No, a Stolen iPod Didn't Brick Ben Eberle's Prosthetic Hand

New submitter willoremus writes A wounded Army vet had his $75k prosthetic hand bricked when someone stole his iPod Touch? Yeah, not so much. I'm a tech reporter for Slate.com, and a Slashdot post earlier this week prompted me to look into this story and ultimately debunk some of the key info. Sorry for self-posting, but I thought folks here might be interested in the truth since the false story was one of the top posts earlier this week.

Comments

Rule of thumb

[nysus]

If something sounds too crazy to be true without substantial evidence to back it up, it probably is. I take everything I read on the Internet with a very fine grain of salt.

Re:Rule of thumb

[i kan reed]

Yeah, apparently "what engineer would ever design a product like that?" was the correct question to ask.

Because the answer is "no engineer"

Re:Rule of thumb

[i kan reed]

You don't need vendor lock-in when your product costs $100,000, and your customer can use at most 4.

Re:Rule of thumb

[mysidia]

If something sounds too crazy to be true without substantial evidence to back it up

If something sounds crazy, on the internet, especially Facebook,etc; It's probably click-bait. They just want your clicks to earn ad revenue.

They will earn money, even if it's false or bogus. Also, there are unlikely to be any negative ramifications at all.

"Sorry, our bad"

And everyone will forget.

Sort of.... i'm sure there will be many repeats, and we'll just never get it.

Re: Rule of thumb

[jd2112]

Personally I use two or three large salt mines. A single grain just doesn't cut it anymore.

Re:Rule of thumb

[c]

Yeah, apparently "what engineer would ever design a product like that?" was the correct question to ask.

Because the answer is "no engineer"

I once pulled apart a cheap shop vacuum to fix an electrical problem. The motor was held in with about 10 screws evenly spaced around the core.

Nine of those screws were a phillips head.

The other screw? Otherwise identical to the others, nothing special about its location or anything to differentiate it from the others. Security torx.

Because some engineers are just assholes.

Re: Rule of thumb

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not an engineering decision. That's management told the product team to make the vacuum impossible for consumers to repair. He could have used ask security torx. Or he could have used all different bits. He used but one since that was sufficient to placate management and should be easy for you to defeat with a dremmel (cut a slot; now it's a flat head screw).

He wasn't an asshole. He was being as nice as he could without being fired.

Slashdot got a sensational story wrong?

[Nimey]

Say it ain't so!

Re:Slashdot got a sensational story wrong?

[Nimey]

Now I hope all you jackasses who immediately piled on with your superiority complexes ("oh, how could an engineer be /that/ stupid? I know better than him, hee hee") have learned something, but I doubt it.

Re:Slashdot got a sensational story wrong?

[CanHasDIY]

I'm more incredulous that Slate ran a factual story that wasn't 99% opinion.

Thanks

[alvinrod]

Thanks for actually looking into this. Reporting in general seems (or perhaps it's always been this way, but I just wasn't as aware of it.) to have gotten a lot more lazy recently, especially with the explosion of news blogs and other internet only news sources. There's such a rush to be the first to break a story and get the massive number of clicks and associated ad revenue that reporters have lost focus on digging deep and getting to the bottom of a story. After that everyone just links to the original without bothering to verify the information and the facts gets buried under a combination of half-truths and/or agenda-driven opinion.

I have a logical explaination

[viperidaenz]

The guy said "they stole my iPod now I can't use my hand until I get a new one"
The media interpreted that as need a new hand, not need a new iPod. Since need a new hand means more clicks on headlines, they run with it without clarifying.

Re:Rule of thumb: expand it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to include printed sources too since this story was originally reported in the San Antonio Express - News and picked up by the national press - see link again.

If this Slate reporter/blogger didn't follow up, we would have never known for sure.

And here's the kicker, I guarantee you that Touch Bionics will be disputing this story for years to come.

All you need is someone who is careless or just lies because it sounds good, and it catches on, people remember the misinformation and never the truth. - mostly because it falls into their world view and they ignore anything that disputes it

I am no exception to the rule and I have been weening myself off of all news. If it's really important, I'll hear about it from my friends and neighbors. Everything else is just fluff, out of my control and irrelevant to me.

As a result, the World seems much safer, nicer, and I can listen to my neighbor's opinions and disagree without getting angry. Burying my head in the sand? Am i uninformed? What good is it to know everything happening in the Middle East when I cannot do anything about and it is irrelevant to my life? Who cares what the current leader of N. Korea says? Or the idiocy coming out of the politician's mouths? It's all lies, anyway. And don't get me started on the moronic cable news channels and the professional Trolls/Pundits like Hannity, O'Reilly, and those overpaid assholes.

Now, to ween of the Internet and all it's shit.

Sorry Slate reporter and Slashdot, but my life will be better without you.