The Researcher/Academic

Reading Knaus’s publications is heavy-going but at the same time very illustrative: to laypeople, they seem largely alike. That is precisely what makes them significant: Knaus always plays with the same building blocks, but manipulates the experimental setup. Does one get different results depending on whether one instils the substance into the experimental animal’s mouth or stomach, small intestine or rectum? Does the substance have a different effect on the 32nd day of a rabbit’s pregnancy than on the 18th or 9th day? Knaus never gambles and never tires – he checks every detail. In later disputes with his critics, this is to be his strength: he doesn’t extrapolate the whole from individual chance observations but takes the trouble to be thorough. In doing so, he retains a fascination for the natural processes of pregnancy and birth.