Helmintholog

Glancing at Damian Thompson’s blog, I see the well-known trope of climate change denialists — that those who advocate the reality of anthropogenic global warming are very well paid for their efforts. The implication is not just that the denialists are not themselves funded by special interests — though of course they are, and this tactic is pure Swift-boating: accusing your opponent of precisely the most shameful thing that you have ever done (in Bush’s case, cowardice sufficient to ensure it was never even tested under fire; in this case, taking bribes to lie) — it is suggesting that the purity of science is compromised by its funding.

What suddenly struck me as odd about this argument, deployed as it usually is by defenders of unbridled¹ capitalism, is that it’s difficult, on the face of it, to think of any scientific feat that should be more or better paid than trying to save the whole world. If these guys are right — and they are — no researchers into anything should be paid more than those who warn us of an impending catastrophe while there is still time, possibly, to avert it. Under what crazed, dystopic regime can you only be right in a garret?

¹ a technical term, referring to the sort of companies which are big enough to buy governments; not to be confused with free markets.

You’d have thought, after ten years writing about religious journalism in this country, and twenty years perpetrating the stuff, that I would know better than to take any Times exclusive at face value. You would be wrong. I should have checked Ruth Gledhill’s blog post about the supposed poisoning of an English missionary in Malawi before mentioning it here.

I didn’t. I didn’t get around to it until yesterday morning, when a couple of phone calls produced some interesting results.

• The three “poisons” that Ruth mentions on her blog posting were in fact prescription drugs — an anti histamine, an antibiotic, and a tranquilliser. You can’t check this directly, because the first thing she did after I rang her up and told her was to say “Oh Dear” and the second, to take the post down. It has been replaced by a copy of a letter I forwarded her giving a rather more credible explanation of these symptoms.
• Ruth had not checked the properties of the “poisons”. Neither had her source, Mark Hunter, the dead Canon’s nephew.
• Ruth rang last night, eight hours after our original conversation, to say that her co-author on the story had checked, and thus knew that they were writing a story about prescription drugs but had forgotten to tell her. Readers are invited to look at the Times story in the light of the fact that one of the authors knew when it was written that the “poisons” involved were an anti-histamine, an antibiotic, and a tranquilliser.
• The three priests dying in mysterious circumstances thirty years ago, put down to witchcraft, may not be true either. At any rate, I have spoken to Donald Arden, who was then the Archbishop of the province, and he has no memory of it, who might be expected to know. Before you ask; yes, his marbles are all in his possession.

Apart from those details, the story seems accurate.