Abstract
The European debate around genetically modified foods was one of the most sustained and ardent public discussions in the late 1990s. Concerns about risks to human health and the environment were voiced alongside claims that healthier foods can be produced more efficiently and in a more environmentally friendly manner using the new technology. The aims of this paper are (1) to test the usefulness of Stephen Toulmin’s argumentation model for the analysis of public debates almost 50 years after it was first introduced, and (2) to establish whether any of the parties in the genetically modified (GM) food debate used seriously flawed argumentation. The paper argues that Stephen Toulmin’s argumentation model can be useful in three ways when analysing public debates. Firstly, incomplete or flawed claims can be defeated by exposing missing or mismatching argumentation elements; all examined arguments in the GM debate were well formulated. Secondly, weaknesses in argumentation can be identified by making explicit warrants and backing; in the GM case, this allowed the identification of points of attack for counter-argumentation. Thirdly, analysing the type of backing used, allows inferences about the persuasion approach taken. The industrialists employed ethical principles as their backing much more than the scientists and environmentalists, a surprising result.
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Notes
An example of Toulmin’s (2003, p. 90f) for a self-justifying warrant would be the following. We claim that “Harry’s hair is not black”. As datum we say: “We have seen that it is in fact red”. The inference licence in this case is rather trivial, namely that “If anything is red, it will not also be black”
For the soya case-study, various search terms were tested before choosing ‘genetic*+soy*’ as the most accurate and comprehensive way of obtaining relevant articles. The terms ‘genetic*+soy*’ signify that the article must include both words, one starting with ‘genetic’ (e.g. genetic, genetically, genetics) and one starting with ‘soy’ (e.g. soya, soybean), in order to be selected
The value for the reliability measure is extracted by the formula: total number of agreements in the codes (63) over total number of agreements plus disagreements (82). According to Krippendorf (1980) any value above 0.60 is considered satisfactory
We will disregard a fourth group for our study, namely, the editorial teams of the two newspapers. Also, we will focus on the main arguments rather than ALL arguments
Research has shown that scientific approval of a new food does usually little to allay public fears. This has been attributed to the different levels of debate whereby experts try to reduce uncertainty by focussing on technical aspects while the public focuses on matters of institutional trust; see also Renn and Levin (1991)
An example for a flawed argument in the GM debate would be the following modification of E2. (1) “Nature does not allow passing of the cross-species barrier.” (2) “GM allows for the passing of animal proteins to plants. Hence, GM is unsafe”. Here a clear mismatch between the data and the claim would have been detectable, even though the argument might sound superficially plausible to those who associate ‘naturalness’ with ‘safe’.
For a full view of the industry’s efforts to use the moral argument see http://www.agbioworld.org/
We count ‘irrelevancy’ as a form flaw
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Peter Herissone-Kelly for very helpful discussions of Toulmin’s model and Armin Schmidt for comments on an earlier draft.
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Ladikas, M., Schroeder, D. Argumentation theory and GM foods. Poiesis Prax 3, 216–225 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10202-005-0078-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10202-005-0078-9