Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Dolls of destiny
BARBIE dolls: does playing with them discourage a future in research? Feedback suggested that it鈥檚 more a matter of how you play, given a report of doll mummification (5 April).
Support for this thesis is provided by a friend of Feedback reporting a film re-enactment involving a row of dolls buried neck-deep in sand. The scene was from Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, set in a prisoner-of-war camp. That friend is now researching the laws of war, particularly those governing occupation.
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Andrew Doble鈥檚 bank annoyingly limits his online transfers to 拢999,999,999,999,999.99 鈥� some 56 times the . What does it know about inflation that we don鈥檛?
Disclaimers as art
DISCLAIMERS on websites are developing into an art form. We liked the sober disavowal of responsibility concluding with a that 鈥淪hould you decline to comply鈥� a leather winged demon of the night will鈥� search the very threads of time for the throbbing of your heartbeat鈥� (16 December 2006). Now Brian Clegg stumbles across another whose actual legal content is equally bizarre, demanding that the reader agree: 鈥淚 understand this website is only illustrative of what might be achievable from using this/these products, and that the story/comments depicted above is not to be taken literally and should not be treated as non-fiction.鈥� The website is called and appears to consist entirely of plugs and puffs, from 鈥淗ow to conquer your debt in 2 minutes鈥� to 鈥�5 betting tips to win money this World Cup鈥�.
Database is not a researcher
WHAT drew Brian Clegg鈥檚 attention to , above, was an especially bizarre plug it featured on weight loss. The author of this item 鈥淲e asked the National Centre for Biotechnology Information in America. They confirmed that raspberry ketones fight obesity and increase metabolism.鈥� Feedback suspects the mention of the NCBI is at best a garbled reference to the of research paper abstracts that the Center provides.
Diet deal or no deal?
SO DO 鈥渞aspberry ketones鈥� have anything to do with weight loss? The PubMed database includes abstracts of two research papers that seem relevant. One, 鈥淎nti-obese action of raspberry ketone鈥� () features two authors working for Kanebo Ltd in Japan, now a cosmetics company.
But our main concern is with wallet weight-loss. The website was plugged by , as we mention above. It offers a 鈥渢rial bottle鈥� for just 拢4.95 post and packing. Only inspection of the hardly prominent reveals that those who sign up agree to be billed 拢69.95 every 30 days.
The Observer newspaper that customers of a strikingly similar site found that they had unwittingly entered into a 鈥渃ontinuous payment authority鈥� to debit their credit card. Some banks told them 鈥� incorrectly 鈥� that these payments could be stopped only with the agreement of the company requesting the payments, who weren鈥檛 answering the phone.
Dopers鈥� hopers
WHEN new medicines become available, new technology is often close behind. Feedback has a press release plugging 鈥� apparently serving the medical marijuana industry.
The PotBot is software that uses 鈥渘eural-net algorithms to recommend custom strains鈥� of pot to customers, presumably depending on what ails them. BrainBot, meanwhile, uses 鈥渘ew-age EEG scans that aid in the medical analysis of patients seeking a proper medical marijuana diagnosis鈥�. Finally, NanoPot 鈥渦ses advanced DNA readers to scan seeds and generate a custom-made growth model to maximize growers鈥� yields鈥�.
So how do they work? We poked around the website. We were left scratching our head and wondering quite how much of the merchandise they had sampled.
Definitely a good idea
FEEDBACK regrets that we were unable to let readers know about an intriguing US Secret Service request, published on 2 June, before its deadline on 9 June. The agency is looking to procure a social-media analytics tool with the 鈥渁bility to detect sarcasm鈥�, among other things. We are sure that a week will have been long enough to put together thorough treatments of this interesting problem in linguistics. Of course successful candidates will sail through a proper Turing test for artificial intelligence (14 June, p 3).
Danube detonation danger
FINALLY, our mention of the UK Independence Party鈥檚 use of the Blue Danube as its on-hold music (24 May) jogged a colleague鈥檚 memory. Rather than referencing the musical paean to the unification of the Germanic peoples, might the party be referring to the code-name of the UK鈥檚 first operational nuclear weapon?
That in turn jogged Feedback鈥檚 memory. Somewhere in , a publication of the UK government department , is a mention of one variant of the 鈥淏lue Danube鈥� bomb being withdrawn because it was scarily unstable.
Digging turns up suggesting that this particular 1958 variant had a 1-megaton fission warhead 鈥� and the primary measure against unscheduled ignition was 6500 steel balls in a rubber bag, removed from the hollow uranium core before take-off. We now feel ill with retrospective worry.