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The point being that scientists can make mistakes, just like everyone else can. So when one study makes some spectacular claim, it's always necessary to think to yourself "Did they screw it up?" Case in point: Bovine Spongiform Encephalitis (BSE, "Mad Cow Disease") seems to be caused by a prion and a variant on it can infect people who eat the beef from infected cattle. In anything between ten and twenty years it will kill them by destroying their brains. One question which became obvious about ten years ago was whether it could be communicated to sheep; was lamb safe to eat, or could it too be infected? A large study was started to examine the brains of 2867 sheep to determine if any of them had been infected with BSE. Years of work on brains taken from slaughter houses between 1990 and 1992 determined that many of the sheep from which they had been taken were indeed positive for BSE. Only now it comes out that by some unbelievable screwup, all the brains they were testing had come from cattle. Somehow or other they had received the wrong brains. The entire study was a complete waste; it didn't prove anything useful. Ten years and more than ₤200,000 are down the drain. (discussion in progress) They think they know how the mistake was made. |
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