

UNRAVELING THE SECRET OF LIFE: DNA self-duplication, the basic precept of biotechnology, is denied

by Barry Commoner
GeneWatch
May-June 2003

References

Unraveling the DNA Myth: The Spurious Foundation of Genetic Engineering

by Barry Commoner
Harper's Magazine
February 2002

Synopsis
References

MORE ROSES THAN RASPBERRIES
A Classification of the Responses to "Unraveling the DNA Myth"
Andreas Athanasiou

In addition to the substantive analysis of the respondents' comments that appears in the preceding pages, we have made a quantitative assessment of the comments with respect to the respondents' judgments on the value of the article's content and/or Harper's decision to publish it. Readers of the article had two opportunities to respond to it: one was provided by letters to the editor, which are routinely welcomed at Harper's; the second was provided by a footnote on the first page of the article that invited readers to e-mail CBNS for a list of the references used as sources. Fifty letters to the editor were received by Harper's, of which four were selected for publication, in abbreviated form, in the May 2002 issue. Harper's kindly provided us with the unedited versions of all 50 letters. As of August 29, 2002, we had received in addition 383 e-mail communications, of which 196 offered substantive responses to the article in addition to requesting the references.

Depending on the personal information that they provided, the respondents were classified into four groups:

Related Sciences: (biologists, including molecular biologists and molecular geneticists; chemists; physicists; and medical doctors)
Other Professions: (chiefly other academic disciplines and a range of professions, such as journalist, attorney, computer specialist or minister)
Students: (college and high-school students)
Not Identified: (insufficient information to classify in above categories)

The responses from each of these groups were classified as to whether or not they included comments, and the comments were classified as "positive" or "negative," in keeping with the following criteria:

Positive: responses that voiced general approval of the article and/or the decision to publish it.
Negative: responses that disagreed with the article's arguments and conclusions and/or the decision to publish it.

Given the intensity with which these judgments were expressed, classification was relatively unambiguous. Adjectives employed in the positive judgments ranged from "brilliant," "magnificent," and "bravo" to "cogent and timely," "fascinating," and "thought-provoking." Negative judgments employed terms that ranged from "deliberate misrepresentation," "irresponsibly misleading," "incompetent," "gibberish," and "either intellectually dishonest or scientifically naive" to "erroneous," "hyperbole and half-truths," and "poorly researched." The relatively few responses (usually quite brief) that used neutral terms such as "interesting" or "read with interest" were classified as neither positive nor negative and were included in the "no comment" category.

The results of our classification of the responses to the article are described in Figures 1, 2 and 3. Figure 1 shows the distribution of the total responses among the four categories of respondents. The largest group of identified respondents, 133 or 31% of the total, were from professionals in the related sciences; 15% were from other (chiefly academic) professions; 7% were from students. The remaining 202 respondents (47%) could not be identified from their communications.

Figure 2 shows that of the total of 433 responses to the article, 246 (57 percent) included comments, as defined above. The largest proportion of comments came from 89 readers (67 percent) in the related sciences. In the remaining categories of respondents, those commenting ranged from 50 percent to 58 percent. It is perhaps no surprise that those readers who were most familiar with molecular genetics and genetic engineering had more to say on the subject than readers less directly involved in these subjects.

Of the four groups of commenting respondents, those representing the related sciences, by virtue of their interests, can be regarded as most informed about molecular genetics and biotechnology. For this reason, and because of its relatively large size, the division of these 71 respondents between positive and negative assessments of the article is particularly meaningful: 80% positive versus 20% negative. The two other identified groups, Other Professions and Students, exhibit an even more extreme imbalance toward a favorable assessment of the article (97% and 94% positive, respectively). This overall impression is supported by the result from the Not Indicated group, which presumably reflects the relative proportions of the other three groups. Of the 103 members of this category, 91 (88%) responded positively to the article and 12 (12%) negatively. It is also significant that the distinction between the Related Sciences group and the other two identified categories with respect to negative responses - 20% versus 1% and 1% respectively - is confirmed by the intermediate value of 12% in the Not Indicated category, reflecting its mixture of the three identified ones.

In interpreting this unbalanced result, it is important to recognize that the respondents are a self-selected, voluntary group. To some extent, readers who were positively disposed to the article were more likely than the negatively-minded readers to request the references and could use the occasion to comment. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that a preponderant majority of the readers regarded the article as a positive contribution to their understanding of molecular genetics and biotechnology, often praising Harper's for deciding to publish it. That this position is expressed by a substantial majority of readers active in the relevant fields of biology and medicine, including molecular genetics itself, suggests that this science, and its application to biotechnology, is ripe for a much-needed reevaluation.