Farmscape for April 22, 2015

The director of the Office for Science and Society at McGill University says people need to pay attention to who they listen to, to avoid fall prey to the scam artists.
The Office for Science and Society was created by McGill University about 16 years ago to help the public gain a better understanding of science, and when it comes to the internet, help separate the myths from the facts.
Dr. Joe Schwarcz, a professor of chemistry and director of the Office for Science and Society, told those on hand last week for Manitoba Pork's 2015 Annual General Meeting, the internet has been both a devil and an angel at the same time.

Clip-Dr. Joe Schwarcz-McGill University:
It's a fantastic source of information.
It's unbelievable.
You put in something through Google and within a half a second you get a million references.
Of course not all of those references are reliable.
It's like going to the University of Google where you don't know who your profs are and some of them may be totally untrained.
That's what we're seeing.
Very often it's the scam artists who rule because they're very good at setting up their web sites and getting their message out and being alarmist.
If you're not willing to do the work yourself, that is, to sit and study, and pour over the literature, and take courses or whatever, which is really the way to do it.
If you're not willing to do that then you have to make sure that you know who you're listening to because there are people out there who know what they're talking about and who are on the right side of the debate and who are willing to do the explanations but you have to know.
Because very often the charlatans and the scam artists will sound very good and they know how to play the game where as the legitimate scientist very often will have to say I don't really know, we're not really sure and that doesn't instill confidence.
But the naturopath will always say, yes I can do something for you.

For more on the Office for Science and Society visits facebook.com/mcgilloss.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council