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

[Voltara]

Something didn't seem quite right, but I just couldn't put my finger on it...

Re:Rule of thumb

[Richy_T]

Or a marketer (vendor lock-in) or an auto company (special tool #16)

Re:Rule of thumb

[kdataman]

As the OP of the original post, I would like to point out that I listed 3 possibilities and the first was that the story was wrong, maybe even intentionally wrong.

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

[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.

Re:Slashdot got a sensational story wrong?

[the gnat]

their No Nukes anti-vax GMO-free science illiterate readership.

Uh, which readership would that be? I've been reading Slate almost daily for a while now, and they've been very consistently against the anti-vaxxers and, to a lesser extent, haven't had much sympathy for the anti-GMO crowd either. They even employ Phil Plait, who rarely misses an opportunity to denounce scientific illiteracy. Perhaps you confused them with Salon?

Re:Slashdot got a sensational story wrong?

[gman003]

Are you reading the same Slate I read? Slate got my eyes by hiring Dr. Phil Plait, who is basically a full-time anti-science debunker, one who is specifically against anti-vaxxers, astrologers and conspiracy theorists. And although I don't often read many of their other authors, I've never seen an anti-vax or anti-GMO article there either. They've got their share of inanity (the advice blogger is almost hilariously bad), and they link to bullshit sites like Buzzfeed, but "science illiterate" isn't one of the complaints I'd voice about them.

The truth?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot readers don't want the truth, they want their own version of reality that fits their particular political/sociological/etc. slant.

Mythbusters

[dfsmith]

Maybe the hurried journalists quietly noted that there are now 66% fewer Mythbusters and thought, "Let's run with it—what's the chance of being caught now, eh?" B-(

Re:Mythbusters

[dfsmith]

I thought, "I'll run with it...".

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.