I guess my thought while I was writing was that a direct approach will immediately be tuned out by some people (like the head of the lab in my example, who phrased his question about starlink corn with the assumption that big government was butting its evil head into the affairs of business). It didn't exactly advance the revolution to point out that maybe there might be real scientific issues involved in the starlink case or the question of gmo's in general, but I got the guy to question the version of truth he'd been hearing up until then. Which might lead to more questions further down the line.
les