Now, is it really fair to use Gilbert and Sullivan’s satire of British military bureaucracy to introduce serious global health research? This was real research, uncovering complex life cycles of parasites and their vectors, knowledge necessary to control these diseases. This was not smoke and mirrors; the new knowledge was true, verifiable today.

The problem with research then, and today, is the games every researcher must play to get funding, to get attention, to get a name. We still struggle with whose names to put on the published paper, and it what order. There are plenty of door handles to polish, plenty of exams to pass, plenty of partnerships to develop. And sometimes, as at the end of this song, the casualty is no longer thinking for ourselves.

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