Stanford engineer publicly refutes claim by Cambridge that a human Spider-Man could not exist

[Jim__]

From phys.org:

(Tech Xplore)—Engineer Elliot Hawkes and colleagues at Stanford University have dramatically rejected the claims made recently by zoologist David Labonte, of Cambridge University who in a press release stated that for a human to be able to climb up a wall the way Spider-Man does, he would have to have a size 114 foot. His claims were based on a study he and colleagues conducted that led to a paper being published in PNAS.

Rather than simply refute the claim, Hawkes made a video where he dons adhesive tiles, goes outside and climbs a glass door—he then promptly posted the video on Youtube. To further abase his colleagues across the sea, he added a backing soundtrack by the Stanford Mendicants singing the theme song for the sixties era Spider-Man show.

The in-your-face video rebuttal by the Stanford team came after late night talk show host Steven Colbert announced the sad findings of the Cambridge team on his show. Hawkes references the show in his video and the Cambridge findings and then reminds viewers that he and his team had invented a device for allowing spidey wall climbing almost three years ago.

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