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Back in 2012, Damien Hirst had a massive retrospective at Tate Modern which featured a bunch of his famous pickled animals: you know, the shark in formaldehyde and all that jazz. Not long after, a scientific paper by a bunch of Italian researchers revealed that formaldehyde gas levels in the gallery during the exhibition were above the legal limit. Hirst’s company responded that they were confident that there was ‘never any risk to the public’. But who are you going to believe, real-life actual scientists or a guy who pickles sharks for a living? The scientist, obviously – you'd be a fool to pick the pickler.
Well stop being so damn cynical, because one of the scientists, Professor Pier Giorgio Righetti has just come out and described the paper as ‘inaccurate and unreliable.’ So art lovers can breathe a sigh of relief – Hirst's famous tanks are not releasing abnormal levels of carcinogenic gas. Definitive proof that artists are smarter than scientists. Forget cures for cancer and global warming, invest in some god damn art.
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