“Trust the science” sounds reassuring, but science only advances by challenging assumptions, testing alternative explanations and following evidence. When modern medical research sits within a pharmaceutical industry worth enormous sums, it is important to ask questions about viruses, germ theory and the largely forgotten concept of the terrain.
We are increasingly encouraged to “trust the science”. Yet genuine science is a method of enquiry. Its history consists of theories being challenged, modified and discarded when better explanations emerge.
This matters in medicine since science is usually tied up with financial conflicts of interest. Pharmaceutical companies fund research, universities depend upon grants, scientists build careers within established disciplines, and vaccines, antiviral drugs and diagnostic technologies support vast commercial markets.
A major Cochrane review examining 75 papers found that industry-sponsored drug and medical-device studies were more likely to report favourable efficacy results and favourable conclusions than independently sponsored research. The authors concluded that industry bias existed which conventional assessments of study quality could not adequately explain. [1]
Which “trusted” science, funded by whom, and were competing explanations given the same opportunity to be investigated?
Modern medicine overwhelmingly adopted the germ-centred understanding associated with Louis Pasteur, while ideas associated with his contemporary Antoine Béchamp became less influential. One could surmise germ theory is more profitable.
Germ theory asks which microorganism caused the disease, while the terrain perspective asks what was happening within the individual that enabled disease.
People exposed to similar infections may experience different outcomes. One becomes seriously ill, another experiences mild symptoms and another remains well.
Modern medicine recognises that immunity, age, genetics and previous exposure influence this difference. Terrain thinking broadens the question further to include nutrition, metabolic health, environmental exposures, toxicity, stress and the overall condition of the body.
Perhaps there was wisdom here that became overshadowed when medicine concentrated increasingly upon finding and attacking pathogens. Are germs the primary cause of disease or has terrain has been underestimated?
Robert Koch understood a fundamental problem: finding something in a sick person does not prove that it caused the sickness.
His famous postulates sought to establish causation by isolating the suspected microorganism, growing it in pure culture, demonstrating that it could reproduce the disease in a susceptible host and recovering it again.
Viruses do not fulfil these original criteria in a straightforward way. Conventional virology explains that viruses cannot reproduce independently because they require living cells. In 1937 virologist Thomas Rivers proposed different criteria for establishing viral causation. [2]
If the original criteria could not be satisfied because of characteristics attributed to viruses, how were those characteristics independently established?
Most people hearing that scientists have “isolated a virus” would reasonably imagine that the suspected virus was physically separated from everything else in the patient sample and examined independently.
Material from a patient may be introduced into living cell cultures, after which researchers look for changes interpreted as viral replication. Other techniques, including purification, electron microscopy, antibody testing and genetic sequencing, contribute additional evidence.
Critics including Dr Sam Bailey, Dr Tom Cowan and Dr Andrew Kaufman question whether this sufficiently establishes the existence and causal role of the proposed agent. They ask what was actually separated, whether changes observed in cell cultures could have alternative explanations, whether appropriate controls reproduce those conditions and how association became causation.
Mainstream virologists have detailed responses to these objections and point towards multiple converging forms of evidence.
The dramatic coloured viruses we see in newspapers and on television are frequently illustrations, digitally constructed models or artificially coloured images.
Electron microscopes have produced images of particles identified as viruses. The interesting question is thus how to identify those particles and what they can do. The microscope cannot tell if a specific particle causes influenza or another illness.
This becomes interesting when considering exosomes and other extracellular vesicles, naturally produced particles released by our own cells.
Scientific literature acknowledges striking similarities between some extracellular vesicles and viruses. A 2016 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper noted similarities in their physical and chemical characteristics and biological pathways, and even described situations in which extracellular vesicles from virus-infected cells can be extremely difficult to distinguish from non-infectious viral particles. [3]
Genomic sequencing is another area where public perception can differ from what actually happens. A complete viral genome is not extracted intact and simply “read” from beginning to end. Modern sequencing can produce numerous shorter pieces of genetic information that bioinformatics software subsequently aligns and assembles into longer sequences.
Computational genome assembly is a technique used throughout genetics. How was it established that the genetic fragments assembled into a proposed viral genome all originated from the same intact physical particle?
Again, conventional virology has answers involving culture, purification, sequencing and other molecular techniques. The point is that understanding those answers is very different from simply being instructed to trust them.
Bailey, Cowan and Kaufman sit outside mainstream virological thinking, but like any dissenting voice and for the advancement of science, all deserve a voice. Kaufman has explored relationships between particles described as viruses and extracellular vesicles; Cowan and Bailey have questioned isolation, cell culture and genomic reconstruction.
A controversial voice is Kate Shemirani, who has questioned conventional virology and discussed viruses in relation to exosomes. Her reputation makes her easy to dismiss, but reputation is not an experimental control. A scientific claim should stand or fall according to its evidence rather than the popularity of the person making it.
There is also a human being behind the controversy. Shemirani lost her 23-year-old daughter Paloma to lymphoma in 2024. The subsequent inquest concluded that parental influence contributed to Paloma’s refusal of chemotherapy, a conclusion Kate strongly disputes. Importantly, evidence at the inquest recorded Paloma asserting that the treatment decision was her own, and a psychiatrist who assessed her had no concern that she was being coerced or unduly influenced. Whatever one’s view of Kate Shemirani, a grieving mother and her adult daughter’s own expressed wishes deserve more nuance than a convenient headline. [4–5]
Personal vilification should not substitute for addressing someone’s argument.
This brings us back to the enormous financial ecosystem surrounding modern medicine.
Pharmaceutical companies manufacture vaccines and antivirals. Diagnostic companies sell tests. Biotechnology companies own valuable intellectual property. Universities receive research funding, governments invest heavily in infectious-disease programmes and researchers pursue work for which grants are available.
Evidence shows that sponsorship can influence scientific outcomes. The Cochrane review found industry-sponsored studies were about 27% more likely to report favourable efficacy results and 34% more likely to reach favourable overall conclusions than non-industry-sponsored studies. [1]
Institutional bias can develop much more ordinarily. Research follows funding; careers develop around established paradigms; journals publish within established disciplines; and theories upon which enormous institutions have been built naturally acquire tremendous momentum.
This raises an interesting question about terrain theory. A model centred upon nutrition, environment, metabolic health and strengthening the host does not generate the same commercial opportunities as a model centred upon identifying pathogens and developing patented pharmaceutical interventions against them.
This gives us reason to ask whether financially attractive scientific questions inevitably receive more attention than less profitable ones.
Terrain theory asks something different. Why did this individual become ill? What condition was their immune and metabolic system in? What environmental pressures were present? Why did another exposed to the same thing remain perfectly well?
Conventional virology may be correct yet terrain has been underestimated. Perhaps mechanisms attributed to viruses will eventually be revised. Science cannot know the answer to questions it refuses to investigate.
That is why “trust the science” is such an unscientific instruction. A better invitation would be to examine it.
Read Pasteur, but read about Béchamp too. Understand Koch’s postulates and why Rivers changed them for viruses. Find out what virologists actually mean by isolation. Look at genuine electron micrographs as well as computer renderings. Understand how genomes are assembled. Read the scientific literature on extracellular vesicles, then examine what Bailey, Cowan, Kaufman and Shemirani are arguing and decide whether their questions have been adequately answered.
Above all, follow the funding as carefully as you follow the citations. You don’t have to believe the alternative explanation. You only have to remain willing to examine it.
Science should never demand that we trust it - strength should lie in its willingness to be challenged, independently reproduced and, when evidence requires proved wrong.
Lundh, A., Lexchin, J., Mintzes, B., Schroll, J.B. & Bero, L. (2017). Industry sponsorship and research outcome. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, MR000033. The review included 75 papers and found industry-sponsored drug and device studies more often produced favourable efficacy results and conclusions.
Rivers, T.M. (1937). Viruses and Koch’s Postulates. Journal of Bacteriology, 33(1), 1–12.
Nolte-’t Hoen, E., Cremer, T., Gallo, R.C. & Margolis, L.B. (2016). Extracellular vesicles and viruses: Are they close relatives? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(33), 9155–9161.
Kent and Medway Coroner’s Court (2025), inquest into the death of Paloma Shemirani. The coroner concluded that parental influence contributed to Paloma’s refusal of chemotherapy.
Contemporary reporting of the Paloma Shemirani inquest, including evidence concerning Paloma’s stated treatment decisions and psychiatric assessment. These should be read alongside the coroner’s findings rather than treating either interpretation alone as the complete account.
Lundh, A. et al. (2018). Industry sponsorship and research outcome: systematic review with meta-analysis. Intensive Care Medicine, 44, 1603–1612.
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