John Gibbons: Science is continually rejected by farm bodies. Who will shout 'stop'?

Ireland had largely escaped the worst of the 'counter-factual' debating around science up to now, but there are indications that the virus has jumped the Atlantic and is now infecting our own institutions

The chair of a recent Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture hearing, dairy farmer Jackie Cahill TD made it clear that he fundamentally rejected the scientific evidence on water quality presented by the EPA. File picture: Eddie O'Hare

In a democracy, we are all entitled to our opinions, but we are absolutely not entitled to make up our own facts.

We have to be able to agree on objective reality, including trust in science, as it forms the solid foundation on which policies can be developed and debated. When this basic trust is undermined, the results are invariably bad, as has been witnessed in recent years in the US in particular.