Ask a silly question, get a silly answer
The monthly US FoodDemand survey added some questions about government policies this time around. Mostly these were reasonable (eg, do you support a tax on sugared sodas, which got 39% ‘Yes”, the same as here; do you support a ban on sale of marijuana, 46% yes)
However, one question was
“Do you support mandatory labeling for foods containing DNA?”
There’s no way this is a sensible question about government policies: it isn’t a reasonable policy or one that has been under public debate. Most foods will contain DNA, the exceptions being distilled spirits, some candy, and (if you don’t measure too carefully) white rice and white flour. Nevertheless, 80% of people were in favour.
There was also a question “Do you support mandatory labeling for foods produced with genetic engineering”. This got 82% support.
It seems most likely that many respondents interpreted these questions as basically the same: they wanted labelling for food containing DNA that was added or modified by genetic engineering. This isn’t what the researchers meant, since they write
A large majority (82%) support mandatory labels on GMOs, but curiously about the same amount (80%) also support mandatory labels on foods containing DNA.
If you ask a question that is nuts when interpreted precisely, but is basically similar to a sensible question, people are going to answer the question they think you meant to ask. People are helpful that way, even when it isn’t helpful.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »
It might be a good illustration of scientific illiteracy, though. Definitely for the questioners, possibly for the answerers…
10 years ago
It depends what the labeling says. If the label says what animal/vegetable the DNA comes from (and independent of the producer) then I would think a lot of consumers are going to be pretty happy about that. With the scares in Europe about horse meat being substituted for beef
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_meat_adulteration_scandal
and a “This American Life” episode about pig intestines being substituted for calamari
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/484/doppelgangers
and with the world wide movement of food, it’s not surprising that people want to know what they are really eating.
10 years ago
There isn’t any labelling: no-one, as far as I know has proposed this, so there isn’t even a straw man set of potential labelling.
In any caseI, it’s already mandatory for products to say what animal/vegetable the DNA comes from. They lie about it, but it’s still illegal
10 years ago
I was agreeing with you – that the question was stupid, but not because the respondents were scientifically illiterate as Helen was suggesting, but because there was a lot of context that respondents could bring to a poorly thought through question.
10 years ago