Boxing clever
IN THIS post-truth era, Feedback is delighted to discover one company using trickery for the powers of good. 快猫短视频 has often mused on the mystery of how bicycles stay upright (5 September 2015, p 32). Dutch cycle makers VanMoof found themselves wondering the same, after customers received bikes that had been damaged by boisterous handling during the delivery process. Then they devised a novel solution.
Realising that its boxes were about the same size as a very large television, the company started printing a picture of one of those on the side of each box instead of a bicycle 鈥� a move it claims has since cut .
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鈥淛eff Dickens is intrigued by an email from travel company Booking.com that included the sage advice: 鈥淧lan ahead for the best trip yet. Minimise stress by completing your trip before you set off.鈥濃��
Bad blood
LAST year, journalist John Bohannon announced he had 鈥渇ooled millions鈥� with a bogus study on 16 people that claimed to show eating chocolate could help you lose weight. into the world, and picked up by such august journals as Bild, theDaily Star and 鈥渂oth the German and Indian site of The Huffington Post鈥�.
Bohannon鈥檚 actions received far greater coverage as the story started to focus on whether performing a fictitious study to draw attention to lax journalistic practices was any more ethical than doing so to sell chocolate.
German authorities have now decided it is not 鈥� and sanctioned Gunter Frank, the doctor who took blood samples from people in the study, none of whom were aware they were participating in a bogus trial. Frank was fined 鈧�500 for failure to obtain full consent or arrange an ethics committee. A final bitter aftertaste in the chocolate chicanery?
Opinion maker
MORE fakery: to dodgy studies and bogus journals, we can now add a tool for generating fake peer reviews. Noting that 鈥渃ommercial publishers may find鈥� excellent opportunities for profit, even in the form of journals with little or no scrutiny鈥�, Alberto Bartoli and his colleagues have thrown a lit match into the tinderbox of predatory publishing with a software program that can produce plausible-looking reviews on demand.
In 25 per cent of cases, the machine-generated reviews were good enough to fool experienced readers into agreeing with them while rejecting a genuine review.
Feedback is left wondering if we can believe anything we read 鈥� even papers on how to publish fake scientific papers.
It鈥檚 clearing up
MEANWHILE, presidential candidate Donald Trump鈥檚 weak grasp of reality appears to be catching. During the recent televised debate, the Republican nominee denied ever claiming that global warming was a hoax.
Feedback readers will recall Trump has done just that on Twitter, on several occasions (). Rumours circulated that his team had quickly deleted the offending messages, a claim that itself turned out to be untrue.
, (Rumsfeld this time) 鈥淭here are true untruths, and there are untrue untruths鈥︹��
Stone the crows
WHO will rid us of these troublesome untruths? Environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth has been accused of misleading the public about the dangers posed by fracking.
A flyer received by Reverend Michael Roberts last year implied that Grasmere in the Lake District was threatened by shale gas extraction. The retired geologist noted on his blog that 鈥渢his scare story is so laughable as the rocks on surface are Ordovician Borrowdale volcanics鈥� 鈥� so the rock beneath has no organic material to tap.
(ASA) has now agreed, adding that claims about poisoned water supplies and plunging house prices could also not be substantiated.
Flammable gas
MEANWHILE, the same body reversed anti-fracking flyer, which claimed that 鈥渆xperts agree 鈥� it won鈥檛 cut our energy bills鈥�. Having originally sided with the complainant, Lord David Lipsey, the ASA rescinded the verdict on the basis of new evidence and found in favour of the environmental group. Has anyone calculated the carbon footprint of this war of words over fracking?
Banding together
the Journal of Acute Medicine has published a case report of man who arrived at the emergency department of Kuang Tien General Hospital in Taiwan with his badly swollen scrotum 鈥渋ncarcerated鈥� in nine galvanised iron rings.
Unsuccessful attempts were made to remove the rings with lubricants, ring cutters, pliers and orthopaedic bone cutters, until finally the doctors borrowed a hydraulic bolt cutter from the nearby fire department, and freed the man from his predicament.
The authors note drily that such emergency challenges require 鈥渞esourcefulness and a multidisciplinary approach鈥�.
The milk-y way
. Hannah Hazlehurst discovers that Marmax Products, a company that sells recycled plastic furniture to schools, claims it has 鈥渟aved enough plastic milk containers to do 2 orbits around the space station鈥�.
Feedback certainly doesn鈥檛 remember seeing that bit of craftwork on Blue Peter 鈥� do Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos know about the impressive propulsion of these bottle rockets?