Dr. Vandana Shiva, eco-feminist - whatever that means - philosopher and environmental activist does not like that Mark Lynas has changed from being an anti-GMO crackpot, like her, to accepting science.

On her Twitterfeed, which is chock full of lunatic rantings for the 17X as many followers of her nonsense as I have, she provided an extra-special treat for her acolytes: she said that allowing farmers to use GMOs was the same as telling rapists it is okay to rape.

No GMOs are safe, she has declared with her awesome knowledge of philosophy. But she is on a committee with Jeremy Rifkin, who popularized the 'it takes a gallon of gas to grow a pound of beef' pretend metric that is one of the many goofball claims I debunk in Science Left Behind (with Dr. Alex Berezow, Public Affairs 2012), and Ralph Nader, so she must know what she is talking about regarding food science. 

She also claimed for her PhD thesis that hidden variables and locality in quantum theory were explained by philosophy - philosophers love science-y jargon, as we all learned in the Sokal Affair - so physicists know to listen when she speaks as well. Now she has again let biologists know how stupid they are - nothing new, every crackpot tells biologists they are stupid - but also that they are like rapists.



She is using emotional hyperbole, of course. That was a key weapon Lynas cited in his 5,000-word lecture on how he undermined GMOs.  Ironically, for a feminist she clearly loves plants more than she loves women, since she just demeaned and devalued rape victims - including the victim of a horrible crime that just occurred in her home city of New Delhi last week - but maybe she felt the analogy was legitimate because she hears about rape so often. It happens every 20 minutes in her city while she makes up nonsense about plants instead of trying to fix the problem. Strange behavior, for a feminist.

'You are a rapist if you accept science' not all you can read on her Twitterfeed. You can also be treated to statements like "Plants also have integrity . We need to move from an patriarchal ,anthropocentric worldview to one based on #EarthDemocracy" (sic), which has meaning to people who are batty enough to pay any attention to what she says.

H/T Becca Harrison via Twitter