On: Oil prices rise after US and Iran exchange fire in Hormuz strait

The news arrives as a headline, a mere datum without provenance. “Oil prices rise after US and Iran exchange fire in Hormuz strait.” This is useless to me. Who observed the exchange of fire? What vessel, what instrument, reported it? Was it a visual sighting from a merchant ship’s log, or a signal from a military detection system? The time, the exact coordinates, the nature of the “fire” - these are omitted. And then the second fragment: “US President Donald Trump said the ceasefire… is still in place.” Here we have a source - the President - but his statement is a political declaration, not an observational record. It cannot be reconciled with the first datum without the intermediate facts. The price of oil is a derived measurement, a consequence. To understand its movement, one must first establish the primary event. Was there an exchange? If so, of what magnitude? The Straits of Hormuz are a narrow channel; a single incident could be a misfire, a warning shot, or a sustained engagement. The catalogue of events is absent. I cannot form a judgement. This is the curse of modern reporting: it presents the conclusion - the price rise - without the foundational observations that should support it. My work on the southern stars depended on knowing, for each entry, the telescope, the night, the atmospheric conditions. Here, I have nothing. It is as if an astronomer announced a new nebula but refused to note its position or the instrument used. I am left with a feeling of profound irritation. The data is not data; it is rumor shaped into a headline. Until I see the logs from the vessels involved, the official bulletins from both navies, and a timestamped record of the event, I consider this story an uncalibrated instrument, producing noise, not signal.