Feedback is New Scientist’s a popular side view of the latest science and technology news. Items you think readers might find interesting can be submitted to Feedback by email at feedback@newscientist.com
Shooting for the moon
It’s been a while since humans walked on the moon: 54 years, in fact. Since then, many robots have visited our satellite, some of them even landing successfully instead of plowing into the lunar surface like a bullet hitting a pile of talc. But no people.
NASA’s Project Artemis plans to send humans to land on the moon in early 2028in two years. If this mission is followed by another, perhaps the permanent population of the moon will move from zero.
So Feedback was surprised to learn that accounting firm PwC had published its own in January evaluation of the lunar market. “The Moon,” he says shrewdly, “is rapidly emerging as a potential hotbed of future global economic activity in space.”
Finally someone says it: whenever Feedback looks at our planet’s natural satellite, we speculate on how to monetize it. PwC says people now have “ambitions aimed at a permanent human and commercial presence” and tried to find out how big this new market could become.
“The study uses a scenario-based approach and forecasts market opportunities for lunar surface activities from 2026 to 2050,” we’re told. “The focus is on five core pillars: mobility, communication, housing, energy and water. Each domain is analyzed in terms of investment needs, technology inflection points and potential revenue streams.”
It seems that lunar entrepreneurs can expect to make good money. “Total cumulative revenue expected from activities on the lunar surface between 2026 and 2050 is estimated at $93.9. [billion] to $127.3 [billion]This is more than the GDP of most countries,” concludes PwC.
It all seems to come down to one main factor. “The revenue outlook of the lunar economy is shaped primarily by the intensity of manned and unmanned exploration missions,” PwC informs us. When it’s right, it’s right.
Still, the numbers struck Feedback as a bit optimistic given that Artemis missions to the lunar surface had not yet begun. Then we noticed that this is the second edition of PwC’s Lunar Market Assessment and wondered what first edition he said. It was published in 2021 and projected revenues of “cumulative $170 billion by 2040” – meaning that five years ago PwC expected significantly more monthly money, 10 years earlier.
Feedback is not sure what has changed in the last five years to dampen the outlook for the lunar economy, but we are disappointed. We were hoping to pay off the mortgage by investing in beef futures.
Stranger than fiction
In February, the diary Pediatrics and children’s health posted two fixes. There is nothing unusual about this: journals constantly correct errors in scientific papers.
Except these were no ordinary repairs. One listed 15 papers that it repaired; the second mentioned 123. The captions explained that the purpose was to “add a disclaimer”.
If readers scroll, as Feedback did, through the dizzying list of articles that required these new disclaimers, they will find the following text: “Each clinical vignette presented in the journal’s CPSP Highlights section describes a fictitious case, created as a teaching tool and related to a Canadian Pediatric Surveillance Program (CPSP) study or survey.
This is phrased so anonymously that its meaning may not be immediately clear. However, dear Retraction Watch journalists give it more explicitly: “Medical journal says case reports it has published for 25 years are actually fiction.”
It turns out that since 2000, the journal has published a regular series of case studies that appear to describe real patients. Some of these have been included in clinical advice; others have prompted doctors to start research programs following up on the observations. Except the case studies were created and the magazine had never labeled them as such before.
Feedback comes up here and suggests that perhaps the disclaimer that the case studies were fictional should have been there from the start. But maybe we’re looking at it wrong. Science often struggles to get coverage in the mainstream news, but if it were freed from the shackles of objective truth, it could really screw up readers. “Dark matter is actually space whale farts”: admit it, you’d click on it.
Time for a drink
The feedback has an occasional recurring thread of “Well, they’d say that, wouldn’t they?” It persists because press officers keep sending us press releases that appear to convey objective scientific information, only to sneak in additional details that reveal their true motives.
Another arrived in our overflowing email inbox, announcing that “Ahead of World Sleep Day (March 13, 2026), we’re sharing expert insight into a simple but often overlooked factor that could affect sleep quality: hydration.” He goes on to explain that “even mild dehydration can contribute to nighttime discomfort and fatigue the next day” by causing “common discomforts such as headaches, dry mouth, muscle cramps, and general restlessness.”
The press release was sent on behalf of a company that manufactures soluble electrolyte tablets.
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