"Clear."
"Good luck. And on behalf of your uncle, thank you." She shook his hand again and left.
NO BLONDE EXTINCTION, AFTER ALL
BBC Reported False Story Absent Fact Check
No WHO Study, No German Study
A Bad Blonde Joke for 150 Years
The World Health Organization (WHO) today denied it had ever conducted or published any study predicting the extinction of the blonde hair gene. According to the UN group spokesman, "WHO has no knowledge of how these news reports originated but would like to stress that we have no opinion on the future existence of blondes."
According to theWashington Post, the BBC story stemmed from a German wire service account. That story, in turn, was based on an article published two years before in the German women's magazineAllegra, which cited a WHO anthropologist as its source. But no record of the anthropologist exists.
The story would never have run, said Georgetown media professor Len Euler, if even minimal fact-checking had been done by BBC editors. Some media observers noted that news organizations no longer check anything. "We just publish the press release and move on," one reporter observed. Another reporter, speaking on condition of anonymity, said, "Let's face it, it's a good story. Accuracy would kill it."
Further inquiry by the urban legend site Snopes.com uncovered multiple versions of the extinct blonde story going back 150 years, to the time of Abraham Lincoln. In every instance, scientific validity was claimed to bolster the story's credibility. A typical example dates from 1906:
?BLONDES DOOMED TO VANISH FROM EARTH ?
Major Woodruff Sounds Their Deathknell - It's Science
The girl with the golden tresses is doomed, and within six hundred years blondes will be extinct. The fate of the blonde was foretold today by Major C. E. Woodruff in a lecture at the Association for the Advancement of Science at Columbia University...
Clearly, blondes will not become extinct, but neither will the news stories that predict their demise, since the stories have been repeated for a century and a half with no basis whatsoever, said Professor Euler.
CHapter 034
Henry Kendall's wife,Lynn, designed web sites for a living, so she was usually at home during the day. Around three in the afternoon, she got an odd call. "This is Dr. Marty Roberts at Long Beach Memorial," a voice said. "Is Henry there?"
"He's at a soccer game," she said. "Can I take a message?"
"I called his office, and I called his cell, but there was no answer." Dr. Roberts's tone made it sound urgent.
"I'll see Henry in an hour," Lynn said. "Is he all right, Dr. Roberts?"
"Oh sure, he's fine.He's perfectly fine. Just ask him to call me, would you?"
Lynn said she would.
Later, when Henry came home, she went into the kitchen, where he was getting cookies and milk for their eight-year-old son, Jamie. Lynn said, "Do you know somebody at Long Beach Memorial Hospital?"
Henry blinked. "Did he call?"
"This afternoon. Who is he?"
"He's a friend of mine from school. A pathologist. What did he say?"
"Nothing. He wanted you to call him back." She somehow managed not to ask her husband what it was all about.
"Okay," he said. "Thanks."
She saw Henry glance at the phone in the kitchen, then turn on his heel and walk into the little study that they both shared. He closed the door. She heard him speaking softly on the phone. She couldn't make out the words.
Jamie was eating his snack. Tracy, their thirteen-year-old, was playing her music very loud upstairs. Lynn yelled up the stairwell: "A little less noise, please!" Tracy didn't hear her. There was nothing to do but go upstairs and tell her.
When she came back down, Henry was in the living room, pacing. "I have to take a trip," he said.
"Okay. Where?"
"I have to go to Bethesda."
"Something at the NIH?" The National Institutes of Health were in Bethesda. Henry went there a couple of times a year, for conferences.
"Yes."
She watched him pace. "Henry," she said, "are you going to tell me what this is about?"
"I just have some research - I just have to check on something - I just - I'm not sure."
"You have to go to Bethesda but you're not sure why?"
"Well, of course I'm sure. It's, um, it's to do with Bellarmino."
Robert Bellarmino was the head of genetics at NIH, and no friend of her husband. "What about him?"
"I have to, uh, deal with something he has done."
She sat down in a chair. "Henry," she said, "I love you but I am really confused here. Why aren't you telling me - "
"Look," he said, "I don't want to talk about it. I just have to go back there, that's all. Just for a day."
"Are you in trouble?"
"I said I don't want to talk about it, Lynn. I have to go back."
"Okay...when?"
"Tomorrow."
She nodded slowly. "All right. Do you want me to book - "
"I've already done it. I have it handled." He stopped pacing and went over to her. "Look," he said, "I don't want you to worry."
"That's pretty hard, under the circumstances."
"It's fine," he said. "It's just something I have to take care of, and then it'll be taken care of."
And that was all he would say.
Lynn had been marriedto Henry for fifteen years. They had two children together. She knew better than anyone that Henry was prone to nervous tics and flights of fancy. The same imaginative leaps that made him such a good researcher also made him a bit of a hysteric. He was inclined to frequent self-diagnoses of dreaded diseases. He visited his doctor every couple of weeks, and telephoned more often than that. He was plagued by aches, itches, rashes, and sudden fears that woke him in the middle of the night. He dramatized small concerns. A minor accident was a brush with death, the way Henry told it.