I’ve long been a believer, on intuitive, metaphysical, and Platonic grounds, in the theory that red wine is good for your health (says the PL blogger current quaffing a westside Paso Sangiovese right now out here on the Left Coast), but today comes the disconcerting news that one of the leading researchers behind the “resveratrol hypothesis” has been massively fabricating his data for years:
A University of Connecticut researcher who studied the link between aging and a substance found in red wine has committed more than 100 acts of data fabrication and falsification, the university said Wednesday, throwing much of his work into doubt.
What the hell? Who does this guy think he is—a climate scientist??
I think there’s only one thing to do: drink more red wine. Hey—it works for the French. About the only thing that works for the French.
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds, via Facebook, send along this note about why we shouldn’t put too much on this story. I agree!
Meanwhile, since I’m still out here basking in obscenely nice weather on the Left Coast for another 36 hours, I might as well treat Power Line readers to some raw footage I shot yesterday at Rincon Point, chiefly because the background is so much fun. I’ll be using this in an upcoming video, tentatively titled “Energy Wipeout”:
Now back to my heart medicine Sangiovese.
JOE adds: At dinner last evening with the excellent Dr. Harvey Mansfield and others, the following passage from Waugh came up, transcribed to me this evening in a well-timed email from my friend Jordan Teti. The protagonist Charles Ryder is dining with a rich man, Rex, who is a bore. Charles decides to throw himself into the wine.
Those were the kind of things he heard, mortal illness and debt, I thought.
I rejoiced in the Burgundy. How can I describe it? The Pathetic Fallacy resounds in all our praise of wine. For centuries every language has been strained to define its beauty, and has produced only wild conceits or the stock epithets of the trade. This Burgundy seemed to me, then, serene and triumphant, a reminder that the world was an older and better place than Rex knew, that mankind in its long passion had learned another wisdom than his. By chance I met this same wine again, lunching with my wine merchant in St. James’s Street, int he first autumn of the war; it had softened and faded in the intervening years, but it still spoke in the pure, authentic accent of its prime and, that day, as at Paillard’s with Rex Mottram years before, it whispered faintly, but in the same lapidary phrase, the same words of hope.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.