Good science conquers greatest fear: the unknown

In downtown Des Moines Oct. 12, we honor an agricultural scientist whose work has been compared to that of Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Carl Sagan.  And yes, even to that of Iowa-born Norman Borlaug.  I don’t claim that University of Florida horticulture professor Kevin Folta has saved a billion lives. That’s Borlaug’s legacy. But the plaudits for Folta are that he’s done as much as anyone in the past decade to help you understand the biotechnology behind what you eat. What that means is he wants to help you conquer your fears. Because we live in an age of so much information, we also live in an age of misinformation. Oftentimes, I find, the very point of misinformation is to induce fear. So I can understand if you’re nervous about talk of genetically modified food. Activists and celebrities have wide audiences for their messages that biotechnology is a threat to healthy food — messages that are not backed by evidence. Folta is being honored for countering this by communicating about science. He wants to replace fear with fact. For that, he’s been attacked relentlessly, from obscenity-laced social media messages to death threats.