It seems that 32 Bostonians have simultaneously dropped dead in a ten-block radius for no apparent reason, and General Purcell wants to know if it was caused by a covert weapon. Of course, the military has been put in charge of the investigation and everything is hush-hush.
Without examining anything, Keyes takes about five seconds to surmise that the victims all died from malfunctioning pacemakers and the malfunction was definitely not due to a secret weapon. We’re supposed to be impressed, but our experience with real scientists and engineers indicates that when they’re on-the-record, top-notch scientists and engineers won’t even speculate about the color of their socks without looking at their ankles. They have top-notch reputations because they’re almost always right. They’re almost always right because they keep their mouths shut until they’ve fully analyzed the data.
Even top-notch engineers and scientists will speculate wildly when they’re off-the-record. We define on-the-record as those times when their written or oral communications are likely to be taken seriously and directly attributed to the scientist or engineer making them. Surely answering a direct question posed by a general would fall into this category.
32 people in the same ten block radius simultaneously dying of malfunctioning pacemakers seems so tremendously unlikely, I can’t imagine how one could even locate that as an explanation in a matter of seconds.
A pacemaker malfunction isn’t automatically fatal. In most cases the patient’s heart will still beat, although with an abnormal rhythm. The severity of a pacemaker problem depends on the type of malfunction as well as the severity of the patient’s condition. EM interference can cause problems, but major problems are rare considering the amount of EM interference pacemaker patients are exposed to. Pacemakers are designed to minimize these problems. It’s hard to believe that dozens of pacemaker patients with various heart conditions and different makes and models of pacemakers would simultaneously die from microwave exposure.
Still sounds extremely unlikely. If a model of car has a particular design flaw, you’ll expect to hear a lot of reports of that model suffering the same malfunction, but you wouldn’t expect to hear that dozens of units within a certain radius suffered the same malfunction simultaneously. You’d need to subject them all to some sort of outside interference at the same time for that sort of occurrence to be plausible, and an event of that scale ought to leave evidence beyond its effect on all the pacemakers in the vicinity.
You just press it. It also works with karma scores on LW to see the percentage of positive votes (at least on Android). I didn’t know how to read title texts on xkcd until reading TobyBartels’s comment, though.
Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics’ review of The Core
The remark included the following as a footnote:
32 people in the same ten block radius simultaneously dying of malfunctioning pacemakers seems so tremendously unlikely, I can’t imagine how one could even locate that as an explanation in a matter of seconds.
Also from the review:
Unless the 32 people used the same, or very similar, pacemakers, and somebody forgot to say that.
Still sounds extremely unlikely. If a model of car has a particular design flaw, you’ll expect to hear a lot of reports of that model suffering the same malfunction, but you wouldn’t expect to hear that dozens of units within a certain radius suffered the same malfunction simultaneously. You’d need to subject them all to some sort of outside interference at the same time for that sort of occurrence to be plausible, and an event of that scale ought to leave evidence beyond its effect on all the pacemakers in the vicinity.
If I recall correctly, he also pointed out that the fact they had invited two experts on magnetic fields was also a strong clue.
See also the extra panel (hover onto the red button) in yesterday’s SMBC comic.
… I had not known about red buttons on SMBC.
roll d20… success on ‘resist re-binge’ check.
Umm… how do I use the red button on a mobile device? (I also have this problem with xkcd.)
I know that you crossed this out, but the answer to the parenthetical implied question is this: Use the xkcd viewer app.
Android (used by me regularly on my Android phone)
Apple (never used by me because I don’t have an Apple product)
Thank you!
You just press it. It also works with karma scores on LW to see the percentage of positive votes (at least on Android). I didn’t know how to read title texts on xkcd until reading TobyBartels’s comment, though.