Science fiction? No, fictional science...

No names, no pack drill, but the family recently invested in some food intolerance testing, despite being generally sceptical of such things and, in fact, having only a minority of us who suffer from symptoms which may, or may not, be related to what we eat.

As to the outcome of those tests, well, perhaps the email I wrote them best summarises:

I recently purchased a pack of four tests - two premium and two junior tests - which we took last month.

We chose **** because my wife has previously found the results chimed with her experience of foods which did and did not cause issues.  However, I am writing to express my family's disappointment at the results of these tests. My son displayed a 100 score for reactivity with cow's milk which he has drunk all his life with no ill-effects. After the results he tried a week where he had no cow's milk products at all - and noticed no change in his energy, skin, digestive health, or any other issues.

My wife scored 73 for reactivity with white fish mix - this has left her perplexed as she has eaten white fish, including cod and haddock, all her life with no ill-effects. My daughter - who we expected to show the most pronounced results given, of all of us, she displays the most symptoms that could be food-related - had only borderline reactivity to milk. I tentatively tested my apparent borderline intolerance to hemp, and now add hemp seeds to my morning muesli.

What had motivated our purchase was a desire to find if specific foods were causing, in particular, my daughter's eczema and my own occasional migraines. The results of my wife's previous test in 2007 were almost life-transforming.  The same cannot be said for these. It has left us confused and disappointed.  We cannot see that the foods identified are causing any issues. Certainly, cutting down on cow's milk dairy for my daughter (she showed borderline reactivity to cow's milk) has not made any difference to her eczema, and my son, who is allegedly as intolerant as it is possible to be to cow's milk, found no change by trying a week without it.

Given the lack of face validity of these tests we wonder if it would be possible to run them again to verify the results produced first time round?  If not, could we be refunded the cost?

Well, soon after pinging off my email, I found myself in conversation with a customer representative called Rhys.  All credit to him, he'd swallowed the company philosophy hook, line and sinker and there was no way this zealous adherent would be swayed. I didn't keep a note of the meeting - indeed, I wasn't expecting to be on the phone for almost 25 minutes - but highlights included:

• Food intolerances need not result in symptoms.  Just because the test shows that you are intolerant to a particular foodstuff, that intolerance may be displayed asymptomatically.  But you're still intolerant.
• Or it may be the case that you show symptoms, but you don't identify them as such.  Rhys suggested that my son's high scores may actually be displayed as, say, brain-fog or inability to get up in the morning.  (I pointed out he was a straight-A student, probably Russell Group-bound, who gets up at 6.30am every morning for a part-time job.  He wasn't fazed.  Chap.)
• Or, alternatively, you may have symptoms related to foods which aren't captured by these particular tests (I didn't want to bring up me and eggs and, honestly, you don't want to know, but my results were silent on those ovoid joys).
• And there was no way Rhys would let us repeat the tests gratis, because their analysis proved their reliability and on this we just had to trust them.

I did wonder about bringing up Karl Popper and falsifiability, if only to see how he would bat it away, but didn't.  Indeed, part of the point of those members of the family who weren't suffering symptoms taking the tests (and Rhys really pressed over why we would do something so strange) was so they could show an absence of intolerances.  I did, however, point out that his arguments, hugging any supportive evidence close to his bosom whilst dismissing the inconvenient truths, is exactly how people try to justify astrology.  He barely flinched.  Truly a credit to the cause.

Rhys promised to escalate my email as a formal complaint as that I would be contacted within five days.  A month later, having had no contact whatsoever, I emailed to say that I was making a Section 75 claim for mis-representation.  Minutes later my mobile rang and we agreed a 50% refund.

If only the world could get the same deal on astrology.

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2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.