Vandana Shiva, Anti-GMO Celebrity: "Eco Goddess" Or Harmful Fabulist?

Cami Ryan, contributing columnist with the Genetic Literacy Task, co-authored this report.

Vandana Shiva is a prominent Indian-born environmentalist who has emerged as one particular of the world’s most prominent critics of typical agriculture and biotechnology. In the most current signal of her iconic status, earlier this month, Beloit School in Wisconsin conferred on her a prestigious honor as the Weissberg Chair in International Studies, calling her a “one-lady movement for peace, sustainability and social justice.”

Whether or not that accurately describes Shiva is debatable—there seems to be a sizable gap among her self-representations and the topics she claims to be an expert on. Even so her status as a celebrity activist is not in query. Shiva’s unbridled opposition to GMOs has manufactured her a preferred in liberal and environmental circles. She hopscotches the globe, producing regular appearances at anti-GMO rallies, on college campuses and on lecture tours, most recently final week in Costa Rica.

Shiva has been referred to as a an “eco warrior goddess” by the e-Zine Punk Rock Permaculture, a “rock star in the worldwide battle in excess of genetically modified seeds” by journalist Bill Moyers and a “global sustainability expert” by the University of Kentucky. Time Magazine named her an “environmental hero” in 2003 and Forbes  identified her as a single of the Seven Most Powerful Feminists on the Globe in 2010. She has a lot more than 23,000 followers on Twitter and 43,000 on Facebook.

Shiva is possibly greatest known for claiming that the introduction of genetically modified cotton seeds in India has led to mass genocide by bad farmers seduced by the ‘false promise’ of GMOs.

“270,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide given that Monsanto entered the Indian seed marketplace,” she has said. “It’s genocide.”

That’s a exceptional claim, and if real it is a tragedy of staggering proportions. If it is not, it’s demagogic. What are the facts?

Shiva’s celebrity and her claims

Vandana Shiva was born in the valley of Dehradun in India in 1952. Educated in her homeland, she ultimately pursued graduate scientific studies in Canada, receiving an MA at Guelph and a PhD at the University of Western Ontario. A dedicated activist, she founded Navdanya – which means “Nine Seeds” – a lot more than two decades ago. In accordance to its web site, its organizational mandate is “to protect the diversity and integrity of residing assets, specifically native seed, and to market natural farming and fair trade.” Under her guidance Navdanya has evolved into a nationwide movement.

Shiva is an energetic campaigner towards globalization and a vocal critic of agricultural genetic engineering—GMOs. She has written more than twenty books. In Biopiracy, Stolen Harvest and Water Wars, she examined the social, financial and ecological fees of corporate-led globalization. The Violence of Green Revolution and Monocultures of the Thoughts challenged what she referred to as the dominant paradigm of non-sustainable, reductionist Green Revolution agriculture.

Numerous prominent intellectuals herald her as a forward-considering scientist and skilled in genetic engineering. When Beloit conferred its honorarium on her, and in accompanying news releases and the website announcement touting her choice, it prominently noted her “PhD in nuclear physics,” calling her “a recognized expert on agriculture and biotechnology.”

Are people claims accurate?

Shiva believes so. “ I am also a scientist… a Quantum Physicist”, she writes on her Navdanya site. The speakers bureau that represents her identifies her as “a skilled physicist.” Hundreds of organizations and prominent journalists, from universities to Bill Moyers to National Geographic (which referred to her as a “nuclear physicist turned agro-ecologist”), have represented her that way.

But people representations are incorrect. In accordance to the University of Western Ontario, in which she received her PhD, her doctorate is not in the discipline of physics, as she claims, but in philosophy. It centered on the extremely technical and typically politicized debate in excess of a central notion in physics recognized as Bells’ Theorem, which has been referred to as the “most profound” theory in science.

Maybe foreshadowing her present contentious views about modern day agriculture, Shiva concluded that quantum mechanics in physics was philosophically invalid and factually doubtful. The major thesis of quantum mechanics that she challenged has given that been confirmed by experimental physics, which means that her thesis stands at odds with factual reality. Independent of the top quality of her philosophical investigation, it is a substantive leap to go from earning a PhD in the Philosophy of Science to self-identifying as a “scientist,” “nuclear physicist” or “quantum physicist”—the a variety of ways she refers to herself.

Shiva also claims to have written much more than 300 papers—a factoid echoed in almost each and every report or news release about her, which includes on Beloit’s website.  A query of Thomson Reuter’s World wide web of Science (analysis platform for data in the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities) returns only 42 information of peer reviewed papers or publications authored by Shiva given that 1980.

Vandana Shiva, Anti-GMO Celebrity: "Eco Goddess" Or Harmful Fabulist?