2026 · The Lancet Infectious Diseases
The spread of sexually transmissible drug-resistant shigellosis in England: a genomic epidemiology study
Verdict
UNSCIENTIFIC
Neither the paradigm nor the study inside it passes. The verdict is unscientific.
1·Study methodology · inside the paradigm
UNSCIENTIFIC
Does not follow the scientific method within Germ Theory / Genomics / DNA Model.
2·Paradigm · Germ Theory / Genomics / DNA Model
UNSCIENTIFIC
Fails the tests. The worse layer decides.
How the verdict is decided
The verdict grades both layers: the paradigm this study assumes, and how the study was carried out inside it. Both must be scientific for the whole thing to be scientific. A clean method inside an unscientific paradigm is unscientific. An unscientific method inside a better paradigm is unscientific. A split on either layer is mixed. The worse layer decides.
1·Study methodology
Did this study test its claim with methods that are independent, falsifiable, and non-circular?
UNSCIENTIFIC
This study claims that drug-resistant shigellosis is spreading through sex among men who have sex with men in England, faster and farther than cases from travel or other sources, and that handwashing will not stop it. All three tests fail.
Independently Verifiable
Fail
Sequencing machines gave off light, software turned it into letters, and the authors' evolutionary model turned the letters into family trees of spread; sexual transmission only exists at that step.
Falsifiable
Fail
If the sexual-spread groups had shown no faster spread, the paper's own proxy grouping would have been blamed, so that result would never have counted as a disproof.
Non-Circular
Fail
Men aged 16 to 60 with no recent travel were labelled presumptive MSM, and then that label was used to show that sexual spread is distinct.
Why
Patients gave stool samples at 138 labs. The labs grew cultures, which the authors name Shigella sonnei, and sent them to national surveillance. Machines then produced light signals that software turned into letters, and the authors compared those letters to draw family trees and fit an evolutionary clock. Age, sex and travel history came from forms. Men aged 16 to 60 without recent travel were labelled presumptive MSM, everyone else without travel went into a leftover group, and tree distances were compared across the labels. Sexual transmission was the assumption used to build the groups, and then it was reported as the finding. Nobody watched a bacterium pass from one man to another.
2·Paradigm · Germ Theory / Genomics / DNA Model
Does the framework this study assumes pass the three tests?
UNSCIENTIFIC
Independently Verifiable
Fail
Diarrhoea is visible, but that a cultured organism and its letter sequence cause it is the premise itself, not something a stranger can see.
Falsifiable
Fail
A sick person with no organism found, or a healthy person carrying one, is renamed a missed test or an asymptomatic carrier instead of a disproof.
Non-Circular
Fail
Culture methods and the reference sequences used to match isolates were built from organisms already named as the cause, so every match confirms the name.
Why
The framework starts from the claim that a named bacterium causes the diarrhoea. Cultures and sequence comparisons were built from organisms already assumed to be the cause, so they can only return that organism. Illness without the organism, or the organism without illness, is explained as carriers, missed detection or resistance, never as a reason to doubt the claim. The framework asks which organism the patients carry. It never asks what in their food, bodies or conditions changed before they fell ill. Treating the cultured organism as the cause is the assumption behind this whole line of work, and the paper never tests it.
From the study
Presumptive MSM (pMSM) cases were defined as men aged 16-60 years without recent high-risk travel history.
We implemented phylodynamic and geospatial modelling on national genomic surveillance data of S sonnei isolates collected in the UK between Sept 20, 2004, and Feb 28, 2020
Our study shows the distinct and intensifying sexual transmission of shigellosis