That IS my point. I'm generally surprised that people on the Right -- who tend to have a little more faith that, with persistence, you can push something to the point where it works -- don't feel the same way about technologies that solve problems that they don't necessarily agree ARE problems in the first place.
The leftists who see 'danger' in genetically engineered foods are only upset that it's Big Corporations that are doing it, and they will not have the wherewithal to do the same, or that some diabolical corporate scientist has left a time bomb in the gene...it's a political opinion, not a scientific one. Rational skepticism is reasonable, but like you said, after some point, an honest skeptic would accept favorable results. They don't. The Jeremy Rifkins of the planet just stubbornly refuse to give in, even when confronted with good results. Are the results imperfect, incomplete? Probably. But if you want perfection....ain't gonna happen.
Over the last 30 years I have heard time and again that this was a big problem, never happen, too hard, too expensive, blah blah. Engineering curricula mentions this in many places, but also provides rational tools to debunk the repetitive erroneous assertions. But consider some of these famous statements:
Theodor Von Karman, 1921: "The Gas Turbine will never be light enough for aero propulsion, even if you could make one work". Wrong.
Ken Olson, Head of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977: "What could you use a personal computer for except maybe balancing your checkbook?" Ken's gone. So's his company.
The world to Stan Ovshinsky in 1978:"Amorphous Semiconductors will never be economically viable". Do a web search on Stan for some history. They were wrong.
You just gotta keep trying. If there's a real goal, and you aren't trying to build perpetual motion machines, you never know. You just might get what you need.
Like fusion power and space travel?
The problem with hydrogen is that a bunch of utopians imagine it to be some magical panacea without giving any considerations to costs vs. benefit. "Could we switch to a hydrogen economy?" completely ignores the fact that if it was a good idea, we would already be there.
These people cannot imagine that the market drives things in certain directions for very good reasons and defying or brute forcing the market can be downright disastrous.
If this sort of thing could be brute forced into being, we would all be speaking Russian.