There are food riots in Haiti and Bangladesh. In Kenya hunger has driven half
the population to set fire to the other half. In Bolivia they are fighting
over vegetables. And even in Italy people took to the streets to complain
about the price of pasta.
So you might imagine that all of the world’s scientists are currently in their
bunkers, desperately trying to figure out why the world is running out of
food all of a sudden and, more importantly, what can be done. For sure, they
had a stab a while back at genetically modifying wheat so that it would grow
– with no water, sunlight or soil – into a prepacked, presliced loaf. Sadly,
though, the whole thing had to be abandoned when some antiGM food activists
turned up in white boiler suits and rolled all over the experiment.
And now, it seems, the world’s boffins have got more important things on their
enormous minds. Last week, for instance, as the fires in Haiti burnt, a
group of eggheads at Yale University announced that after some exhaustive
research, they’d proved women who eat chocolate five times a week are 40%
less likely to get preeclampsia than those who indulge only once a week.
Meanwhile, in Britain, scientists at Manchester and Newcastle universities
announced that if you eat two tomatoes a day you are less likely to get
sunburnt when on holiday this year. And that you will have a lovely
complexion well into old age.
What’s more, on the very same day that the Americans were making their
announcement about chocolate and the Brits about tomatoes, leading
scientists in Germany published a report that says if you have a dog in your
house your children are less likely to develop hay fever. I promise I am not
making any of this up.
And then we learnt that a popular osteoporosis drug will break your heart,
that hair dye will give you cancer and that those pots of friendly bacteria,
which look like jars of sperm, will stop your kids getting eczema.
Furthermore – and I’m still only giving you the scientific news from Tuesday –
we heard that women who take HRT will have a stroke; that smokers get
depressed more easily; that Range Rovers cause global warming; and that if
you take pills for high blood pressure, you will become stick-thin and, I
don’t know, fall through grates in the street or be taken away by a stork.
I thought we’d reached a new pit of scientific balderdash when they announced
last month that anyone who eats one sausage a day, or three rashers of
bacon, increases their chances of getting bowel cancer by a fifth. But no.
Scientists in California decided to go one better and announced last Monday,
wait for it, that if you send your children to a playgroup you cut their
chances of catching leukaemia by 30%.
Honestly, if you believed everything these scientists say you’d never dare get
up, go outside or dip your celery into even the smallest pinch of salt.
You’d be terrified that a tomato might turn you into Joan Collins. You
wouldn’t smoke or drink or go near a pylon in case you caught ebola.
In fact you’d spend your entire life in a playgroup classroom, fearful that at
any minute the door would be broken down by a swarm of cancerous sausages.
Happily, of course, we pay not the slightest bit of attention because we think
we know exactly what’s going on here. We reckon, for instance, that if a
scientist says a playgroup will cure the common cold he’s being funded by a
company that owns playgroups. And similarly we suspect that when a scientist
stands up and says you have to eat tomatoes, his clothes, hairstyle and
house may well have been paid for by someone with a greenhouse.
And then there’s the sausages business. Do they really expect us to believe
that a scientist woke up one morning and thought, I know, I’m going to see
if a pork chipolata does anything nasty to my bowels. All of which brings me
on to a bunch of boffins in Australia who are warning people not to flush
their tropical fish down the lavatory.
I know several people who keep such fish in England and none has ever felt the
need to put his often very expensive collection in the khazi. Apparently,
though, that’s what they do in Oz; and now one particular breed, called the
platys, has made it to the ocean, where it’s causing havoc.
It was bred to live in an aquarium because it suffers from what I call Hammond
syndrome – an inferiority complex resulting from the fact that it’s
about 6ft short of being a shark. It is also tough and bright. Not only is
it capable of dealing with the complexities of a U-bend, but it can also
swim through several miles of Australian faeces just so it can get into the
Pacific, where it is now decimating fish stocks, eating frogs and generally
running around shouting: “You’re going home in a f****** ambulance.”
Are you bothered? Neither am I, really, but I am wondering. Why did a
scientist get up one day, stretch and then say: “Hmm, I wonder if any
aquarium fish have escaped into the wild today?” And if he didn’t, did
anyone pay him to find out? And why? Who benefits from all the newspaper
coverage?
Is it the Spanish, I wonder? Are they about to claim the world is running out
of food because the sea is running out of fish? And that this has nothing to
do with their giant aquatic vacuum cleaners that charge about the oceans,
sucking everything smaller than a pea into their holds, and is entirely the
fault of Bruce and Sheila who put their platys down the Armitage Shanks one
morning.
Oh, the frivolity of scientific research.
Thanks for highlighting the work looking into such pointless areas as preeclampsia and childhood allegeries - really needs prevention or cure for these? Apart from women and children obvously.
And then, would you believe, they waste more money on fripperies like bowel cancer and childhood leukemia - outrageous!
The sooner this blatant squandering of resources is stopped and the money redirected into something that really matters - e.g. would wearing less tight jeans really fix that impotence problem or is it back to the little blue pill? the better.
John, Coventry, UK
Am I missing something or are some of our posters actually taking this as a serious debate? Seems they built a by-pass around the town called Upper Sense of Humour. All hail Clarkson, who continually and entertainingly seems to rub some people up the wrong way.
Andrew Metcalfe, New York, United States
oh my god.. Would you all stop arguing about nothing.. I mean ... the only thing clarkson want to do it's tell his opinion and make you talk about it.. And as always it's working.. This guy is brilliant! And about the person who told he cant drive.. Come on.. it's clarkson we're talking about here!!
Mikaeela, Montreal, Canada,Quebec
If you give enough of anything to a rat it will die!
Therefore everything will kill you
That pretty much sums up scientific research
Olly G, Melbourne,
"You're all happily typing away on a computer (only made possible by the research of many scientists) to leave comments on a webpage (the world wide web started life at a physics lab - CERN) and you criticize science for not producing useful stuff! - Amit, London"
which side are you arguing?
jem, london, uk
Another wonderful piece of journalist genius from Clarko - I mean, what have those scientists ever done for us?
Hibbo, Dundee,
To describe this as "pub conversation" is to miss the point. Clarkson is pub conversation brought to a fine art. I love his writing even though I rarely agree with him.
Kevin Straw, Leicester,
For a bloke who makes his living from cars, he must be constantly frustrated by the sad fact that he CANNOT drive. Naturally badly co-ordinated, watching him try to control a car at high speed through a bend is painful. He has no 'feel' for what the car is telling him and constantly over-corrects.
Hilary, Southall,
It's disappointing to read such a cheap piece of journalism from The Times. It is easy , frivolous, uninformed and misleading. This could be a transcript of a pub conversation, not even an inspired one. I'd be surprised if Clarkson has even read a scientific journal in his life.
Francesc, London,
Scientists go where the money is. Unfortunately most of the research funds are for pseudo-solutions to non-problems. We need more science based on observation and measurement rather than data dredges and computer models.
Franl Upton, Solihull,
My personal top scientific finding of last week: German scientists have discovered that global warming is going to take a ten years' break starting from now! Cute, innit? Takes a lot of pressure off the German car industry. If there were anyone to give a damn about this crap anymore.
KDB, Coburg, Saxe-Coburg
Two of the biggest problems in the uk are obesity and food shortage, scientists work tirelessly to find a solution
Dave C, manchester,
Many thanks for making me feel clever. Not only did I manage to complete the large General Knowledge Crossword on Saturday but todays Bank Holiday Special was a piece of cake too!!!
On a serious note though I hope that there are plans for an extra jumbo crossword to make up for today's mistake?
Jo Newton , Cobham , Surrey
I read Clarcksons column because it makes me smile.
It does not make me think"gosh,I will have to watch out for that"
It is however always enertaining and life is too short for seriounsness!
Michael Wilkinson, Telford, UK
Yes, about as useful as driving across Florida in old bangers with anti-religious slogans or 'nascar sucks' scrawled across them.
Paul, London,
Jeremy Clarkson is, as usual, spot on in his analysis.
The papers, in particular the Telegraph it seems, have recently taken to filling their columns with yards of drivel about bizarre medical threats to our survival, most of them claiming quite fantastical percentage accuracy- Balderdash.
Jonathan Wilton, Singapore,
Boring,
irrelevant after you mentioned "Range Rovers cause global warming". yes yes, we know you dont want to believe it because of your precious 4x4 that never see's a dirt road. Mind you Jeremy can talk, lampooning scientists. If i had a pound for every piece dis-informational twaddle you wrote..
Matthew, Enfield, England
"Futures should not be allowed on ... food and oil."
Normally you might think so, for pure speculators at least. But some airlines (e.g. Southwest) have used oil futures to insure against rising oil prices so that they could avoid putting prices up. Allowing one but not the other may not be easy.
Hugh, Sunnyvale, California,
Ah, Jeremy Clarkson.
"If you believed everything scientists say, you'd never get up."
Jeremy, why can't you simply admit that, like most middle-aged men with a penchant for tight jeans and fast cars, you are simply afraid of the reality of the finiteness of all things encroaching upon your carefully constructed worldview? This quotation gives us all a good deal of insight into your psyche; you need your illusions to keep you sane. So don't blame the scientists for being too harsh; blame yourself for being too weak to deal with it.
T.C., Hull, UK
Being in the scientific community, I share this story. I worked with a US national lab. One group there had recently built an atomic clock, accurate to the fullest capacity of atomic clocks around, the size of a pea. Now about 10 full time scientists have a huge federal budget to make it smaller.
Daniel, Boulder, CO, USA
A thought provoking article.
Remember that the definition of an expert is --
An ex is a has been, and a spurt is a drip under pressure.
Jean. France.
Jean, toulouse, france
The loonatics that have run our country for the past 15 -20 years have destroyed our farming industry..wrecked our fishing industry.. Now all of a sudden..Food shortages..
Russia supplying Gas
France about to build Nuclear power stations
Who owns the water..Iran ?
Course we should worry!
Martin, Manchester, Lancs
of course Jeremy is dangerous.
How on earth do you think that clone Boris became London mayor.
" It woz Jeremy that won it"
Alan Denman, Hants, UK
Jeremy, how can you miss that, there is food shortage because of what the scientists did yesterday. Edible crops are being used for biofuel! This is totally your alley.
Turgut, Ankara, Turkey
As witty as one would expect from Jeremy, though i believe i am not the only one who is begining to tire of his off handed, i'm going to generalise and ignore the facts manner. Mr Clarkson you're a funny and intelligent man and i love you for it, but you have the rationality of a king edward potato.
Thomas Hogarth, London,
If you believed everything Clarkson said - there would be no life on the planet!
Neil , Cambridge,
Jeremy Clarkson and George Bush don't understand science and research, so they laugh at it, and want others who don't understand laugh at it too, so they won't feel stupid laughing at what they don't understand. We are healithier, live longer, and have a better quality of life. Ha! Ha!
lee, sterling, usa
I take JC seriously - I mean, who better to rule the world?
paul, Milton Keynes,
'believe half of what you see and none of what you hear'
I Heard It Through The Grapevine.
Marvyn Gaye
works for me......
Paul, Whitley, England
A very warped view of scientists! They don’t just make up research hoping no one notices. They can’t make something true because they are paid to do so.
They don’t look for results that people want to hear.
How about electricity, medicine, cars, planes, space travel, computers.. All made up?
S Dynan, Oxford,
Jeremy - if it wasn't for scientists your programme would be called "In the Stirrup" and you would be raging about the tax on oats. Keep it up, though - at your best you are almost as funny (if less believable) as Frankie Howerd.
Barry Hughes, Edinburgh, UK
Too many people are having kids they can't afford and want other people to pay for them. Stop family allowance and tax relief for children and they will wise up in a hurry
m wilson, bidache, france
Joyful day Boris is Mayor and Jeremy on form - life is good !
Wills, Winchester , uk
Research has shown that 50% of articles by J Clarkson are only partially true, and the other 50% are largely exaggeration. However, at least 98% are very funny, and it has been shown that laughing reduces your risk of cancer by 40%, so on balance, it is safer to read them.
Jen, London, UK
Eric Campbell I agree. Dr Clarkson is definately a danger. I was cooking quiche, when, as I was taking it out of the oven, I caught sight of the lovely picture of Jeremy on my wall, and thus became overwhelmed with passion. It was at this moment I forgot what I was doing & managed to burn my hand.
JezzaBelle, Somerset, ENGLAND
Jeremy, great stuff, but you missed the one about toothpaste giving us mouth cancer... (very small print here) provided you clean your teeth in boiling water.
gerry, exeter, england
The most overused, undeserved word in the English language is 'expert'. Hacks (or 'journos' to be polite) use 'expert' as a handy one-word label to cover a multitude of sins. Always ask yourself - who is funding this scientist and what's their agenda? The answer(s) usually speaks for itself.
Ysabel Ekaterin, Mansfield, Notts
I do think Amit has missed the point by miles. Jeremy is saying that frequesntlt scientisits produce a load of rubbish.
Peter, Eastleigh, UK
In most cases, the scientists didn't research the things that they are reported as saying. Newspapers like headlines while scientists prefer closely argued papers. The journalist, typically qualified in history, looks through the paper, finds a snippet he understands and PRESTO! Instant soundbyte.
Alan, Mansfield,
God only knows what that Newton fellow was thinking. Who cares about apples? Or that Einstein guy, I mean who cares what happens at the speed of light.
We should probably throw away all of science. And maths. I mean square root of -1, come on! Engineering too while we're at it.
Ben, Brisbane, Australia
You're all happily typing away on a computer (only made possible by the research of many scientists) to leave comments on a webpage (the world wide web started life at a physics lab - CERN) and you criticize science for not producing useful stuff!
Amit, London,
The problem is, of course, that when genuine science is announced, it will be discounted as being yet another piece of pseudo-scientific drivel. Someone irresponsible has to be funding this twaddle and it's giving Science a bad name.
Dwight Vandryver, Scholar Green, Cheshire, UK
Clarkson would seem a good deal less dangerous and a good deal more funny to me if I didn't think people were taking him seriously.
Sophie, Aberystwyth, Wales
I know none of you care, but it's not the poor scientists' fault that there are so many of these stories...go to Ben Goldacre's Bad Science site for an explanation.
lucy, london,
I spent a week in Tenerife, apart from the Cockney gangsters who wanted me to eat a roast lunch with Watney's red, what really irked me was the sight of the local fleet landing it's haul. It amounted to a fishbox full of penny sized fish. The geezer parading his haul looked he had won the FA cup !!
John , Up north,
Al wood, could you send me the paper on driving into a wall at 100 mph that says this will kill people ? only I have found this scientist who disagrees with this analysis, apparently its down to global warming , eating eggs and drinking loads of coffee who'd have thought eh?
Tony, Hailsham, UK
Dear Eric Campbell..
...I am sure you are not the only one and that there are plenty of other people who have no sense of humour just like you. Of course, you could always, I don't know, NOT READ THE ARTICLE!
Great stuff as usual Jeremy.
J. Wilkes, Gloucester,
Loving how you concentrate on the more uncomfortable things that scientists discover. And it may be unbelievable that dogs might help prevent hay fever, but there are a lot of weirder and more wonderful things out there that scientists help unweave. Ever heard of Richard Dawkins?
Peter, Cape Town, South Africa
Well done Clarkson.....Its good to have a good chuckle at a well written" tongue in the cheek "article on a Sunday Morning. I liked the friendly dig at Hammond.
A Nagle, Loule, Portugal
So we need less expensive resource hungry organic food, less ,"set aside" and more high yielding GM? That will make the self righteous hairy and angry brigade very angry, and possibly a bit more hairy.
Why do so many of the above go aout of their way to be offended?
NRG, BELFAST,
"I woke up this morning thinking 'Oh God it's Sunday, I'll have to spend the day fuming about the immature and facile Clarkson's latest primary school ramblings." Eric
Eric, I think you need to get out more...
Macelington, Nottingham,
I'd rather they spent their time on sausages and tomatoes than fabricating evidence about global warming and secondhand smoke, thereby helping control-mad governments to keep us in a permanent state of false imprisonment.
PaulD, Essex, England
Surely Mr Eric Campbell you ARE the only person who thinks Mr J Clarkson is dangerous. You get up and deliberately read a column which you already know you hate. This is a key measure of the worth of Jeremy. More read, listened to and loved than any politican or fellow journalist.
Andy Jones, Cheltenham, UK
There was a scientist who trained a spider to walk towards on him on the scientists verbal command. He then pulled the legs off the spider and put the body on the bench. The scientist then shouted "walk", but the poor spider did not move. He then announced that a spiders ears must be on its knees.
alec, Manchester, United Kingdom
I woke up this morning thinking 'Oh God it's Sunday, I'll have to spend the day fuming about the immature and facile Clarkson's latest primary school ramblings. Surely I am not the only one who thinks he is potentially very dangerous, sucking the gullible in to his smart-alec,uneducated bigotries.
eric campbell, harrogate, uk
Jerry baby (may I?)
The entire global warming nightmare scenario has been caused by your personal hot air emissions and do I care. No not really.
Regards from pissed but happy.
CHARLIE MORTIMER, LONDON, UK
last month i was talking to rice farmers in northern Thailand. They told me they are producing as much rice as they always have and furthermore they are receiving more or less the same price .. so who is spreading the rumours and who is profiting .. it sure aint the farmers !
andy , Lyon, France
Most scientists would say that if you drove head first into a wall at 100 mph you'd be likely to kill yourself. But since you don't believe scientists why don't you test it? Scientists don't know anything after all.
Al Wood, BSB, Brunei
Bravo, Jeremy! I have a philosophy on this kind of thing, having been brought up to regard scientific studies of this nature with at the very least a deep suspicion and never to take them on face value, and it is this: everything in moderation, accept you'll die one day and make the most of now.
Wyvern, Plymouth, UK
All this so-called "scientific" research is really statistical research - not real science at all. A weak statistical link between two phenomena (eg tomatoes and sunburn) does not necessarily indicate a scientifically provable mechanism.
Martin, Newmarket, Suffolk
Food is going up in price for one big reason: The world population that wants feeding has doubled in the last 40 years.
Add in Peak Oil and the massive UK national, corporate, and personal debt lthat we stand no chance of repaying and it becomes clear that we have had our "concorde moment"
David, Bristol, England
Oscar Wilde, to paraphrase, said 'non smokers don't live longer, it just seems longer'. Whilst people are paid or not paid for their research matters not, for me anyway.
adam, jerusalem, Israel
Isn't global warming a result of cutting down all the bloody trees ?
Whats all this rubbish about food shortage? I went shopping at Tesco's yesterday, the shelves are full!
Will, Hannover, Germany(where good cars come from
I'm just guessing here, but I would have thought that Scientists aren't specifically looking at the relationship between tomatos and being sun burnt.
I assume that this is just a minor strand taken from a larger, more significant scientific research, that just gets picked up by the media.
mark, reading, uk
The reason for all this bad science is that in most research organisations and universities scientists must publish a certain number of papers a year or they will be sacked. This often leads them to do pointless research because it can produce quick results.
Ian Davis, Sydney, Australia
I agree with Guido, Bochum, Germany that now investors are moving away from mortgages they are putting money into futures of food and driving prices up causing misery for all. Futures should not be allowed on necessities like food and oil.
joe, Edinburgh, Scotland
And the same applies to scientists saying ......"fish flatulence causes global warming"
They are being funded by the bottomless fount that is the aid from governments to combat carbon.
Its just the way scientists make a living nowadays
Then the scientists and bureaucrats get to go to Bali to chat
Simon Osborne, hong kong,
Jim from Toronto put it succinctly. We need our crackpots to provoke our thinking, but I want to take it further. Shouldn't all research be done in a mental asylum? Just as most drug breakthroughs are discovered accidently precisely because the conventional mind cannot search for the unknown.
Tom, Perth, Oz
Hmmm... why is it that whenever food shortages are discussed the simple fact that the human population is expanding relentlessly, to a level which it appears the planet is unable to sustain, is not mentioned?
Why is this happening? SCIENTISTS of course, interfering with nature.
Mark, Kettering, England
Pills for high blood pressure make you stick thin? Which brand are they?
Rob Lyons, Nottingham,
I agree with you Clarkson. Scientists are studying the most foolish of things. I remember I saw a documentary at school that help me decipher the "scientific claims" made every hour about everything except that matters. Instead of trying to solve a real problem, they spend their time on silliness.
Leonidas N. Melissinos, Sunderland, United Kingdom
Hmmm, I woke up this morning and wondered about growing GM wheat or corn or whatever, and using it to create ethanol for fuelling your Range Rover, rather than depleting the food supply.
Mind you I wouldn't have wondered this if it wasn't for your article
Jim, Toronto, Canadia
The food shortage isn't really a shortage. Climate change has caused a dip in rice production, speculators see an opportunity and there go food prices. Biofuels are now moving away from food crops, GM crops don't really work. So instead of scientists explaining the "shortage", the economists should.
Guido, Bochum, Germany