Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com
The ultimate tent
Ophthalmologist Gus Gazzard writes in after taking a close look at a marketing email he received from WildBounds. It advertised a revolutionary new range of tents from Colorado-based company Big Agnes, which has created a new kind of waterproofing called HyperBead.
Marketing is often detached from reality, but one sentence stood out: “Waterproof at the molecular level, this proprietary material shrugs off rain without relying on coatings or chemicals, meaning no reproofing and no PFAS.”
There’s so much in that one little sentence, Feedback barely knows where to begin. Maybe we should start with the claim that the fabric is “waterproof at the molecular level”. At what other level might it be waterproof? But this pales in comparison with the claim not to use chemicals. We can only assume this means that the tent is actually a forcefield.
We await Big Agnes’s Nobel prize in physics with interest.
I mean, honestly…
Have you ever lied on a form? Feedback definitely has. We once claimed to have a good sense of humour on an online dating site, yet Feedback Jr regularly assures us we are more cringe than funny.
However, if you have to sign your name at the start of a form, rather than the end, you’re more likely to be honest, because you’ve effectively promised to tell the truth. At least, that’s what Harvard behavioural scientist Francesca Gino found in a 2012 study.
Gino has conducted many interesting studies on honesty. She once showed that feeling inauthentic leads people to believe that they are immoral, and to want to “cleanse” themselves by doing nice things. Likewise, networking can make people feel impure, but less so if they are focused on getting a promotion. And people who behave dishonestly may subsequently be more creative, because they have already become accustomed to breaking rules.
Why are we telling you this? Well, it’s mostly to introduce one of the most perfect headlines Feedback has ever seen, courtesy of The New York Times: “Harvard professor who studied honesty loses tenure amid accusations of falsifying data“.
Yes, the honesty researcher has been fired for dishonesty. On 27 May, Harvard announced it had stripped Gino of her tenure. The university got rid of her after a lengthy investigation, prompted by a group of researchers, blogging as Data Colada, who accused Gino of rigging the data in four studies. All those findings we mentioned? They’ve all been retracted by the journals that published them.
In the spirit of honesty, we should say that Gino denies the allegations and has filed a lawsuit against the university and the blogging team. She wrote on her website that “with the support of experts I was denied through Harvard’s investigation process”, the suit will reveal “why their case is so weak and that these are bogus allegations”.
Wondering what she is up to in the meantime, Feedback glanced at her LinkedIn profile. She is doing “executive coaching and leadership development”, with the bold promise that “I’ll Help You Bring Out the Best in Your Teams and Business”. Could a self-help book be in the offing?”
Always delete
Feedback has a number of recurring nightmares stemming from our career as a writer. One such bad dream involves the helpful remarks editors sometimes insert into our draft copy. These include: “I don’t understand what this means”, “Could you punch this up a little”, and – our absolute favourite – “Do we really need this?” In our nightmare, we forget to take these out, and readers get to see what our editors think of our raw copy.
Therefore, we felt a pang of sympathy when readers started posting excerpts from recently published books showing AI prompts that had been left in the published text. One such unfortunate author was Lena McDonald, whose fantasy romance novel Darkhollow Academy: Year 2 included the following text in a steamy scene: “I’ve rewritten the passage to align more with J. Bree’s style, which features more tension, gritty undertones, and raw emotional subtext beneath the supernatural elements”. Oopsie.
McDonald says she is “a teacher by day, a writer by night, and a mom 24/7”, and claimed she had to resort to AI because she couldn’t afford an editor – which, for a teacher, seems distressingly plausible.
A similar fate befell K.C. Crowne, author of Dark Obsession, a romance set in the world of Russian organised crime in Chicago. Readers were surprised to see: “Certainly! Here’s an enhanced version of your passage, making Elena more relatable and injecting additional humor while providing a brief, sexy description of Grigori”. Crowne publicly admitted to using AI “to make very minor edits” and to “brainstorm”. It may or may not be a coincidence that Crowne has published over 150 novels since Her Mountain Daddy in 2018.
Feedback is oddly heartened by two things. First, despite all the worrying about people not reading enough, there is clearly a starving market out there. And second, readers were furious when they found out about the AI use – suggesting backlash against ChatGPT-created novels.
Of course! Here is a rewritten ending, with a more satisfying punchline tying back to the opening statement about editors’ notes, with ironic overtones reminiscent of David Lodge’s writing.
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