whose scientists can't tell the difference between sheep and cows ...yeahbut®
There's a wonderful, funny yet serious
word issue behind this. First a quick recap for anyone who has not followed the English Brainless Disease Part 253:
1. Scientists were set the task of checking whether
sheep's brains were carrying the same patterns of disturbance as found in cattle with BSE symptoms.
2. There is a test that checks for this with results avaialable in 1 week, but being Scientists this was far too easy and too sneakily like
cheating, so they did the old-fashioned method that takes
4 years!3. Only now at the conclusion has it emerged that they have, er, somewhat compromised the results by testing brains of cattle and not of sheep. D'oh!
4. The resulting consumer scare will probably now finish off the entire sheep farming industry in the UK.
Now, the delightful thing is this: Brit scientists, raised in the classical snobbery of not wanting to share their language with the plebs, tend to use the Latin terms. This is the context of a simple labelling error.
Ovine to Bovine is one small step for idiotkind...
