We were of course worried when we heard
that the bees were dying. That lasted a while and then, like the way
of most things the worry was replaced by acceptance and then, more
menacingly I suppose, indifference. So the bees died back, gradually.
Brown areas opened up in gardens and parkland. Some fruit crops and
orchards failed, prices rose, demand increased and then flagged. It
was all a familiar cycle of warped supply and demand. People got used
to not seeing or tasting apples, almonds, cherries and blueberries.
It was of course a blow to the food industry and there was the hype
of over-advice and trumped up alternatives. Not all of them went down
well. Summers were rainy and the buzz and erratic flight of bees
became a memory. Other, more successful insects filled in the gaps,
flies and mosquitos, pests and nuisances that could replicate neither
the charm nor the pollination skills of the bees.
Various attempts were made to replace
the bees' pollenating action with synthetic alternatives. It was a
chemical Holy Grail, like the cure for cancer or HIV. Billions of
Dollars worth of business was at stake and the big boys took it
seriously. We never really thought that our little lab, busy with
test schedules and contracted forensic work could figure in such an
industry until it all happened. I read the threads of the tests, the
fails, the close but not close enough results. Apparently desperate
measures, hoaxes and failures. The bees, no longer quite so busy,
still dying, here and there and of course the ongoing alternative
(and mostly madcap) attempts to save them or at least reverse the
trends. The world is always hungry for something and conversely
something is always hungry for the world.
As part of the research programme to
seek out a synthetic pollen, batches of material were sent out for
prescriptive testing by a wide range of randomly selected labs. It
was a government initiative. They realised that, in this kind of
science, there was an X factor of probability that suggested he
answer was close but unseen. It was under our noses but the white
noise of the corporate and the size of the problem might well be
masking the obvious answer. There in the details. Rumours abounded of
course, mostly around the research being carried out by the Chinese
and the Brazilians. They were the hot teams, under pressure in the
fields, up the Amazon, deep in africa. Big game hunting for a robot
insect, a spray, and accident, a petri dish of answers, mould, DNA,
fungus or just some identifiable magic scraped from the back end of a
bee. Where it was a bumble, a honey or a killer hardly mattered. We
just need an answer.
Our batch came in a Fed-Ex jiffy bag.
Three 50cc plastic bottles of material each with a unique bar coded
label. There was also a sheet of tests and website where the data was
to be deposited once the programmed work was completed. It was Mark
who carried out the work, I supervised and backed up the notes. We
were both pretty meticulous on this and as a government cheque was
always welcome I hoped for some repeat business in this lottery. The
high price of food these days meant that every penny was counted and
pinching. We did the tests and analysis and in the prescribed manner
wrote up the notes and uploaded them into the the greater machine. We
would be informed about our success score the website said once other
corresponding data had been collected. The three plastic bottles and
the residual material in them was to be Fed-Ex'd back to the centre
for correlation and recheck. The process just seemed to be running on
and on in some bureaucratic spiral. We took in more batches, did more
tests and the cheques kept coming. After a few months I'd to take on
an extra graduate to help with the work. Our little lab was scoring
well and the repeat business was welcome.
Repetition can be good but it can also
be dangerous. It breeds that awful familiarity and carelessness that
comes with simplification and a regular dumbing down. I never thought
that it would come to us or indeed happen to me but it did. It
sneaked itself in, a rogue result, a bad figure. We were on our 99th
test, months down the line. Lots of data and results and submissions
and we were running on auto pilot, cruise control, whatever. We got
lazy, other things were going on, we lost focus and we'd forgotten
what honey ever tasted like and how bees sounded. Numbers on a page,
flickering data on a screen. In the slip a percentage test was
compromised, unseen, we fudged the numbers, we assumed the quality
matched, a batch was spoiled and we missed it, we missed the bastard.
The jiffy bag was returned but the match was wrong and we went out on
the weekend blissfully unaware. We drank beer, sat out in gardens,
talked about sports and beefsteak, moaned about the weather, looked
at the patches where certain flowers and foliage had been, got
annoyed by the new strains of dominant buzzing non-bees whatever they
were, didn't think about Monday.
On Monday I picked up the automated
email, a “do not reply” one. It said that our data was
compromised and that a follow up call would be made. Mark and I ran
over the last test results and we found the rogue. There was a mild
panic. “That's the fuckin' gravy train derailed”. They called
about 1130. The robot voice said a new batch would be sent but we had
to replicate our mistake, the data we'd submitted was described as
“of interest”. When the batch arrived on Wednesday I followed the
two processes, right and wrong, meticulously. If we'd fucked up then
we'd do it consistently, we'd prove our integrity. Our systems might
have a flaw but we could repeat and understand (and eradicate) error.
That seemed a statistically important answer to be able to stand by.
Good systems equal good science.
We uploaded the new and repeated data.
I sighed and sat down. There was other work to do and I got on with
it hoping that the previous incident would evaporate. It surely
would.
To be continued...
