Naturally, members of the Inuit race also smell their own (and each other’s) farts regularly. Their geographic dispersion and the hostile environment in which most farts are emitted, however, means that even the most sociable Eskimo cannot hope to assemble a fart fragment archive comparable to those of his Western cousins.

Free from such aromatic ‘brain washing’, he is thus at liberty to focus on matters of greater immediate import, like snow.

Well, there it is. Let the academic world reel! Like any good scientist, I welcome vigorous debate of the concepts presented herein. How insipid a victory if I were to silence all at one stroke with the logic and intuitive ‘rightness’ of my theory? To borrow a metaphor from the sporting world, I say to dissenters: ‘give it your best shot!’

But beware! I am fully conversant with Herr Gustav Grogan’s ‘Reversionist’ Theory. For those of you unacquainted with this pap, my disgraced former aide de camp maintains that the molecular constituents of farts are of minimal value in cell construction and are expelled by the body for this very reason.

He further asserts that in urban environments, a form of fart-based ‘poison ball’ is being (not so) silently played out, with every fart consumed being ‘reverted’(read: hurled back into the ethereal melting pot) by ungrateful bodies.

Such reckless statements transcend incompetence to exit the realm of social responsibility. We need only consider recent atrocities by the terrorist group: ‘Farting with Franco’ for evidence of this dangerous folly. Using Herr Grogan’s ‘theory’ as their touchstone, these indiscriminate criminals claim that since any one of us could be temporarily harbouring fart molecules evinced by the deposed dictator, we should all be summarily executed for suspected treason.

Under The Feisty-Hassing Fart Molecule Retention Theory, of course, any human custodians of such molecules are either dead or too elderly to warrant persecution even by these hotheads.

A good scientific theory must do more than explain facts. It must lift mankind beyond itself - such that we can smell the roses and marvel at their blooms, as well as understand their maddening propensity for aphid infestation.

You be the judge.

END