Justin's Vagenda starts to smell

The problem with choosing people on the basis of their plumbing is that sometimes you run smack into an immovable lump of shite...

Neurologists who treat MS patients are appalled, saying her lobbying calls into question Duncan’s suitability as a neutral, dispassionate science czar. “This is the most curious appointment since Caligula named his horse as Consul,” said McGill University’s Dr. Michael Rasminsky.

“The idea that there is some kind of scientific conspiracy to stop good research from happening, or stop good research that doesn’t fit with convention from happening, I think is an unfortunate perception for someone who is now the science minister,” said Tim Caulfield, a health-policy professor at the University of Alberta.

Of course, there are at least two sides to every story, right?

Duncan will not comment for now on the criticism, said a spokeswoman this week.

You're just not gonna hear it from Minister Kirsty.

**********

MORE: The thing that she's most known for...

...was an expensive, abject failure that Kirsty Duncan (geographer) had spent years planning. Duncan ended up digging up remains that were not below the permafrost... and thus useless.

But the story doesn't end there.

Unfortunately she didn't know that two other scientists, Jeffrey Taubenberger (pathologist) and Johan Hultin (virologist), had already got sufficient samples in Alaska—Hultin having made it to the same difficult region of Alaska in 1951.

In March of 1997 in Science News, there it was: “1918 Pandemic Virus Found.” A small sequence had been discovered by Jeffery Taubenberger. I wrote a letter saying, “If you need more specimen, let me know, and I will go back to Alaska. I’ve been there before. I know where it is. I can go back.” And I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t hear anything. And I thought, well, he knows, he thinks I’m a nut. He happened to be on vacation so he didn’t get his mail.

And he called me here. And he asked me, “When can you go?” So I said, “I can’t go this week. But I can go next week.” And I called up to Brevig. Now this time when I come, the second visit in 1997, it so happened it was in August.

And Hultin went up there with a pick and shovel. He recovered the samples and brought them back to Taubenberger. No government or private funding, No years of shameless self-promotion.

**********

RELATED: Speaking of bad smells