People have trouble at times grasping the importance of doing studies.
I think that you are doing a wonderful job not only of educating people
about ADV but also of explaining the foundations needed for the work to
have any meaning and to be of any help to ferrets and ferret people.
 
We tend to be an impatient country.  We so often want everything in an
instant, disposable, microwavable, just-add-water form.
 
To further complicate things, the basics -- such as how scientific
inquiry happen and the basics of science itself -- are so often not
taught in our schools that people have no concept of science, or even
of what science is.  It doesn't hit people that a term like "global
warming" means not that people in any location will feel hotter but
that the energy which drives storms is far more present in atmosphere
and oceans.  It doesn't strike folks that if there was a Spiderman
that each time he webslung he would use about 4% of his body mass in
the mass and energy expended.  It doesn't cross people's minds that
it is through study that a researcher avoids disastrous surprises.  It
doesn't even cross people's minds that surprises happen, that in science
as much as infancy crawling must precede walking, nor that the best
researchers are the ones who work hardest to find the holes in their own
reasoning so that the final result is not a convincing sales job but is
instead a proven body of work which has met many challenges and still
proven out in experiment.
 
So, the upshot of this lack of understanding on what science is, is that
people tend to figure that if something is convincing that this is the
same as being proven, when in reality nothing could be further away from
reality.  People confuse looking things up and building a convincing
argument with actually knowing.  That not only is a route to bad
science (or no science) but it helps shape unwary and easily victimized
consumers, too.
 
The sad fact of the matter (Sorry.) is that there is absolutely no
replacement for careful study.  Steve's doctoral advisor used to say
that if 75% of a person's hypotheses panned out that then the person
wasn't trying hard enough.  (If the number was under 25% then the person
was exceeding that individual's abilities.)
 
In the popular comic strip Non Sequitur this week one of the main
characters right now wants to grow up to become a "preconceptualist"
because then she can create theories and not listen to any challenges
or do any testing.  Of course, she has wanted to grow up to be a
dictator at one point, and a White House reporter taking graft in the
past comics.  That character likes to avoid the kind of hard and
careful work which are essential for medical research.
 
Without doing research step by step and knowing that surprises can
happen we will all wind up falling on our faces from placing faith
into hypotheses which are fine works of art, but are not how things
really work.  Recently, an excellent example of that occurred*,
You have all read of the claims for lifespan increase from caloric
restriction.  Can you believe that no one thought to consider if perhaps
it was not the calories themselves but their source that mattered?  No?
Well, then you were expecting carefully and rigorously done research
which is good for you because that means that you are not an intellectual
push-over.  Too many people just swallowed the premise and never asked.
Guess what?  Someone finally asked.  In the first of such studies (and
hopefully far from the last) it turned out that by restricting the source
of protein and fat to half of the amounts normally eaten there was a 60%
increase in lifespans of fruitflies, whereas restricting the sugar
calories only added an insignificant 2% to their lifespan.  That is NOT
what people expected.  Surprise!  (BTW, I am NOT suggesting a protein or
fat reduction for ferrets; members of Carnivora have a long history of
adaptations which have restricted their dietary options.  Besides, there
isn't a verifying study, yet, let along research into sources for
multiple species, or further break-downs of source components.  Nor is
added quantity of life necessarily the same as added quality of life;
the two can at times have different requirements.)
 
There is NO substitute for careful research.  People like UGA's ADV
researchers may not be as flashy as folks who create arguments and
behave as if an argument is the equivalent of fact, or who try to
argue against needed research.  (I guess preferring guesswork?)  But,
face it -- those people who don't challenge and don't do actual careful
experiments including into where they themselves may be going wrong have
to use flash, fear, and sensationalism because the extremes of argument
are all they have.  They don't have proven facts.  It is always important
to keep hypotheses separate from facts in your mind.  We are all always
learning.
 
If someone truly loves her or his ferrets and understands the need for
careful research then that person will know to take precautions, too
keep an open mind, and to know that given enough time and enough
well-challenged experiment the results will be REAL RESULTS -- real
infections avoided, real animals saved, even perhaps real vaccines
eventually.
 
Think where you will be 5 years from now if nothing is done.  Now,
think where you will be if the slow, hard research such as that of
the ADV experts at UGA continue.  That will be a BETTER place.
 
Like Richard Feyman wrote:  "It doesn't matter how beautiful your
theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree
with experiment, it's wrong."  Or to say it in the oh-so pleasing
words of the wise man Yogi Berra:  "In theory, theory and practice
are the same.  In practice, they are not."
 
Now, I guess that I have strayed from my point to some extent that by
talking about WHY people tend to not understand what science actually
is -- not merely the introductions of possible answers which is the
route toward the needed work -- but then the absolutely essential
parts of ripping those same ideas apart, and testing, testing, and
more testing under carefully controlled conditions.  In today's world
where most people have no idea how to challenge and test ideas, let
along that there are all sorts of aspects which need accounting-for,
people are easily swayed by the easy looking tv, movie, and sales talk
images of science which pretty well don't resemble actual science in
the least.  So, the pathologists working with DIM need to be sure that
certain pathogens are not the cause because it is not enough to suspect
that they are not caused by a certain "bug" given that sometimes a
disease will present with an an unusual appearance compared to its
typical one -- like ages ago when there was that mutant strain of
coccidia which would have simultaneous massive egg blooms that were
fatal (a disease that died out due to very careful isolation and then
treating all ferrets in the affected households).  It is not enough
to assume that certain animals won't be contagious at certain times --
there needs to be the carefully found proof.  It is not enough to assume
that animals who have the virus and are asymptomatic are not contagious.
(Remember the recent news story about some asymptomatic people with
herpes passing it along -- a story I have not looked into further but
those with herpes may want to do so to see if there is a foundation for
the statement.)
 
When people forget that real science (as opposed to the fictional
variety or the publicity garnering version) involves years of
painstaking careful challenge, careful experiment design to avoid
alternative causes (like avoiding the caloric restriction assumption
study gaps), careful measurement, careful controls, etc.  then they are
looking for the sexy media image of "science", but are forgetting that
concepts which are unproven could lead them down paths that might not
help, or at worst could hurt ferrets and their people who love those
ferrets.  Research into dangerous ferret illnesses like DIM and ADV
does take time and does take extreme levels of hands-on care to help
those ferrets.  The more complex the illness is, the harder the work.
 
So, instead of expecting instant answers to such questions as how to
best know when ADV is contagious, which animals can spread it, and
can we have a vaccine, everyone should remember that it is essential
to lay the foundation and to progress step by step.  Hypotheses are
great fun but as something to stake a conclusion upon they only are
all air and light so they weigh nothing -- meaning that it isn't any
surprise that the foundations of some turn out to be faulty.  Once we
get beyond dreams, assertions, concepts, arguments, sales jobs, PR,
and hypotheses we enter the realm of reality where a strong foundation
is ESSENTIAL to satisfy our needs and to save our ferrets.  So, it is
fine to discuss concepts as long as we recall that if we ever to actually
KNOW then we need the careful research to see which hypotheses pan out
and which ones don't, or what their nuances turn out to be.  Our ferrets
matter too much to figure that guesswork could ever take the place of
actually studying.
 
ADV is way too serious to not do this the right way!
 
Support ADV research!
 
--Sukie (who is looking forward to further reports on the carefully
  done ADV research)
*  http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050611/food.asp
[Posted in FML issue 4908]