Last updated on April 18, 2014
Twitter is a great social medium for academics.
Really: My presence on Twitter over these past three years has given me a few research ideas, it has allowed me to meet a number of like-minded academics I would otherwise not have met, and it has given my research more attention from other researchers and policy makers than it otherwise would have received.
In short, Twitter is an excellent means of keeping one’s thumb on the pulse of one’s interests–in my case, agriculture, development, and food policy.
The foregoing is true most of the time. Sometimes, Twitter is where hope goes to die simply maddening. I will simply leave this exchange — which I had last Thursday on Twitter — here for posterity, without any further comment. Just know that the first tweet was responding to someone who was saying that she was now consuming an all- (or maybe it was mostly) organic diet–and that my last tweet in this exchange went unanswered.
I think tweeting with added value is fine but this endless forwarding on without adding value just clogs up sites. We need to save the planet. How about that for a research topic published on CNN: twitter causes global warming. I made the same point on Mr Blattman’s site and said that he should get a filter. Junk tweets.
As for organic food. GMO forever! Monsanto have no public relations experts though they pay their pr department millions. Imagine the slogan: Monsanto, the friend of the African Farmer. Add in a picture of GMO corn flourishing in the back ground with some basic information about yields etc and they will make millions and the world’s hunger will decrease very quickly as these Aussies have proved or so they say.
Three Aussies have produced a book on world staples and climate change etc. It is out in May so obviously I haven’t read the book.
But that is what it should say anyway. A pre-emptive review before publication!
I hope this is not off topic. But you may not wish to open your stream to a debate on GMO.
Oww. Wow. My head hurts. The Nature force (fallacy) is strong with them.
The plural of anecdote is not data.
Not to mention that there is a complete dismissal of even the possibility that placebo effects might matter! Thanks for your comment, Norm.
I think the user did a self-reported scientific study with a sample size of one (herself). Does that close the matter? :-)