Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
An irreducibly simple model
A COLLEAGUE forwards a paper with a most wonderful title: “Why models run hot: results from an irreducibly simple climate model” (). The paper’s authors are Christopher Monckton, with whom we have history; Willie Soon, also well known for his belief that climate change is nothing to do with us; David Legates; and William Briggs.
We had barely reached the end of the title when it occurred to us to take an information-theoretic approach. An “irreducibly simple model” would be one that is encoded by one bit of data. That one bit could represent your preconception of what the model’s output should be – “true” or “false”: take your pick.
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The paper appears in Science Bulletin, whose website address is – a choice the publishers may wish to reconsider.
Alex Delimata sent an unusual tip for comet-spotters: in November 2013, Astronomy Ireland declared that comet ISON was “already visible to the naked in morning skies”
Onanistic statistics
NEVERTHELESS, we read the paper promising an “irreducibly simple climate model” noted above. It states that its model – based on an equation with eight parameters and variables – is “designed to empower even non-specialists to research the question how much global warming we may cause”.
This reminds us of missives we receive from people claiming to have found that the world isn’t warming at all, by manipulating raw data in spreadsheets. And that reminds us that when we last mentioned that this activity has been called “mathturbation” (21 January 2012) we omitted to credit the sharp Open Mind blogger at .
What an elephant weighs where
SLIGHTLY closer to the Earth we know and love, readers continue to be inspired by the saga of plucky little lander Philae, which as we write is still shivering in a dark corner of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Tim Stevenson points to something we missed in another publication’s description of the cute lander having the same weight as a newborn elephant (6 December 2014). “Philae is on 67P and all known elephants are on Earth,” Tim observes. Gravity on 67P is somewhat weaker than on Earth, wherein lay the lander’s challenge. So is it fair, Tim asks, to deduce that the mass of Philae “is of the order of several tens of thousands of metric tons?”
Frank Cross spotted a less cuddly metaphor. Fortunately for our sanity it specified that the mass of the comet, not its weight, is “about 150,000 aircraft carriers”. Would that, Frank asks, be the British vessel that has no aircraft to carry, or another one in the news?
Nano-likes
“SHOCK” was John Rowlands’s reaction to how the European Space Agency reported image ratings given by visitors to its website. The images were from the Rosetta craft, which is orbiting comet 67P, and when John looked, one image was presented with a rating of 4.81818181818182 out of 5 with “11 votes cast”.
“Are there now so many official websites competing for user ratings,” John asks, “that we’ll end up with femtoratings?” Later the same day, when we got a moment to visit , someone at ESA had remembered to round it off to 4.8. Well done!
Features every crayon in box
THINKING of promotion, we are getting inured to reading tech jargon clichés. Occasionally, however, a press release manages to startle us back to awareness. Thus did telecoms company O2/Telefonica, hailing a device that combines “GSM 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, a pedometer and accelerometer… is voice controlled… comes complete with Instagram, Facebook, Twitter…” It “took a team of 35 engineers two and a half years to build”.
Nina Bibby, marketing director, goes on: “Music and technology are in O2’s DNA, which is why we’re so excited to be giving O2 customers the opportunity to exclusively get their hands on the Puls in the UK… By combining cutting edge technology with music and fashion, the Puls has the power to revolutionise wearable technology.”
The list of features isn’t that unusual. But – it’s in their DNA? That’s more intimate than wearable, surely?
Comet out of bounds
RETURNING to the subject of comets, Martin Stuart observed this publication reporting that Comet Lovejoy “won’t return to the solar system for 8000 years” (17 January, p 7). He understands “the solar system” to mean “the sun and everything orbiting it, including comets”.
So: “Where is it going? How does it get back again?” And, crucially, “who is helping it with the orbital dynamics?”
Obviously, Martin surmises, the answer is “aliens”. But “how did they let this story get out?”
A widely-published professor
FINALLY, the answer to the solar-system conundrum above may be supplied by Gáspár Bakos. Marc Smith-Evans notes that, according to a reputable weekly science magazine, this researcher “has published findings on 56 planets” (10 January, p 8). The impression was thereby given that Bakos had not only found Earth-like planets, but had located publishing houses on them – a more significant first for Princeton University’s research impact ratings than the piece made explicit.