Heretic!

I am a scientist. I reached PhD level in 1987 and have worked in microbiology ever since. I went self-employed as a rogue scientist in 2005 and apart from a dry spell (more to do with politics and devious maneouvering than anything else, but that’s a different story) I’m still here. Still involved in science. So when I hear some smug shitebag telling me to ‘do some research’ I have to restrain myself from going full blast at them. Research is what I do. It’s what I’ve done since I passed my first BSc in 1981. I have researched using the library stacks in the basement. I know stuff that isn’t on the internet.

Yes, there was a gap. I worked as a technician for a while after the BSc. It wasn’t enough. And other things happened. Not relevant here.

These days I do commercial science. I do stuff for food companies. No, I don’t test their chickens for Salmonella, that’s easy and not very interesting. I research new products for animal and human health. It does, however, mean I can’t publish it or say too much. I have to sign ‘no speak of this’ papers in order to get paid. Companies don’t want their research given away. They pay me both to do it and to shut up about it.

So that’s the disclaimer. I know how peer research works, I have a long publication list to prove it (before going commercial) and I have peer reviewed other people’s papers. I have supervised PhD and MSc students and none of mine have ever failed.

I have built – and since refined greatly – a device in which I can test the effects of additives on the gut population without involving any animals. I have built – and published – a model estuary which maintained not only bacteria but also Nereis, Coprophium and Macoma species. For weeks at a time. Basically, until I needed a day off. It even had a tidal system. Yeah, it was the hard way but it worked, and produced a lot of insights into chitin degradation in estuaries. Some I still hold back for fun and potential profit  😉

You might infer from this that when it comes to science, at least biological science, I have at least some idea of what I’m talking about. Or you might prefer the crap you read in the modern lefty hack-rags masquerading as certain science journals. That’s your choice. I’ve put my cards on the table. Let’s see yours.

I’m not rich because I’m honest and well, a bit blunt. I was once asked to try putting probiotic bacteria into vegetarian sausages. I told them it can’t work because sausages have to be cooked right through so the bacteria would be dead.

They said ‘But it’s vegetarian. No meat’.

I said ‘It doesn’t matter what sausages are made of. What matters is how they are made. Any contamination at any stage will go right to the centre. You always have to cook them right through.’

So I didn’t get the project. I could have. If I had been unscrupulous I could have spent months or even years pretending to try to get it to work, knowing it never would but banking the money anyway. Unfortunately I have something fatal for a scientist trying to get rich. Scruples.

I could have presented results showing long term survival of the probiotic in the sausage, given them shelf life details, all of it. Just… never mention what happens when they are cooked. I’d have got away with it too, but I don’t want to be that kind of person.

There are plenty of that kind of person around, and plenty of jobs for them in the modern lie that is ‘public health’. They would have taken that project and reported a resounding success. That success was a certainty to anyone who knows how Lactobacillus species interact with vegetable matter in a zero or restricted oxygen environment such as a sausage.

The probiotic would have thrived in there but when you cooked them, you’d have silage sausages with no live bacteria inside. On paper, a great success. In practice, pointless and… yeuk.

I smoke. I’m doing it now, here in my office room. I restrict smoking in the house because it’s rented. There is no ‘no smoking’ rule. Just a rule that says ‘don’t leave a mess’. Basically, if I turn the ceiling yellow I have to repaint it before I leave. That seems fair. It’s unfurnished so all the nicotine-saturated furniture either leaves with me or gets dumped.

But yes, I smoke. I like it. I don’t do it to deliberately kill anyone or to deliberately annoy anyone. I don’t ‘promote’ smoking. I really have no interest at all in whether anyone else smokes or not. It’s not something I get a commission on. It’s not a pyramid scheme. If you don’t smoke, I gain nothing by persuading you to try it. So I don’t. I, like other smokers, am happy to let you live your life the way you want. If only the medics thought that way, they might turn out to be good at their jobs and not be almost universally termed ‘quack’. It seems that’s all we have now. The British Mallard Journal is the strongest evidence for this.

CStM recently returned from Denmark with ten packs of cigarettes. Vikings. I like them but you can only get them in Denmark and they are about £3.50 for 20. On open display too, and we are talking corner shop prices not supermarkets. Seriously. Don’t blame the EU for plain packs and Doors of Shame. We are the only ones who fell for it. The UK government are the only stupid bastards in the whole of Europe who fell for the probiotic sausages researchers.

It’s not too surprising. They are far too busy trying to destroy relations with our biggest trading partner after Brexit, the USA, to trouble themselves with what those who elected them actually care about.

They pander to minorities. I’m not talking about immigrants. I’m talking about a much smaller minority. The health hate machine.

The health hate machine has noticed us. We little bloggers. Frank Davis, Junican, Dick Puddlecote and many more. They have become upset that we are not talking through their own forums where they can moderate us and slap us down. They want ‘antismokerphobia’ to be a Thing like Islamophobia and other made up crap. They want criticism of their new religion of NewScience to be illegal. Don’t they all?

You Must Believe! Never mind that it makes the atheist attack on Christianity’s ‘sky pixie’ (they never seem to mention the Islamic moon god or that they revere a lump of stone, isn’t that odd?) look like a compliment. At least the atheists recognise the (potential) existence of the enemy they don’t believe in.

The Baccy Haters don’t like us. We’re questioning the gospel.

I have a book on the Spanish Inquisition somewhere in my piles of unsorted books. They worked in exactly the same way. Denounce someone and they were guilty. There was no innocent. They had to tell you what they were guilty of and they’d decide a punishment. Might be small, might be big but if they came for you they were never wrong.

The Inquisition acquitted nobody. If they arrested you, you were guilty of something. You might be sentenced to six Hail Marys or a burning at the stake but you wouldn’t get out without a confession.

14th century. Seven hundred years. That’s no time for an evolutionary change and there hasn’t been one. The staff of the Inquisition are still here. Same people, different methods.

They used religion to get their way and debased it to a laughing stock. Islam is a bit late to the game but the same will happen to them. Sooner than they think.

Now they use science and medicine to get their way and have ruined both. Those pillars of Western civilisation have crumbled.

Science used to decry religion but it has become a new one. Believe what we say or you are a heretic and must die. Do not question our research because we didn’t do any and don’t need it, our personal preferences are proof enough.

 

 

I am a heretic. A smoky-drinky heretic.

I dare them to burn me.