  Understanding the ways in which participants in public discussions frame
their arguments is important in understanding how public opinion is formed. In
this paper, we adopt the position that it is time for more
computationally-oriented research on problems involving framing. In the
interests of furthering that goal, we propose the following specific,
interesting and, we believe, relatively accessible question: In the controversy
regarding the use of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture, do
pro- and anti-GMO articles differ in whether they choose to adopt a
"scientific" tone?
  Prior work on the rhetoric and sociology of science suggests that hedging may
distinguish popular-science text from text written by professional scientists
for their colleagues. We propose a detailed approach to studying whether hedge
detection can be used to understanding scientific framing in the GMO debates,
and provide corpora to facilitate this study. Some of our preliminary analyses
suggest that hedges occur less frequently in scientific discourse than in
popular text, a finding that contradicts prior assertions in the literature. We
hope that our initial work and data will encourage others to pursue this
promising line of inquiry.
