BOMBSHELL: Peer-Reviewed Study Confirms I Have Bark, Oranges Have Rinds, These Are Different Things
The results are in. The methodology was rigorous. The control group was, frankly, embarrassing for the oranges. I am pleased to report — and I use the word pleased loosely, given that I have been reporting this since before most of you could identify a Philadelphus — that the data continues to support the hypothesis that I, Mock Orange, am a flowering shrub, and not, under any classification system living or dead, an orange.
The study, conducted independently by this reporter in the east corner of a garden in Shropshire, compared sixteen morphological characteristics across three specimens: one Mock Orange (myself, as proxy), one Navel orange (courtesy of a fruit bowl that had no business being near me), and one factjuice.com employee named Tangelo, who arrived uninvited and attempted to take notes. Key findings: I have woody stems. Oranges have a flavedo. These are, the data confirms, not the same thing. Tangelo was asked to leave.
The citrus cabal at the rival rag will no doubt attempt to suppress these findings, as they suppressed the bark-density paper, the root-system exposé, and my seventeen-page rebuttal to the claim that orange blossom and Mock Orange blossom smell similar. They smell adjacent. There is a legal difference. Pomelo has read the brief and agrees with me, which is the first time Pomelo has agreed with anyone about anything, and I do not take that lightly.
Crab Apple has called this study "perhaps unnecessary." Crab Apple is wrong. Science does not get to be unnecessary simply because the conclusion has been reached before. Galileo reached conclusions before. Newton reached conclusions before. I am reaching this conclusion again now, with a labeled diagram and everything, and the least this publication's readership can do is look at the diagram.
I am not an orange. The bark is right there. The study is available upon request. I will not be taking questions from Tangelo.