sensationalism Archives - Prindle Institute

November 5, 2019December 14, 2022

CRISPR and the Ethics of Science Hype

CRISPR is in the news again! And, again, I don’t really know what’s going on.

Okay, so here’s what I think I know: CRISPR is a new-ish technology that allows scientists to edit DNA. I remember seeing in articles pictures of little scissors that are supposed to “cut out” the bad parts of strings of DNA, and perhaps even replace those bad parts with good parts. I don’t know how this is supposed to work. It was discovered sort of serendipitously when studying bacteria and how they fight off viruses, I think, and it all started with people in the yogurt industry. CRISPR is an acronym, but I don’t remember what it stands for. What I do know is that a lot of people are talking about it, and that people say it’s revolutionary.

I also know that while ethical worries abound – not only because of the general worries about the unknown side-effects of altering DNA, but because of concerns about people wanting to make things like designer babies – from what my news feed is telling me, there is reason to get really excited. As many, many, m–a–n–y news outlets have been reporting, there is a new study, published in Nature, that a new advance in CRISPR science means that we could correct or cure or generally get rid of 89% of genetic diseases. I’ve heard of Nature: that’s the journal that publishes only the best stuff.

I’ve also heard that people are so excited that Netflix is even making a miniseries about the discovery of CRISPR and the scientists working on it. The show, titled “Unnatural Selection” [sic], pops up on my Netflix page with the following description:

“From eradicating disease to selecting a child’s traits, gene editing gives humans the chance to hack biology. Meet the real people behind the science.”

In an interview about the miniseries, co-director Joe Egender described his motivation for making the show as follows:

“I come from the fiction side, and I was actually in the thick of developing a sci-fi story and was reading a lot of older sci-fi books and was doing some research and trying to update some of the science. And — I won’t ever forget — I was sitting on the subway reading an article when I first read that CRISPR existed and that we actually can edit the essence of life.”

89% of genetic diseases cured. Articles published in Nature and a new Netflix miniseries. Editing the essence of life. Are you excited yet???

So the point of this little vignette is not to draw attention to the potential ethical concerns surrounding gene-editing technology (if you’d like to read about that, you can do so here), but instead to highlight the kind of ignorance that myself and journalists are dealing with when it comes to reporting on new scientific discoveries. While I told you at the outset that I didn’t really know what was going on with CRISPR, I wasn’t exaggerating by much: I don’t have the kind of robust scientific background required to make sense of the content of the actual research. Here, for example, is the second sentence in the abstract of that new paper on CRISPR everyone is talking about:

“Here we describe prime editing, a versatile and precise genome editing method that directly writes new genetic information into a specified DNA site using a catalytically impaired Cas9 fused to an engineered reverse transcriptase, programmed with a prime editing guide RNA (pegRNA) that both specifies the target site and encodes the desired edit.”

Huh? Maybe I could come to understand what the above paragraph is saying, given enough time and effort. But I don’t have that kind of time. And besides, not all of us need to be scientists: leave the science to them, and I’ll worry about other things.

But this means that if I’m going to learn about the newest scientific discoveries then I need to rely on others to tell me about them. And this is where things can get tricky: the kind of hype surrounding new technologies like CRISPR means that you’ll get a lot of sensational headlines, ones that might border on the irresponsible.

Consider again the statement from the co-director of that new Netflix documentary, that he became interested in CRISPR after he read about how it can be used to “edit the essence of life.” It is unlikely that any scientist has ever made so bald a claim, and for good reason: it is not clear what it means for life to have an “essence”, nor that such a thing, if it exists, could be edited. The claim that this new scientific development could potentially cure up to 89% of genetic diseases is also something that makes an incredibly flashy headline, but again is much more tempered when it comes from the mouths of the actual scientists involved. The authors of the paper, for instance, state that the 89% number comes from the maximum number of genetic diseases that could, conceptually, be cured if the claims described in the paper were perfected. But that’s of course not saying much: many wonderful things could happen in perfect conditions, the question is how likely they are to exist. And, of course, the 89% claim also does not take into account any potential adverse effects of the current gene editing techniques (a worry that has been raised in past studies).

This is not to say that the new technology won’t pan out, or that it will definitely have adverse side effects, or anything like that. But it does suggest some worries we might have with this kind of hyped-up reaction to new scientific developments.

For instance, as someone who doesn’t know much about science, I necessarily rely on people who do in order to tell me what’s going on. But those who tend to be the ones telling me what’s going on – journalists, mostly – don’t seem to be much better off in terms of their ability to critically analyze the information they’re reporting on. We might wonder what kinds of responsibilities these journalists have to make sure that people like me are, in fact, getting an accurate portrayal of the state of the relevant developments.

Things like the Netflix documentary are even further removed from reality. Even though the documentary makers themselves do not make any specific claims as to understand the science involved, they clearly have an exaggerated view of what CRISPR technology is capable of. Creating a documentary following the lives of people who are capable of editing the “essence of life” will certainly give viewers a distorted view.

None of this is to say that you can’t be excited. But with great hype comes great responsibility to present information critically. When it comes to new developments in science, though, it often seems that this responsibility is not taken terribly seriously.

July 16, 2019December 14, 2022

Plant-Based Meat Substitutes, Sensational Reporting, and Information Literacy

Close-up photograph of a hand holding vegan McDonalds burger

2019 has been a good year for plant-based meat replacements. In January, Carl’s Junior launched their Beyond Famous Star Burger, made with the plant-based Beyond Meat. The Mexican food franchise Del Taco launched tacos made with Beyond Meat at all of their franchises in April. The introduction of the vegan alternative has been a smash success, leading the company to release two additional products made with Beyond Meat to their menu in June of this year. Many other restaurants have recognized the consumer interest in meat-free options. Restaurants such as Burger King, White Castle, A&W, and Red Robin offer products made with Impossible burger, a plant-based competitor to Beyond Meat.

Now, one might respond, “but haven’t plant based alternatives existed for quite some time?” After all, most people can’t remember a time when they haven’t been able to purchase a veggie patty from their local supermarket. These alternatives are different. They have been designed, not simply to provide a substitute for meat, but to provide an option that is so similar to beef in taste and texture that few consumers are able to tell the difference.

By May of this year, Impossible raised 300 million dollars in Series E funding, generating investments from individuals like Jay-Z, Serena Williams, Alexis Ohanian, Katy Perry, and Jaden Smith. When Beyond Meat went public in May, it was, according to Business Insider, “the best performing first-day IPO in nearly two decades.”

The success of plant-based substitutes is an unmitigated good thing. A move away from meat consumption is critical for a healthy environment. Animal agriculture accounts for 14.5-18% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. This makes animal agriculture the second biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions after the burning of fossil fuels. Animal agriculture also contributes to pollution of land, water and air, deforestation, and loss of biodiversity.

Environmental considerations matter for our futures and for the futures of our children. They also matter for all of the other species of living beings on earth. But movement away from meat is important for reasons beyond impacts on the environment. We have a direct obligation to the animals being consumed. Given the fact that it isn’t necessary for humans to consume flesh to survive, many believe that animals ought not be made to sacrifice their lives because we enjoy how their dead bodies taste. What we should be striving for, as philosopher Tom Regan elegantly put it, is “Not larger cages, empty cages.”

Even those who aren’t sympathetic to that argument might be sympathetic to arguments related to animal welfare. One might think that it isn’t wrong to kill animals for food, so long as those animals are treated humanely and killed painlessly. The fact of the matter is that this simply isn’t the reality of how the meat for our tables is produced. Most meat is produced in factory farms. In these places, animals are treated as things rather than as living beings. They are treated as products to be mass produced rather than as creatures capable of experiencing a wide range of sensations including pleasure, pain, anxiety, and grief. Conditions in these places are appalling—animals are given very little room to move around, they experience existences of perpetual anxiety and pain, and there are no steps to see to it that these beings live their lives in a way that would constitute flourishing for members of their species. The appearance on the market of plant-based alternatives that taste so similar to meat that many tasters can’t tell the difference is truly a remarkable achievement. We have the power to ameliorate all of this suffering and death and still satisfy carnivorous palates.

The fact that meat substitutes are doing so well is big news. Predictably, in the current click-bait news climate, eye-catching headlines and sensationalist news stories are easy to find, and they spread across social media like a virus. Among other things, many news articles raise concerns about the nutritional value of substitutes like Beyond Meat and Impossible meat. All one needs to do is search for news stories about the nutritional value of a given meat substitute to find plenty of noteworthy examples. Consider the story Are Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers Better for You? Nutritionists Weigh In, published in the Huffington Post on July 10th, 2019. The first concern that the nutritionist lists in the article has to do with protein. The protein content in these products is high—Beyond Burger contains 20 grams of protein and Impossible contains 19 grams. The levels are actually higher than the protein content one finds in ground beef with the recommended 20% fat. It can’t be, then, that these meat replacements don’t contain enough protein. Instead, the nutritionist’s complaint is that the proteins are processed. She expresses her concern, “The problem with a lot of additives is that we just don’t know the long-term effects of them, whereas a beef burger could just be one ingredient: beef.” She makes it clear, of course, that the problem with these products is not in average consumption, but in overconsumption. The average reader is likely left with the impression that we simply don’t know whether the contents of these products are healthy or not. A common takeaway, therefore, may be that, because we might not know the long-term effects of processed plant products, we should stick with tried and true beef. What she fails to point out in the article is that there are things about overconsumption of red meat that we do know—such consumption has been linked to both cancer and heart disease. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States.

The nutritionist also raises concern about the amount of sodium in these meat replacement products—the Beyond Burger has 390 milligrams of sodium and Impossible has 370. This is, granted, much more sodium than is contained in beef. That said, these sodium levels aren’t, all things considered, high. The American Heart Association recommends no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium per day and suggests that people average around 1,500 milligrams. Use of one of these meat alternatives as the main source of protein in a meal is certainly compatible with satisfying these recommendations.

The style of reporting in these stories is familiar—it is designed to raise concerns in the reader’s mind about the nutritional value of these products for the purposes of increased readership. In the end, the concerns, though presented as serious, are completely innocuous. Reporting on topics of consumption of all types is frequently this way. Consumption is a big part of life. Arguably, one of the most difficult aspects of living is achieving a healthy balance when it comes to consumption. Many people turn to the Internet to help them navigate the rocky terrain. When the stakes are this high, reporters shouldn’t scare consumers away with misplaced concerns about nutrition.

June 28, 2017December 14, 2022

Media Sensationalism and the “Affaire Villemin”

The case of Gregory Villemin is well known in France, to the point that it is frequently referred to as the “Affaire Villemin.” Gregory was a four-year-old boy who was found dead in 1984, in the waters of the Vologne River in eastern France. There was intense media coverage of the case’s details, but ultimately, the murderers were never found.

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