It’s clear that the National Air Traffic Service computer system was not up to scratch - David Behrens

Curiously, it’s only a year since other ‘scientists’ came to exactly the opposite conclusion. Even a little alcohol, it was said then, reduces the brain’s ability to judge the symmetry of someone’s face. Seeing someone through ‘beer goggles’ is supposedly more likely to make you stumble out of the pub and into bed with them.

The fact that two sets of researchers produced such diametrically different results underlines the need to take such information with a pinch of salt. Figures mean nothing out of context; you have to know if there’s a hidden agenda on the part of whoever commissioned them. In this case that might involve trying to make us drink more or less alcohol.

But if the scales fell from the eyes of lounge bar libertines this week, they weren’t the only ones. Another piece of research found that a quarter of Church of England priests now acknowledge openly that Britain is no longer a Christian nation. Many of them wish the church would embrace more enlightened views on marriage and premarital sex and four in 10 say they are stressed by the disconnect between them and the rest of society. Perhaps they should go on strike like every other disenfranchised group of workers.

No-one outside the church will be surprised by this. It was just another silly season story, its publication timed to coincide with the high summer when there is less proper news around.

There have been many examples over the years. In 2018 there was a small sensation when someone filmed a crow at Knaresborough Castle apparently saying “y’alright love?” in a Yorkshire accent. And a decade earlier a 65lb carp called Benson and said to be the piscine Pavarotti was found upside down in a lake in Northamptonshire.

Stories like this became the small change of the national currency just because it was August; parliament was in recess and everyone was away on their holidays.

This week, however, people who should have been on holiday were stuck in the departure lounges. A piece of computer data in the wrong format had somehow managed to take down not only the national air traffic control system but also the backup, causing the cancellation of hundreds of flights on what should have been one of the busiest weeks of the year.

Here, too, some context is required. There isn’t an IT department in the land that doesn’t field calls every day from people who can’t open an attachment because it’s in Adobe Doodah format instead of Microsoft Whatsit, or vice versa. Usually the computer responds by rejecting the said document and sometimes by throwing a hissy fit and freezing entirely. Very rarely does it bring all the other computers out in sympathy.

Yet that’s exactly what seems to have happened at NATS, Britain’s state-backed air traffic control operator. You’d have thought their system would be better than anyone else’s, given the requirement to keep planes in the air and stop them crashing into each other. It turns out it isn’t.

And as with the beer goggles nonsense, you don’t have to delve very far into the archive to discover a conflicting narrative.

In fact it is barely a month since NATS brazenly handed a £1.2m bonus to its chief executive, Martin Rolfe, for not having contributed to the chaos that was already ruining thousands of holidays. That was the fault of airports for having too few security staff to process the queues.

That’s like you or I pocketing a reward for not causing the train strikes or the NHS delays. It’s a nice idea but completely irrational.

This week’s debacle is very much Mr Rolfe’s fault, though. It’s clear that the NATS computer system was not up to snuff and the responsibility for that is ultimately his.

So the least he should do is hand over his £1.2m to those who have suffered from his failures – families who had to sleep on airport floors because their airlines didn’t get them the hotel rooms to which they were entitled.

Even that will be a drop in the ocean of the £100m the chaos will have cost airlines and their passengers – most of whom would doubtless like to see Mr Rolfe himself dropped in the ocean, from the next available plane. Which at this rate might be several weeks away.

That really would be a story for the silly season. What a shame we will never get to read it.