There’s a news report making the rounds about a team of researchers who claim that they will be able to produce an “invisibility cloak,” or a “cloaking device,” depending on whether you like Harry Potter or Star Trek more. The idea is that a “metamaterial” (“self-referential material”? Material that refers to itself?) will take light from one side of an object and bring it around to the other, as if it passed through the object. Thus, the cloaked object would be invisible–and not just to the eye. Light beyond the visible range as well as sound could also be warped to hide something.

Needless to say, I am taking this report with a grain of salt so big that nothing could cloak it. First of all, stories like this surface in the press every few months or so. Researchers somewhere claim that they’re working on something amazing, and they’re not too far from success in developing it. Usually it’s a clean, cheap, and plentiful new power source, but almost as often it’s some amazing gadget based on a startling new principle. The thing is, you always see news stories about these claims that they’re on the brink of getting the thing… but you never hear of them again, there’s never a report that they actually did it. See, that’s the gold standard I’m waiting for: show me the money. Show me an actual cloaking device, and I’ll be amazed. Tell me one is in the offing, just you wait, and I’ll interpret that as another Brooklyn Bridge deal. Especially when you use words like “metamaterial.”

But the real tell was in the details of the story:

He added that a cloaking material might not take long to develop, assuming there is sufficient research.

“If there is adequate funding, I’d have thought it would take in the order of five years,” he said.

“Five years.” Those are the magic words. (Not to mention “in the order of.”) You see, I once heard an engineer say that when a project is vaporware and the team has no idea whatsoever when the thing will be finished, if even at all, any question about when the project will be finished will be answered: “It’s five years away.” Somehow five years is the magic amount of time. Some engineer apparently figured that five years was just close enough to sound promising, but just far enough away to allow for something to intervene by the time the deadline came up. Or people would just forget by then. I mean, really, if these “cloaking device” guys come up with nothing in five years, will you actually remember and say aloud, “Hey! Where’s that cloaking device we were promised?”

Of course, the second tell was when he said the words “adequate funding.” That’s kind of a giveaway. Actually, it turns out that another team claimed that they were working on a cloaking device a few months ago. All this sounds like perpetual researchers vying for money from gullible people (like Dilbert’s “Vijay, the World’s Most Desperate Venture Capitalist”). Like this second team is trying to one-up the first team: “No we’re working on a cloaking device! Really! Give us the money!” It brings to mind that scene from The Life of Brian where Brian is up on his cross with other condemned people, and when a clemency order comes along for “Brian,” and he doesn’t respond, others chime in: “I’m Brian, and so is my wife!”