Schrodinger's Gun - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Schrodingers Gun; Schrodingers Rails

The state of anything in a Tabletop RPG that has not been observed by the players is undefined until the players' actions affect it.

It's a simple concept: Just as a Schrodingers Cat character is neither alive or dead until the plot demands it, the world of Tabletop Games isn't fixed beyond what the GM has revealed to the players. So, when faced with an impending Off The Rails event and improvising, the GM can subtly tweak the facts the players haven't discovered yet to suit the changed plot.

Lets say the DM lured the players/characters to ~~their fiery dooms!~~ a nice peaceful village where he plans to have the villagers turn on and attack the players. However, the Munchkin player has used a heretofore unknown source of Genre Savvy and convinced The Dumbledore NPC to come along in case things about this village aren't what they seem. With him along, the villagers won't be much of a challenge. What's a GM who's Off The Rails to do?

Take Schrodingers Gun off the mantelpiece and load it, of course. In this particular case, it turns out The Dumbledore is also a mole working for the Big Bad, and has convinced the community to ally with him! Now the heroes are trapped in the Untrusting Community and have to deal with the Ultimate Evil's right hand!

Or the DM could decide beforehand that what the players do will decide where the plot goes, especially if he knows the players aren't prone to go where he wants them to. Let's say he wants their first encounter to be with one of the minions of the Evil Overlord. He won't give any hints where this minion is, so wherever the players go will be where the minion is.

Anything that the GM had planned as canon but isn't out in the open is subject to change in order to keep the plot moving. This is common enough outside of tabletop games, too: a savvy TV series creator or literary author can knowingly feed multiple competing Fanon theories before picking one and "coalescing" Schrodinger's Gun into a tangible form (Sniper Rifle, Uzi, or Rocket Launcher as the situation requires). Note that the GM simply improvising doesn't count. If he was improvising and passing it as something he had planned all along, it would be this trope.

Or, in more free-form adventures where there are no rails to speak of to begin with, the GM might just reveal something for which he hasn't thought of a cause yet, and then retroactively come up with the best explanation based on the players' actions. Improvisation masquerading as planning, if you will.

A helpful way to look at this is the bad habit of how Mystery Fiction authors will constantly feed the audience "clues" supposedly narrowing down the possible suspects... but they can still choose whoever they want as Chekhov's Gunman by the denouement and fit the facts around it.

In non-tabletop games or Choose Your Own Adventure stories, the player may be offered choices which work like this, i.e. they don't directly affect where you end up so much as where you began.

Also known as "Railshroding" because it can easily be used for Railroading.

The larger principle behind Schrodinger's guns is Chandlers Law.

Not unlike Sure Why Not, applied to world-building. A major Road Cone, when The Time Comes You Will Know What To Do is related, but it doesn't necessarily imply "the writers themselves don't know yet what it's for". A fictional character taking a similar approach to their master plan is playing Xanatos Speed Chess. Contrast Ret Con. See also "Multiple Choice Past"; where this happens when something gets different origins over a period of time and different writers.

Compare Schrodinger's Suggestion Box

Examples

Comic Books

A Batman Choose Your Own Adventure involves the Joker deciding to kill half of Gotham's population. Batman decides that involves piping poison from a utility. The Joker is always at the first utility one chooses to investigate.
The villain of The DCU Crisis Crossover Armageddon 2001, the mysterious Monarch, was originally intended to be the superhero Captain Atom. After fans figured it out too soon, DC changed the story, and the Monarch wound up being a different superhero entirely. (However, the current Monarch, villain of Countdown to Final Crisis, actually is Captain Atom. You can't make this stuff up.)

Film

Masterfully applied in the movie about the boardgame Clue. It has endings for several characters where they are the killer, and of course they Flash Back retroactively showing how only they could ever possibly be the killer. Each theatre showed it with a different ending. The Home Video showed all three straight through, and the DVD lets you do it either way, with a random ending or with all three. In the end end, Mr. Green reveals himself as working for the government and that "They all did it!" Take them away boys!
But if you want to know who killed Mr. Boddy, it was me, in the Hall, with the Revolver. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go home and sleep with my wife.

Literature

Just about every Choose Your Own Adventure book does this heavily, in order to keep it interesting through multiple re-reads.
- Rampant in the Goosebumps Choose Your Own Adventure books. There'll at the very least be a major choice near the beginning that divides the book in half (say, try to give the magic book back or try to hide it), and the entire setup, the very nature of the situation you're in, will be completely different depending on which you choose. Then other decisions will cause the same thing to happen on a smaller scale. Worst, often there'll be a situation in which you have a single decision where both lead to a quick death and an unhappy end, but the nature of what was putting you in danger is not the same depending on which you pick.
Chuck Palahniuk has mentioned in interviews that he got stuck at the ending of Fight Club until he read over what he had written earlier and found the line "paraffin has never, ever worked for me".

Live Action TV

The "Helo on Caprica" plot in the first season of Battlestar Galactica was like this. Favorable fan reaction to Helo upgraded him to Mauve Shirt, and a new plot was born. It's actually evolved to the point of being an entire series long affair, which in retrospect the writers may have never considered until the miniseries was over and done with.
- Likewise the four Cylons revealed in the Season 3 finale are practically Schrodinger's Hit-squad. All were perfectly plausibly human until the revelation, one even went through an "Am I a Cylon?" existential crisis and was told by an existing Cylon that he wasn't! But after the revelation, things still fit with them being Cylons. Though there are a few niggling plot details on how one managed to infiltrate colonial society for so long, the series kept its word that "anyone can be a Cylon". At this point, with one last Cylon left to reveal, the only people we know aren't Cylons are Helo and Cally (have a Half Human Hybrid child with a Cylon), Roslin (flat out told by the only one who knows she's not), and Apollo (can at most be a half Cylon).
- And now with the final Cylon revealed as Ellen Tigh, the niggling details are explained. Cavil, the first humanoid Cylon they built, killed them, blocked their memories and placed them on the Colonies to witness the coming genocide. The "oldest" among them has been explained in official statements as not having served in the first Cylon war, Saul just thinks he did, a service record was probably forged by Cavil.
- They're still Schodinger's Hit-squad when you realize that two of the four were unplanned additions to the cast, which means that there is literally no way their reveals were planned out from the start of the show. They even had to Ret Con that Nicki isn't a half cylon, Cally apparently slept with Hot Dog. The producers even admitted it was their biggest problem when picking Chief as a Cylon.
- They've since added a 13th (well, actually the 7th) Cylon named Daniel. His clones were "corrupted" by Cavil, meaning they're either dead or transformed/transplanted into someone else, bringing it back to "Anyone could be a Cylon".
  - Word Of God shot this theory down — Daniel's long dead, Schrodinger's gun was never fired.
  - It still qualifies, the production team had to find a work around their earlier ad hoc numbering sequence that put the first few Cylons revealed as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8
Babylon 5. During production, J Michael Straczynski planned the B5 plot out for a 5-year arc. However, he also made plans for Real Life Writes The Plot. Indeed, the show didn't even end as he had originally meant for it to end, due to changing station commanders between seasons 1 and 2, changing several major plot points. And if you were just watching the show, you probably wouldn't have noticed (much).
- One particular noteworthy instance of a double-Schrodinger for the same plotline. Lyta Alexander was introduced in the pilot as a telepath who got to see and have mental contact with a Vorlon, thus establishing her connection with them and providing possible material for leveling her up later. However, because the actress had other obligations Lyta didn't make it to the first season. Instead, Talia Winters was introduced, also a telepath. And she was also given a plot arc that actually began the process of leveling her up. Then, the actress playing her was too much of a prima donna, so she left. But they got Lyta's actress back, so they just went on and did what was originally intended.
- I prefer the obvious actor/role substitutions: Jeffrey Sinclair/John Sheridan; Carolyn Sykes/Catherine Sakai/Anna Sheridan; Laurel Takashima/Ivanova/Lockley.
Each season of 24 has lots of shots of various characters giving significant looks and suspicious glances, so when The Mole is revealed, no matter who it is the audience has already been given a lot of seemingly suspicious behavior to justify it.
- The reason why is that each season only starts with the first half of the season planned out. The rest is written on the fly.
The new Doctor Who set one of these up with The Master. After his death and cremation, an unidentified hand reaches in and takes a ring he wears. The creators have said they have no plan for this, and have not assigned the hand to belonging to anyone in particular. It's meant as a hook that the next batch of writers and producers can retroactively fit into their own plot when they want to resurrect him again.
- This has turned into a big fat lie, as the final episode being done by the current writer/Doctor is set to have the Master come back, making this more of a Chekov's Gun.

Tabletop Games

A campaign example for the Tabletop Game Poké thulhu involves the players "choosing between four houses for shelter". The book explicitly says that no matter which house the party chooses, it will be the one which contains the plot devices.
Included as an explicit character creation option in the Tabletop RPG FATE. When using this option, players start play with an essentially "blank" character sheet, and fill in skills as the play progresses. For example, if a character is stuck behind a locked door, the player can declare that his character has the lockpicking skill and fill it in in one of his skill slots.
The "Gizmo" advantage in GURPS. This advantage allows the player to be carrying around an unspecified "gizmo", which he may at any time "pull out" and declare it to be whatever device he wants it to be (that he could have reasonably possessed.) Additionally, the gizmo does not "enter play" until activated, so it cannot be damaged, lost, stolen, or uncovered in a search.
- The same is true in TOON — Steve Jackson Games loves this trope.
This is essentially Burning Wheel works: If you say that you want to kick a bowl of fruit into the guard's face to create a distraction, then there will be a bowl of fruit right there for you to kick. It wasn't there until you said it was. Essentially, the players all have Schrodinger's Gun, to an extent.
- Houses of the Blooded is similar. When a player rolls for something, it's generally the right to decide things about the scene or how actions turn out. The rules explicitly state that you can decide pretty much anything that hasn't specifically been established yet.
  - There are several other games which allow the players to retroactively decide minor aspects of the current scene, such as Feng Shui and Exalted.
- Adventure! handles this with a game mechanic: players can spend points to perform a Dramatic Edit and declare that there is e.g. a convenient manhole cover in the blind alley they've run down. This is great when the players only need to use it to collaboratively make situations more awesome, but less great when, as it sometimes does, it becomes a sort of ablative defense against railroading (why would the GM decide it was a blind alley in the first place?).
- In Wushu, everything happens exactly as the players describe it. Additionally, the more complicated and dramatic a description is, the more dice the players receive, providing massive incentive to weave complicated and dramatic descriptions. To prevent complete insanity, actions can be vetoed by another player or the GM, and there's generally a "pool limit" maximum dice cap.
Nobilis has The Monarda Law, which states that the answer to a PC's question should almost never be a flat-out "no". Additionally, in that game, prophecies explicitly work by the GM throwing out a lot of meaningless symbolism — when the P Cs offer a plausible explanation, it is assumed to be true, and any action they take on it gains a bonus.
Exalted and its modern cousin Scion both rely on a Stunting system. Do it with style, and even if it is utterly ludicrous, it's more likely to succeed than if done boring-ly. For the most part, "stunts" involve pieces of the environment that the players make up as they go along. Asking if something exists in the scene should be met with "It does now."
The DC Heroes RPG had a similar feature. A PC may spend a few of his/her Hero Points to decree the existence of specific objects in his vicinity, if the GM agrees to allow them.
It is explicitly written into the rules of Paranoia that anything the GM says goes. Anything. The GM is perfectly free to roll a 5 and declare it a 17. Similarly, players may discover that they had mutations they were unaware of, that the NPC they're assigned to kill suddenly belongs to their secret society now, or that their weapon was actually sabotaged by communists, or that while they were fleeing from a renegade robot they caused an Ultraviolet citizen a twenty minute delay in his routine. If it doesn't contradict established fact, or if the GM can invent a justification for why it doesn't, then it's all good. (Although, considering that this is Paranoia, contradicting established fact is perfectly acceptable behavior.)
One of these comes preinstalled on the Pyramid of Shadows module for Dungeons And Dragons: the P Cs, quite early on, have to choose between entering a magic pyramid, and just leaving the clearing. If they try and leave, the pyramid grows faster than they can run and swallows them.

Video Games

Some computer games (especially Interactive Fiction, given that it is just one step away from a table-top RPG) can do this. For example, in the Peasant's Quest game, at one point, there are four bushes with a trinket hidden in one of them. No matter what order you go to the bushes, the trinket is always in the fourth bush you look in.
- Plenty of Interactive Fiction games use this to let the player configure his character. The classic Infocom game Leather Goddesses of Phobos does this, where you have to go to the bathroom, and whatever room you choose — ladies' or men's — ends up being the correct one. A less known IF game called Enlisted pulls it off for the same reason, where you get your uniform out of a dispensing machine, and what settings you set it to (short, tall, etc), turn out to be the right ones. In an even less known IF game called Amnesia the main character closes his eyes and visualizes his appearance, to check how badly he's affected by the titular condition: your choices of features turn out to be completely wrong. Dude be whack.
- Moonmist does this with your favourite colour — which colour you choose determines how your bedroom is decorated, and also (no causal relationship) who the villain is.
- Some IF designers call this the Magician's Choice, and it's a very good way to turn an initially wide-open map into a small one. Whatever direction the hero goes, that's the right way to go. See Photopia, for instance.
Sierra Adventure Games. If the programmers can't kill your character off with something because you noticed it, they may not bother with it at all. Your car only has a fault if you don't perform the safety inspection. (Police Quest 1). The policeman's only there if you're indecent. (Leisure Suit Larry). There's only a car coming if you don't look at the street. (The Dagger of Amon Ra). The biggest example is in the latter: giving the wrong item to a speakeasy doorman would make the game Unwinnable, so it also causes a completely random person to walk in from offscreen and stab the protagonist to death. The game then quotes knife crime statistics.
In the horror RPG/adventure game Elvira 2 -- The Jaws of Cerberus, there are three places where Elvira may be hidden. No matter in what order you reach them, the first two Elviras will be fake and transform into monsters.
In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, there's a plot choice point of which main character to follow. Excluding the main character, you get all the current secondary characters and the same new characters (with a few exceptions) appear in each chapter. Your chosen lord will even have the same encounters with the Big Bad and the Big Bad will always take the Sacred Stone from whichever lord you picked.
- That being said, there is a difference in the routes, at least storyline wise. In Eirika's, Lyon's spirit is subsumed and killed by the demon king's. In Ephram's, Lyon's spirit unites with the demon king's and does a full (if very sad) Face Heel Turn.
Seen in Mario And Luigi Superstar Saga in a boss battle at Joke's End. When Jojora asks the Mario Bros. which of her friends should come(and beat the crap out of them, presumably), the player is given the choice of four different names, which seem to refer to four different possible enemies. However, no matter which one you pick, Jojora's friend will look and fight exactly the same. The only thing your choice really affects is what name the battle display refers to her as.
Used extensively in Illusion Of Gaia, due to Will's ability to guess any question correctly. It is demonstrated at the beginning of the game, where Will is asked to pick a card. No matter what the player picks, it is the right one. It resurfaces much later for a Wire Dilemma, where the player simply has to remember that Will is psychic and make a decision quickly. Amazingly, used at the end of the game to win a game of Russian Roulette.
- For the Wire Dilemma, it might be subverted as the bomb doesn't explode at all if the bosses are defeated. Maybe it's some kind of boss-powered device?
- And for the Russian Roulette game, if you pick the wrong choice, the game ask you if you're really sure.
Indigo Prophecy has a tarot card reading about half way through. No matter which card you pick or in what order, you get the same ominously creepy message. I guess You Cant Fight Fate.
In Tactics Ogre, there's a Road Cone at the end of the first chapter of the game. You have to choose whether to kill a group of prisoners in order to frame the Big Bad. (It's complicated and political). If you choose to kill the prisoners, your best friend will reveal himself to be incredibly noble and oppose you and all governments, and throughout the game form La Resistance until you become The Atoner. If you choose not to kill the prisoners, your best friend will reveal himself to be the biggest asshole ever and side with the killers just to gain power.
- In a way, this is a bizarre sadistic choice. You cannot be a spotless hero and at the same time have your best friend be a good guy (and alive) by the end of the game.
In Knights Of The Old Republic II, you can answer various questions about past events, such as Revan's fate in the first game and the color of the lightsaber the Jedi Council took away from you, and the answers retroactively determine what happened.
- As well, depending on which side you pick on Onderon, an opposing NPC will either be a mercenary or a patriot.
In the Star Ocean games, in order to keep some kind of weird Arbitrary Headcount Limit, you can only pick certain party members; which prevents you from getting others, who just aren't available anymore.
- Or, in one particularly egregious case (Bowman), just not interested in traveling with you anymore.
Drakengard has what might be the most strenuous version of this. Depending on which ending you get the very fabric of reality functions differently. Your Dragon might be the only thing that can save the world, or you may be destined to destroy her lest she destroy the world.
At one point in Fable, a key is hidden in one of three books. No matter what, the key is always in the second book you pick.
In the second NES Rescue Rangers game, the player faces a Wire Dilemma when defusing a bomb. Any choice turns out to be the right one, though one causes the screen to flash white with a boom, then revert back as one character says "Just kidding!"
The "It's War" chapter of Conkers Bad Fur Day has a pair of levers near a soldier strapped to an electric chair. The first level Conker pulls will electrocute the soldier. The second lever he pulls opens a door.
The Blade Runner Adventure Game had several plot points (such as whether characters were replicants or not) decided either at random in each game, or depending on the choices the player made.
Dead Rising: Did Barnaby manage to bite Jessie when he started turning into a zombie? Only if you start case 8-1. If the truth vanishes into darkness before then, no he didn't.
At two different points in Persona 3, you can join one of three clubs. No matter which club you choose, the characters for the related social link will always be members of that club. It's most obvious with the Culture Clubs, as Yukari says Fuuka is a member of one of them, but can't remember which — it turns out to be whichever one you end up joining.
- To a lesser degree, the Athletic Club in Persona 4 — you're still hanging out with Kou and Daisuke — only difference is which one is the focus character.
Happens in Radical Dreamers the so-called "prototype" to Chrono Cross, yes, Magile is Magus and Kid is Schala's reincarnation. However, unless you've played the game I bet you don't know that depending on which room you entered first and what you did; Magil is also either a time-traveling guitar playing rockstar detective from Mars who plays with hand-puppets, the forgotten lover to Ridell, or a demon from hell. Likewise Kid is sometimes else raised by a nunnery that Lynx killed off, raised by Lynx's daughter Shea, or a gigantic berserk magic-wielding sunflower. Lynx himself is a nobleman, a ghost, a Humongous Mecha, or a giant space octopus.
- Speaking of Chrono Cross, there are at least 3 different points in the game that Kid will try to join your party. If you reject them, she will forcibly join you at a fourth point. She's joining you no matter what.
In Myst III: Exile, Saavedro has rejigged the training worlds that Atrus rigged up for his sons in order to guilt-trip him. Each training world has a video viewer in it somewhere, and Saavedro has recorded a different guilt-trip message on each one. But no matter what order you visit the worlds in, the messages will be presented in the correct order.
In Cave Story, choosing to avoid speaking to an injured old man A) determines whether or not his injuries are fatal (they are only fatal if you talk to him) and also B) determines whether or not there is a vitally important rope among the junk on the floor of a room entered later, which appears to have been sealed for many years. (The rope is only there if you didn't talk to the old man.)
Apparently one puzzle in Space Quest 4 is about finding the two halves of a code and inputting them. Whichever order you first use to combine them is the wrong one. There's no detriment or danger, the programmers just hate you.
You finally bring down a Yellow Squadron bird in the "Stonehenge" mission of Ace Combat 4. No matter which one gets shot down, though, it's always Yellow 4 who bites it.
In the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy text adventure game, there are 12 or so Chekhovs Guns to collect. The bad news is you'll need one at random at the end of the game or you'll die. The other bad news is the "random" one you need is always one you don't have unless you have them all. It's a cruel game.
inFamous employs this to make its Sadistic Choice even worse. Your girlfriend Trish is always on the tower you didn't save, regardless of what the Big Bad says.
Baldur's Gate II has a sidequest where one of your companions returns home to find his sister has been murdered, and an investigation is still in progress. His father is convinced it was a hit from a rival and tells you to kill him in revenge. If you kill the rival, you later find out that he was innocent; if you spare him, he was guilty all along.
In Tales Of Symphonia Dawn Of The New World, Emil is asked to guess which of Lloyd's companions joined him at the end of Tales Of Symphonia. Since it was based on Relationship Values there, any answer could be a correct one, and, indeed, no matter what Emil (that is, the player) guesses, Lloyd admits that he guessed correctly.
- Similarly, in Tales Of Symphonia, there's an optional scene where you're told that a friend is waiting for you, and you get to guess who it is. And by guess, we mean decide.
In Batman Arkham Asylum, at one point Batman must search three body bags in order to continue. No matter what order he opens the actual bags in, the result is always the same. His dad's body, his mother's body, and then Scarecrow. Also, no matter what order you collect the audio logs in, they are always the next in the set, as are the Spirit of Arkham messages.
An experience while playing Deja Vu seemed like a literal Schrodinger's Gun: trying to shoot the gun-toting mugger resulted in him firing first for a game over. Restarting and giving in to his demands the next time around let him escape while claiming that the gun wasn't even loaded.
In Dragon Age: Origins you may end up with plot relevant fights halfway through traveling, no matter where you are, and there are dozens of them. Even if you meet a bunch of elves defending themself against some darkspawn in the far northwest near the dwarven home, while the elven woods are southeast and the darkspawn isnt actually rare on the surface that far north.
- The origin stories always end with Duncan bailing your ass out of trouble, which every origin you choose will be the place Duncan decided to recruit a new Gray Warden. It is implied if you go back to those places as a different origin that what happened happened but without Duncan saving that could be hero. The Dwarven Noble, the second child of King Endrin, was framed for murdering his brother and killed on the Deep Roads, the Dwarven Commoner died in jail, refusing to eat, the human noble was killed by Tim Curry, etc.
Assassin's Creed II does this with The Truth. No matter what order you find the glyphs, the segments of the video and puzzles will always be found in the same order.

Web Comics

The idea is brought up in this Irregular Webcomic strip. Fittingly enough, the characters are players in a Deep Immersion Gaming RPG, and they actually mention Schrödinger.
- Also appears in Darths and Droids by the same creator, starting here. It also appears in a more amusing variation, Schrodinger's Bodyguard, seen here.
In Fear The Boot, "Chainmail Bikini: The Nightmarish Legend of Deuse Baaj", the players are sent to retrieve a farmer's pigs in return for a sword. Instead of fighting the goblins that have stolen the pigs, they set a siege and wait until the goblins have run out of food and surrender, thus totally ruining the adventure the GM had written. (And then they go and slaughter the goblins anyway.) The GM gets back at them by having the farmer's village been attacked and razed by the minions of the Big Bad Diabolical Mastermind by the time the characters return.
- Not to mention, a player thoughtlessly wonders why the starving goblins didn't simply eat the stolen pigs; at which point the rescued pigs suddenly transform into a pile of bones as the gamemaster quickly retcons the situation.
Hilariously occurred in Gold Digger Tangent. The comic had a forum right beneath it, where people often speculated. One person yelled out, without spoiler tags. "Ooh! That one guy we saw taking a bath is going to swoop in and pull a Big Damn Heroes, making him a Chekhov's gun!" The artist's response? "Great, now I need a new way to bail them out!" He figured it out.
In Chapter 2 of Gunnerkrigg Court, a set of glowing pictures (a Shout Out to the film The Peanut Butter Solution) are briefly featured in the library. When asked about the pictures, Tom Siddell explained that he has planned out a Story Arc involving those pictures, but he isn't certain that he'll be able to work that arc into the comic. So it's unknown at this time whether those pictures will end up being a Chekhovs Gun or just Cow Tools.
Every single thing in MS Paint Adventures. Since the various series use fan-submitted suggestions to drive much of the plot, seemingly non-sequiter commands like "Build a fort out of your desk" can lead to larger developments in the in-game universe. Or just be one-off non-sequiter gags.

Western Animation

The Season Two premiere of The Venture Brothers is a veritable Schroedinger's machine gun. The writers deliberately took all the fan speculation about how the cliffhanger at the end of the Season One finale would be resolved, and made it all true. A partial list follows.
- With Hank and Dean dead, the title would now refer to brothers Rusty and Jonas Junior — as seen in the episode's opening credits.
- The boys would be raised from the dead by Doctor Orpheus.
- Dr. Venture would clone the boys.
- It would be revealed that the boys were always clones.

Real Life

Many of a stage magician's illusions rely on some form of this. The Other Wiki has more details.
Politicians facing elections usually have their victory and concession speeches prepared well in advance. Similarly, newspapers pre-write articles and obituaries. Hilarity Ensues if they jump the gun and publish a wrong article.