My mind is unclear on this point. Grift means to obtain money illicitly. Satire is to expose foolishness using irony or humour. PLOS One has published a paper that is one or the other, but I genuinely can’t tell which.

The paper published was written by 6 authors and titled “Measurements of methane and nitrous oxide in human breath and the development of UK scale emissions”. Readers may be surprised to hear that PLOS One describes itself as a peer reviewed journal. Readers probably won’t be surprised to hear that the research (sic) was funded by a UK quango issuing grants for research into greenhouse gas emissions in the UK.

The groundbreaking research revealed that human breath contains some methane and some nitrous oxide. So what? I hear you ask. Well, these gases are classified by some grifters researchers as greenhouse gases. So it’s important to research (sic) the quantities. The grifters researchers tried to distinguish between age groups, dietary habits, sex etc but couldn’t find anything statistically significant, much to their disappointment.

While the greenhouse gas quantities emitted were small, the grifters researchers cautioned against drawing that conclusion since they did not test flatulence emissions. Well, why not? I want to hear the full story and if that requires also measuring the gases emerging from the back end of a sample of farting survey participants, so be it. Not every researcher’s life can be lead in a sweetly perfumed bed of roses.

Is this genuine research or is it another example of a journal being tricked into publishing something that the editors wanted published because it fits a narrative? I really hope it’s satirical and the journal has been scammed. The alternative explanation is depressing, that the state of publicly funded research into matters that deal with climate change has degenerated into grift and farce.