There could have been huge benefits to Europe in such convergence, but the process was deliberately sabotaged by US intelligence agencies, working from the hypothesis that a tie-up between the EU and a democratic Russia would pose a major threat to American long-term economic interests.
In science, we test the hypothesis and report the findings.
A study by Elson and colleagues last year showed that for one particular methodology, the modified Taylor Competitive Reaction Time task, if you take a typical data set and analyse it using one of twenty-eight different analytical variants that exist in the research literature, it is possible to find 'evidence' to support any hypothesis you so wish.
Indeed, were Gordon Brown to fall under a bus - and the hypothesis is usually related to serving, rather than putative, prime ministers, Johnson would certainly be my candidate to succeed Blair.
He is known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis.
They attributed the larger wide plates to males, in keeping with the "handicap hypothesis", which sees males invest in cumbersome body parts to prove their evolutionary fitness.
It took a further three years before he became the darling of the French avant garde with L'Hypothèse du Tableau Volé (The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting, 1978).
So, while it is reasonable to start from the position that any association between scientists and industry may indicate a conflict of interest, that is not evidence, it is just a hypothesis.
While I'm aware that the group in El Salvador has this hypothesis, and I'm always open to being convinced, our data just don't seem consistent with it".
(Psychology PhD candidates in need of a thesis: please test this hypothesis).
It's a hypothesis that would be severely tested in any March election.
