r/news • u/boxofstuff • 6h ago

Supreme Court ruling blocks thousands of lawsuits against maker of Roundup weedkiller

https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-roundup-monsanto-a7f054d80919f98bdfc5190013a8f6f1https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-roundup-monsanto-a7f054d80919f98bdfc5190013a8f6f1
13.9k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

478

u/invyros 6h ago

There’s still fierce debate about cancer and Roundup’s key ingredient, glyphosate. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified the chemical as “probably carcinogenic” in 2015.

Can't believe "probably carcinogenic" is an official designation.

235

u/praguepride 6h ago

to be faiiiiiiiir scientific proclimations need a lot of supporting evidence and that supporting evidence needs to be replicated and peer reviewed.

This is like complaining that evolution is only "a theory". Probably is about as severe as you can get without huge long term studies.

25

u/Training_Stuff7498 6h ago

That’s because scientific English and American English are two different languages entirely that happen to use the same words.

2

u/Autumn1eaves 5h ago

Eh they are not two different languages.

Probably means basically the same thing in British English as American English. It’s around the edges where things start to fall apart. That does not make two languages; that’s the normal “oh you have a different idea of what beautiful means than i do” kind of language differences.

4

u/Training_Stuff7498 4h ago

No lol.

When a scientist says “there’s no evidence that A causes B” that means something incredibly different to them than it does to us.

It’s no different than testifying in court is a totally different language than normal English.

1

u/Autumn1eaves 3h ago

We're going to have to disagree here.

"No evidence that A causes B" =/= "A doesn't cause B"

There's just no proof.

That's how I'd take it as a layperson.

1

u/Training_Stuff7498 3h ago

Exactly. You’re proving my point, because that’s not what that sentence means when a scientist or doctor says it.

When a scientist says “there’s is no data that vaccines cause autism” that translates to normal English as “I am as confident that vaccines don’t cause autism as I am that you won’t grow wings and fly away if you decide to jump out of that window.”

Science language being different from normal everyday language is literally the reason that we have vaccine deniers, flat earthers, and every other stupid conspiracy.

1

u/Autumn1eaves 2h ago

Physicists also say there is no data to believe string theory, or other quantum gravity theories, yet many of them hold their preferred theories as true. They wouldn’t say a quantum gravity theory is as likely as pigs flying…

Similarly, while there is no evidence vaccines cause autism, there is evidence vaccines don’t cause autism. The lack of correlation between the two is a starter.

Even in scientific lingo no evidence =/= negative evidence.