By Nathaniel Beard

Over the last couple of days, a tide of articles has emerged claiming that a “scientific study” has found some beards contain more faecal matter than a toilet. It always amuses me to watch the now-redundant beardless overclass and their increasingly desperate attempts to discredit beards. It should come as a surprise to nobody that the multitude of articles covering this story in such dubious publications as The Mirror and news.com.au contain little to no truth.

Let’s take a look at the actual study shall we? Oh wait – we can’t because it doesn’t exist. After trying to get our hands on the data unearthed in this alleged scientific experiment, it quickly became evident that no proper scientific study took place and no poo was found in any beards. As was reported in The Guardian, the only thing that happened was that a reporter from an Albuquerque news network (yes a reporter and not a scientist) swabbed a handful of beards (the number was unspecified) and then talked to a microbiologist about what the swab-results revealed. They found that “while some contained normal bacteria, others contained bacteria similar to those found in faecal matter”. That’s right – similar, but not the same. The bacteria in question are called “enterics” and are also found in the human intestine. While it’s true that human faeces is partially composed of this type of bacteria, it is wholly inaccurate to claim that the two are one and the same. Further to this, none of the levels of bacteria found in the swabbed beards were high enough to pose any threat to human health. The microbiologist interviewed also pointed out that if you swab anything that we touch regularly – be it your toothbrush, kitchen sponge or the hair on your head, you will find tons of germs. In fact it’s not unheard of for human skin to contain the same kind of bacteria normally found in the gut. This information was omitted by most of the articles, which were more concerned with scare-mongering and hyperbole than accurate, fact-based reporting.

We the bearded are used to these laughable attempts to undermine the beard. The multi-billion dollar shaving industry has reported huge losses on men’s shaving products globally and will do anything they can to manipulate the masses into shaving. This recent swathe of bogus articles should serve as a lesson to the public not to believe everything you read (although the bearded members of the public will already be aware of this, as they’ve been scientifically proven to be smarter, more astute and more well-read than their beardless counterparts). Having said all of this, it should be noted that even if these allegations were true (which they aren’t), even if this was a proper scientific study (which it wasn’t), even if it had a decent sample size (which it didn’t) and even if the results were published in a reputable scientific journal (which they weren’t), I’d still rather have pieces of shit in my beard than be a beardless piece of shit.