91av

Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more

The science of not knowing

FEEDBACK is always pleased to extend, enlarge and engorge our vocabulary so we are particularly pleased to discover a paper by Rasmus Benestad and colleagues in Earth Systems Dynamics entitled “Agnotology: learning from mistakes” ().

We see this as a sort of anti-review article. Whereas a review article tries to draw together the state of knowledge, this focuses on ignorance, examining the errors in 17 papers that question climate change, and looking for patterns.

A subsequent blog posting at defines “agnotology” as “the study of how and why we do not know things” (). It, too, goes on to discuss climate change denial in this light.

The coiner of the word turns out to be Robert N. Proctor, at Stanford University in California, who edited after hosting a on “the social construction of ignorance”.

And now we look, we discover that agnotology has been mentioned in 91av, in a one-sentence item in the now-defunct column “Viewfinder”. This defines it as “the study of deliberately created ignorance – such as the falsehoods about evolution that are spread by creationists” (18 April 2009, p 23).

A large banner promoting an alternative health practice in Wokingham, UK, exhorts: “Treat fertility with acupuncture”. Martin Kipps asks: “Will this replace the pill?”

The stars and climate change

ANOTHER nice lexicon enlargement reaches us in the above-mentioned : “climastrology”. This is the practice of trying to fit terrestrial climate changes to the motions of heavenly bodies, without mentioning mechanisms by which the one may affect the other.

Aspirin and something

WHEN Andrew Young was scanning two packs of aspirin at a self-service till in his local supermarket, the software very responsibly asked him to get this purchase approved by a member of staff.

He was, however, puzzled that the machine had not requested similar approval for the two packs of ibuprofen he had also purchased, so he asked the young man who came over to explain the difference.

“Ah!” said the young man triumphantly: “The aspirin has got penicillin in it.”

He delivered this opinion so emphatically that Andrew almost believed him – until he ruined the effect by adding, “… or something.”

Fortunately, this somewhat shaky grasp of pharmaceuticals did not prevent him from approving Andrew’s purchases.

Air that is mainly water

THE “Solar Window Thermometer” offered by “The Gizoo team” in an email to Richard Steane doesn’t only tell you the temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit. “You’ll also see the humidity (that’s the bit the hygrometer measures). It’s expressed as a percentage, like 68 per cent. That means 68 per cent of the air is actually water vapour.”

Richard is “particularly interested” in this suggestion. “What happens if it goes as high as 100 per cent?” he asks. “Will there be no air left to breathe?”

Film in four dimensions

SINGAPORE-based reader Jonathan Matthews says he can’t wait to visit neighbouring Malaysia, where Legoland is showing “Legends of Chima – this year’s most exciting 4D movie” (). Feedback hadn’t been keeping up with the terminology emanating from film company marketing departments and hadn’t come across this kind of movie before, so we sympathise with Jonathan, who says he is especially looking forward to seeing what happens when he puts on the glasses at the film theatre. “Will I be able to see through time?” he wonders.

Long-term arrangement

READER James Parsons’s email from “those nice people at npower” told him: “We’re really sorry that you’re leaving us. We’ve now confirmed that your gas will transfer to your new supplier on 1st January 10000 so we’ll carry on supplying you until then.”

“You can’t accuse them of not giving me plenty of notice,” James comments.

That noble rat

BEING “somewhat deaf”, Ted Webber had the subtitles on for the televised keynote speech at a meeting of the National Press Club of Australia. During her discourse, Suzanne Cory, president of the Australian Academy of Science, referred to Professor Brian Smith as an “Australian Nobel laureate”. The subtitles rendered this as “noble lawyer rat”.

Correcting our mistakes

FINALLY, noting our statement on 13 July that we “always strive to correct our mistakes when alerted to them”, several readers pointed out a mistake in the previous item on that page, which called the last book of the Bible Revelations instead of Revelation.

Readers may like to know that errors in Feedback, or elsewhere in 91av, are acknowledged and corrected in the “For the record” section of the Letters pages and the Revelation mistake was noted there on 27 July.

Other reader’s comments on Feedback stories are sometimes published in 91av as letters. See, for example, Barry Manor’s letter on heat pump efficiency in last week’s issue (10 August).