After I and my colleagues at Washington University, St. Louis, began studying
commercial organic farmers in 1974, many organic farming supporters -- long
accustomed to being victimized as kooks by an overbearing, hidebound
agricultural establishment -- assumed that we had to struggle to get funding
to do the work at all, to get it published in a respectable journal, and to
have it accepted by the scientific community.
Quite the contrary. The research was supported at a very generous level by
the National Science Foundation, that bastion of scientific legitimacy;
moreover, NSF gave us completely free rein to pursue the subject as we saw
fit, even though it was very unconventional at the time. In 1976, the
American Journal of Agricultural Economics--we're talking deadly serious ag
research establishment here, folks--actually INVITED an article on our
research. (Talk about not having to struggle to be published!) And once the
work was published, even though its findings on the high productivity and
profitability of organic farms certainly went against prevailing dogma, the
"attacks" never amounted to more than an occasional wiseacre remark or a few
ludicrous irrelevancies. To a substantial degree, the scientific community
took a serious interest in the work, scrutinizing it in the constructively
skeptical way that any scientific paper reporting a surprising result should
be scrutinized. (Granted, there were some exceptions, but they just made our
lives more fun.)
Very likely, our experiences were atypical; Patrick's remarks probably are an
accurate characterization of many people's experiences. He concludes that
"it's hard to avoid getting discouraged, or angry, or both" about attacks on
researchers who report results that (some) people don't want to hear. In
general, I agree, but I am delighted that at least in our case, it wasn't
hard at all. I'm not sure why we were so lucky.
William Lockeretz
Tufts University