If Monsanto is science, then isn’t it “bad” or “junk” or “pseudo” science? Good science would consist of asking mother nature the right questions and respecting the answers. Bad science might be blindly pursuing some executive bullet point with bioengineering and other science-backed processes without actually engaging fully in the full scientific meaning, consequence, and harm of what their latest crash development program might create.
In other words, I don’t believe the harm to surface waters, soil, the progeny of herbicide-resistant weeds, or the toxic harm to honeybees, monarch butterflies, and bats would result if industrial agriculture were truly scientific. They aren’t. They are “science-y” in the “truthiness” sense of meaning. I fear the truth of the situation is closer to: they distort scientific truth through myopic lenses applied in the wrongful pursuit of their agenda, creating great environmental harm, and doubtless other forms of harm, including economic and monopolistic. They are irrational in the pursuit of profits, which is why the agriculture they create is unsustainable, environmentally harmful, and likely toxic to its consumers.
At best, Monsanto does “real” unethical science, based on the harmful real-world outcomes they’re creating with it. I personally would argue that “real science” and “harmful results” are mutually-exclusive, and so what they are doing is by definition “not science or scientific” any more than a tobacco company developing a new “rational” argument for why smoking does not cause cancer.
