An unlikely team of biological warfare experts and university entomologists has determined a possible cause of the mysterious "colony collapse disorder": A "tag team" of a virus and a fungus that, when combined, devastate bee colonies...
Well, colour me surprised; I was told in no uncertain terms by the organic foodies that it was all due to pesticides, GM crops and feeding HFCS to bees.
You mean people might make **** up to promote their own pseudoreligious nonsense? Nooo, that would never happen.
It's always some kind of synthetic bogeyman for that ilk. Time and again, this assumption has been proven wrong but they keep repeating it because it gets them money.
Anyway, hats off to those researchers...
More recently:
The following article borders on the CT edge: that Bayer is trying to cover CCD up, has payed off Bromenshenk (
probably so that he could help them improve their product -- oops, I meant so that they could cover it up more, of course
), and that "here's more proof that pesticides are evil" mantra. Of course, it doesn't provide any counterarguments to why Bayer would shoot itself in the foot by producing pesticides that would ultimately put their clients' product in danger (farmers who rely on pollinators). That makes so much sense. Bayer is obviously in the business of wanting
less business...
Skepticism is a valuable tool in helping us discern what is true. Used well, skepticism helps us accept true claims and reject false ones. Used poorly, skepticism sets too high or unreasonable a bar and rejects true claims and/or sets too low a bar and accepts false ones.
In light of additional research on bee colony collapse which has been done since this thread was active, I thought it might be worth looking at some of these old posts again.
The posts by soylent, slimething and majamin are good examples of poor skepticism. These posts display
excessive hostility to the idea that pesticides might be a cause of colony collapse (and to any evidence supporting that idea) and
excessive credulity to anything contradicting the idea that pesticides might be a cause (and any evidence supporting that idea).
It now appears highly likely that a pesticide
is one of the causes of colony collapse. In particular it is a Bayer pesticide -- one which was previously suspected of being a possible cause, and one which research such as Bromenshenk's helped deflect suspicion away from.
The aim of skepticism should be to come up with a uniform standard for examining evidence -- one which is neither excessively hostile to people and ideas we tend to disagree with nor excessively credulous to people and ideas we tend to agree with, but rather which gives the same critical scrutiny to both.
Since there is a new thread on this topic,
"Pesticides linked to honeybee decline", that's a better place than this to continue the discussion on pesticides and their effect on bees. But in carrying on that discussion, it might be good to look over some of the old threads on colony collapse, such as this one, and try to learn from past mistakes.
