QUOTE : Our story begins in Israel, some time in the 7th century B.C. Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, has just conquered Jerusalem and orders his head eunuch to escort several Israelite nobles to his palace. Among them is Daniel, a man known for his piety. Upon his arrival, Daniel asks the head eunuch to let him abstain from eating “the king’s food and wine” since he and his men have their own religious diet. The eunuch is taken aback and objects. “I am afraid of my lord the king,” he says, “who has decided what you shall eat and drink. If the king sees you looking worse than the other young men your age, he would have my head because of you.” So Daniel devises a stratagem. “Test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and decide what to do with us based on how we look.” The Babylonian agrees. After ten days, Daniel and his friends look “healthier and better nourished” than the other courtiers, and from that moment on they are no longer served the royal delicacies and wine but a diet of pure vegetables. Quod erat demonstrandum. This is the first written record of a comparative experiment in which a hypothesis is tested and a control group is used. A few centuries later, these events would be immortalized in the biggest bestseller ever: the Bible (see Daniel 1:1