When Japanese researchers said earlier this year that eating whale meat could help prevent dementia and memory loss, the news provoked snorts of derision - it couldn't be real science, went the retort. Despite protestations of academic rigor from the men and women who do the work, anything involving the words "Japan", "whaling" and "research" suffers from a credibility gap in the court of global public opinion. Tokyo was told last year by the United Nations' top legal body that the program of "lethal research whaling" it has carried out in the Southern Ocean for nearly two decades was a fig leaf for a commercial hunt.

Japan's whaling science under the microscope. (2015, June 4). Philippine Star, p. B-8.