Japanese Whaling Produces Results - NOT!

Japan constantly argues its whaling industry is really research and that some 20,000 whales have died since 1986 not for profit, but for science. What is this research? I'm sure there's been plenty of product development and marketing research devising schemes to make whale meat more attractive to Japanese consumers. But what about real, valid, peer-reviewed scientific research? Ah-hah! Ask, and ye shall receive!
Finally, after decades of lethal research, the Japanese Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry has released a "scientific" report that has rocked the world! Japan has proven beyond all doubt... that whales eat fish! Who would have thought it, eh? Many scientists have long speculated that whales eat fish: now thanks to Japanese research whaling, it's a fact - no longer just a theory.
However, Japanese research will continue because there needs to be a scientific model constructed to prove this fish-eating behaviour is permanent, not just an aberration. More whales must be killed every year to establish that eating fish is something whales do all the time and not just during leap years. Is global warming a factor? Does it have something to do with the position of the stars? We won't know unless more whales are killed for further study.
Japan claims that all whaling in Antarctica and the North Pacific is conducted for research purposes and it's unfair to accuse the programme of being commercial. Japan maintains the only reason the whale meat is sold is so it won't be wasted. Annual whale meat sales bring in more than $500 million dollars which Japan claims is used to fund the research. True - increasing the kill each year will increase profits but this is not the goal of the programme, according to the Japanese government. Yea...right!

This Japanese announcement is a weak attempt to establish that the mass slaughter of whales is producing any discoveries. However, if the Japanese are only "discovering" now that whales eat fish, just what the hell have they been doing with their so-called scientific research programme for the last two decades?

Perhaps this approach to science by Japan is the real reason why no Japanese scientist has ever won a Nobel Prize for whaling research!