This is just so terribly cute, don't you think?
As an attempt to make sure that nothing ever does happen this is pretty good. We have the precautionary principle, that nothing can or should be done until it has proven to be safe. And the cost and effort to prove safety is laid upon the shoulders of those who would do the thing.
Well, we disagree, but can see the concept. We run with the idea that everything should be tried - at small scale - except those things we already know to be damaging because that’s how civilisation advances. We find out what’s dangerous by doing those things and then stopping if they are.
But then we get this next constraint:
Revealed: Monsanto’s secret funding for weedkiller studies
The research, used to help avoid a ban, claimed ‘severe impacts’ on farming if glyphosate was outlawed
It’s not quite explicit as yet but it’s certainly implicit:
The secret funding of the ADAS studies was uncovered by a German transparency campaign group, LobbyControl. In December, LobbyControl revealed two pro-glyphosate German studies that were partly funded by Monsanto and published in 2011 and 2015 without the funding being declared.
“This is an unacceptable form of opaque lobbying,” said Ulrich Müller at LobbyControl. “Citizens, media and decision-makers should know who pays for studies on subjects of public interest. The studies also used very high figures for the benefits of glyphosate and for possible losses in case of a ban. These extreme figures were then used to spin the debate.”
The tendency of the results of scientific studies to favour their funders – called funding bias – is widely recognised in research on chemical toxicity, tobacco and pharmaceutical drugs.
That’s all getting very close to the demand that those who would do things not be allowed to fund studies showing the safety of doing things. That is, we’ve the demand that safety be proven but also that safety cannot be shown. Which will, of course, mean that nothing new is ever done. This will not be to the benefit of our future selves.