Debunking Food Evolution 1 - A Rough Opening

Neil Degrasse Tyson opens the film "Food Evolution" with the assertion that “The survival of our species has always depended on advances in food and agriculture.”

A surprising red flag here is "always".

Good analysis and good science are conservative and careful. They tends to avoid absolutist terms like "always" and "never" unless it is believed a claim must be true in all possible worlds.

Significantly higher standards are required to justify "always/never" claims. These can be hard standard to meet, and therefore should be deployed cautiously.

On the other hand, we can stipulate definitions of our terms simply. For example, we may assert "a bachelor is always unmarried" as part of our meaning. That can be taken as true in all possible worlds in our discussion.

Modern Humans seem much more likely to have survived ups and downs regarding food, while agriculture seems to have emerged within the last 15,000 years.

Based on the Jebel Irhoud site in Morocco, we Modern Humans appear to be at least 300,000 years old.

While this has no direct impact on how we assess the film's GMO safety claims, it does seem to undermine the film's credibility. One does not have to know much anthropology to consider agriculture a relatively recent advance for Modern Humans.

How credible should assessments be taken when misinformation on well-established basics is a starting point? Keeping a sharp eye and grain of salt handy seems prudent.