The Scientific Method

The Scientific Method

1.

I used to make my way home each evening by train followed by ten minutes on foot, which would bring me to the door of the bleak bedsit I rented. I live well now, a comfortable suburban existence, but I remember those cold, hand-to-mouth days with great nostalgia. Every now and then, weather permitting, I'd walk a longer route that took me some way down the river then across St. Helen's Park. The park was mostly flat and featureless, a threadbare field used by the kids for football and drinking, but some of the oaks at the borders were truly ancient and pacifying after a hard day. It was here on a warm summer's evening that I met Rupert Foster, Doctor Rupert Foster no less, within the peeling, yellow walls of the park's public toilet block.

It is a peculiar thing to recall the surreal circumstances of our meeting. He, abnormally tall, round as a barrel and dressed in pastel shades more suited to golf than, I would imagine, to cottaging, emerged from a cubicle clutching a large, brown paper bag, and set about propositioning me ' this while I was at my most vulnerable: midstream. As I was facing the wall and distracted by the graffiti over the urinals, I did not respond to his initial effort to attract my attention; this being a hefty clearing of the throat, a loud rumbling roll of heavy phlegm decongesting then settling back with a nauseating wheeze onto his chest. Undeterred by my apparent indifference, he next let out a peculiar high-pitched whine and a brief, reedy whistle (both noises of a rather muted, apologetic volume) before delivering another ugly guttural rasp. At this, I turned my head toward the source of the noises to find that the cubical door had been thrown open, and that the imposing figure of Rupert now stood on the threshold, bag in hand. He wore cream chinos and an undersized sky-blue pullover from which a peach tinged shirt sprouted at neck, cuffs and ample midriff like the seedy innards of a squashed tomato. Under the single twitching fluorescent light tube his facial features had a sinister appearance, bathed in shadow, but this was made perversely comical by the oversized peak of his Day-Glo baseball cap.

As I watched, with my neck twisted awkwardly so that I could maintain a bodily attitude toward the urinal, he formed a lopsided, nervous smile and, making a saucy click-click with the side of his mouth, winked and rolled his eyes, simultaneously thumbing over his shoulder to direct my attention to the empty cubicle. My bewilderment at his affected performance perhaps masked my sheer terror at being so addressed by this flabby, lumbering giant of a man. This is not to betray any homophobia on my part. My fear was due only to his sheer massive physicality next to my own tiny frame. How, I wondered anxiously, would this seemingly demented individual react to rejection?

I finished relieving myself and shook, tucked and zipped my member away before turning to face him, remaining judiciously silent. I reckoned my chances of making a successful run for the exit to be very small. At the lack of a positive response he expectorated productively once more before repositioning his flat feet and descending into a truly disgraceful parody of homosexual behaviour, presumably inspired by those trite old English comedies that venerate the much-loved/reviled stereotypical mincing fruit. He mewed and whined, winked, wolf-whistled and moistened his lips seductively with a plump pink tongue. He blew hideous wet kisses of dribbling saliva. He twisted his face into monstrous pouts and made flamboyant limp wristed gesticulations. He gyrated his cumbersome thighs gracelessly, at one point losing balance and flailing like a hippopotamus in a tutu. Finally, he placed a hand on one hip and jutting the other out like an Elizabethan fop, or a little teapot, puckered his mouth and awaited my response. Whatever this man was after, he was evidently not gay.

I tried to speak but gagged, as my throat was dry and constricted. Misinterpreting the significance of this hesitancy, he held a podgy finger to his lips and made to continue the ritual enticement. This brought a rush of adrenaline by which I was somehow able to blurt out, "I'm so very sorry, but I think you've got me wrong.

The giant tilted his head, unable to interpret my frenetic chatter. "I beg your pardon, he said in a cultured but wavering tone. I repeated the cliché verbatim, slowly enunciating each word. The effect was ghastly. First stillness, which I interpreted as rage, preparing myself for a desperate dash to freedom, but then I saw his face crease like cracked plaster. His entire frame folded inward, crumpled and telescoped like a deflating concertina as he sank into a deep hopeless squat and began to expel great histrionic sobs. Tears flowed down his cheeks in broad streams, dripping off his round chin in globules. Mucous poured freely from snuffling nostrils. This was not simply a man rejected; this was a man at the end of his tether. A man blubbering with arse and peach shirttails soaked from the pools of muddy urine that saturated the concrete floor.

I couldn't help but feel pity and attempted to comfort him, but when I reached for his shoulder he shrugged my hand away violently, raising his head from the crooks of his elbows to face me. Glaring at me from behind a tormented mask, he choked out the words, "Do you think I want to be here, do you think I enjoy this? The endless rejections, night after b-b-bloody night? Then, like a wild-eyed madman in a B-movie beseeching, what year is this, man? the year!, he screeched, "I don't do this for myself, I do it for humanity, for the sake of humanity! I was naturally taken by the urge to run while he was down, to find civilisation and merge into the collective anonymity of a crowded place. However, there was an inescapable sense that he was no lunatic, just someone in dire need of help, or at least the chance to unburden himself of his troubles. It gives me no pride to admit that I would ordinarily have turned my back on such a case but recent events (to which I will not digress, this being his story, not mine) had changed my attitude; so much so that I squatted down beside him, taking care to keep my own clothing free of the wet ground, and said, "you should come, have a drink. "I - don't ' drink, he croaked between hollow sobs. "It'll do you good, I replied, and made a gesture to lift him by the elbow ' a gesture only because, in his height and corpulence, he was at least twice my size.

*****

We walked in silence across the damp grass of St. Helen's to the Tall Cavalier pub, a traditional wood-panel and brass horseshoe place just outside of the East gate. On this night the Cavalier was quiet enough for us to find seats, but sufficiently busy with sports on the TV and general chatter that we would not be overheard. For this I became increasingly thankful as the night progressed.

I bought us both a stout with a whiskey to chase it and we took a corner table next to an opaque bubbled glass window, dappled red and pink from the evening sun. By the light of the leaded lamp on the table I saw his face clearly for the first time, and this was a peculiar thing to behold. His face was tiny, set in a broad, flat head like a man in the moon, with small, close eyes set around a pockmarked button nose. The eyes had no brows to speak of, just smooth bald knobs like inflammations. When he removed his cap I saw his hair was thinning and only lightly shaded with a hint of ginger, so the gleaming freckled scalp was visible beneath. Most striking was his mouth, perhaps by its very innocuousness. It formed a sheer slit across his face, almost lipless, and pursed with an infuriatingly subtle smugness. The fit of the seam was perfect. Around the precise seal, his chin (or chins) and extensive cheeks spread backward in featureless ovals ' the skin of his forehead, small ears and neck (where its ampleness caused it to bunch up in folds around his starch-stiff shirt collar) was similarly smooth and flawless. I found this physiognomy uncomfortably evocative of circumcision. I was momentarily mesmerised by the sight of him pouring the unfamiliar alcoholic liquids into the unzipped aperture of his mouth, giving a comically exaggerated drinker's grimace at the chaser.

"You might take it easy, I suggested as he rose to buy another round, having downed all during the brief monologue by which I introduced myself. "So what was that all about Rup? for he had told me his name. Rupert Foster serves as a pseudonym which I feel accurately captures the essence of the original.

"Oh God, he simpered, "oh God it's so hard to tell.

"You need to tell someone. We've never met, never likely to meet again ' not by accident anyway ' and I'm a trustworthy man, it would go no further. Unless you'd rather I called one of your friends¦

He snorted derisively at this suggestion and surveyed me pensively for a moment before commencing his narrative. There was a natural haughtiness in his voice, embellished by a slightly upper class accent, an unevenly extravagant vocabulary and a tendency to slip into passive voice, all of which I later discovered is typical among members of his profession. At times of excitement his words would trip over one another and he would shower the table with viscous spittle. These idiosyncrasies were exaggerated by the alcohol, and perhaps are caricatured in my memory, as I too consumed copiously that night. Once he had started, it became clear that he'd been waiting for the opportunity to discharge his story for some time, and many passages carried a bombast that indicated they had been repeatedly rehearsed in his head. He had bottled these thoughts for many years and, lubricated by whiskey, they gushed freely.

"I'm a scientist. Have been really since I was a child, you know, never wanted anything much else than to be discovering ' vital, fundamental things no one else knew or even guessed before. Or, at least, that was how I dreamed it. I'm a doctor now, you see, a P ' H ' D. How proud I once was to hold that title! So many years of toil, to the detriment of all else. Not, he conceded, using a wave of his plump hand to draw attention to his general physique and facial characteristics, "that there was very much on offer. I made discouraging noises at this self-deprecation, but he dismissed them with a flourish, "spare me!

He appeared to be intent on telling me his life story by way of introduction, starting with his childhood. He described a long appreciated sense of his own difference from his peers, his relationship with the other children being his first experience of life long ostracism. In his reminiscences there were numerous coy admissions of social ineptitude, a stinging loneliness, a crippling, blushing shyness even in the most humdrum of interactions: Jehovah's witnesses, post office clerks, bus drivers. He had a pathological fear of talking to women above all and detailed several excruciating stories of humiliation which sprang from his intense introversion. There was no real need for him to elaborate so. Alcohol and desperation to unburden himself fuelled his apparently Herculean efforts to talk to me, but he wore his social inelegance openly in farcical facial expressions and starkly insular body language.

Of his childhood, he talked fondly of a burgeoning fascination with the workings of things, the seeds of the passion that led him to a career in scientific research. He was a child who disassembled and reassembled hybrid machines from toys and discarded electricals, who mixed household chemicals with varying levels of perilousness, who bred stick insects and grew ant farms, then fried the same ants under a magnifying glass on sunny days. He spoke also of his precocious discoveries of biology, chemistry and physics; of the planets, of radiation, DNA, the atom; of relativity, genetics, quantum physics and uncertainty, of molecular biology, of cats in sealed safe boxes awaiting annihilation by ionised gas. He talked about Newton, Mendel, the Curries, Rutherford, Einstein and Bohr (and their great philosophical punch-ups), Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Watson and Crick. Principal among these, though, was Darwin, and evolution, wonderful Darwin!

This child was enchanted by shambling, preoccupied professors in baggy corduroys, holey socks and sandals, filthy grey beards, and he had watched enviously as they filed in and out of the local university grounds on creaking single-gear rust-bucket bicycles, fantasising that this was where his future lay. From these early recollections, we came to his first laboratory experiences at school, to the, scent of alcohols and esters, and the perfume in natural gas¦ the anticipation as a pregnant drop of acid fell from the tip of a pipette and the pure beauty of the moment when that single drop turned alkaline solutions green to red¦ In later life, he would feel the same thrill of sensual allure when inhaling the uniquely scented toxic fumes of phenol, seeing the ethereal glow of DNA under ultraviolet light and hearing the urgent crackling and jarring scream of a Geiger counter held over a radioactive spill.

Then, by turns, we moved to his university years, when he was introduced to the international community of scientists, a people so possessed by the desire for communion that they had invented the Internet. This gave him his earliest, abstract sense of belonging. There was great honour in his voice as he described how the collaborations of international scientists had for decades crossed the deepest political, cultural, ideological and religious divides: East with West, North with South, capitalists with socialists, fascists with communists, Catholics with Protestants, Jews with Muslims, the English with the Welsh. But, for all these glorious observations and fond remembrances, it seemed that the feelings of alienation had only become more acute, even if he denied it to himself. Among scientists, he remained an awkward misfit seeing nothing of student life besides the lectures, workshops and tutorials. He claimed that this was all he craved, told me that he had willingly given his life to science, living monastically by design, that he had foregone a potential social life, a wife, children, friends. In short, he proclaimed himself a martyr to science. Though I had taken the Samaritan's role, it was quite clear to me that far from being the altruistic sacrifice he portrayed, devotion to science had been an unavoidable path for Rupert, providing a surrogate existence for the pariah.

"People, he exclaimed at one point, "laypeople, see science as so locked down, empirical, suffocating and boring! The great scientists had more freedom of thought and imagination, more fanaticism, than any conventional artist. This, science, was the ultimate art form! His passion was unquestionable; his scientific id was swollen and pulsing. Whatever my view of the motivations that brought him to a life of scientific asceticism, he seems to have been in his element. When his tale eventually came to his transition from student to academic researcher, he was on fire. "I had started on a crusade, the battle to rid man of his true great enemies ' viruses, prions, bacteria, diabetes, cancer and so on. Those evils that theologians and the military do not dare address! During this time, both of his parents had died, but he was proud to report that his devotion to science was such that he had not missed a beat, leaving his lab bench only briefly to attend the funeral services.

In the midst of this idyllic existence, however, reality had started to bite. In his formative years, an aging patriarch had taught him the values and ethics of the old school researcher, the absolute importance of honesty, of community, of integrity, that without integrity the academic researcher was nothing. Rupert, considering himself privileged beyond measure, had strived to maintain these standards, "working day and night in pursuit of the truth, the pure and simple truth, and was happy for a while. But, as the years passed, he detected imperfections, cracks in the veneer. Science was changing as he lived within it, losing its pioneering spirit, its thrill and, above all, its integrity. There emerged a mercenary, capitalist view of academic scientific research and his colleagues stopped playing fairly. He alleged that, one by one, they became happy to publish questionable data, worse, they no longer flinched from fabricating or stealing the data of others, all to further their careers, a practice Rupert found so distasteful as to be sickening. This was the reason, he proposed, that his career ground to a stand still, while other less deserving individuals attained promotion after promotion. Rupert was at least forty-five by the time we met and had spent some twenty years as a junior researcher.

He was careful, however, not to blame the scientists per se for their unethical behaviour. He pitied them; after all, he said, they were only trying to eek out a paltry livelihood in a changing environment. Evolving. The fault was external: words like commercialisation, patenting, branding, intellectual property and streamlining, were spat venomously. His fat cheeks wobbled and the eyes widened to show angry, alcohol-reddened whites around small irises, with fierce sparks in the pupils. He said that universities, "once bastions of veracity and independent research, in the face of increasing financial pressures and had become, "submissive concubines of the big pharmaceutical companies. Nature, it seemed, belonged to somebody rather than everybody; like the human genome, nature was being copywrited, patented, hidden away in someone's sweaty pocket. Less money, harsher competition, research came to be judged not on merit but on commercial viability. Projects became ever more mundane as risk and novelty took a backseat to predictability, each step of the research set in stone, defined turn by turn, "straitjackets to the visionary researcher. Rupert saw himself as an island of moral decency in a cesspool, a rat race, a web of banality, ever more isolated. Exhausted. Disillusioned.

"I often thought, he reflected mournfully, " that even if you got one, a truly novel, groundbreaking discovery nowadays, an elixir, the big pharmaceuticals would buy you out and lock it in a vault, or have you killed if you didn't sell. Last thing they want is a cure impinging on their reservoir of chronic diseases. Chronic is a good investment, cure is just a one off payment¦ This was spoken in a conspiratorial tone. His hatred for the pharmaceutical companies, commercial science, was all consuming.
Stalled at a menial level, he had moved from supervisor to supervisor, each younger than the last. His current employer was a man some eleven years his junior. Wrapped in his creased mish-mash of poorly fitting soft-hued attire, Rupert derided his supervisor's, Italian style suits, manicures, eyebrow pluckings, arrogance, egocentrism, materialism¦ his tendency to extemporise, while preening, on his conquests of various female students, and his insistence on the most dreary, unimaginative research. The arrogant youngster, a full six inches shorter than Rupert, would arch his neck uncomfortably in order to talk down a starkly angled nose at the lowly employee who cowered and cringed before him, boiling inwardly like an autoclave. Rupert claimed to have spoken no more than a handful of words to his supervisor, each of these stammered inaudibly under the young man's supercilious stare.

There were tears of frustration in his eyes by this point. Quite simply, Rupert's once boundless youthful enthusiasm had been ground out of him. He felt betrayed, that he had given his soul and received nothing in return. Naturally, I wondered whether this subjective view was tainted by bitterness, by resentment at the success of others in light of his own short fallings. Even if he had been a great scientist, a genius, did he, a sufferer of such intense social cretinism, really have the right stuff to get ahead? There was something in Rupert's version of events that recalled a plump, beetroot faced, spoiled child blenching at the discovery that his peers are unwilling to indulge him with the selfless worship he expects at home. Had scientific research really changed or had he, like so many others, found his personal Promised Land to be rotten at the core? I admit I felt some contempt for Rupert, and sympathy for his supervisor, presumably faced daily with this puerile spitefulness. I certainly did not see Rupert's problems as unique. Perhaps I am a child of the 80's, but to expect any profession to be immune to the commercial realities of our time is surely naïve. I'd always thought it a sad requirement of maturity that one accept the bureaucratic, manipulative, dog-eat-dog nature of the real world, of Catch-22, so my opinion was that Rupert had not yet outgrown his childhood infatuation, his adolescent dream. However, I felt more pity than contempt when he summed up his introductory monologue by saying, "My interest had dwindled, my passion dimmed. I had given my life for nothing, and I saw only 20 more years of the same. This was enough easy to empathise with.

2.

The window beside us was lit only by the glow of a dull blue street lamp against a starless sky by the time he picked up his story with yet another round of drinks.

"But I had, in those years, cultivated another interest, he confided, leaning a little closer over the table. " Like I said, I had difficulty communicating with women. I like women, but I can't talk to them, and when I've tried, well, look at me. It never worked out. I didn't ever do much except for the science. No cinema, theatre, sport, I didn't go to pubs or clubs. As a result, I've been pretty much alone and frustrated from puberty onwards. He fixed my gaze and, with an air that combined the opposite characteristics of inflated pomposity and utter defeatism, said, "so what does a man do after more than forty years celibacy? When he is not pious? When he is not spiritually chaste but craves the opportunity for repeated, relentless acts of procreation? When he is not intentionally abstinent but has had a sexual drought forced upon him due, at best, to the indifference and, at worst, the revulsion of the opposite sex?

"A man masturbates, and masturbates a great deal. I suppose you could say that if science was my first love, then masturbation was a very close second. I was deeply uncomfortable with this delicate revelation, and he must have sensed this as he said, "please ' I have to get this out and you offered to listen.

"I did it a lot, increasingly so when my profession became less appealing. As my interest in science faded, my desire for self-abuse flourished. At first I did it just at home, fitting it in around my work hours, whenever I wasn't thinking about work. It was my hobby. But the thing is, it became habit forming, like some hobbies do, and a few years ago it all got to be too much, and I started to find it difficult to refrain during the day. There are a few pretty females in biological science, you might not know, and sometimes, while I was at work, the urge got too strong, something about white coats and latex gloves I think. I was hardly going to leave the lab and do the business at home. Luckily, there are plenty of incubation periods in biochemical research ' chemical reactions and so on ' where one is idle, twiddling ones thumbs, and the lab is on the top floor at the end of a long corridor next to a set of toilets that hardly ever get used. So I'd make a dash for a cubicle every now and then. Bob's your uncle! I remember the expression on his face perfectly, no shame, no embarrassment. He seemed relieved to be divulging this intensely personal information and there was an unmistakeable quiver of anticipation at what was to come.

"It got more and more regular. Even when I was losing enthusiasm for research I still worked inhuman hours. Most nights I'd be at the microscope with the lights out, working over the cancer cells we cultured and experimented with. My supervisor generally left early so I would be alone from late afternoon on. Eventually, under shroud of darkness and with the door of the lab locked, I could see no reason to leave the room. I got proficient at multitasking, he said this with enthusiasm and not a hint of irony. "One hand doing the science and the other working away down below. It could be done either way around, ambidextrous you see, and he spread both his hands before his eyes, furling the fingers villainously in sweeping spirals to form tight fists like a melodramatic Victorian pickpocket.

"Anyway, I remember the date well, the 29th of July last year. Burning hot, record breaking summer, and you can imagine in a hot dusty university building there was a lot of flesh on display from the ladies. But my supervisor was working late that night, finishing off a grant proposal on some typically innocuous subject or other, and my only place of solitude was not accessible as the toilets were out of order and locked. By the time he finally left and I had barred the door behind him, I was frantic. In my haste I made what I considered at the time to be a terrible error, but which has since turned out to be the most wonderfully felicitous occurrence.

"You may have heard the slightly apocryphal story of how Alexander Fleming accidentally discovered penicillin. They say that he too faltered in laboratory procedure, leaving a bacterial growth plate open to the atmosphere. Fungal contamination landed on the plate, grew up, the bacteria retreated and eureka! Antibiotics! Ah, well, I also contaminated my plate of cells that night. The problem was that my supervisor, so certain of my ineptitude, was keeping account of the number of plates of cells I was using and the cost of any errors. As a result I could not very well dispose of the offending plate without confirming his suspicions of my incompetence, and this I could not tolerate, so I did my best to remove the main body of contamination from the growth media and returned the plate to the incubator for the night. I went home extremely disappointed with my unprofessional behaviour and, for the first time in many years, abstained from any similar activity that night.

"The next day, however, I examined that very plate and, a miracle! The cancer cells had regressed from the very spots that the foreign material had torpedoed. Not shrivelled and died, not undergone some non-specific necrosis, they had regressed, forming near perfect empty circles around those areas. What a remarkable phenomenon, I thought, though I initially constrained my enthusiasm. Science is a cruel mistress, so often tantalising one with greatness only to snatch it away at the very pinnacle of expectation.

"It was fortuitous that around this time my arse of a supervisor embarked on a series of overseas trips to various conferences, taking prolonged breaks around the meetings, no doubt to sample local 'culture' and parade sandy beaches and pool side patios, showing off his allegedly ample genitals and Brazilian wax in minuscule swimming trunks and greasy sun-oil. So I started to add covert experiments to my work plan, and recorded them falsely in my logbook, keeping an accurate book separately. At first these were only small experiments that would go unnoticed, but they became gradually more extensive until this line of research took over completely. Ah, what days they were! I rediscovered my long lost love and my fervour was piqued by the fact that I could combine equally the two great passions of my life, science and onanism. And indeed the result was genuine 'regression of lung cancer, melanoma, breast, colon was seen¦ It was truly astonishing!

"Yes lies were told, ethics and procedures I had held so devoutly were disregarded. The project I was paid and approved to perform was to build a database of molecular markers for clinical grading, a truly uncreative bore¦ but I was curing cancer man! Daily! I held the panacea in the very palm of my hand. The experiments progressed to more complex, physiologically relevant systems, all consistent and successful, and surreptitiously performed to prevent untimely revelation. Believe me, though egotism is a great driving force for many scientists, the allure of a Nobel Prize; or avarice, the riches that can be accumulated by patenting significant findings, I felt no such coercion. I did not hide my discovery through selfishness, I desired more than anything to share this knowledge. But how could I? How could I tell my supervisor, from whom I shirked even requesting¦ the loan of a pencil? How could I describe to him the series of events that had led to my discovery and face his smug derision of my pitiable existence? Moreover, how could one publish such data in the anally retentive, buttoned down environment of a modern scientific journal? Gone were the days when a patent clerk could submit his crazy theories to international journals. What of a scientist whom, with complete disregard for the scientific method and for the holy scripture of his project plan, had relieved himself over a cell culture apparently just to see what would happen¦ and then claims to have discovered the ultimate magic bullet, blasphemy!. Modern science is not rock and roll. It does not welcome overnight sensations. Brilliance should only be seen in one who has taken the pains to ingratiate himself to the correct people, joined the proper exclusive circles. I felt certain that this constipated community would have little option other than to ridicule and distance itself from my findings, no matter their significance. By ignoring the protocols, I had laid myself open to such disgruntled scientists as might wish to discredit me, the upstart flunky, the jumped up pantry-boy. Indeed, I admit that a number of my more advanced experiments may not have been considered entirely legal.

"And what of the all-important funding bodies, eagerly awaiting their predictable, insignificant database; what would it mean for our livelihoods if they knew what I'd been doing with their money? He paused thoughtfully, then snorted, "and the moral issues! What would the papal councils make of this latest, greatest scientific anathema? Oh no, to make this public, I needed irrevocable, unquestionable proof.

"Thus, I worked 18 to 20 hour days, catching brief cat naps sitting on one of the lavatory basins with my head on a toilet-roll pillow. I often performed my lurid, clandestine research nocturnally to avoid discovery, with no lights other than a pocket torch. I ate from pizzerias, fast food outlets and snack machines on the university campus. My weight ballooned and I got acne, but I no longer had any need to go home. Many fundamental observations were made, most importantly the lack of side effects on normal cells, which grew unabated under treatment. Finally, on December the 24th, near midnight, I succeeded in isolating a pure fraction containing the material that mediated the effect of which I speak. I called it, 'Factor X.' He paused for dramatic effect, his tiny eyes like saucers.

"M-hm, I grunted after what I hoped would appear to be a respectful pause. "But that was over six months ago. What brought you to the park tonight?

"Tonight and every other night! For two weeks! Each with a similarly disappointing conclusion! As you could probably tell, I'm no more proficient in seducing men than women. I know I fancy women, but I never really found men at all attractive. Each to his own I suppose, but given the chance I'd rather be with a woman, he cast a salacious eye over the other patrons in the smoky bar room, briefly losing the thread of the story. "But even thirty years of sexual frustration could not drive me to banish my awesome shyness and approach another human for sexual purposes, even though evolution teaches us that this is the ultimate imperative. The word evolution had an almost religious inflection. "No, but science could provide the impetus.

"During the last six months I've learned everything I possibly can about Factor X. I know it's large and complex, multimolecular¦ proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, co-factors. It's an absolute marvel of molecular biology, a nanomachine that specifically targets biological aberrancies. You'd never try and synthesise something so extravagant chemically, but, of course, we shouldn't have to. There's a potentially endless supply. However, what I didn't know for sure, and had to know, was if this is a general phenomenon. You see, my testicles are the only current source of Factor X I have available. What if I'm the only one, or one of an oligarchy of freaks who produce this factor? Genetics says it could go either way ' we all could carry the same functional molecule, or no two people might be the same. I could publish this data only to discover that, all across the globe, thousands of scientists have been ejaculating into their petri-dishes with the sole effect of soiling their media. I'd be a laughing stock, an outcast¦ more of an outcast. I needed to know if the effluence of others could produce the same effect. This is the key.

"What's more, the sheer volume of research I've performed, along with the increasingly perfunctory nature of what was once the most pleasant and satisfying task of producing the necessary materials, has made it ever more difficult for me to keep up with demand. The science has taken over everything. On the one hand the research is bliss, but on the other, I must admit it is becoming an arduous and loathsome task to get it on. Although he had struggled occasionally to relate his story, he had generally been quite voluble, even allowing for his unfamiliarity with the usual social nuances. Like a man shipwrecked for many years, he had developed a hint of gruffness owing to the weakness of a neglected larynx. However, he had never shown the slightest twinge of reticence. Now, in admitting this creeping impotency, his eyes could no longer meet mine, and he stared fixedly at a point on the floor.

I made consoling gestures, but he was insensitive to them. After a few uncomfortable moments, he cleared his throat with a sound suggesting that he had been holding back tears. "So I decided there was nothing to do but to solicit the involvement of others. I obviously couldn't go through the official channels to obtain samples, though there's plenty out there if you've got approval and money ' neither of which, sufficed to say, I have. No, I had no choice but to go to the source. With this, he pulled an aluminium flask from his brown paper bag ("liquid nitrogen, he confided) and from his pocket a small, clear jar with a yellow screw-top lid.

"I had no idea how, though, so I had to go off what I had seen on TV, when I still watched it. I suppose I could have gone 'cruising' for 'rent-boys' but I don't have a car and I've really no idea where one does that sort of thing. All I could think of was cottaging. I'd seen a programme about it once, and remembered that one participant said you needed a big brown paper bag. That way, one of the amorous couple could stand in it so the nosy toilet attendant would only see one pair of feet under the gap at the bottom of the cubicle door. I suppose attendants used to check a lot at one time, when homosexuality was still thought nefarious. No such thing as attendants now.

"You see, while I'm bang up to date on the science, my data on modern culture is pretty sketchy. Anyway, I had noticed all the phone numbers, explicit descriptions and proposed meeting times in graffiti. I'd always supposed they were, you know, schoolboy pranks, but then I heard about that pop star getting himself arrested in America and I thought I might as well have a go. He laughed suddenly. I had not heard his full laugh. From such an unusual man I expected perhaps a high-pitched overloud squeal that would attract uncomfortable attention in public places. On the contrary his laugh was natural, wholesome, hearty. Almost infectious. While he laughed his porcine pink features lifted and became reasonably presentable. But as the laughter faded it had a sardonic edge ' it had been just a bitter preamble to a description of his experiences during the past two weeks. "I was ignored, threatened, beaten once or twice. Oh yes, I'm a large fellow, but no match for those chaps. I've never hit anyone in my whole life, and one time two of them laid into me. I'm a patchwork of black and blue under these clothes. Some ran out of there, smaller chaps like you who were probably a bit intimidated. I know I'm no oil painting, but so much rejection. I feel such a fool. I'm sure my mincing would have insulted the hell out of any homosexual man who came in. Anyway, tonight was my last shot and God only knows what I'll do now. Maybe I'll swallow my pride and humiliate myself, lower myself to as yet unplumbed depths and go to my supervisor. If he believes me I suppose I'll just stand by, like the stately nobody that I am, as he steals my discovery and passes it off as his own. Let that smarmy b-b-bastard get all the glory and riches he desires, but at least the cure would be out there, I suppose, for those who need it. If he doesn't, if he laughs in my face, well¦

"Unless, of course¦ he picked the sample jar off the round table between stout thumb and index finger and wiggled it in the air a few inches from my nose, inclining his expectant eyes toward a dark tanned wood door with a brass embossed, 'Gents,' sign and a stencil of a top hated toff below.

3.

I will not enter into further description of the night's events, nor divulge whether I supplied him with a sample of my own Factor X. I will concede that we were pretty drunk by the time he finished the tale and in this weakened intellectual state I had become quite beguiled by his passionate narrative. We talked long into the night and I will allow that he departed reinvigorated, with an air of distinct determination. Even in the midst of near blinding inebriation, however, I was unconvinced of his story's truth and waking the next afternoon, much the worse for wear, I concluded that the man was a poor, deranged imbecile thriving on a ridiculous, albeit carefully constructed fantasy.

I never met him again. Until just over four months ago (almost three years after that night) I had not set eyes on the pursed lips of his matchless, fleshy visage. Then, suddenly, that moon face appeared simultaneously on the front page of the business section of several national newspapers. I normally discard the business section with real estate and cars without a thought, but even the briefest glimpse of a photo of such a distinctive face was sufficient to arrest my attention. There he stood, with four others, beside the lower tiers of an enormous champagne fountain. He was the eldest of the five by some way, but for all that he looked immeasurably sprightlier and than the haggard soul I had spent an alcoholic evening with. His hair was fuller, expensively coiffed, his skin was richly tanned, even allowing for the cosmetics he likely sported for the posed portrait, and he had switched his slacks and sweater for a sharp, hand tailored suit, similar to those worn by his companions. Don't misunderstand me, he was not handsome, that was not possible, but he was certainly not the bulbous absurdity with whom I had shared so many drinks. The hand holding his champagne glass was heavily decorated with chunky gold rings and bracelet, as was the other hand of this ambidextrous wonder, which now held a smouldering cigar the size and colour of a bratwurst. These men, the editorial remarked loftily, were the new, 'young' high fliers of a pharmaceutical giant whose name would be familiar to most and which had posted a record yearly profit. The legend to the photo recorded a name somewhat different to the one he had given to me, for the purposes of this piece I will say it was Roger Farmer, but the features were unmistakeable.

Significantly, nowhere in the text was there any mention of an unconventional miracle cure which would account for his abrupt elevation from lowly university pawn to mover and shaker at the head of a great multinational company. I fancied two possibilities:

1. This rich and powerful kingpin, as is sometimes the way with individuals of stellar capabilities and achievement, had certain furtive eccentricities, foibles by which he vented his frustrations or gratified hidden compulsions. These included passing himself off under various guises and aliases in order to obtain bodily fluids from unsuspecting simpletons such as myself.

2. Rupert had a twin.

The second seemed unlikely. Though an obscenely successful brother might have explained Rupert's disdain for big pharmaceuticals, he had described himself as an only child, and surely that face was a singularity. The first was ludicrous but the only remaining possibility appeared too improbable, whatever Conan Doyle would suggest. Could he really have been telling the truth? And was it possible that a drugs company could have bought out the noble spirit I had encountered that night?

I investigated on the Internet, in scientific databases, finding data chronologically consistent with his claims. Rupert had indeed been a scientist at the university, sporadically publishing papers as a meagre auxiliary author. His last had been about six months after our meeting, a standard report about clinical markers, and then nothing. When I called the university switchboard, they no longer had his name on the register. And his supervisor, whose name I found in the publications, was brusque and dismissive of my telephoned enquiries. Rupert had disappeared and Roger had taken his body.

What of this great new man? The Internet gave me what I expected ' nothing until twelve months ago, then a plethora of information. Suddenly Roger was everywhere, inordinately wealthy, the big man in New York, London, Paris. During the time that I was performing my searches on the web, the name Roger Farmer started to appear in tabloids and glossy gossip magazines. Using his new found aphrodisiacs of wealth and power Rupert/Roger was giving vent to a long stifled libido. He was an 'It' boy, a gadabout, spotted in the most exclusive London nightspots, in Soho and in the infamous hunting grounds of Hampstead Heath, cruising from conquest to conquest in a lush metallic gold Bentley. Each night he was photographed with another glamorous young lady or gentleman of the jet set, or several of each. And these snaps by the voracious paparazzi stood out from the usual crowd of shamefaced celebrities hiding behind handbags or drunkenly assaulting photographers. Roger, the confident, enigmatic, charismatic evolution of Rupert appeared with a broad lipless grin and two thumbs up to the barrage of camera flashes. His days as a respectable executive were surely numbered, but he was making the most of them. He was, no doubt, assured of a sizeable pay off.

So finally I had to concede that Rupert had sold his soul to the pharmaceutical devils and been richly rewarded. At first, I felt a deep sense of disappointment in this man who, in the face of temptation or intimidation, could not carry the courage of his heartfelt convictions. But, you see, Rupert was one of those rare individuals who hold their principles above all else. His principals were more to him than air or water, they were his whole life; they were all he ever had. It is little wonder that, in the end, he became so easy to corrupt.

I often wonder how they found him and suppressed his discovery. Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are correct, and corporations really do have spies at all levels ' a bogus student or plumber working in the out-of-order toilet. Perhaps he had approached some corrupted academic with his data, or bypassed the academics altogether and gone directly to the corporation, having become so disenchanted with science as to accept the hush money gladly. Whatever steps big business had taken to buyout his great discovery, they clearly did not know of me. Perhaps he was so drunk that he did not recall the details of our meeting through the cold reality of his first hangover. Perhaps he felt I would pass his story off as pure fancy and never discuss it again. Indeed I find this hard to resist, but I could not in good conscience ignore the potential significance of what I know, however outlandish it may seem. So I have chosen to make his story public and stand the storm of public ridicule as wonderful Darwin did¦ or perhaps I too will use a pseudonym.

In concluding this piece, I feel that the Rupert I spent a few hours with would take some comfort from what I see in my mind's eye. I see the fulfilment of his noble vision of an international community of scientists, a scientific utopia. I see tens of thousands of bearded, besandaled professors of all creeds and colours in dirty white coats, abusing themselves in furious union over great production lines of open petridishes. And of Roger I must say that today, as I take another glance at his face in the newspaper, at his childish, toothy grin and his trim, lithe body, entangled in the lustful arms of the young and the beautiful, he certainly looks satisfied.

Sci Method, W Moseley, 2006