Sugar Blues

This week, the American Council for Science and Health goes after the Sugar Association for teaming up with the Center for Science in the Public Interest (!?) in criticizing ads for Splenda. Splenda ads make the claim that the sweetener is "made from sugar" and "tastes like sugar."

I guess the sugar industry’s check bounced.

You have to admire the way Alicublog puts it:

Such people are not total hacks -- that is to say, while they may be Satan's emissaries on earth, they do take professional pride in their own work, and add filigrees and flourishes partly to increase effectiveness but also, I believe, out of pure love of craft. For example, there is some obvious merit to the author's accusations against the sugar barons -- among others, that they had hooked up with pure-food types not out of altruism but as a way to fight Splenda's increasing share of the sweetener market. This is the spoonful of sucralose, so to speak, that helps work down the public's gullet a larger message: that people who oppose synthetic foods on whatever grounds are anti-technology "chemicalphobes."

Organizations such as this are not about arguing a case, but adding strands to a narrative. Facts may be used as part of the grapeshot, but they are by no means the only or even most important part of the armamature. Painting an investigation of questionable scientific assertions as an inquisition on the order of Galileo's, for example, lifts the issue out of the debating chamber and into the realm of dreams. You certainly don't want to side with inquisitors or chemicalphobes. Now eat this chlorinated sugar.

The reference to Galileo and the Inquisition is a column by Steven Milloy about Bjorn Lomborg, the “skeptical environmentalist”, who has been criticized by numerous scientists over the evidence and reasoning he uses to support his views that concerns about global warming have been overblown. But, as Alicublog says, it’s not about careful reasoning, but simply manufacturing narrative.