Not even wrong

There’s a story about Wolfgang Pauli about how another physicist gave him a dubious paper to look over to get his opinion. Pauli, ever the critic, remarked about the paper something akin to this:

This is a way of saying that there are failures so deep, so fundamental, that one cannot get past them to deal with the basic issues of the underlying theory. If the fundamentals are off, there is no possible way that the theory could remain intact. And we have an example of this, today. I am guessing that a marketing person thought this would be cool to do, and use a deft turn of the phrase to imply something. But without understanding either the turn of the phrase, its meaning, its context relative to the underlying product … it makes the whole rest of this … well … ludicrous. And no, I won’t go into the underlying “science” behind what they are trying to do. This is about as close to #epicfailure as you can get. In short, using Domino Sugar’s own words, its product, sugar, or more correctly, sucrose, where each molecule has 12 carbon atoms, is apparently … … carbon free … #facepalm Yes, I understand they are implying that the product is made all “naturally” without a “carbon footprint”. Won’t talk about the underlying assumptions there, but if you follow the link to the “carbon fund” site, you see my previous discussion of following the money for this movement, are likely correct. Lets ignore that for a moment. Transporting the product to market will not likely be “carbon neutral”. The fuel burned and pollution generated by bringing this product to market, selling it, and counting the proceeds also matters. This is a second failure. But you can’t get to the second failure, because the first one is … just … so … awful. This second failure is huge by itself. I am assuming Domino Sugar has some chemists on staff. Whom weren’t asked their opinion about this advert. And are now … less than pleased. Not even wrong. Dead on analysis. Sad.