… so ran a recent headline in the Express newspaper (click headline the headline to read it...if you dare).
‘Experts,’ we are led to believe, are creating homosexual moths in an effort to
curb the UK’s growing moth problem. But are they? Are they really? Or is this
the most heinous piece of ‘science writing’ ever?
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| The elephant hawk moth: not gay. |
According the article, scientists have developed a chemical
lure that attracts male moths. It’s a synthetic pheromone which then settles on
the insect’s body, making it smell like a female and seem irresistible to other
males. The guy moths are then so busy trying to mate with one another that they
forget about the females. They have been ‘turned gay.’
Let me begin by saying, just for the record, that I don’t
have a problem with gay moths. Some of my best friends are gay moths. Insects, I
believe, should be allowed to make their own lifestyle choices just as we do. If
there was a ‘Moth Pride’, I’d go. But are these animals really gay?
Dousing male moths in female pheromones is the equivalent of
plucking a man from a pub, putting him a dress and a wig, and spraying him with
a fine mist of ‘Temptation’ by Impulse. Sure, he might turn heads but if another
man offers to buy him a drink, we don’t presume that man to be homosexual. It
could be the disguise is so convincing he thinks he is chatting up a lady…
albeit one with unusually large hands and stubble.
Nor is it, as the makers of the pheromone spray suggest, a ‘gender
reassignment’ treatment. Unless you’re David Walliams, putting a man in a frock
doesn’t automatically make him a lady. These moths have not been ‘turned GAY,’ not
even if you put the word ‘gay’ in shouty capital letters (as the Express like
to do). Their gender hasn’t changed. They are the innocent victims of an
elaborate fraud. They have been deliberately misled. They haven’t been turned
homosexual. They are simply confused.
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| An old lady - strictly heterosexual. Copyright Helen Pilcher |
So why the subterfuge? Well, according to pest control firm
Rentokil, the early spring and mild, dry winter has caused UK moth populations
to rocket and inquiries on how to deal with the bugs have risen by a fifth in
2016. And moths eat clothes, and people that wear clothes don’t like that, and
trials of the product have been shown to reduce moth populations by over 90%....
which is all excellent news, except that, hang on, it’s all a bit dubious.
Yes, we’ve had a mild winter but moth populations are not soaring.
They’re struggling, and have been for many years. According to Butterfly
Conservation (who like moths and
butterflies), numbers of larger British moths dropped by 28% between 1968 and 2007, and more than 60 species became extinct in Britain during the twentieth
century. Pollinators, plant consumers, food for others and general, all-round important
ecosystem members, moths are an important component of the world’s
biodiversity. Scientists aren’t ‘dealing with a growing moth population.’ They’re
lamenting its loss.
No surprise then, that the ‘scientists’ behind ‘Moth
Population Control Assist’ are not academics. They work for Rentokil. Complaints
about moths may well be up by 20%, but Rentokil offer no figures to make that
statistic meaningful. Did they have 10 calls last year, and 12 this year? Or
have there been millions? The scale of this moth scourge remain sketchy, as do
the details of their product and the trials devised to test it. Naughty
Rentokil!
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| A chocolate tip - which, despite it's name, is also not gay. Copyright Helen Pilcher. |
This isn’t, as a first glance might suggest, a bone fide
science story. It’s a carefully crafted piece of media marketing. The story was
spoon fed to the media by press release, some of whom were then too lazy or indifferent
to do anything but chunder it up onto the page. But it’s damaging.
It’s damaging because it creates the impression that moths
are a pest that should be destroyed. The Express topped their story with a
picture of an elephant hawk moth. But elephant hawk moths don’t eat clothes;
they eat willow herb. The story doesn’t distinguish between the hand-full of
moth species whose larvae do eat clothes and the 2,500 or so that don’t.
It’s damaging because it doesn’t distinguish between the
Rentokil scientists, who keep the details of their discoveries to themselves
for the sake of company profit, and the vast majority of other scientists in
the world who go to great lengths to keep their work as transparent as possible
and openly declare when conflicts of interest occur.
And it’s damaging because it masquerades as science writing.
There is no science in this story, only product placement. Now sound the Shoddy
Reporting Klaxon and go hand your head in shame. I'm going for a lie down in a dark room.
